Being Restored Through a Differently-Abled Christ

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.

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

moved across the country to avoid Diane's grandmother, who accused her daughter, Diane's mother, of sleeping with the devil. She called Diane “the devil's daughter”. That was just the beginning of the torments she would face throughout her life.

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. 

Lenten Reflection

I wrote the following as an entry in the Princeton University Chapel Lenten Meditation Booklet. I was assigned the following text: Matthew 5:1-12 (The Beatitudes)

Doesn't Jesus make the Beatitudes sound so easy? Who wouldn't want to live in these ways?

Just follow these simple words and you will be blessed by the Lord. Why would it not be easy?

Yet we all know that these words, easy as they sound, are a lot harder to live out. At Jesus's time, in the First Century AD, people of faith had become lax in their devotion and practice. Social injustice was abound in a community that claimed to worship God.

Doesn't that sound familiar? Look at our current world that is ravaged by a lot of societal ills, such as mass incarceration, war, gun violence, increasingly economic inequality. Our worship can sometimes become rote, instead of having spiritual richness. In many ways we are currently in a similar position as First Century Israel.

To confront this communal sin, Jesus issues a call for His followers to go deeper in faith. He issues standards of devotion that God expect out of the new followers. These same standards are still relevant today. Christianity is not supposed to be something that is only relegated to Sunday mornings. Instead, our faith should be lived out in our everyday actions.

Yes this is hard to do! Another thing about the Beatitudes: Jesus was talking to His Disciples, not to a single person. We cannot do this alone, separate from each other. As a faith community we should work together to improve the world around us, so we can all be blessed, not just some of us. But this work of transformation must begin with us.

This first step in this transformation is to support each other and hold each other accountable to live deeper into our faith to strive to be like the examples Jesus expresses in the Beatitudes.

Looking for Perfect Victims = Foolish Search

This past semester I took a class on the Book of Job. For the final project, I wrote a series of reflections looking at Job from a personal and societal liberation standpoint. Here is one of these reflections concerning the monologue of Elihu in Chapters 32-37. I might share other reflections from the my notebook on Job.

The Wrath of Elihu by William Blake (Source)

One of the reasons the Elihu rejects Job as being an innocent victim is because he doesn't resemble what Elihu think an innocent victim would look like: Himself. Daniel Berrigan, in his commentary on Job, writes, “Since Job drastically falls short of Elihu's estimate of a just one, a question occurs; What form would his “ideal Job” take? Elihu and his cohorts suggest the form rather consistently; the paragon would resemble—themselves,” (Berrigan 293). Often, then and now, innocence is only reserved for the judging parties, not for judged. Rarely will we ever find a totally innocent victim.

In December, my friend Nyle through sharing a post by Son of Baldwin on Facebook called my attention to an article of a recent horrific murder in Ohio. A 16 year old African American male teen, Dione Payne, was beaten up and violently raped by his killers because they, two white men in their older thirties, wanted to rob him of drugs and money. The hometown newspaper ran an article about the killing under the headline of “Dayton Teen Beaten to Death Had Trouble Past”, even though looking at the URL, it seems that the headline was at one time was supposed to be “Bond Set at $1 Million for Men Accused of Beating Teen.”

(Update: While editing this journal entry on December 20th for final submission, I discovered that the headline now reads “Bond set for Franklin men accused in teen's beating death” and there is no acknowledgment of the headline change or apology for the mistake. Also still no mention of the brutal rape he suffered before his death. A petition has also been started on change.org to pressure the prosecutor to add hate crime and rape to the charges)

Dione Payne in 2012 (Source)

Why did the headline change, if it did at all? Can a black teen with a trouble past not be a victim? Will the eventual court case put him on trial as much as the media has? Will the deceased be tried along with his killers as if his drug dealing compelled the men to savagely kill him as some sort of accomplice? Yes Dione was probably not an honor student and had a criminal record, but he did not deserve to die for dealing drugs, much less to be beaten and rape to the point of death. The point of the article was to tell about a heinous crime he was a victim of. With the headline and the focus of the article on the past, they make his heinous violent death into a passive one.

