This is a sermon I preached at the chapel of Acadia Divinity College. I thought this might be of interest to people who are seeking to learn more about disabilities.
What Do You Want Me to Do?
Mark 10:42-46
Introduction
As we read through the Gospels, we find that one of the frequent activities of Jesus is healing people who have disabilities. He heals those who are blind, who are deaf, who are mute, and who are lame. We read these stories so often that we may fail to reflect deeply enough about how we are reading them. How do you read these stories?
One way to read these healing stories is simply as a sign of Jesus’ great power and authority. Not even the most debilitating disabilities can stand before Jesus. Another way to read them would be to see them as a testimony of Jesus’ boundless compassion. Jesus loved these strangers so much that he could not leave them to continue suffering with a terrible disability. Those two readings would be very common.
Have you ever wondered how a person with a disability might hear these stories? At my previous congregation, we had quite a few people with disabilities. As I would preach through the Gospels and would read a story about healing a blind person, I would look out into the pews and see Bonnie and Joanne, two blind ladies sitting just a few rows from the front. How were they hearing that story? Or as I read a story about a man being healed so that he could walk again, I would look at Omar, the person live-streaming our services for us, as he sat in his wheelchair. How did he hear these stories?
While some Christians read the healing stories and it causes a burst of praise for how great Jesus is, some people with disabilities hear a different message in the Gospels. They see a Jesus who seems to see disabled people as broken things that need to be fixed. And not only that, Jesus seems to leave that same message to the church, setting an example that has caused great harm.
I once attended a church that saw a strong continuity between the healing ministries of Jesus and the early church with the church of today. One Sunday I showed up for our College and Career Sunday school and there were only two of us plus the leader. The other person had a severe brain injury and was in a wheelchair and was not able to speak clearly. The leader decided that if Jesus heals, there was no good reason for that young man to still be in a wheelchair. So he had me help lift him out of the chair and we supported him as we made him walk up and down the halls as we encouraged him to accept the healing that Jesus had promised him. By the end of our time, not only was the young man physically exhausted, he was also spiritually traumatized. I would assume that he has nothing to do with church now.
That’s an extreme example, and yet we have to wrestle with what we do with these texts. Should we be praying for the healing of disabled people today? And even if we don’t, is the Jesus we point disabled people to, the one who sees them as broken people who need to be fixed? Let’s turn to the Scriptures to try and wrestle through this.
Blind Bartimaeus
The story of Bartimaeus seems to be pretty typical of the healing narratives. Bartimaeus is a beggar, something we see over and over. There were no official social supports for people with disabilities and so begging was often the only way to survive. To get a sense of his experience, consider how you interact with people begging that you pass by. This could be considered an example of intersectionality, as he is disabled, poor, and socially isolated. Consider even his “name.” Bartimaeus is not really his name, it is simply a way of identifying who he is the son of. The guy doesn’t even get mentioned by name.
Bartimaeus happens to be at the place where Jesus was passing by. He could tell by the crowd that something big was happening. He must have heard someone mention Jesus and perhaps he was aware of Jesus’ reputation. He began to yell “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The crowd saw this as a distraction and tried to silence him but this only made him get louder. Jesus heard him and asked to speak to him. After a short conversation, Jesus healed him. The standard interpretation is that this an example of irony. Most of the people, including the disciples, did not understand who Jesus really was. But here a blind man, who could not physically see, could actually see Jesus for who he was in his messianic identity. His physical blindness shames the supposedly sighted people who could not see the truth of Jesus. This is a valid reading and most likely, the Gospel writers want us to get that message. However, how might a disabled person read this story? They might take notice of a part of the story that is easily skipped over. When Jesus speaks to the man, he doesn’t say: “Of course, I will have mercy on you. Prepare to receive your sight.” Rather, Jesus says: “What do you want me to do for you?” We might think that is rather obvious, but what does Jesus do? He gives the man some agency. Jesus did not assume that his greatest need was sight. Perhaps his mother was on her death bed. Or his brother was in a Roman jail? Maybe he had children who had gone in the wrong direction? It ended up that the man did want to be healed of his blindness but Jesus gave the man some say in what was about to happen. Let that reading sink in.
The Ministry of the Church
With the words of Jesus ringing in our ears, what does this mean for how the church ministers to disabled people? In the research that I did for my thesis, I interviewed numerous people who were victims of unsolicited and unwanted prayers of healing. Well-meaning Christians assumed that anyone with a disability was desperate to be healed and that they were the means that God would bring deliverance. When the person was not healed, they were left with the criticism of lacking faith. Meanwhile, each of those people were content with their disability and did not want to be healed. My wife and I have ourselves been the victims of criticism by friends that our children still have autism, when all we had to do was receive their healing. Those were traumatic experiences when we were already struggling to deal with their diagnoses. I mentioned a couple of blind ladies in my previous congregation. One mentioned to me that she appreciated how we made her feel welcome. I assumed she meant how we brought her up the elevator or got her coffee or provided a footstool in her pew. No, she felt welcomed because we never attempted to pray for her healing from blindness. We accepted her exactly the way she was.
I get asked regularly how congregations can welcome people people with disabilities. They are often thinking in terms of physical accessibility or formal disability ministries. I would start with the words of Jesus; “What do you want me to do for you?” Don’t assume that because a person has a disability that you know what it is that they really need. When our children were diagnosed with autism, we were overwhelmed with advice of how to “cure” autism, as if that was what we were looking for. We did find what we were looking for during a break in my pastoral ministry when we were attending another church. Our autistic son was making some noise during the sermon, and the pastor seeing the dirty looks by some of the congregation, stopped and said: “Isn’t it great that everyone is welcome in our church?”
You might think what a disabled person needs is a special group that meets in the basement but what they really need is to be able to use their gifts to bless the rest of the church. You might think that a person with a disability needs to be fixed, when what they need is to help you become more like Jesus. Renovations and programs have their place, but what is really needed is a renewed commitment for the church to be the Body of Christ, where every member is valued and treated with respect.
Conclusion
I love the Bible and especially the Gospels. I love the stories of Jesus. I love the stories of his power and compassion. But I also realize that I read the Gospels through my own lens, through my own personal perspective. That cannot be helped. But as a pastor, when I preach the Scriptures in church, I am not just preaching for me or people like me. It is important to consider how different people read the same passages. How do women read the passages that are just dripping with patriarchy? How do single people read passages about going forth and multiplying? And how do disabled people read passages where Jesus seems to heal every disabled person he bumps into? Some disabled people are going to continue to struggle with reading the Gospels, seeing in the healing activity of Jesus a reflection of what they experience in church of not being good enough because they are too broken. But in the story of Bartimaeus at least, we have another part of the puzzle. Jesus did not always assume that people wanted physically healing. If we are going to continue the work of Jesus, perhaps this is the passage to start with. Perhaps we could consider the difference between curing and healing. Curing would require the relief of the physical affliction, but healing could be broader. Ultimately, people of all abilities need some level of healing and that might never include the abandoning of hearing aids, guide dogs, or wheelchairs. Let us commit ourselves to asking as individuals and congregations: “What do you want me to do for you?”
