Touched by Love

Scripture Comments: These passages of healing have been used to oppress people with disabilities and I need to make a disclaimer about what I am not using them for. I am not using these scriptures to talk about disability. I have learned from my friends with disabilities how thee passages have been used to oppress, equating healing with one’s faith and lack of healing with lack of faith. And they reinforce the notion that life lived from the perspective of disability is a second class way of life and therefore people with disabilities are second class human beings.

All of these healing texts from the Bible have been interpreted from a nondisabled perspective as well as intermingled with the attitudes and biases of our culture. And the fact is that we need more people with disabilities studying in our seminaries and doing the scholarly work to help us better understand how to interpret these texts. My own simple interpretation is that healing people in the time of Jesus rendered them on equal ground with others in the community. It other words, it brought them back into community, where they had previously been excluded and pushed to the margins. Today we do this by making our buildings accessible, changing attitudes and ending discrimination.

Six humans trapped by happenstance

In black and bitter cold.

Each one possessed a stick of wood,

Or so the story's told.

Excuse Me, Are You Jesus?

As I’ve told many of you before, back in my teenage and young adult years my faith journey, although I was raised in the United Methodist Church, took me through a more conservative evangelical understanding of the Christian faith and attended a number of non-denominational churches. The United Methodist Church gave me my foundation in the faith, my faith came alive in these more conservative settings, and then I came back to the UMC as my faith was growing in a different direction.

One thing that was very very important to the more conservative evangelical faith tradition is witnessing to your faith and the fruit of that is, of course, winning souls to Christ. But witnessing meant something very narrow, I discovered and I really couldn’t get into it with their understanding.

The most bizarre experience was when I lived in Southern California. I lived there after college. It’s where I went for my internship in music therapy and where I found a job as a music therapist. I was invited to go ‘witnessing’ with a team of people. I was to be trained in on how to witness. So we all loaded on to the back of a pick up. There were about 10 of us. And we drove to the Watts/Compton area of LA, an area where people lived in poverty, and where there quite often is racial unrest. So here come us white folk, paired 2 by 2, going door to door ‘witnessing’ for Christ. Well the guy who was my mentor approached witnessing much like he approached his day job, which was a salesman. In fact, he sounded a lot like a used car salesman. The process was to dump a spiel on people about Jesus, using the four spiritual laws, and get them to pray and ask Jesus into their hearts – the motivation for them to do this was so they wouldn’t go to hell.

Well, this didn’t work to well, and after knocking on every door on the block, no one accepted Christ, which didn’t surprise me. The "used car sales pitch about Jesus" approach was rather offensive. And then we all got on the back of this pick up to drive back to Anaheim, where we came from.

Well, someone brought a megaphone and started blasting things about Jesus to the whole neighborhood. Apparently, this was ‘witnessing for Christ’ as well. Last week one of them got stopped by the police and fined for this, since using one of these megaphones without a permit was against city ordinance. They considered this being persecuted in the name of Christ. I considered it being being stupid.

When Jesus said, "You will be my witnesses to all the ends of the earth," somehow I don’t think that’s what he meant.

In our scripture Jesus tells his disciples they will receive power from on high and they will be his witnesses to the world. The physical presence of Jesus on earth brought hope, comfort and courage to their lives. His life showed them what God is truly like, what a life of compassion looks like. His physical presence helped them understand God’s love more deeply. Through Jesus, God was present to them more deeply than they had ever known. There were many holy moments recorded in the Gospels of their life together.

Where is God Leading? That is the QUESTion!

There is a book called, ST. George and the Dragon and the Quest for the Holy Grail. It’s a story about an ordinary man named George who was not too religious most of his life, but then feels called on a holy quest. The book is an allegory about his spiritual quest.

He relates his story like this: "My story began several weeks ago when I felt an unexplainable urge to set out on a spiritual journey. I felt it deep within myself – the call to go on a holy quest. Now such a call would have been understandable in the Middle Ages, but this is the end of the 20^{th century!"}

"My wife was outraged that she should be expected to stay home, care for the children and pay the bills while I trooped off to strange and distant lands. My boss thought that I was suffering from burnout and suggested therapy, while my neighbors only shook their heads in disbelief. Even the travel agent to whom I had gone was bewildered by my request. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘We don’t have any brochures or information on ‘lands of quest.’"

"But I – non-hero, ordinary middle class fellow – heard the call. In the attic of my house I found my great grandfather’s rusty sword. Packing a few personal things, I bade farewell to my angry wife, confused children and chuckling neighbors and left home, my sword and sheath at my side."

George’s story continues as he embarked on his quest. Soon night came and it became pitch black and he could not see where he was going. He began to wonder if he had lost his way. Then suddenly with an explosion of energy, bright lights and flames everywhere, an enormous dragon appeared before him. It’s serpent like body was covered with scarlet scales that flashed orange and yellow. The tail of the dragon was barbed with spear-like points. Smoke and flames poured out of its mouth, which was lined with white teeth.

At the sight of the dragon, George dropped his sword and stumbled and fell. He gathered his wits about him, jumped to his feet and began to run away. He suddenly stopped and thought to himself, "Wait, a dragon, a real live dragon! It’s only natural that I should meet a dragon if I’m on a quest. Great! Meeting a dragon face to face on my very first night is a clear sign that I’m on the right path." But he was still frightened and his knees were rattling. But, never-the-less, he picked up his sword, closed his eyes and marched straight towards the flame spitting scarlet scaled dragon.

And the dragon began to speak, "Hello stranger. You look like you’re lost. Can I be of any assistance?" asked the dragon in a rather tired voice.

Knowing Your Place
Mark 9:30-37; James 3:13-18; 4:1-8
PAUMC  05/02/10

 We live in a world based on competition. There are winners, there are losers. The winners take the prize, the losers go to the back of the line, they are left out. We create this hierarchy and a value system based on hierarchy where those at the top are the best, are the ones most worthwhile and valued; while those at the bottom are worth-less. We are ranked and ordered and we all know our places.
 Throughout history we have done this and reinforce that we must all know our place. There are the executives and the working class. And we work our way up the system in corporate America at the expense of those we trample over to get to the top – the most esteemed position – the place of honor. There are those who have value, there are those who do not.
This is the value system of racism that causes us to resist the full integration of African Americans into US culture long after slavery had ended. There were white only bathrooms, white only drinking fountains, and of course, the back of the bus. Although we do not draw those lines quite that clearly, and have made those lines against the law, there are invisible remnants of them left in our culture.
 Up until the early 1950’s Native American families were not allowed to raise there children once they turned 5 years old; at which time they were to be turned over to state run boarding schools to be stripped of their culture.
 It wasn’t that many decades ago parents of children with disabilities were told that the best place for their child was in an institution. And so kids with disabilities were not raised in loving families with the support they needed. They were out of sight and out of mind to the rest of our culture. When they died in these institutions they were buried out back with a gravestone that had a number, not a name.