LIFE ON THE “D” LIST: DISABILITY

John 9: 1-11

A woman was on a plane flying from Melbourne Australia to Brisbane. Unexpectedly the plane was diverted to Sydney instead. The flight attendant explained that there would be a delay and that if passengers wished to get off to stretch their legs, boarding would again commence in approximately 50 minutes. Nearly everybody got off of the plane except one lady who was blind. A man had noticed her with her dark glasses on as we walked by her, and with her guide dog lying quietly under her seat. He was on duty with his guide dog handle attached. The woman had flown this flight many times and was well known to the crew and the captain. The captain approached her and called her by name: “Ms. Watson” the pilot said, “Would you like help getting off to stretch your legs?” To which she replied, “No thank you captain, but maybe Buddy ( she said motioning to her guide dog) would like to stretch his legs.” At that airport there was no jet way; passengers disembarked outside on to the tarmac. Imagine the looks of the other passengers as the captain came down the steps of the plane with his sunglasses and uniform on, giving Buddy time to stretch his legs! It is a true story! The picture I gave the children is a picture of the captain walking Buddy. It was especially astounding as those at that gate, who saw the captain and Buddy, started asking to change their flight!

A blind pilot; it’s hard to imagine. Yet a deaf composer conducted his own work in his Ninth Symphony that became known as “The Ode to Joy.” Ludwig von Beethoven; the story goes that someone actually had to turn him to the audience so he could at least see the thunderous applause. We know that those who lose their larynx can still speak with the use of mechanical devices, even if the voice sounds electronic. We know that with the help of walkers, canes, and wheelchairs paraplegic people can be mobile, and with the help of hand devices for gas and brakes, they can even drive a car, truck, or van. Did you know that Dr. Stephen Hawking who wrote the stunning book that combined astronomy and theoretical physics called A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, has debilitating ALS? He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics from 1979 until 2009 at Cambridge University in England, a chair once held by Sir Isaac Newton. He is currently the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology in Cambridge. And oh by the way: with his ALS (or Lou Gehrig’s disease) he has not been able to feed himself or get himself out of bed in 1974! His wife Kate took care of him and their three small children, in the 1970s, and with slurred speech he could communicate. But by 1985 he caught pneumonia and had to have a tracheotomy so his ability to speak was gone. He could then only communicate by barely raising an eyebrow when someone pointed to the right letter. At one point he got up to the speed of 15 words per hour! Finally a computer expert created a program called Equalizer which could be run on his desktop computer controlled by a hand switch or by eye or head motions. Painstakingly he sent letter by letter messages into a storage device. Later someone created a synthetic voice that could read what he wrote, so one of the greatest minds in the world today, trapped in a body that can barely communicate, found a way to communicate. He is still alive and changing the way we see the universe today, working through his disability.

Too often we fall into a very logical dilemma of faith: if God rescued the Israelites years ago, why doesn’t God save us? The message about disasters will be addressed next week. But today some will ask: “If Jesus made the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk, then why am I not healed?” Like looking through a telescope from the wrong end, we get focused on the dozen or so healings Jesus performed and we stop seeing the ways that God uses people in every stage of weakness, to inspire the world and give glory to Heaven. In John 9, for example, healing made just one man happy while the gathered crowd reacted with jealousy and suspicion. Later when Jesus healed people, he had others lined up around the block to saying “me too; me too!” And of course it is understandable. For those who have lost good eyesight, how much they long to see again. For those who have lost the hearing they once had, how much they wish they could hear well again. Who wants to go through life saying “What?” or “Could you speak louder?” When my grandfather was losing his hearing and before he got his hearing aids, we could not stay in the same room with him when he was watching TV; it was so loud. And if we turned it down to levels appropriate for the rest of us, he could not hear a thing. Losing our senses of any kind can be isolating. But there are the Stephen Hawkings, and Beethoven’s who in some way were formed by their disability. I have a hidden disability called diabetes; that means it is likely that I will die at a much younger age than someone without it; it is likely that I will face amputations, and I have to watch how long I go between eating. I only got it in 1999. But my message to others and my passion for nutrition would never have developed without the knowledge of my own disease to drive it. My health message is my second gospel after the Bible. And it would never have happened if my pancreas had not stopped functioning as it once did. God spurs people into new areas that encompass their disability; even every one of you, if I asked enough, would find areas that show your brokenness. When you have realized that you were broken, who did you connect with best: someone who seemed to have everything all together, or someone who was broken like you? I connect with other broken people best. Instead of saying “I wish, I wish, I wish,” about my broken part getting fixed, I say “With faith and fight, I will survive and seek to thrive.” The one time Jesus healed the man born blind, it did not build community, or collegiality, or compassion. It bred jealousy, suspicion, and charges. For two thirds of a chapter he dealt with the result of the physical healing he produced. But it is in the last third of the chapter when he says he has come really for making the wounded spirit whole and for healing the sin sick soul to quote two spiritual hymns. In verse 38 he says “I came into the world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Even Jesus was backpedaling after the physical healing brought the unexpected poor results that it did.

Today we know there are Christians who have experienced healing in charismatic services. We also know there are also those who have prayed as hard and have not been healed. So do we expect healings and then get disappointed if they don’t occur, or do we celebrate if they do? Should we, instead, embrace our disability and ask for eyes to see the ways we can glorify God through our disabilities? You could pray for healing; our prayer list has such prayers every week. But what would it be like if you instead prayed to reach others, and to be empowered, in your disability?

Today we seek to welcome every broken person. We welcome them not just with wheelchair ramps, large print bulletins, assistive listening devices, mailings to those at home and sermons on pod-casts around the world. But we also have empowered people broken by grief to begin a compassion ministry. And as I said in the announcements, on Saturday we many again will join in a walk in the name of a young man who died with Melanoma, but with determination, prayers, and the support of friends, they are determined to help save others in the name of the son who could not save himself. Church is a great place to think about the accusation people hurled at Jesus: “He saved others; but he can’t save himself.” I give thank for those who have let God work through their weakness! I don’t know about you, but I am inspired by the Christian songs “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine!” “Rescue the Perishing!” and “To God be the Glory.” They were written by a woman who was blind since her first month of life. Little Frances Jane Crosby was born on March 24, 1824 but by late April the parents realized that their daughter had developed an infection in her eyes. The town doctor was away at the time but a man, claiming to know medicine but who was clearly a charlatan, put scalding hot compresses on the infant’s eyes to draw out the infection. All the man did was to blind her instead. And out of the heart of the infant, who grew to be a girl, and then a great Christian woman, blind Fanny Crosby wrote some of the most beloved hymns in Christian hymnals. Who knows what her life would have been like if she had her eyesight? What we do know is that God turned a human disability into a divine blessing. May God bless your broken places with a holy touch of the divine as well. And may the gifts of the Spirit be yours: seeing, hearing, and speaking through a Spirit-filled heart.

Jeffrey A. Sumner April 3, 2011