With You in Mind

First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen

August 21, 2022

Written and delivered by: Rev. Ashley Bair

Title: With You in Mind

Scripture: Luke 13:10-17

*Today’s text invites us to have a reflection on disability justice. I have a lot of learning to do in this area, so I am leaning on the works of those in the midst of this work today, including Standing Up for Racial Justice who collaboratively define disability justice as a framework that challenges the fundamental privileging of people with certain bodies and minds that fit some fictional idea of normal. And I’m excited to get into this today with you, because I have found this framework incredibly enlightening and helpful in shifting into a space where the definitions of possibility are expansive and inclusive. I think this is especially critical in the church, which has had both a history of supporting the work of disability rights and inclusion AND been a place with some of the most exclusive policies and practices.

It’s important to name this because, while some churches and likely people here have been a part of or alongside those working to decrease barriers and increase access, there has been a lot of harm done in the name of Christianity toward disabled people using texts like this one. At points in our history the church has condemned and ostracized people instead of uplifting the beauty and bounty of all bodies in the fullness of themselves and as they are created. With this in mind, I hope the conversation on disability justice continues beyond this moment.

Prayer - God, be with us today. Stir our hearts, stir our minds, stir our souls. May these words be suitable to you. Amen.

In our Scripture passage today, we encounter a woman physically bent over and we do not know why or who the woman was, or what she was seeking in the temple. She never asked for anything. It was the Sabbath, and she was seeking access to the synagogue, as was everyone else. I imagine, since the text says she just appeared, that she was easy to overlook. But Jesus noticed her and saw that she might need something to be the best version of herself in that space. He went to her and, by removing a barrier, he restored her to full participation in the temple.

Many see this text as a healing text, but the word healing actually never appears. Jesus did not see this woman as someone needing healing, she didn’t ask for that. As he says, he noticed the woman as someone in bondage, someone who had been bound by a spirit later named as Satan. Interestingly, the Hebrew translation of the word, Shatan, means at its root: obstacle. Satan means obstacle. There was something in this woman’s life or in the life of the synagogue or something in her environment, something outside her, that was an obstacle. It wasn’t so much that she was a disabled person, as much as something in her world was disabling her participation. And Jesus’ removal of the obstacle, was removing her from that obstacle's bondage.

What kind of things in our world hinder our participation? What forces might cause a woman to shrink in on herself? What is going through you now as you think about obstacles in your own life and in the lives of those you love that make participating difficult, maybe impossible?

It could be physical: the shape of the space doesn’t work for us; or it could be social: the attitudes of those around us won’t let us be our true selves. Meeting and removing these obstacles, seen and unseen, is a part of our call to liberate each other. I think we have a lot to learn from those in the disability rights community who have been doing this work for a long time.

Obstacles and barriers are regular words used by disabled people and in the disability rights movement. Some obstacles and barriers are purposeful hardship to access, as was the case in 1990 when more than 1,000 people came to the US Capitol in what is known as the Capital Crawl. There hundreds of people abandoned their mobility aids, walkers, and wheelchairs to step, crawl, and edge up to the capitol steps, forcing members of Congress to seem them and vote for the Americans with Disability act. One of the participants was 8 years old Jennifer Keelan.

In 1984, at age 2, Jennifer Keelan was diagnosed with cerebral palsy that left lesions on her brain. She began using a wheelchair and from an early school age, because of her disability and irregardless of her ability, she was forced to take separate classes from her peers, ostracized by the school system and continually impeded by the lack of accessible buildings. Jennifer in telling her own story, says that she has spent her life trying to live a normal life in school and on public transit. The public school system is what stirred her into a disability rights advocate.

When she was 6 years old, she went to her first protest with her mother in Phoenix. When she was 7 years old, she marched alongside advocates in Montreal and was arrested when she left the route and tried to go to the bathroom. Then, when she was 8 she went to the capitol and climbed up the steps saying, “I’ll climb all night if I have to.”

The work of those like Jennifer Keelan moving for disability rights goes back decades. In 2020, for the 30th anniversary of the ADA, NowThis featured a commemoration where they told the history that led to that pivotal moment… “For most of human history, disability has been a diagnosis, something to be cured, fixed, and cut out. Across the United States, from 1909 until the 1970s disabled people were put into institutions and sterilized against their will and often without their knowledge.

In 1935, after the great depression, disabled people in New York City said, “Why should we settle for second class status?” after they were specifically excluded from projects from the Works Progress Administration under FDR. And there they launched one of the first ever recorded sit-in protests in US history.

