a sermon on John 9.1-7 & Luke 8.43-48
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
“Janice” is nearly 60, but she has the mind of a four-year-old. She is blind.
Her back is curved, as are her arms and legs, due to a congenital disease, so
she sits all day in bed or in a wheelchair. She has been in and out of
institutions all her life. Her family tries to take care of her at home for a
while, but before long they realize once again that her needs are too great. So
back she goes to a state institution for the severely handicapped. The family
feels guilty about this, because she is happier at home, but her aging mother,
now a widow, is unable to lift Janice and care for her properly. They lack the
money for round-the-clock in-home care. If you visit the cottage where she
lives, you will find her holding a teddy bear or playing with beads or bottles,
singing happily to herself. “Jesus loves me” is a favorite. Of course she is not
always happy. Like all of us she feels a full range of complex emotions, but she
is unable to articulate many of hers. She has been known to scratch herself when
she is upset. She depends on the people around her for all her needs, and she
remembers the ones who are good to her. I have changed her name, but I assure
you she is a real person and one I have met.
This sermon is about Janice and millions of other handicapped people, with
disabilities ranging from mild to severe. It is about disability and how as
Christians we fit it into our conceptual world. How are we to understand
disability? How ought we respond? Where does God fit in? And how do we cope if
we become disabled? These are not easy questions, but they are important ones.
There is a distinctly Christian take on the whole phenomenon of human
disability. It stands in contrast to other views that are out there—for example,
an Eastern view that says disability is punishment for sins committed in a
former life or a pagan view that tries not to view the disabled at all.
In the ancient world, how Christians thought about disability and cared for the
disabled set them apart from their pagan neighbors. What usually happened in
Greco-Roman culture when a baby was born with some sort of defect was the
parents would take the child out into the wilderness somewhere and leave it to
die. Christians did not do this. In fact, Christians were known to sometimes
rescue such children and raise them in a loving home. How’s that for putting
theology into practice? It takes strong faith and love to do something like
that, but it happens still, once in a while. A Christian couple will adopt a
handicapped child because no one else wants the boy or girl and they know he or
she is worthy of love. That’s an admirable calling.
Since there is a distinctly Christian understanding about disability, I thought
I should share it with you, especially now that pagan practices are making a
comeback. It is easy now to tell if a child will be handicapped while it is
still in the womb and abort it. Meanwhile, at the other end of the lifecycle,
euthanasia makes more and more sense to people who measure the worth of a human
life not based on the image of God or any inherent dignity but on quality of
life and even financial considerations. Christians never ask the question that
seems to preoccupy pagan cultures, from ancient Greece and Rome to Nazi Germany
to the Western world today: Who is worthy to live? …
One problem I face in preaching about disabilities is the scope of the topic.
Disabilities come in many forms. Some people are born disabled. Some become
disabled later in life. Disabilities can be causes by genetics, accident, or
age. They can be physical or mental or a combination. It is a vast topic, and I
cannot hope to give you a full or final word, but I can draw in broad outlines
the distinctly Christian view.
First some basics: Every person, no matter how severely disabled, is a human
being, created by God and bearing the image of God. God loves every person.
These are truths we teach small children in Sunday school, and they are the
foundation for how Christians think and act about disability. What do you feel
when you encounter a severely handicapped person? Pity? Fear? Uncomfortable?
What about a sense of awe at the glory of God? Every human being has an
inherent, inalienable beauty, worth, and dignity because God created us, we bear
God’s image (broken though it may be by our sin), and God loves us.
Also, Christ died for every person, no matter their condition. Christ died for
you. We are all in need of redemption, and disability doesn’t change this one
way or the other. In some cases, a person’s mind does not develop sufficiently
to make sin possible. Young children lack sufficient awareness to sin. They
cannot distinguish right and wrong. Children, we believe, are covered by God’s
grace. If they grow and thrive and develop sufficient awareness, they will
constitute themselves as willful sinners before God and stand in need of
forgiveness. If, however, the mind does not grow, they remain in a state of
grace. Are mentally handicapped adults morally culpable? Are they capable of
faith? These questions can only be answered on a person-by-person basis. Some
are. Some are not. God knows, and he works in their lives and calls them just
the same as with anyone else.
