Advent III

The Third Sunday of Advent 2019 – Cycle A Isaiah 35:1-6, 10; Psalm 146; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

“Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,the ears of the deaf be cleared;then will the lame leap like a stag,then the tongue of the mute will sing.”

How do you think a person with disabilities hears these words of the prophet Isaiah?     Or the words of Jesus for that matter.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:the blind regain their sight, the lame walk,lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear…”

Do people who are blind, wheelchair bound, or suffering from hearing loss hear the words of Isaiah and Jesus as filled with hope or are these words alienating?  Are people with disabilities faulty and in need of repair?   Consider.  “Every time Jesus meets disabled people, if they encounter him with faith, he heals them, New Testament scholar Candida Moss, who is disabled, writes.  “It almost sounds like, if you want to be part of [Jesus’] circle, you have to be able bodied.”

Would Jesus want to eradicate all disabilities today?

The Christian writer Lyndall Bywater, who is blind, thinks that is unlikely.  She says, “If Jesus was walking the streets now, I’m not sure he would be healing in the same way as he did in the Gospels.”  How then do we reconcile the Scriptures with our present understanding of people who are “differently abled”?

Jesuit priest and writer, James Martin sheds a light of understanding on the healing ministry of Jesus for us.  To make sense today of Jesus’ healing ministry, we must first understand that in Jesus’ historical context a disability would have almost rendered a person a virtual death sentence.  Such people were “rejected by their families, would have no way of earning a living and would have been in constant pain.” 

Along with this, sick and disabled people were often regarded as “ritually unclean” which meant they could not enter the Temple and fulfill the Mosaic Law.  So Jesus’ healing is not just repairing a broken body.  “Jesus is restoring [people] to their family and to the larger community.” 

Though the Church continues the healing ministry of Jesus through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, I find the prayers vague.  Is physical healing through prayer the most important spiritual gift a person with disabilities can be offered?

For those of us who do not know the experience of being deaf or blind, we might consider such life situations as intolerable, but is life intolerable for people who are blind and deaf?   Though she has prayed for healing, the writer Bywater considers her 45 years of contented life with blindness as the greater miracle.  How many of us who are sighted, hear, can walk well claim we are content or truly happy with life?  Are people with disabilities faulty and in need of repair or simply different?

So how might we understand such biblical passages as those of Matthew and Isaiah?

Scripture itself may need to be re-imagined.  Sixteen year-old Becky Tyler has quadriplegic cerebral palsy.  She is unable to control her limbs and voice.  Becky uses eye-gaze technology through which she conveyed she felt God did not love her as much as other people.  She did not see anyone in the Bible confined to a wheelchair…until.  Until her mother read to her from the Book of the prophet Daniel: “God’s throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.”  With these words and images, Becky began to understand that God DOES know what it feels like to have a wheelchair because God has one!  The idea that God is disabled or God is a wheelchair user challenges all our concepts about God.

Are people with disabilities faulty and in need of repair or simply different?

In what manner are you and I disabled?

The older we get, the hearing and sight start to deteriorate and the joints ache so that we cannot do what we were once able to do.  But are their not other forms of disability?  But what about the disability of lacking compassion, or being empty of joy and hope.  The blind disability to see people who are in need.  The lack of the ability to attentively listen to another person’s story.  How many of us have never really rejoiced with joyful song, because we are frightened?

Lyndall Bywater considers her 45 years of life with blindness as contented.  It begs the question, who really is disabled?

[Excerpts, phrases from the article, “Blind faith” by Helen Grady, The Tablet, 27 April 2019.]