October 29: "Deconstructing Disability" (Disability Awareness Sunday)

THE WORD IN THE GOSPEL Luke 4:16-21

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read. The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me.

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled just as you heard it.”

MESSAGE

A woman called her local florist to order a flower arrangement. She told the florist, “Make it really nice, full of bright colors, and very festive looking. I want to cheer up my friend. She just lost her Seeing Eye dog.”

Some people just don’t get it.

Before I started seminary several years ago, there were a lot of things I didn’t “get,” too. But once I began reading . . . and reading . . . and reading some more . . . things started to click for me. I started to see things I had never noticed before.

For instance, I remember when I read my first book on feminist theology, I thought, “Wow, I never noticed how using only male language for God can be so oppressive.”  And when I read books on racism and white privilege, I was shocked to learn how much I didn’t understand about the oppressive and racist social systems of which I was very much a part.

Then I happened to read a book that profoundly changed my life and my way of seeing myself and the world. That book, by Nancy Eiesland, was called The Disabled God.

Now, many of you probably already know this, but, I am disabled. I’ve had progressive hearing loss since birth. Fifteen years ago, I finally lost so much of my hearing that I needed a cochlear implant in order to remain connected to the hearing world that I’ve lived in all my life. And even now, I have to rely on things such as a captioned phone, a service that transcribes voice messages into text message, an alarm clock that vibrates under my pillow, and a strobe light smoke detector. And of course, I also rely heavily on the kindness and patience and understanding of other people.

But even with all that experience of having a disability, there were still a lot of things I didn’t understand. Like many people with disabilities, I thought that I was the problem. After all, I was the one with the disability. I was the one who was “dysfunctional.”

But Nancy Eiesland’s book opened up a whole new world for me by helping me understand that while having a disability is a matter of biology, the experience of being disabled is a social construct. That is, the discrimination and prejudice that people with disabilities face is not because there’s something “wrong” with them. It’s because there’s something wrong with society and with the way society views them and treats them and labels them. As Nancy Eiesland writes, the problem of disability is not so much in the psyche or body of a person with a disability; the problem of disability is in our system of social relations and institutions.

And yet, we keep allowing people with disabilities to believe that they are the problem.

The Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, was passed in 1990, and since then, some of the barriers in our society have been broken down so that people with disabilities can participate more fully in life. But we still have a long way to go.

For instance, the ADA requires that all public facilities be accessible,

including stores, lodging facilities, restaurants, all forms of public transportation, schools, and public buildings.

But, did you know that churches are exempt from complying with the ADA standards?

That’s right! When the ADA was being debated, churches and some other non-profit organizations argued that the law would create undue economic burdens for them, and so they lobbied for and received a blanket exemption from this law.

People with disabilities had hoped that churches, in particular, would feel an ethical, if not legal, obligation to comply with accessibility standards. However, except for a few churches here and there, like this one, that have installed ramps or elevators or accessible bathrooms, or that use assistive listening systems or Braille hymnals, the vast majority of churches are, very simply, inaccessible to people with disabilities.

This is a problem. When the neighborhood bars are accessible and so many churches are not, we have a problem.

In today’s gospel lesson, we heard how Jesus stood up in the temple and unrolled that scroll, and announced how things are in the Kingdom of God: the poor receive good news, the captives are released, those who are blind see, and those who are oppressed go free. Jesus was not talking about some future hope of miraculous healing and release. Jesus was talking about the reality of life for those who choose to follow him.

In the Kingdom, everyone who is excluded in some way is welcomed and included. Not because they or their problems are “fixed,” but because we, as the people of God, are, first, aware of all those barriers that keep some people from being able to fully participate in the community, and, second, work to remove those barriers whenever we can.

In the Kingdom, blindness, deafness, all kinds of physical and mental disability are no longer a problem not because people are physically healed of those disabilities, but because we, as the people of God, work to transform our dysfunctional social systems into systems of hospitality, inclusion, and full participation for all people.

If we believe that we are called to live as if the Kingdom were already present in its fullness, then we must also realize that we are called to Jesus’ ministry of liberation, of release, of helping people with disabilities be restored to the fullness of human community.

And if we believe that disability is a social construct, then we must also believe that we can work to deconstruct the problems of disability.

And if we believe that God loves all people, then we must understand that our worth does not depend on how society defines us – such as “disabled.”  Instead, each person is worthy because he or she is a child of God.

Nancy Mairs is an author who has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair. She writes about her experience of being what she calls “Waist-high in the World” in a way that is beautiful and brutally honest. For instance, she writes, “The world as it is currently constructed does not especially want – and plainly does not need – me in it.”

When any church sends the message that people with disabilities aren’t needed or aren’t welcome, they’re doing what the apostle Paul says is impossible!  When Paul describes the Church as the Body of Christ, he reminds us that the body simply can’t say to one part or another, “We have no need of you.” The moment any church does this, it stops being the church.

This congregation has done so much so make the building accessible. And I applaud you for that.

But we may not realize that physical accessibility is only one part of the task of being the Body of Christ that fully includes people with disabilities. And that’s where disability awareness comes in. Even when we make sure our buildings are as physically accessible as possible, and even when we provide equipment to help people have access to our worship services, for instance, there are still barriers to full inclusion – barriers that we need to be become aware of . . . barriers that we still need to break down.

Accessibility goes far beyond ramps and elevators. Accessibility also includes our attitudes, our theology, and the way we worship. It’s a very sad fact that churches are not legally required to follow the mandates of the ADA. But . . . we have an even higher calling: we have a moral and ethical – and loving – obligation to meet and even exceed those legal mandates. Because, after all, you can legislate things like ramps and curb cuts and handicap parking spaces. But you can’t legislate attitudes. As the Body of Christ, we have a moral obligation, a divine call, to model full inclusion by making our buildings, our programs, our fellowship, our attitudes, and our hearts fully accessible, hospitable, and safe.

Living into the Kingdom of God, and revealing that Kingdom in our midst is an ongoing journey, and at times, a struggle, to mover from exclusion to segregation to integration, and finally, to full inclusion.

I think that this church has done an excellent job so far of integrating people with disabilities into our fellowship and worship life. But the only way we will help all people live into and experience the Kingdom of God, where people are not just integrated, but fully included in the Body of Christ, is by listening to and learning from people who face the kind of exclusion that is caused by some of our beliefs and practices.

But don’t take my word for it.

Let’s listen now to some voices of experience.