I know a couple who have a son with Down’s syndrome. When he was born, their
pastor initially refused to baptize him, because he didn’t think the child would
ever be capable of faith in Christ. This was a serious mistake, for several
reasons. To being with, if you baptize any infants, you should baptize all
infants. You cannot guarantee the future faith of any of them. More importantly,
as we practice baptism, it speaks powerfully to God’s grace. Why did that pastor
assume God’s grace was not for this child? It was, and it is. The parents were
devastated. The pastor got chewed out by one of his seminary professors and
repented and baptized the child, but the parents never got over it. Every child
born into the church is part of the community of faith and should be baptized.
The handicapped child is, like every other child, God’s gift to us and a part of
us. We simply cannot be the church, the family, the people God wants us to be if
we exclude the disabled. But now I am racing ahead of myself. Let me get back to
the few basics so we can move on.
The first question in the Westminster Catechism is: “What is the chief end of
man?” Or, in modern English: What is the purpose of human life? The answer it
gives is: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” I have
known mentally handicapped people who do that better than most of us, and I have
never yet encountered a human being incapable of it.
When we think about or try to cope with disabilities, one question is
unavoidable: Why? Why was I born this way? Or, why did this happen to me? I have
an answer to this question, and when you hear it you will be amazed by my
wisdom. You will stand in awe of my brilliance. Here is my answer to the
question “why?”: I don’t know. That’s not a cop out. It is an honest answer. I
really don’t know. There may be a reason—a mother takes medication with
unforeseen side effects during pregnancy, a genetic problem, or a car accident.
Even when there is a reason like this, however, it never reaches to the depths
of the question why. Just knowing the physical cause, even if it can be known is
not enough. “Where was God? Where is God? How can he run the world like this? It
is not fair.” And that’s true. It is not fair. God has a lot to answer for. Not
that we are capable of calling him to account. Yet according to scripture, God
desires his goodness and faithfulness to be known to the ends of the earth. And
thus he holds himself accountable, and all the earth will see and know that he
is good. Someday, when he raises the dead and sets everything right, we will
have our answers. Until then, the wisest answer we can give is, “I don’t know.”
Nevertheless, there are some things we do know. We know that disability is not
God’s will. You may wonder, “How can I say it is not God’s will when it happens
so often?” To which I can only say that a lot of things happen that are not
God’s will. That’s why Jesus taught us to pray that God’s will might be done on
earth as it is in heaven. That’s not happening right now—not entirely anyway—and
disability is another instance of the fallen, broken state of our world.
Remember what Paul wrote in Romans 8 about creation being in bondage to decay.
The entire creation is out of whack. It stands in need of redemption and new
creation.
We know disability is not God’s will because when Jesus was going around
proclaiming the kingdom of God and showing people what it is like, he healed the
disabled. Why these and not others? He was offering a sign of the kingdom. He
was making the kingdom happen. He was offering a sneak preview of the coming
main attraction when all God’s children will be healed and whole. When Jesus
healed, he was doing God’s will on earth as in heaven. What is God’s will?
Healing and wholeness. Jesus healed many; he never maimed anyone—not even those
who everybody would have agreed deserved it.
When the disciples see the blind man, they assume God was punishing someone.
Either the man’s parents had sinned, so God sent them a son who would not be
able to look after them in their old age. Or God foresaw some sin the man
himself would commit and punished him in advance. Jesus said no.
I knew a man once who drove drunk, ran his car off the road, and lost the use of
his legs. God punished him, he told me. I suggested his disability was a
consequence, but not necessarily a punishment. If God did that to him, why are
most drunk drivers still walking around? Moreover, what about the other people
they sometimes kill? I know when you are suffering it is easy to conclude that
God must be against you. Guilt can be strangely comforting. Human beings would
rather feel guilty than powerless. Better that I brought my suffering on myself
than that it happened for reasons I cannot know or control. The crux of faith
comes down to this: Are you willing to trust God despite having to wait for an
answer? Can you believe in his goodness and love despite your suffering and the
suffering of those you love? Jesus helps us tremendously here. We can look at
the cross and know his love. We can look at his healing ministry and know that
he wants—and plans—something better than our condition at the moment.
This leads me into what I want to say about coping with disability. Here too I
am at a disadvantage, for I have not had to cope with being handicapped. So I
will draw on the experience and wisdom of others. I cannot pretend it is easy,
nor will I tell you that all you need is faith in God to wash away the pain and
fill you with joy. Life is more complicated than that. As in most areas of life,
faith in God can save you and make all the difference in the end, but it does
not exempt you from suffering.
My parents were both blind, from birth. My mother totally blind, my father
legally blind. These are my adopted parents. I grew up around blind people, and
I noticed something. Those who had been born blind generally coped better
emotionally with their blindness than those who lost their sight later in life.
