Tag Archives: Disability Justice

Waiting, Serving, Healing: A Sermon for Epiphany 5B, 2024

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February 4, 2024

Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns; the great Charles Wesley, “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” It’s one of the hymns I know practically by heart, one that I’ve sung dozens of times. As familiar as it is, like many hymns, its words can strike differently in different contexts. Take verse 6, for example:

Hear him, ye Deaf; ye voiceless ones,
Your loosen’d Tongues employ;
Ye Blind behold your Saviour’s come,
And leap, ye Lame for Joy. 

On the surface, unremarkable, perhaps but it points to something significant, and challenging in our times. We hear and say a lot about welcoming people, embracing people of different ethnicities and sexualities, of accommodating people with physical or mental challenges but especially in the latter cases—there are often unspoken assumptions that may raise barriers to full acceptance or engagement in the community. We often don’t realize how our hymns, and our scriptures can be such barriers. 

When we come to Jesus’ healing miracles, we may, unconsciously or subconsciously compare them to our own common life—looking to fix or heal other people rather than seeing them as challenging us to grow, and change, and learn. Some of you may recall a sermon a year or so ago in which I referenced the book: My Body is not your prayer request in which the author, Amy Kenny advocates for disability justice in the church.

There are physical barriers that have been constructed, and there are psychological, and even religious barriers that we erect that make full inclusion difficult, if not impossible.

In this little story, in these few verses, Mark has once again packed a world of ideas. First of all, think about the difference in settings between the healing that occurs in today’s story, and the story last week. Last Sunday, a possessed man was rid of an unclean spirit in a public space, in the midst of the synagogue. Today’s story takes place in private, in a home, in domestic space. 

There is a difference as well in the healing and in its aftermath. The unclean spirit, recognizes and identifies Jesus—You are the Holy One of God, but wants nothing to do with Jesus, and we don’t know what happens to him after the exorcism. In a way, the possessed man and Simon’s mother-in-law are in the same situation. They are both debilitated by their maladies, and by definition, they are robbed of whatever status and role they might have had. The possessed man can only disrupt synagogue services, and Simon’s mother-in-law is bed-ridden. Jesus’ act of healing, in both cases, restores them to their roles. 

There’s something else worth noting in Mark’s brief description of the healing. There’s a tenderness, an intimacy in Jesus’ actions. He reaches down to touch her, and “lifts her up”—language evocative of other healing stories in the gospel and of the resurrection.

Cured of her illness, Simon’s mother-in-law served Jesus and the others. But it is interesting. It’s interesting not because it is behavior we might expect of a woman in a traditional culture, or too often, in our own. Our culture, indeed our church continues to be conflicted about such roles. In the context of Mark’s gospel and early Christianity, her serving takes on added significance. For one thing, the term used is the greek word, diakonia, which of course is the word from which our own word, deacon, comes. But there’s more, much more. It’s the same word that appears just a few verses earlier, in Mark’s description of the temptation in the wilderness. V. 13 reads: “He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” The word translated here as “waited” is the same word used in our reading of Peter’s mother-in-law: “she began to serve them.”

 Much later, at the crucifixion, Mark tells us that there were women watching from afar, and Mark writes that these women had followed Jesus and “served him” in Galilee. They were his disciples, and as we shall see, in some ways these women were model disciples, disciples who stayed with him, while the men ran away.

To put it clearly. Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is not just about restoring her to her community and to her role. It is about equipping her to be a disciple. She got up and served them. We might be tempted to see this as her simply returning to the traditional, role of a wife and mother in a patriarchal culture. But for Mark, it’s more than that. She stands as a disciple, one who follows Jesus and ministers to him. She stands as a contrast to the unclean spirit who wanted to have nothing to do with Jesus. She also stands in contrast to those other disciples who came looking for Jesus when he went away for prayer and solitude.

