It’s good to be back and as I looked at today’s texts I thought -- oh my, four good passages!
Should we focus on the Psalm and have us all unpack the cry “Lord, I take refuge” and recall when we’ve leaned into God?
Or should I preach that WE HAVE ALL BEEN CALLED, as was Jeremiah, and have us recall in what particular ways our life’s story is our call story—as well as proclaim that we too have had words of promise spoken over us, before our births, before we could “do anything,” we were claimed in love by God.
And what about Luke’s verses where we get the response to Jesus’ sermon: amazement then people wanting to throw Jesus over the cliff. Wow! Why? I think it’s simply because Jesus demands a response from people! And the response reveals who people, like us, assume Jesus is. Jesus reveals stuff about God and the nature of God’s kingdom that is not easy, or mainstream, or what you expect. Like the inclusion of outsiders…
And it can take some processing, some work to get to understanding and accepting it, to believing and following it: God’s ways, Jesus, that is.
Anyway, yes, while all the texts are fabulous and worthy of a homily (and they all do actually dovetail well into my main thought today) I shared in my emails from Kauai how much I appreciated the lectionary’s focus on 1 Corinthians this month. Paul was writing to a community that I think we, as American Christians, have so much in common with…their faith community was divided!
They were fighting over their understanding of spiritual gifts but Paul doesn’t take a side, instead he says pursue love even amidst differences and dissent. Love is the foundational ethic for the church! For the last 2 weeks we’ve been in chapter 12 -- Paul’s classic imagery teaching that the ONE BODY has so many parts, with so many different gifts and tremendous diversity, and that all are not only holy but all are needed in order for the whole to be HOLY….
Now today we have the classic love chapter. But I think we need to start with the last verse of Chapter 12 to ground ourselves in the continuity of the teaching: But strive for the greater gifts. Not everyone has the same spiritual gifts but faith, hope and love are greater because they are available to everyone! And the greatest is love!
If I speak, have prophetic powers, understanding, knowledge, faith, generosity but not love, I am nothing. Love waits patiently. Love acts kindly, love doesn’t act enviously, boastfully, arrogantly or rudely. Love acts…. And Love never ends.
I have also shared how my word for 2022 is Love, actually FIERCE LOVE, and you might have a different word, but I am bringing you, as the church, as a group, along with me because that is absolutely what the work of the church is….
To LOVE. To focus on the love of God for you, me and all people… AND all creation actually. We are to receive and give the unconditional love of God. We are to share the love of God. And We are to do that in an inclusive community -- one that welcomes ALL to the table, into the fellowship, into the kingdom work that God has entrusted to us. We are to welcome ALL to know, experience and share LOVE.
Now, I have to tell you once again the Holy Spirit has been at work preceding my knowledge of what she was up to….
Back in November, I had sketched out a plan to preach about being an inclusive community that welcomes all for 4 weeks starting today. I planned to consider people who are often NOT included in churches for a variety of reasons, people who often feel excluded, unwelcome, unwanted, unappreciated, unloved by God’s people and therefore feel unloved by God.
I had NO idea that the texts this January would have to do with love and inclusivity specifically but God did. And so here we find ourselves.
Talking about love. Paul has been teaching about all the various gifts and says strive for the greater gifts. Is it speaking in tongues or having prophetic powers or generosity? No. “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
So love is the foundational ethic for the church. Love is intentional ACTIONS, not some passive feeling. Love is a VERB not an adjective. Love is fierce. It is not easy but it is the greatest…
And Paul spends time preaching about it because it is a new way, THE WAY, of being in community and leads to a more excellent way of life!
The church is still trying to figure this out -- yes we are further along than the Corinthians were but far too many gatherings of Jesus’ people exclude people who don’t look like them, pray or worship like them, don’t fit the ‘norm,’ are too worldly, too gay, too poor, too dark, too progressive or conservative, too different...
So let’s do some talking about love. It is intentional, strong, gritty and unselfish. How does that look? Well, today I want us to consider how Love changes how we are in community with people with disabilities.
Did you know that most people with disabilities, physical or intellectual, have experienced hurt and exclusion at the hands of the body of Christ, meaning the church? I have to admit, I have not been very curious about how those who are other-abled experience God, especially in community.