In the spring of 1977 disabled people and activists gathered in San Francisco to rally for access to buildings, education, and employment initiatives. They occupied a federal building for 28 days and demonstrations took place across the nation demanding their right to access. Disabled people organized together for themselves, and people came together in the community in what is marked as one a pivotal moment of intersectionality - churches, unions, gay groups, politicians, and Black led civil rights organizations. Until the regulations were finally signed.

Leader Kitty Cone said in her victory speech, “We showed strength and courage and power and commitment. That we the shut-ins or the shutouts, we the hidden or supposedly the frail and the weak, that we could wage a struggle at the highest level of government and win!”

A decade later activists traveled to every state to build the momentum for what disability activists would call, “our own act” - the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because despite the regulations ordered in 1977, millions of disabled people, like young Jennifer Keelan, still faced rampant discrimination.” So, in 1990 Jennifer and the 1,000 others traveled to the Capitol, putting their bodies on the line, moving with signs that read “Access is a civil right,” forcing others to confront the obstacles to their access.

Though changes have been made, there is today a worldwide movement of disabled people working for equal opportunity, self-determination, and respect for everyone. Working for a world where accessibility is not an afterthought.

The question I ponder myself is: How, in the church, have we learned from the people powering this movement? From those in our own community entering this space - and not just the physical space, the ethos that we exude, the invitation that we offer, the way we move with ourselves and our programming. How do we embrace and expand access? Are we considering the obstacles that are in the way of us and those around us and how we can be restored to the community?

The body of Christ is one of fullness. Remember the passage from 1 Corinthians that says we are one body of believers, and we are not complete when someone is left out of the body. We are not complete until we are restored to each other. It’s not only about your physical body. You were fearfully and wonderfully made as you are. You come with the body you have, and it is welcome in the kingdom of God. It is about what around us is prohibiting full participation in the earthly riches of community and love.

Jennifer Keelan, along with the many, many other people working toward more inclusive spaces inspire me, because I have so much learning to do around disability rights and the church. The Christian church is not the first place I think of for inclusion and embrace - it should be, but I think there are obstacles. I think we highly value property and tradition, those things hold a lot of purpose for us, and so when we acknowledge changes that need to happen, we can be reactive. We are ready to offer support when someone asks for it, and we make something work when we are faced with the possibility of excluding someone. There is room for us to make access a part of our evaluation and planning.

After Jesus had removed an obstacle from the woman, the religious leader said to the crowd, “not today.” And Jesus’ reply was, of course we restore today. You have already restored today. You’ve restored the thirsty ox, restore this woman, too. For 18 years she has had to wait to fully participate. And the crowd felt some shame about that, recognized the truth in Jesus' words and rejoiced that the woman’s obstacles were removed. Anything that bonds one of us from being restored to our community deserves restoration today.

How many people have come through our doors looking for access and we say, and not today. There is nothing wrong with resting, but what the religious leader missed was remembering the heart of God’s law, which is also the heart of the Gospel - which is compassion and love.

This story — like so many Gospel stories — illustrates a basic truth about God’s kingdom: the kingdom [of God] doesn’t care about our timing, or our sense of etiquette, or our obsession with propriety and decorum and rules. The kingdom cares about love. It cares about love today. Heaven will not wait for us, though I pray we always spend our time earnestly and fervently trying.

Whether we face obstacles for the length of our lives or for a period of our life, they will come. Restoring each other to the community benefits everybody.

I wonder what it would look like for us to shift from all are welcome here to: this space was crafted with you in mind. That’s how God made the world. With you in mind. And isn’t that what we all want and deserve? For the obstacles to be lifted, to enter a space as our best selves, for our bodies to be acknowledged as the wonderfully made images of God that they are, for overflowing grace to free us from whatever obstacle is holding us back. That’s the love of God in action: that you are seen by the greatest force in the universe as whole. And that we see you that way, too.

We all have access to the grace and love of Jesus Christ, who came to us in a body. And we are better when we are together. Just as Jesus restored people to their place and to their people; facing the barriers, moving alongside those seeking to be. Our call is to free each other from the barriers that prohibit access. Obstacles, be gone. Access is your right. Amen.

END NOTES:

1. #DisabilityJustice by The Word is Resistance podcast, SURJ. August 21, 2022.
2. https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/capitol-crawl-for-ADA/
3. https://jkclegacy.com
4. “Commemorating 30 Years of the Americans with Disabilities Act”, Now This news at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQafuiLGP7g
5. https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2316-she-stood-up-straight