Any Body, Everybody, Christ’s Body – From Creation to Community
By Carolyn R. Thompson, M. Div
July 14, 2010
keynote address at the United Church of Christ LGBT Coalition national gathering, San Diego, CA
Lessons: Genesis 1:1-27, 31 and I Corinthians 12: 4-23, 26
Any Body, Everybody, Christ’s Body – I am delighted that you have chosen this as a theme for the national Coalition gathering! This is actually the title of a resource book that the UCC Disabilities Ministries Board has put together to help congregations and other organizations of the church be more welcoming and “accessible to all.” Any Body, Everybody, Christ’s Body…, the words roll easily off the tongue, but what are they saying about the church? That ANY body is welcome? Sinners and tax collectors? Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party members? Noisy children? High school dropouts? CEOs, gays and lesbians? Opinionated old ladies? Humph. Or it could mean any BODY… young bodies, old bodies; black, tan, white bodies; bodies decked out in the height of fashion and bodies covered with whatever was available from Goodwill; bodies that get around with the aid of crutches and walkers or navigate the world in wheelchairs; bodies with eyes that don’t see or ears that don’t hear; bodies with injured brains! Really? Goodness, that’s everybody… What a radical idea! And it is together that we make up the Body of Christ.
diversity & goodness of creation; humankind made in God’s image
The reading from Genesis told that in the beginning God created the heavens and earth from a formless void, separated day from night, put lights in the sky, gathered the water together and let the dry land appear, brought forth vegetation, sea creatures, birds in the air and animals on land, and finally, humankind created in God’s likeness. What a diversity of surroundings and life! It is very clear from this account that variety and difference are essential to God’s master plan. We are also told that at every step of the way God looked over the new creation and declared it was GOOD.
The text does not say, “perfect.” Advertising in our world today puts great emphasis on perfection. We can easily become obsessive about our appearance and abilities: about perfect skin, perfect abs, perfect weight, perfect grades, a perfect lawn, etc., etc. I do NOT believe this notion of perfection is what God intended. This Genesis passage also tells us that we are made in God’s image; we reflect God’s likeness. I believe it takes all of us to do this, like we each are a piece of the mosaic that makes up this image of God. Perhaps this indescribable God can only be mirrored in the diversity of humanity. Perhaps even disability is part of this plurality, this variety that God intends for creation.
life with disability
I am sure that in this gathering tonight there are some individuals with disabilities, some have family members with disabilities, or people in your congregations who are disabled. Maybe you don’t personally know anyone who has a disability. Among us there is a wide range of knowledge and experience. I want to reflect for a bit on some of the realities of living with a disability from the perspective of many disabled people. The United Nations recently came up with this definition: “Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”
A key part of this definition is the interaction between the person with the impairment and the environment. This environment can present physical barriers like a stairs, narrow doorways, small print or attitudinal barriers that impose negative stereotypes. It is difficult to be one’s true self when the world labels you as a pitiful, defective burden to society, as something expendable. People with disabilities are constantly struggling to free themselves from such stigma.
Scholars have coined the term, “ableism” – like sexism and racism – to name a subtle and pervasive bias that assumes that non-disabled people are the “norm” and that anyone with a disability represents an undesirable deviation form this norm. In this biased view the impairments and limitations become the defining characteristics of the person with the disability. Discrimination against people with disabilities rests on this prejudicial measure of the person’s worth and acceptability.
Disability does confound our human notions of perfection, health, purpose, status and success. Disability directly challenges many fundamental assumptions we have acquired over time, but rather than confront this discomfort, we often shroud the subject in silence and try to distance ourselves from it. Too often, by not acknowledging our own vulnerability, we project our fears and anger onto those with disabilities. These people then become the scapegoats who bear our own inadequacies and pain. We either condemn them or venerate what we interpret as “their suffering.”
Life with a disability is full of paradox and ambiguity. It has a cruciform shape that calls one to stand in the center, in the mystery and to hold the tension between the extremes. This position requires balance and imagination to resist the simplistic "either / or" answers that some suggest. It requires living with uncertainty and trusting that God will show us the way.