This little gospel reading is challenging in so many ways, not because we have to struggle to make meaning out of it, but because it reflects our own situation, our own relationships with Jesus. Imagine the scene, after these two healings, everyone with a problem comes to Jesus. They’ve heard of his miraculous powers, and they want him to help them. We can imagine the scene. Dozens, hundreds of people waiting in line, pressing at him to get his attention, to feel his healing touch. At the end of it all, Jesus is exhausted, worn out, and he goes away by himself to pray and recover. Mark writes: 

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

It’s a telling moment in Mark’s gospel, a rare occasion when Jesus is off by himself. After all that excitement and work, he needs to be by himself, recover and rejuvenate, to pray, to be with God

But even then he’s not left alone. His disciples come after him. The text says, “they hunted him down.” And what do they do? Do they ask, “How can we help? How can we serve you?” No, they tell him the obvious, that everyone’s looking for you.

Jesus responds enigmatically, saying, we’re not going back. We’re moving on. I’ve got more work to do. “I have to go elsewhere, to other towns, and proclaim the good news there.” Jesus turns his back on Capernaum, he turns his back on whoever back there he might not have healed, or whoever might have come late and missed their chance, and he moves on proclaiming the good news, of the coming of God’s reign.

In a way it’s a fitting end to this story, and brings us back to the beginning of my sermon. For even Jesus couldn’t do it all; he needed time to regroup, time to be with God, to deepen his relationship with God before embarking on a new mission in new territory. None of us can do it by ourselves. To respond to God’s call, to serve those in need require skill, and energy. But it also requires us to make room for others, to enable others to serve and do their part. 

One of the things I’m learning as I enter this stage of my ministry, is to make room for those others, to give others space and opportunity to use their gifts and skills, to follow their passions, to respond to God’s call in ways that are appropriate to their context, their experience, and their abilities. As a congregation, we would do well to hear that message, to follow Jesus, to equip and make room for everyone to serve the body of Christ, to be the body of Christ.

The words from Isaiah call us to remember the importance of bringing those burdens to God, as Jesus brought his to God in prayer. As we think about the upcoming season of Lent; they may inspire us: 

but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Amen.

Disability and Healing: A Sermon for Proper 16C, 2022

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This past week, I read Amy Kenny’s My Body is not a prayer request: Disability Justice in the Church. Kenny is disabled and writes passionately and with humor about her experience with the medical establishment, with Christians. She also calls for a rethinking, not just of architecture and attitudes, but of our theology and language of worship, urging us not just to accommodate the needs of disabled people but to incorporate them fully in the life of the church and of society. 

I was reading it at the same time that I was hearing criticism of current attitudes toward COVID restrictions—knowing that many people are living with conditions that make them especially vulnerable and that by demanding a return to normalcy, we are relegating them to live in constant fear or in isolation. At the same time, I read about cases in Canada, where medically assisted suicide is now legal, that doctors and medical personnel have encouraged some disabled people to undergo suicide because they were burdens to the medical system, or in one case, there was no adequate housing available for the person in question.

For Kenny, one of the great challenges in her life is how people respond to her disability. Each chapter concludes with a list of remarks people have made to her. Among them: “At least you’ll be running in heaven”

Or among the top ten reasons she is disabled:

“God needed a special angel” or

“You’ve given up hope.” Or

“You need to have a little more faith.”

Kenny and other disability advocates challenge us to work toward a world, spaces, society which are fully inclusive of all people. We are being challenged to rethink our assumptions, to reorient our perspectives, and to rebuild our spaces.

Such challenges cut to the very heart of our assumptions about scripture and faith. For example, the healing stories in the gospels are easily read in light of those assumptions. For example, in today’s reading, it’s easy to interpret this as simply another one of those demonstrations of Jesus’ compassion and divine power, healing a woman who had been disabled for eighteen years.

But it is a much more complex story than that.

But wait, that’s not quite the story Luke tells. First of all, the woman. Luke doesn’t tell us why she came to the synagogue. What he doesn’t say is that she came because Jesus was there, that she was hoping Jesus would heal her, that she asked Jesus to heal her. In fact, she doesn’t say anything to Jesus, she doesn’t touch his garment; she doesn’t disrupt the service. It’s Jesus who notices her and stops what he’s doing to heal her. Moreover, Luke says nothing about her faith, that it was faith in Jesus that brought her to the synagogue, or that she came to faith because of the healing. All he says is that after she’s healed, she praises God.

