God’s Heart for Wholeness

Hebrews 2:10-18

The Rev. Robin Lostetter
PDC Leadership Team and pastor of Point Pleasant Presbyterian Church, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey

Perhaps you remember having been hospitalized — lying in a hospital bed. You may recall the discomfort or pain that landed you there. Maybe even the anxiety of not knowing what is making you ill. Doctors don’t always rush into your room the moment they come up with a diagnosis. You may not see them until early the next morning, when you’ve had precious little sleep and may be groggy from medication or fever.

And if you or a friend or family member has requested it, one of your memories may be of a visit from your pastor or a hospital chaplain. And if you were particularly anxious or the pain or prognosis was disturbing, that person might well have ended a prayer with you with these words:

“through Jesus Christ, who has experienced all that we experience in life.”

In today’s reading from Hebrews, we read, “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death ... and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death ... It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”

One way of paraphrasing that might be that Jesus Christ was incarnate as a human being — a vulnerable baby, a wayward 12-year old, a preacher, and a criminal dying a painful death on the cross. In this way he was perfected, or “brought to completion, as one who totally shared humanity.”

And so, we are able to pray, “through Jesus Christ, who has experienced all that we experience in life.”

In what way does the full, perfected humanity of Christ, God-with-us, contribute to our individual lives and our community of faith?

First and foremost, this statement in Hebrews depends upon our belief in an incarnational and loving God. Scripture describes how, through Jesus’ life and ministry on earth, God-with-us fully understands human anxiety, physical pain, grief over loss, and unmerited rejection. Our prayers ascend to one who has lived among us in history. God-with-us in full humanity is also at the heart of our theologies of redemption and atonement. Christians proclaim that through God’s great love for humanity, Christ died for us and intercedes for us. (Romans 8:34)

Paul’s letter to the church at Rome also gives us these cherished words: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) This text leads us to affirm that, on a day-to-day level, our incarnate God-with-us is a God of presence. God is present with us in all circumstances.

William Blake concludes his poem, “On Another’s Woe,” with a particularly poignant affirmation that, in our seasons of grief or pain, God “doth sit by us and moan.”

And Nancy Eiesland echoes Paul’s statement in Romans (8:31), “If God is for us, who is against us?” She suggests that “this revelation is of a God who is for us, one who celebrates joy and experiences pain.”

So, friends, we are, indeed, able to pray, “through Jesus Christ, who has experienced all that we experience in life.”

Now I have many passions in my ministry. One, in particular, is a passion for those who live with disability, chronic illness, loss of function and the complaints that accompany increasing age.

And so today I’d like us to think a bit about the diversity among us: our diverse gifts, and our diverse limitations, in the context of God-with-us — how we each play our role in the fabric of our faith community — and how that extends into the larger secular community.

Let’s begin with the “image of God” found in our creation narratives. Historically, the image of God has been seen as the human ability to reason and in our facility for language. Without going into the scientific examples of so-called “lower” animals reasoning (such as a crow or small mammal creating a tool to obtain food), or of linguistic ability that has been documented in apes and some birds, just for today, let’s assume that reasoning and language are superficial characteristics of the image of God.

Theologians have classified human attributes that might be seen as reflecting the image of God, into two categories, substantial and relational.

“Substantial attributes” would be physical, emotional, or spiritual characteristics, such as physical appearance, rationality, immortality, or freedom. “Relational attributes” are those that require at least two persons or groups. Relational characteristics that resonate with biblical values include peace, justice, righteousness, and love.

I’d like to tell you about a Bible study I once led. The participants were part of what we then termed a “special bell choir,” one comprised of adults with disabilities. Three lived with various degrees of sight-impairment, and the others had some degree of diminished cognitive ability. I think I’ve told you before of the musical talents that were discovered and nurtured through this activity, and that we also celebrated birthdays and other milestones with parties. And for a brief while, we offered a Bible study.

As the leader, I was fairly naive, and I had a pretty strong science background. So I was familiar with the idea that God’s image was present in us in our ability to reason and our language. Also, this was during my very first years of working with people living with significant disabilities. We began our study with Genesis, probably because it was the first book I studied in seminary! When we came to verse 27 of chapter 1, I innocently asked what the group thought of when they considered the image of God. Without hesitating, members of the group came up with words such as “compassion” — “love” — “caring” — “protection.”

That experience has stayed with me for more than 15 years. The spiritual gifts of the members of that bell choir were profound and their expression was spontaneous. Their insight influenced my interpretation of scripture and my understanding of God and humanity from that point on.

None of us, if we thought about it, would expect that God would look like the majority of folk in our congregation … white, casually dressed, and perhaps sporting a Yankees or Mets baseball hat. But how often do we think of ourselves mirroring God when we are compassionate, loving, tender, or nurturing? And yet, the best scholarship supports the insight of that group of Bible students, whom many would have labeled “handicapped.”