Maybe it is easier to get used to doing without something you have never had
than to have it and lose it. My mother said that when she was young she prayed
for healing. She wanted to see, and she begged God to give her sight, as he did
for the man in today’s reading. She had pastors pray for her. She went to
healing services. But she was not healed, and she felt bitter about it. Then one
day she made a breakthrough. She said, “I was praying for healing once again,
and it hit me that I was saying to God, ‘You gave me your life, now give me
something else.’ ” She changed her prayer and asked God to help her to accept
and to do his will. She gave herself to him without reservations. None of this
“heal me and I’ll serve you” business. I do not know what you make of this, but
that’s how she found peace. She was able to come to terms with her disability
and accept it. Some people never manage to.
Some people feel cursed by God. Their disability chokes out their faith and
love. As Henri Nouwen, the Yale and Harvard scholar who left the academy to
minister to mentally handicapped adults, wrote, “They believe their cup doesn’t
carry any blessings” [Can You Drink the Cup?, p. 66]. But they are wrong. The
love of God is big enough to encompass our suffering and take it up and free our
souls from bitterness and despair. I know this, but knowing it is not enough.
You have to experience it. I do not think I would cope well with a disability.
Yet I know God’s grace is sufficient, so maybe there would be hope for even me.
My prayer is that any of you who struggles with a disability will find the peace
my mother did.
Very well, we have covered the important basics. We have asked the question why.
And we have looked at how one Christian began to cope with disability. Now let’s
consider the final issue of this sermon: our response to the disability of
others.
My first suggestion is practical. The disabled are just like everyone else, with
certain exceptions. For example, blind people can do more than most people would
expect, yet there are certain simple things they cannot do, such as read the
mail. Treat a handicapped person just like anyone else, but know what things
they cannot do and help them. If you have a family member who is disabled, you
know this already. If you have a handicapped friend, ask how you can be helpful.
My second suggestion comes from the reading in Luke. Is there a more beautiful
moment in scripture than when Jesus turns to the woman who touched the edge of
his robe and calls her “daughter”? He was on his way to heal the sick little
girl of an important official. He stops along the way because in his heart this
poor woman who has suffered so much is his daughter. Never be uncomfortable
around a handicapped person. Follow Jesus’ example: “Love one another as I have
loved you.”
Third suggestion: Be sensitive to the needs of parents. I have mentioned before
about one of my early sermons, in which I urged those present to rejoice in the
Lord always and to give thanks in all circumstances. In my defense, I lifted
that from the Bible, specifically Paul’s letter to the Philippians. As the Bible
tends to do, however, it got people thinking, and a woman called me with a
question about her son. His name was Michael. Michael was in a wheelchair. He
couldn’t use his legs. He could only move his arms with difficulty and then not
well. His speech was difficult to understand. He had mental disabilities as
well. He was severely handicapped. She had been thinking about my sermon and
wanted to know, did I mean that she should thank God that Michael is the way he
is? It was one of those rare moments when I got something right (or perhaps God
just had pity on me and told me what to say). I answered, “No, not for how he
is, but thank God for Michael.”
A handicapped child is a blessing that comes with a great price. Any child tests
a parent’s stamina and patience and sanity, but a handicapped child can do so
even more. Even the best, most loving parents need a break sometimes. Many
handicapped children remain under their parents care all their lives. That takes
a lot of grace. Be aware of their needs. Help them out. Encourage them. Not in
some patronizing way, just the way you would care for any friend. Above all,
thank God for the handicapped child—not for the handicap, but for the child. And
do not fail to see the glory of God in that child. This will make more of a
difference than you know. Parents, you see, are conscious of what people think
of their child. They grieve when their child is left out or treated differently.
But when other people love and cherish their child, well, that’s a much better
feeling. That goes for all children, by the way. Bear it in mind.
Finally, as a church, we want to help everyone participate as much as possible.
If you have special needs, let us know. We will try to accommodate you, although
we are limited in some ways by our facilities. Still, we do, I think, a good
job. We try to. We want to.
I hope this sermon has been meaningful and given you something to think about.
There is a distinctly Christian understanding of disability, and it is grounded
in what the Bible tells us about being human generally. We are created in God’s
image, beloved by God, possessed of an inherent dignity and worth, in need of
redemption, in need of God’s grace, and called by God to care for one another.
So let us go on loving one another and coping the best we can, until that
glorious day when the dead are raised and God through Christ makes all things
new. Amen.