By looking for innocent victims, we want to ignore the complexities that come with faith and suffering. Neither faith nor suffering will ever be simple topics to deal. By maintaining an image of a perfect victim, we try to do this and not challenge ourselves on difficult topics. Let ask if we ourselves are really innocent before we try to convince others of their guilt. If we do, why do a majority of us Christians confess our sins each Sunday and ask for forgiveness? As Christians when we do this, we end up reducing our faith and the resurrection to a fairy tale and nothing to ever struggle with. Hence we will continue to believe in a shallow faith that requires no deeper inspection. This will just end up reducing the resurrection to a passive meaningless death. How will that reduction ever serve as a force to liberate the oppressed and the oppressors?

Let us not be foolish like Elihu in our presumptions of others and God!

Lets Stop Glorifying War in Church

This weekend, we are celebrating Memorial Day. In the last week, as I have passed churches on the road and seen their Facebook updates, I have seen a lot of messages that says something about honoring our heroes. Each time I read or see that, I cringe. It is further evidence of the combining Christianity and patriotism in this country. The Early Church gathered in secret to worship a Savior that was executed by the most powerful military at the time, but now we worship the most powerful country and its military strength along with Christ. There are a lot of dangers in this continued Idol worship.

The influential German theologian Karl Barth was perturbed as a young man when his clergy mentors and other prominent Germans signed the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three in 1914. This manifesto offered unequivocal support of the actions of the German military. This had a major effect on Barth's theology about the separation of the church and the government. When a professor talked about this pivotal moment in Barth's life and theology last semester during a class on Karl Barth, he did not even attempt to make the connection between Barth's crisis to the current dilemma that we face in this country. Tomorrow, thousands, perhaps millions of US Christians will walk into their churches and not be surprised to see the American flag near the altar.

I have been thinking about this dilemma for a while. Growing up, I attended anti-death penalty vigils outside of my state's Governor Mansion. In reading about the cases, I sometimes learned that the death row inmates have served in the armed forces at some point before their crime. Often I reflected on this double standard, we teach people how to kill people and then praise them, but then we will also put to death the same people if they kill other people. How does any of this fits in Christ's admonishment that we should love our neighbors?

Last May I took a short intensive class on Young Adult Ministries. As part of this class, we talked about ministries in university settings, prisons, and the military. To talk about military chaplainships, the class traveled down to Washington DC and talked to chaplains currently serving in different parts of the armed forces. Several of us asked most of the chaplains how they dealt with the command from Christ to love our neighbors. All but one chaplain did not answer this question. Usually they responded with that they are just following orders or altogether avoid the question. The one chaplain who actually answered the question said that it was a hard question and one that some soldiers had a hard time wrestling with.

As a Christian, when I am in church, my allegiance is only towards Christ. I do not believe that God only blesses the USA, instead I believe God loves the whole world. I do not buy into a philosophy that is the outgrowth of the Manifest Destiny that led to the unnecessary slaughter, slavery and death of millions of Native people. I do not buy into a philosophy that was used to justify slavery in this country and around the world. I believed that we are called to love our neighbors period.

By writing this, I do not want Christians to abandon our troops. We should dialogue about what it means to support our troops and how to support these men and women after they return home, changed forever. We should also hold up the people who go to the same regions to do purely humanitarian work, often unarmed and with less support, in an effort to bring about peace in other ways. But at the same time lets not glorify the world's richest military within our church doors. We already do that enough the other six days of week.

Instead, on this Memorial Day weekend and after, let's keep Church as a place to remember the human costs of the war (including all casualties of war) and our own implicitness in this industry that keeps us at war. Let's pray that God will keep giving us strength to work towards an eternal peace that will only exist when God's Kingdom come into being.

Reflections from My Lenten Journey with Anger

The Lenten season has ended, but my journey with anger is just getting deeper. Over the Lenten season, I thought about: How deep my self-hate actually is; why I root for underdogs; and How I may unknowingly discriminate against others.

During the Lenten season, I began to really grapple with how deep my self-hate goes. I wrote about this in my first blog post, but at that time I did not know just how deep it is and how I have held a grudge against myself. Upon this realization, I thought that if I just started to love myself the self-hate would magically disappear...

