Month: March 2010

We should pause for a moment to recall the significance of eating at someone’s table in the ancient near eastern cultural world of the Bible. This is more than tolerance; it is deep acceptance. Mephibosheth is accepted as a member of the King’s own family. The social stigma and practical barriers of his disability have been erased by the King’s gracious act.

This scene of the lame man eating at the King’s table is a picture or type of the Kingdom of God. In the Gospels, over and over again, we see Jesus healing the lame and eating at table with sinners. Jesus’ power over physical disabilities often is presented in the Gospels as clear evidence that the Kingdom of God has arrived. Matthew chapter nine, for example, presents a remarkable succession of such Kingdom-events: in the space of that one chapter, Jesus heals a paralyzed man, eats a meal with tax collectors and other sinners, heals a woman of internal bleeding, raises a girl from the dead, casts out a demon, and travels, as verse thirty-five summarizes, “through all the cities and villages, teaching in [the] synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.”

At first blush, this kind of blitzkrieg of Jesus-miracles seems just as unhelpful as the rest of our triumphalistic theology and practice. I know that many of you have prayed ardently for the healing of your children, and we have prayed for you and with you and over you, yet the disabilities remain. But here we must try to place the Mephibosheth story and the Jesus stories into the Bible’s “big picture.” These things are only glimpses of that which is yet to come.

It’s as though we’re backstage on the opening night of a master playwright’s great creation. The curtain is down and we can’t see the front of the stage. The playwright has given us some lines to learn, some movements to practice, some marks to hit, so that when the curtain goes up, we’ll be ready to fulfill our roles. Every now and then the curtain parts a bit and the playwright brings some bit of scenery or lighting or costume or music or choreography to the rear of the stage, which is slowly, painstakingly being transformed into the world the playwright has envisioned. As that world begins to take shape, we realize that even now we are participating in the playwright’s work, and we anticipate with excitement the great performance to come.

The scenes of acceptance and healing we see in scripture are like bits of the future performance that we have been able to rehearse and preview. The lame will walk; the outsider will be brought in to the King’s table; the wounded will be healed; the sinner will be forgiven. This is the storyline. We often experience the excitement as pieces of the story unfold before us, as we’re drawn into the drama even now.

Maybe you haven’t seen Jesus heal your child miraculously, but I have little doubt that you have known a moment or two in which the curtain has opened a bit in a smile, a sparkle of recognition, a laugh. One of you even mentioned to me the grace you receive each night as you clean up your child after she goes potty. She can’t learn how to help herself in this task that most of us take for granted. Yet she recognizes your help with a grateful smile. This child, in this way, is the embodiment of God’s grace.

The God who suffered on the cross is the author of the narrative of your child’s circumstances. I believe with the certainty of faith that this God has not failed and will not fail your little one. I believe with the conviction of this God’s acts in history, His words in the scriptures, and His testimony in and through the Church, that our prayers for these little ones — yours and mine, and those all around the world — are more than empty words. God hears, God acts, God has saved, God will save.

I imagine that the first royal banquet attended by Mephibosheth in David’s palace caused a stir among the courtiers. One who was excluded for being lame, one who deserved death as a member of Saul’s defeated household, received honor. Many who dismiss or conveniently ignore our sons and daughters today will likewise be surprised at the great wedding feast of Christ.

At this point, perhaps you’re ready to tune out this sermon as more “pie in the sky.” I don’t blame you. Here is where we must work hard to recover the sense of both the flesh-and-blood immanence of Mephibosheth’s story and of the mysterious transcendent spirituality inherent in Jesus’ idea of the Kingdom of God.

When you hold that baby with her broken body and misfiring neurons in your arms now, she is sitting with you, right now, at the King’s table set by Jesus. When you pray for the orphans of the world, those precious little ones are seated with you, right now, at the eschatological feast. When you do what you can to send material aid and to declare the good news of the Gospel, you are participating, right now, in God’s own work of bringing the story to a right, good, just, wholesome completion.

I know that Mephibosheth’s story doesn’t answer all your questions or resolve all your heartaches. Somehow we’ve learned to think of “faith” as something always instant, always obvious, always dramatic. We need to unlearn this view of “faith.”

Don’t give in to the despair, the limited vision, which would reduce the victory of the Cross, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the work of the Church, only to that which is obvious and evident to our human senses. The drama God is choreographing is much bigger. Yes, this is a time for you of testing. It requires patience and perseverance. Yes, there is opposition, often fierce opposition, to the work of the Kingdom, and many refuse to participate, and so are fostering and inheriting wrath. But we now pledge our help to you, in the company of the Saints throughout the ages, as you continue in your good work of caring for the very least of the least, until Christ appears and we sit at his table together.

Tags Disability

Spirituality

Hope for Families of Children with Disabilities: A Sermon (Part II)

Post author By David Opderbeck
Post date March 25, 2010

(Part II of my “sermon”):

In Second Samuel we encounter a disabled child named Mephibosheth. His disability seems like a meaningless tragedy of war, an unfair spillover from God’s judgment of Saul, or both. It appears that Mephibosheth quite literally fell between the cracks of the great and terrible events that surround the story of his life. We will see, however, that God remembered and graciously provided for Mephibosheth.