Life with disability is often unpredictable. A person’s disability can be stable or progressive. It might be readily apparent, like a person using a wheelchair, or it may not be so obvious, as in the case of a person with congestive heart failure or mental illness. Having a “hidden” disability might seem like an advantage at first, since the person can “pass” as being non-disabled. But secrets become difficult to guard, so eventually the person may be faced with “coming out,” and many of you here know what that process can be like.
How each person with a disability experiences life will also vary from one to the next, even for people with the same type impairment – like losing a leg as a teenager. Many societal and economic factors, such as personality, family and community supports, access to healthcare, options for education and employment, and religious faith, enter into how a person adjusts to having a disability. All of these will influence the outcomes.
Someone who is born with a disabling condition or becomes disabled at a very young age will have a very different experience from someone who acquires a disability later in life. The child grows up with the disability so it becomes a part of his identity. The adult who becomes disabled will likely feel like his or her life has been turned upside down, like he has been dropped into a strange land with no directions on how to negotiate the terrain. There is a sense of diminishment, anger, and the desire to blame someone for what has happened. It is not at all unusual individuals to be become depressed during this period of adjustment. They will need to grieve what has been lost and then work at building a new self image. This is also true for parents of a new baby born with significant impairments. The family will need to mourn the loss of the child they had been expecting before they can welcome the child who has arrived. We need clergy who are better prepared to provide appropriate pastoral care in these situations.
Helen Keller said, "Life is a great adventure or nothing at all." Living is risky business. It has been the Creator’s design to place this breath of live in fragile earthen vessels. Although disability is not one of those adventures we arrange on our own terms, it is a natural occurrence in our lives, a contingency of being human. Recent census figures tell us that people with disabilities make up nearly 20% of the population in the United States, and the incidence of disability increases with age. One in every three or four families is affected by disability. As medical and scientific advances continue to reduce the death rate form disease and injuries, more people survive to continue life with some disabling condition. This is a minority group that anyone can join.
According to statistics, about 20% of your membership in the Coalition, in your congregations would comprise people with disabilities. If not, where are these people? In our beloved United Church of Christ we speak of God’s extravagant welcome, but how do we draw this eclectic flock together, ... the usual members and all the people who have been left out, ignored, forgotten, or made to feel unwelcome? How do all these people fit in?
building community - body of christ
I want to touch on three main themes in the bible and see how they inform our theology and practices today concerning people with disabilities. These are the stories about giving, healing and eating.
Let us consider again the words from I Corinthians:
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good…. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it
Paul was very clear in his comparison of the church to the human body that one member could not say, since I cannot perform like you, I do not belong, or since you are not like us, we do not need you. No one is more important than the others, and no one is to see himself or herself as so insignificant as to be unnecessary to the whole. There is a place for each to belong. The focus on individualism in this country has put so much emphasis on being self-sufficient that we have forgotten we were created to be in relationship with one another. We are interdependent.
We need to remember that a person’s disability is just one of her attributes; it does not constitute the entirety of who that person is. Each person has something vital to contribute, a gift for the building up of the whole body. It can be a gift of leadership or simply a hug or a smile. We need each other for our gifts to be revealed. Individuals with disabilities as well as our families and friends may have gifts to share precisely from our experience of living with disability. We have found ourselves in that liminal space between what is known and unknown. We have met Christ in that empty darkness where we realized we were no longer “in control” and learned to rely on the God’s presence and care. We have learned to be adaptive and use our imaginations to solve new problems; we are resilient and we can guide others in this new territory. God also calls each of us to be a gift, to give ourselves to God’s service. We are to hold nothing back; God wants our whole being, including the parts of our bodies or minds that are impaired, the disabled part.
There are many accounts of individuals being healed through their encounters with Jesus. Some came on their own; some were brought to him, and some he just met along the way. I think it is important to recall how the culture of his day marginalized people because of their ailments, and how his healing restored them to the community. Sometimes it seemed like the crowd could not comprehend the forgiveness and peace of Jesus blessing without a physical sign of his power. Today, in a like manner, the focus usually gets placed on the mending of bodies rather than souls.
