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“Belonging to Christ;” Galatians 3:23-29, Mark 7; June 23, 2013; FPC Jesup

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“Belonging to Christ”
Galatians 3:23-29
June 23, 2013, First Presbyterian Church of Jesup

Slide1Today is recognized in the Presbyterian Church as Disability Inclusion Sunday. While I hope every single Sunday is a day of inclusion for all people, I do think this scheduling gives us the opportunity to highlight the importance of people of all very abilities as members of the household of God, with gifts that contribute to the building up of the entire church.

Slide2While I was at the Festival of Homiletics (Preaching) a few weeks ago I heard a very compelling sermon by Nadia Bolz-Weber examining issues of disability. She’s a Lutheran pastor who leads a congregation called “A House For All Sinners and Saints,” a very non traditional sort of church that uses very traditional liturgy in Denver, CO. In her sermon in Nashville she framed disability and ability in a way I had never quite thought of before.

Her message was from Mark 7: “Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.”

Slide4Nadia then spoke of famous Evangelical Christian, Joni Eareckson, who Nadia describes as a hero of hers. As a teenager Joni became a quadriplegic from a diving accident and wrote a memoir about her story and relationship with God. Slide5Having lost the use of her arms she eventually learned to paint by holding a brush in her teeth. Nadia was watching 24 consecutive hours of Christian television for a project she was doing and saw Joni on the 700 Club. Here’s what Nadia said about this interview:

“A whole lot of well meaning and enthusiastic “prayer warriors” often offer to pray for Joni to be healed of her quadriplegia… but [on the 700 Club] from her wheelchair Joni Eareckson says to them, ‘I would love some prayer, but could you instead please pray for healing from the times when I cherish inflated ideas of my own importance … the times when I fudge the truth … the times when I manipulate my husband to get things my own way…sin…’mam, if you want to pray for me pray that I receive the power of  resurrection to put to death the things in my life that displease God.’”[1]

To Nadia, and to me, this provides a powerful witness as to what it means to be healed and what it means to be transformed by Christ. A lot of the times when we think about disability and ability we think about physical differences and medical issues. In Mark 7, Jesus takes the man away from those who are pleading for his healing, and offers healing. The problem with this, is no one asks the man what he wants, and while all of these people are pleading for this man’s healing, none of them are focusing on their own need to be transformed.

As I was preparing for this Disability Inclusion Sunday I came across a video that speaks to this message much better than I can, about what ability and disability truly look like.

[We viewed “One Question”]

Our scripture today tells us that in Christ we are all children of God, heirs to the promise of God. If we were surprised by the answers to the question on the video that might be an indication of our own desire for a specific sort of change in others. Often the changes that are most needed are not the ones we perceive from the outside, but the ones that come up in relationship, in ability to have empathy, in ability to love as Christ would have us love. What would you change about yourself? Perhaps it is a physical affliction, but more than likely it is something that creates distance between yourself and others or yourself and God. May we push aside our desires to change or transform one another’s physicality and rely instead on Christ’s ability to transform our hearts. May we see the intrinsic value that every single person holds by being our siblings in the household of God. Amen.