Sadly, it does not work that way. By focusing on my self hate more during the Lenten season through therapy, writing, and mediation, I was able to explore how I have internalized people's opinions of myself since a young age. I have sought outside reinforcement of my worth because I do not have a high opinion of myself. I thought I would gain this through other means, but I never have. As I have discovered through the Lenten season, no outside reinforcement has been enough to build a sense of self-worth, it ultimately has to come from me and me alone.

For most of my life, I have been active in helping others and advocating for social justice. I always thought it had to do solely because of my Quaker upbringing. But during Lent, I reflected more on this. In late February the poet Shane Koyczan released a video of the slam poem "To This Day" and it made its rounds across the internet. Then in early March his TED talk was released as well. I have listened to the poem several times and his TED talk once. His words connected deeply to my experiences growing up feeling out of place and why I root for the underdog. If I believe that the underdogs would never win, I would never have a chance. I always thought if they could win, I could win. I am still working through this realization and how it has impacted my life and my outlook on life.

Thinking about this "underdog" mentality also reminded me of the movie, Simon Birch, which I saw years ago. At the end of the movie when the title character dies, everyone else reflects on what lessons they had received from him and his tragic circumstances. This is how people, usually children, with disabilities are portrayed in popular culture as being here solely so that other people can learn valuable lessons. Afterwards they are promptly discarded or ignored. They are not to be recognized as regular human beings with the same desires and feelings, instead they have a mythical presence. This might be because people with disabilities are largely ignored or avoided in the real world.

Society largely does not know what to do with adults living with disabilities. As kids, at least society will raise money and make movies about us. As adults, we are often left alone and the discrimination just gets worse. Another famous example is Helen Keller. Most people learn about her childhood and about her teacher, Anne Sullivan. But did you know that as an adult she graduated from college and became a socialist activist, fighting for human rights? We all like the story of Helen overcoming her disabilities to communicate, but we never hear the rest of the story of how she used her communication skills to advocate for others.

Shane’s poem also raised up the subtle ways my teachers and friends compounded my self-hate and discriminated against me with their use of words and their actions. Realizing how language and actions impacted me has made me wonder how I might discriminate against others with my words and acts. Now I am looking at what I say and how I act towards others. I have explored how I treat people and the words I use. In a recent sermon, I explored the concepts of Light and Darkness. This is just the beginning of that process in exploring ways I might have discriminated against other.

I did not write a lot during the forty days but I hope to continue to write and to develop something for children growing up with disabilities and their families and friends. I continue to welcome anyone who wants to dialogue on any of these topics. This journey will continue as my journey with God and Christ continues after the end of Lent.   

Giving Up Anger for Lent

For Lent I am giving up my anger.

Not a lot of people know about my anger because I have tried to keep it hidden from most people, but my closest friends, family and housemates have seen my anger side. For years I thought my anger came out of my social justice work and seeing  the inequalities in the world.

After working with my therapist for more than a year, I finally realize that the anger comes out of a self-hate. This self-hate has developed over the years due to growing up with a speech impediment and feeling less than equal. I remember crying to my mom when I was young and asking, "Why did God do this to me? Why me?"

I have always known that my family and my faith community love me for who I am, but I spent most of my time out in the world where any slight differences were good enough reasons to be bullied, treated differently, or to be largely ignored. After years of this painful treatment and feeling less than whole, I internalized this hate and started to see myself as not being whole. I would wake up in the morning hating myself and thought that I had to do other things to make myself lovable. This has led me to undertake a lot of different kinds of work to prove that I am worthy of love and respect.

But in the last year, with the support of Jenn, my fiance, and my therapist, I have finally gotten to a point in my life when I recognize that I am a whole human being and that I am deserving of love and respect because of being a person and not because of what I do or do not do.

In this season of Lent, which I am doing in solidarity with my fellow Christians*, I will focus on writing more about my trauma and on loving myself more. I hope that my writing can lead to more personal healing. In the future I hope to produce materials to help youth living with disabilities and their families through the challenges of growing up in a world that is not always accepting of differences. Also, during this Lenten season, I hope to further internalize self-love to rid myself of the self-hate that has plagued my life.  

*Quakers historically do not celebrate holidays because we believe that every day is a holy day. In the last 100 years Quakers have started to celebrate holidays and more and more Quakers are observing Lent, but we do not have any special commeration for the Lenten season as a denomination.