I regret that but let me share an ah-ha moment. For years, we have had large print bulletins for those who have visual challenges but last year, Pastor Janet Rawlins’ daughter shared her struggle being unable to hear.
As an adult with profound hearing loss, she isn’t able to participate in the part of the service where the sermon is preached—she cant hear it!
So she asked her priest for a copy of the sermon so she could read it while he delivered his message. I had never thought of that!
Then when the community gathered for Janet’s funeral there was an elderly person who usually used a wheelchair who asked how they would fit in our sanctuary with the coffin and flowers all up front? That’s usually where we have worshippers with walkers or wheelchairs sit.
Then Cherie Holder’s sweet granddaughter was able to attend worship with her and her daughter in law in December but guess what? There was NO place to easily place her carrier.
Three situations where we unintentionally were making it difficult for people to gather and participate in worshipping God.
And at this SAME time, I began receiving the ELCA’s disability ministries email updates…. A question was posed that asked “How are people who often need accommodations welcomed and made to feel fully themselves in the family of God?”
This question and more sent me on a path of learning more about people with disabilities. As people of faith, we begin with the assertion that everyone’s lives matter -- as God did for Jeremiah, God consecrates every life before an individual is even born so whether one is born with an obvious disability, or has one that is not plainly visible, or acquires one or is without a disability, one’s life counts as being fully human!
But that is not what society always asserts. Have you ever heard of what disability activists call the “Ugly Laws?” I hadn’t either. They first appeared in our country in San Francisco in 1867 in response to people having to encounter others that disturbed them. The first case was a civil war veteran who had lost an arm and had facial injuries and intellectual problems post-war.
He scared “the good people of San Fran” so he was jailed until the almshouse was built and could institutionalize him. Ugly Laws soon became popular in cities across the US as authorities sought to cleanse public spaces of people judged to be subhuman in one way or another. Eventually the laws were removed but Chicago was the last in 1974!
And this is only one example from the history books! Despite tremendous victories such as protections for people with disabilities and anti-discrimination laws, attitudes that those with disabilities don’t fully belong and that perhaps they shouldn’t be counted as genuinely human do remain.
I listened to a Podcast titled Being Human produced by Plough where Lawyer, Notre Dame professor and author Carter Snead was interviewed about how the law defines life and he really unpacked this idea –- consider listening to it but he introduced ideas I had not honestly studied.
Disabilities DO occur, people with disabilities matter and are fully human, and as people of faith, we are to love, with intention, all God’s people. How?
Well, if you ask those with disabilities, it often begins with ourselves! What language do we use for example? One of our ELCA pastors with Cerebral palsy produced a video addressing his own experience. When he was young he was asked all the time “What is wrong with you?” and internalized that, wondering why God had made him that way, the wrong way...
Happily he didn’t get stuck there, he embraced his giftedness and suggests that we need to be careful of our language when we speak to or about someone with disabilities. He has many good suggestions and the ELCA has resources for congregations to embrace as well! Who Knew? Not I!
The Holy Spirit kept bring up more resources to teach me as well. She is persistent right? Plough Quarterly is a Christian magazine whose entire winter issue was about, you guessed it: disabilities. Titled “Made Perfect: Ability and Disability” it is all about people of God who are “other abled!” and it was a wellspring of information. I commend the online version to you because although I had planned to share a lot of stories and examples, if I did we’d be here for hours and my voice wouldn’t hold up!
Let’s focus on that fact that God calls us to love one another. When we make loving our neighbor an abstract ideal, we make loving them difficult.
SO How DO WE LOVE people who are different from us due to disabilities? What do we need to do dear Zion’s to live out our call to love one another in practical ways? What steps do we need to take? We need to consider disabilities from the perspective of the disabled!
We need to hear their stories and see how God is manifest in them, in their lives. We need to ask what does it really look like for us to be a congregation that welcomes anyone with a disability?
Some simple ones are to print out the sermons, have room for those with walkers or wheelchairs to comfortably sit in the sanctuary, make our signage obvious for those needing handicapped parking…I have some ideas but what do you think?
Let’s love fiercely in ways that make a difference! AMEN.
