I preached in the Princeton University Chapel on Sunday April 27th on John 20:19-31. This sermon relates to the sermon I preached on April 1st, but it is not a follow-up per sé because the two sermons were preached in front of different audiences.
Last week, we celebrated
Easter with the glorious news that Christ was missing from the tomb,
the sign that He had indeed risen. This Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter, we hear of the
Disciples' encounter with Christ after His resurrection.
As someone who has felt
like an outcast much of my life, I find a lot of hope in the
resurrection. For years I have been struggling to find my place
within the Christian body. As someone with a pronounced speech
impediment, I have felt more often like an outcast than a beloved
Child of God. I would frequently wonder: Does God really love me if
God gave me this difficulty? Why am I not perfect like others around
me?
Yet, as we look at the
Gospels, Jesus does not have an easy life. From day one, people want
him dead. But during his ministry he is defiant to the authorities
and the upper class, yet loving towards the downtrodden. He meets
with the outcasts of society, to the dismay of His own Disciples. He
is clear that they are Beloved too. In the end, Christ is put to
death for challenging the political and religious powers of
first-century Israel. Yet, He rise again. His persecutors did not
have the last word.
Looking back on my own
life so far, I was tormented by taunts, treated unkindly and
unfairly. But my tormentors do not have the last word either. I am
using my voice, which has been mocked and discriminated against, to
bring you this word of God today. That is one of the hopes that the
Resurrection shows us. Good will always prevail over evil.
I also find hope in how
Christ is embodied after the Resurrection. He did not come back with
a pristine, wound-free body. Yet He bore the wounds He had suffered
on the cross. Others expected this to be the case.
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| The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio c. 1601-1602 |
One of the disciples,
Thomas, was dismayed by not seeing Jesus when the others first had.
He doesn't even believe the others that they had actually seen him,
so he says in verse 25: “Unless I see the
mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the
nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’
After seeing what horrors
Jesus went through on the Cross, Thomas was under no illusion that
Christ would appear without wounds. Furthermore, Thomas expected
Jesus to bear the wounds He had suffered on the Cross. If he didn't,
then he would not be convinced that Christ had actually appeared to
the others.
When Christ appears with
his wounds, showing his imperfect body, Thomas readily embraces him
as Lord. Thomas was not grossed out by the wounds and Christ asked
him to reach out and to touch the wounds. This scene is reminiscent
of all the times in the Gospels where Christ would reach out and
touch the emotional and physical wounds of the outcasted. By Christ
bearing these wounds, we see a new take on what it means to be
differently-abled, and that we worship a differently-abled Christ.
Often being disabled in
our society has been a taboo topic. Until recently people with
disabilities would be discarded from society and locked away in
hospitals and schools, away from the larger society. Things are
improving for people with disabilities. But still today disabilities
are still regarded more as a sin than a blessing. Still largely
outcasted, people with disabilities are often on the fringes of our
society and are often treated more with pity than respect. People
with disabilities faced much discrimination, especially within the
Church.
In her book Disabled
God, the late theologian Lisa Eiesland tells the story of Diane
who was born without lower limbs and above-elbow upper extremity
stumps. Shortly after Diane was born, her family
But, like my tormentors,
her grandmother was wrong. Diane and I are both beloved children of
God, just as we who are gathered here today, are all beloved children
of God.
Ascribing disabilities as
sins is largely due to misinterpretations relating to passages in the
Gospel where Jesus seemingly cures people of their ailments, of their
disabilities. Instead, I see Jesus' witness in
the Gospels as more about restoring outcasts to their communities,
not about healing. The Ecumenical
Disability Advocates Network contends that “The healing stories in
the gospels, are primarily concerned with restoration of persons to
their communities, not the cure of their physiological conditions
Later in her book, Eiesland writes that: “The disabled God repudiates the conception of disability as a consequence of individual sin... Our bodies... are not artifacts of sin, original or otherwise. Our bodies participate in the imago Dei, not in spite of our impairments and contingencies, but through them.”
Christ bearing those
wounds proves this; we are whole just as we are, just as we are made.
Growing up with a speech
impediment was not easy. Often I did not feel whole, because others
treated me as if I was not whole, as if my speech impediment was a
form of punishment for a past sin. I frequently dreamt about
overcoming my impediment. But I see that longing as futile now,
because I have been whole all my life. Because God made me in God's
image.
We are each made in the
image of God, yet we are each shaped differently, with different
genders, with different abilities, and with different skills and
talents. I thought about this concept when I was baking bread for
communion last weekend. Over the last couple months, as I have been
baking the communion bread, I have tried my hardest to shape them so
that they would all look uniform. I could not! They each turned out
to be their own unique shape.
This last time, I took
another approach. I let them take shape as I pressed them out from
the balls that I had formed. The balls themselves were similar in
size and made out of exactly the same ingredients, but each one took
a different shape and yet each one was just as good as all the
others. They served well as the bread of Life, but none of them were
exactly alike.
I noticed that is how
humankind works. We are made out of the same mold, but we come out
looking different, with different abilities and insights. We are all
children of God that God can use as God see fit.
In celebrating a
differently-abled God, we can recognize that the Resurrection is not
about resurrecting perfect people but allowing us, imperfect people
in an imperfect world a chance to be redeemed together through Jesus'
ultimate sacrifice and ultimate victory. We do not need to be perfect to be in this
community; instead we need to be faithful to the best of our
abilities.
Our insistence on
perfection is one of our greatest sins in our modern world. We strive
to be perfect: To have straight A's, to have successful careers, to
be the perfect spouses, to be perfect believers. But I do not see
that as what God intends for us.
As I am ending my ministry
among you in a couple weeks, I see that we are a beautiful diverse
community. We are not uniform, but yet we are all children of God.
Christ has formed us out of the same mold, but we are not same. None
of us are perfect, but we can all strive to be faithful in an
imperfect world.
Also within the
Resurrection, I see a challenge within this hope. I see a challenge
to love others who are different from me, who hold different beliefs
from me, who have different interests from me. Yes we are not made
the same and a lot of the conflict in the world comes out of the
differences that exist between people. The hope is also the
challenge. If we admit that we are imperfect people, we will mess up
and make mistakes. We will fail to love our neighbor fully, we will
fail to see another person's humanity when they cut us off on Route
1, and we will fail to see the light of God within someone when we
feel betrayed by them.
But our imperfectness does
not prevent us from being in a relationship with God. It proves that
we are humans, who are called to be faithful, not perfect.
On this Sunday we, people
of different abilities, are being resurrected as a community into the
differently-abled body of Christ to have another chance to live out
God's Kingdom here on Earth, where differences are celebrated and
embraced.
Let's go forth from here
today striving to be faithful, in celebration of our differences, and
let's remember we are given this chance today only through Christ's
Resurrection.