You may recall that God had warned His people, Israel, that they should not desire a king. God warned the people, through the prophet Samuel, that a king would tax the people and lead them into war for the king’s own purpose rather than for God’s purposes. Yet their response is reflected in First Samuel chapter 8, verses 19-20: “Nevertheless, the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel, and they said: ‘No, but there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.”

The chosen king was Saul, “a choice and handsome man,” as he is described in First Samuel. Saul was a natural politician, yet chosen, we should note, by God. But Saul’s rule was tragic. Though he achieved some great victories, he disobeyed God at a crucial point, preferring to enrich himself with the spoils of war rather than to destroy an idolatrous enemy that would continue to infect Israel’s worship of God alone. (All of this is narrated in 1 Samuel 15). God then chose David, a shepherd boy, to succeed Saul as king. David was often helped by Saul’s son, Jonathan, who became David’s closest friend and confidant. Saul, however, descended into a bizarre spiral of jealousy, rage, the occult, and madness. Eventually, Saul drove David out of the land, but David continued to fight independently with a band of loyal soldiers against Israel’s enemies, with great success. Meanwhile, Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in a battle against Israel’s arch-enemy, the Philistines. (These events are narrated in 1 Samuel 16-31).

Many of us have known a little bit of the paralyzing fog of war. Some of you have fought in wars or have lived in other countries during times of violence. My most vivid experience of war — and I’m sure many of yours as well — was the morning of September 11, 2001. I was working in a law firm in Newark, New Jersey, and we could see the smoke billowing up from across the Hudson River. We literally stumbled around in the hallways of our building, not knowing for sure whether to flee or stay put, whether this was an isolated event or the start of an all-out assault.

Imagine the fog of war in a time before modern telecommunications. The nurse of Jonathan’s children, a servant in the royal household of King Saul, would have heard the gossip about the King’s madness, about the usurper David and his band of mercenaries pressing on one side and the Philistines pressing on the other. Then the news came, probably from the frantic reports of straggling survivors and refugees, of the humiliating defeat by the Philistines, that the King and his heir are dead, the army has fled, and the Philistines have taken over the cities near the battleground. The Philistines are coming. David’s mercenaries are coming. It’s time to flee or to face enslavement or death! So the nurse grabbed five-year-old Mephibosheth and ran.

We don’t know exactly what happened next, because the Biblical narrative is characteristically sparse. The words “he fell and became crippled” seem rather minimalistic and clinical. How does a child “become crippled” from a fall? Usually by the shattering of bones and ripping of tendons. Later, in Second Samuel 9, Mephibosheth is described as “crippled in both feet.” We can imagine the five-year-old’s screams of pain when slipped from the nurse’s grasp and his feet and ankles slammed into the stone floor. We can picture legs splayed akimbo, perhaps a with a compound fracture piercing the skin. We can almost feel the boys legs slowly, achingly “healing” at crooked angles that forever deprived him of the ability to walk, run, jump — that mark him as an outsider in a culture with no concept of “disability” as a noble category. Indeed, Mephibosheth became a double outsider — the physically crippled heir of a spiritually and emotionally crippled dynasty brought to ruin by its patriarch’s hubris.

After Saul’s death, a “long war” ensued between those who had remained loyal to Saul and those who followed David. In addition to this civil war, Israel faced threats from surrounding nations, including the Philistines, Moabites and Arameans. David eventually conquered these enemies and consolidated his rule over Israel, initiating what the Biblical narratives picture as a sort of golden age of the monarchy in Israel. (These events are narrated in 2 Samuel 3-9). David, in fact, later in scripture becomes a type of the messiah who will fulfill all of God’s original promises to the nation — a type, from the perspective of the New Testament, of Christ.

After consolidating his rule, David remembered his friendship with Jonathan and desired to bless any of Jonathan’s descendants who might still be living. He inquired of one of Saul’s former household servants, who recalled Mephibosheth, the one “who is crippled in both feet.” We can sense here the servant’s dismissiveness — surely a cripple cannot receive the King’s honor. And when he is brought to David, Mephibosheth revealed his own concept of himself: he called himself a “dead dog.” Perhaps he expected David to publicly humiliate or execute him.

But instead David did something extraordinary. David gave Mephibosheth everything that had previously belonged to Saul — servants, land, and status. Even more, David gave Mephibosheth a place at the King’s table — a place of honor and influence. Second Samuel chapter nine concludes by telling us “So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, for he ate at the king’s table regularly. Now he was lame in both feet.” Notice how the narrator seems to be amazed at his own story: “he ate regularly at David’s table and he was lame in both feet! A lame man, feasting with the King!” (This part of the story is found in 2 Samuel 9.)

Tags Disability

Photography and Music Spirituality

Hope for Families with Disabled Children: A Sermon (Part I)

Post author By David Opderbeck
Post date March 25, 2010

(This is part I of a “sermon” I had to write for an Old Testament class. I hope some of you find it helpful).