Now let us take a slightly more unexpected turn, theologically speaking. Let us consider the sense of perfection or completion that the author of Hebrews attributes to Christ.

In 1994, Nancy Eiesland posited the image of “The Disabled God” in her book of the same title. She’s not talking about limiting the power of the Trinity — not disabling God’s power in any way. Instead, she’s considering the resurrected Jesus as witnessed to in scripture: the resurrected Jesus, complete with scars on his feet and hands, and a deep scar in his side — scars so real that Thomas was asked to place his fingers inside them. She says, “In emptying himself of divinity, Jesus enters the arena of human limitation, even helplessness. Jesus' own body is wounded and scarred, disfigured and distorted.”

Perhaps you or I would have suggested an alternate title for her book — the Wounded God, perhaps, or the Scar-Bearing God, rather than the Disabled God. But Nancy has come to her thesis through much pain. Not physical pain alone, but the pain of living on the margins of society, the pain of isolation, and perhaps most difficult — the pain of rejection by her church. And the image of the Disabled God has helped many in the disability community to embrace Christianity, despite their experiences of rejection within their very own congregations.

Her perspective is not unique. About that same year, Walter Wink authored an article entitled, “Holy and Without Blemish Before God.” In it, he traced the rejection of folk with disabilities from church leadership to the book of Leviticus. (Beware, adult language ahead!) In chapter 21: 16-23, we read, “the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the LORD’s offerings by fire … he shall not come near the curtain or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the LORD; I sanctify them.”

In addition to this exclusionary passage from the Hebrew scriptures, let us look at the society reflected in the Gospel according to John. In chapter 9, we see that a direct relationship between disability and sin was apparently a common belief. In the story of the man-born-blind, a disciple asks if his blindness was due to his sin or that of his parents. Jesus answers, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him." (vs.3)

Although we hear Jesus soundly negating that link between sin and blindness, we may still read the last part of his statement to mean that God made the man blind just so that Jesus could miraculously heal him. Now whether or not that might be true for that particular man at that particular time, it certainly doesn’t seem to apply to people today who live with blindness or sight-impairment. Let’s read on a little further. We see that the formerly blind man chooses to witness to Jesus, in defiance of the powerful Pharisees. And ultimately, he is one of the few in all of scripture who responds to Jesus with a creedal statement. When Jesus reveals to the man that it is he, Jesus, who is the “Son of Man,” the nameless man exclaims, “I believe.” Might it be this choice to respond — this overt witness, this conversion — that reveals God’s work through him — and not his physical blindness?

But now, let’s get back to how our diverse gifts and limitations contribute to the fabric of our faith community.

In the Bible study I mentioned earlier, the gifts of discernment and wisdom came from members of the Body of Christ who are often labeled “disabled” or “handicapped.” For some, being part of a chime choir was their very first experience of real church participation. I know that some of them had felt isolated within the church, and yet, despite experiencing the worst of church practice, they were insightful in identifying God’s attributes in terms of right relationship. As in the story of the man born blind, my ringers were limited or handicapped by forces outside themselves. Jesus identified the Pharisees as the ones truly blind, truly handicapped — limited in their ability to see God’s giftedness in each person. The Church, the Body of Christ, often persists in failing to identify or nurture gifts that, when allowed to flourish, enrich the whole community.

In my current congregation, there was an unforgettable baptism of a 4-year old who rarely attended worship due to the demands of his care. Immediately after he was baptized, he shouted a spontaneous “Thank you!” that was heard by the whole congregation. He put the lie to the pervasive conviction that a child with a disability — or any child, for that matter — might not “get it” when it comes to baptism. There was certainly no question about his embracing the sacrament he received on that day!

In fact, those who live with disabilities often show us a part of God that is not otherwise visible to the faith community. Hear again the words of Nancy Eiesland:

“Jesus Christ the disabled God repudiates the conception of disability as a consequence of sin. ... Our bodies participate in the image of God, not in spite of our impairments and contingencies but through them. ... The disabled God embodies the ability to see clearly the complexity and the "mixed blessing" of life and bodies, without living in despair. [The Disabled God] ... affirms that our nonconventional bodies, which oftentimes dissatisfy and fail us, are worth the living. ... [The liberating mission of the Church] is only possible when sisters and brothers with disabilities are integral to the life of the community — when our voices are heard, our experiences honored, and our gifts allowed to flourish.”

Think of the people around you — leaders and members of the church. What gifts do they bring? How might the gifts of our silent or invisible “members at home” also enrich our community? Allowing each person’s gifts to be expressed and to flourish may take creativity and intentional discernment. But our community, and the lives of all its members, will enjoy the blessings.

Through Jesus Christ, who has experienced all that we experience in life. Amen.