And before we succumb too quickly to the Jesus against Judaism trope, remember where this is taking place, in a synagogue, on the Sabbath. In fact, it’s the third time Luke places Jesus in a synagogue on the Sabbath. More importantly perhaps, all three times Luke tells us that Jesus was teaching in it. In other words, it’s not just that Jesus behaved like a good Jew by going to the synagogue on the Sabbath. He was seen in all three locations as an authority on scripture, on the law, and was asked to teach, or preach, if you’d rather. He was interpreting Torah, interpreting the law to the assembled congregation. So for him to interrupt his teaching and train of thought, to notice a woman coming in, for him to stop everything and heal her is quite a big deal.

Then there’s the woman herself. What brought her to the synagogue that day? Was it her custom? Was it desperation? What was her life like? For eighteen years she had been bent over, more literally the text could read, as the KJV does, “bowed together,” unable to straighten herself out. For eighteen years, her eyes were on the ground as she walked. She could not see the faces of anyone. She hadn’t felt the warmth of the sun on her cheeks; she hadn’t been able to look at the sky, or the horizon. Her world had narrowed to the few square feet directly in front of her.

What did she do when she was healed? She stretches out to her full stature. What must that have felt like? Can you imagine the sudden freedom? The new perspective on the world? What is her immediate response? She praises God—by the way, that was something that was typically done standing up, arms outstretched to the sky. Had the fact that her body forced her almost into a prostrate position kept her soul from glorifying God, from lifting itself up to God in praise? 

There’s something else in the story that’s curious. After the healing, the focus shifts to a dialogue between the Synagogue ruler and Jesus. The ruler criticizes Jesus for healing on the Sabbath but his criticism isn’t primarily directed at the question of its legality. Rather, he seems focused on Jesus breaking another rule—people come to the synagogue for healing on the other six days of the week. The ruler wants to keep it that way. Sabbath in the synagogue is not for healing but for other things.

So there’s a lot going on in this little healing story and there’s much we could say about it. But I want to focus on one thing in particular. In the ancient illness, disability was often understood to be the result of something—of sin. So in John 9, when Jesus and his disciples encounter the man born blind, his disciples ask him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Illness or disability reflected a disordered person, a disordered soul. In this story, both Luke and Luke’s Jesus take care to emphasize that the woman’s condition is not because of sinfulness, not caused by something she has done or who she is, but that it comes from outside of her, from Satan or an evil spirit.

Just as the ancient world understood illness in a particular way, it also understood wellness, or healing very differently than we do. The word for healing, for wholeness, was the same word as that translated as salvation—so physical healing was tied up with spiritual healing, the healing of the whole person, and the restoration of that person into community. Healing, and wholeness does not necessarily mean the end of a physical or mental disability, but rather wholeness or healing of one’s relationship with God, and inclusion in community.

One thing Kenny points out in scripture that I had never noticed before was that there are repeated references to the inclusion of lame people in the vision of the kingdom or reign of God.  So, for example, in the very next chapter of Luke, Jesus says: 

But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, 

I’m grateful that the leaders of Grace had the vision nearly thirty-five years ago to install an elevator, in order to make our spaces more accessible. I’m grateful that we installed a hearing loop to make our services more accessible to those with hearing challenges. I’m grateful that the pandemic forced us to explore new technologies so that our services are available, usually, to people who find it difficult to come to church. 

Such measures are not accommodations, but the bare minimum. There’s more to do, however. We need to rethink our attitudes, even our theology, to understand that all human beings bear God’s image, no matter what they look like, no matter what their physical or mental challenges might be. We also need to recognize and embrace the reality that people who are disabled are beloved of God and our siblings in Christ. 

I’m reminded that the risen Christ bore on his body the marks of his crucifixion. For my old friend St. Augustine, that was a sign that in the general resurrection, when we are finally in God’s presence, we may continue to carry on us and in us signs of our physical challenges, that our bodies would not be made perfect according to some cultural ideal of beauty, that we would not all look the same, but that we would continue to carry on us signs of those infirmities, even though we would no longer be suffering bodily from those infirmities or disabilities.

As we continue to work toward full inclusion of all those who come to us, as we advocate for a society that embraces all humans in all of their fullness, diversity, and disability, may we also look to Christ, who offers us healing and compassion, and who gives us hope and wholeness, even when our bodies remain broken.