Jonathan son of Saul had a son who was lame in both feet. He was five years old when the news about Saul and Jonathan came from Jezreel. His nurse picked him up and fled, but as she hurried to leave, he fell and became crippled. His name was Mephibosheth. — 2 Samuel 4:4

One of my most vivid and horrifying memories is the day seven years ago when my son Garrett had his first epileptic seizure. The sound of his labored breathing woke me. At first I thought he was choking. Then I saw his little two-year-old body contracting in spasms that I recognized as a grand mal seizure. He had many more seizures after that first one. The area of his brain that is affected by his epilepsy controls speech, and as a result he lost the ability to process language. Today, as a nine-year-old, Garrett understands very little spoken language. He gets by with a mix of words, signs, and pantomime.

Although Garrett is otherwise intelligent, his loss of speech affects his emotional and cognitive development. We have no idea whether Garrett will ever be able to live independently — to go to college, hold a regular job, get married, have a family of his own. And we have no idea whether Garrett will ever really be able to understand the message of the Gospel and what it means to follow Jesus. For now, thankfully, Garrett is happy and content in his own world. We as his parents, however, live every day with uncertainty that gnaws at the hope we want to have for his future, as well as with the stress and burdens of constantly dealing with his unique issues.

I know that there are many of you here today with the same sorts of concerns. Some of you have children with Autism, Down’s Syndrome, Tourette Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, or other ailments that limit or destroy your beloved little one’s potential. A few of you, I know, understand that your child’s condition likely will limit his or her life expectancy severely. And on top of this emotional stress, you are often simply physically exhausted. For you, there is no such thing as a “simple” morning or evening routine. While other children, by the time they are out of diapers, become increasingly self-sufficient, you must continue taking care of your child’s basic needs — getting dressed, eating, cleaning up after themselves, even using the bathroom — long after they should be taking care of themselves.

Your children are extensions of yourselves, so all of you who care for special needs kids know something of the pain of being “other,” of living in a limbo that is rarely acknowledged or appreciated, of adjusting your expectations for the future in ways that, if you are honest, are deeply disappointing.

I’m afraid that some of your disappointment must be with the Church. I know this is true even for me. Many times we celebrate the healthy babies and able children of our congregation. When we dedicate a baby, or send a group of kids out on a summer missions trip, we often unconsciously present a narrative of ability and success to our families: you will nurture and train your children, and a time will come when they, too, will follow Christ exuberantly.

Of course, it is good and right that we remind ourselves of our responsibilities as parents, and that we commission and celebrate young people who go out from us to serve Christ in the world. Yet, we seem to ignore the inconvenient realties of children with disabilities. The very presence of such children challenges to the core how we think about God and about our mission as the Church. The Church, we seem to think, is not supposed to be filled with people who look strange, who make unexpected noises, or who can’t comprehend a sermon.

And I’m guessing that many of you have asked – or have been afraid to ask – questions that the Church seem ill-equipped to answer – because I know I have:

“Why did this happen to my little one?”

“What did I do wrong? Why are you angry with me Lord?”

“God, why don’t you afflict me instead? Just let my little one be healed.”

“What will become of my child when I’m too old to care for him, or when I’m gone?”

“How could a God who is ‘loving’ and ‘good’ let this happen to an innocent baby?”

“If my child is mentally incapable of understanding the Gospel, can he be saved? If not, of if I can’t be sure one way or the other, how is it ‘good news’ for him or for my family?”

“How can I bear the weight of caring for this child’s needs over the long term? It’s not fair. It’s too much.”

“What about the tens of millions of other disabled, impoverished, hungry, orphaned, diseased, broken children in our world today? Are they any less valuable to you than my little one? God, do you take any delight in or gain any glory from their suffering? What kind of God is glorified by such a weight of destruction? Is there no justice for them at all?”

At this point, I’d like to walk methodically with you through the historic theological principles that will answer these questions. But I cannot.

In part, this is because I fear that we have lost the resources to do so in any meaningful way. To be sure, there are flickerings here and there in the Christian tradition of efforts to respond to questions like these. In general, Christians have focused on the Church and its sacraments as the means by which the faith of the Christian community is imputed to and absorbed by those who are not able to comprehend and correlate their lives to the Gospel. It has often been acknowledged, in fact, that even the “able” among us are incapable of conforming to the Gospel. We all need the Church’s communal faith in some sense. The presence of disabled children among us should remind us that genuine Christian faith is always a corporate faith and never just an individual one. Perhaps the honest airing of your questions will help to correct our distorted individualistic concept of faith.

In another sense, I cannot answer these concerns methodically because they simply occupy a space in which all analytical methods break down. There in some important ways are no “answers” here; there are only some paths of “acceptance.” “Acceptance” isn’t a logical reason, it’s a relational status, it’s the act of a character in a human drama. Perhaps this is one reason why the Bible doesn’t give us a systematic theology of disability. What it does give us is a story. . . .