Western society’s approach to disability has been dominated by a medical model that relies on a diagnosis to define the whole problem and solution. The emphasis is on correcting a deficit in the individual; the person with a disability is always the “sick” patient in need of corrective treatment or surgery. We have let a biblical focus on healing become a fixation on “cure.” It can become an expensive and never ending process in the hands of professionals where the more the individual becomes the object of their procedures, the more she loses her own integrity and sense of self. Some people spend a lifetime sitting on the sidelines waiting for a cure.
I believe that healing is more about restoring wholeness than about fixing or correcting something. To become whole, those parts that have become estranged need to be reclaimed.
Some years ago I slipped on a steep embankment. Both bones in my right leg snapped just above the ankle and had to be pinned back together. I had just moved to a new city and started a new job. I could not drive my car to the places I needed to go. I was angry at my leg and blamed it for letting me down. After awhile I realized that my leg was not at fault; it had not intentionally sabotaged my plans. It was just as much a part of me as my other limbs. The whole of my life included this broken part, and it needed my care and attention as much as any other component of my body.
Wholeness happens when all the parts of our individual and corporate lives that have been left out, neglected, or excluded are brought together in love. It is an ongoing process of recovery. The challenge is to reconcile the disparate parts, for people to remember their stories and who they are, to welcome even the least significant or least capable one, and know that it is all holy and acceptable before God. It is about being restored to one’s rightful place in the community, about bringing together all the different pieces of the puzzle so the picture can be complete. This task of integration is challenging work, both for the individual person and for the church as we try to create a place where everyone can participate and feel they belong.
One of the ways that many of us are familiar with disability is through all the requests we get for charitable contributions. While some of the money might be put to good use, these campaigns are disempowering to people with disabilities. They portray us as helpless beggars who can do nothing but sit on the side of the road seeking alms. We have accounts of Jesus interacting with people like this, but I do not recall any story where he threw them some coins. They were outcasts, often people shunned because of their disabilities, but he broke the rules of his culture; he talked to them and touched them. He asked what they needed, and in healing some ailment, restored them to a participatory place in their society. Or he invited them to sit down with him to share a meal, to be in relationship with him. The powerbrokers of his day were horrified that he would do this.
I remember when I was new to a particular church, and first went to a supper they sponsored before an evening event. This is when I had recently broken my ankle and was still awkward with my crutches, so I was relieved when a long time member offered to get me a plate of food. I sat down at an empty table, since everyone else was still standing in line, and waited. In a few minutes he came back with two plates, set one down for me, and went off to join his friends at another table. It was the loneliest meal I ever ate.
Jesus shared many meals with his disciples, friends, “tax collectors and sinners” in homes, on hillsides, and in the upper room. Even when he sent his disciples out on their own, he told them to find a home that would welcome them. He did not tell them to carry sufficient food for the journey or to beg, nor did he give them money to buy food along the way. Part of their ministry was built around sharing meals with the people they met. There was a sharing of food and spiritual nourishment. People with disabilities do not want handouts; they want to share in the activities of the church. How does your congregation share meals in a way that allows everyone to sit at the table and participate? How do you share the bread and cup of communion so that no one who wants to partake feels left out?
Can we learn from this experience of disability, of life with hard limits and weakness as well as rich potential and possibility? In our lifelong journeys to become whole, to become fully who we are, to live into our birthrights as beloved sons and daughters of God, can we wrestle meaning from the adventure of disability and bring it under God’s blessing? Can we trust that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”? (I Cor. 1:25)
Remember, God has imbued us with the imagination, creativity, and power to change the cultural and physical environment and so we can celebrate the gifts every human being brings to life. We are being called to companion each other on this journey. We are all members of a wondrous, diverse, interdependent web of life, and there is an integrity to this creation. Let us open up this place we call church, re-imagine and reconfigure it, remodel and reshape our worship, our programs, our education, and our buildings so there will be space for all to participate fully. This can happen when we allow the Spirit of Truth to show us the way. Let us manifest the hospitality of Jesus in all our relationships, for it is in Christ we are made whole. The Spirit is reaching from God’s future into our present, inviting us into new possibilities, into new and eternal life together.