But
if the Paralympics re-opened new thoughts and fresh thinking about how we view
and react to disability I wonder if the games might offer new options for thinking
afresh about how God views the disability, and how conversely the disabled
think about God. On a practical level following the Disability Discrimination
Act passed in 1995 churches and their communities have started to embrace the
cause of disability and have invested a great deal of energy in struggles
against attitude and architectural barriers, although in my own church the
elevated pulpit and platform of church communion furniture including the
baptismal font still makes access difficult for disabled ministers, preachers
and leaders of worship. I vividly remember holding my grandson over a baptismal
font in a church in the York diocese whilst my Anglican colleague baptised him
(because of her disability she could not hold a child); I too remember the
distress felt by a minister in a wheelchair who could not access the stage at a
URC General Assembly at Warwick University when newly ordained ministers were presented
to the Assembly Moderator on the assembly platform.
Sadly
these instances reflect a church that has often been unhelpful, and even
harmful, as it has tried to relate to people with disabilities. When
disabilities have been considered at all they have historically at least been
looked at as symbols of sin (to be avoided), images of saintliness (to be
admired), signs of God’s limited power or capriciousness (to be pondered) or
suffering personified (to be pitied) – very rarely were people with
disabilities considered first as people,
as the 2012 Paralympics has wonderfully testified. Fortunately the last twenty
years have seen significant changes as a variety of factors have converged to
give churches the nudge to take seriously the presence of people with
disabilities particularly with regard to access, and to remove the stereotypes.During my ministerial training I spent a summer at Earls House Hospital, Durham, a hospital for people (and children) with severe learning disabilities. At the same time I and other friends helped put to bed on a daily basis a severely disabled young adult, recently married, to a disabled partner. It was a responsibility that was to last over 10 years. During this time I began to wonder whether God was disabled, are disabled people made in the image of a disabled God I thought? One of my favourite baptismal hymns is Bernadette Farrell’s lovely arrangement of Psalm 139 “O God you search me and you know me” but often I have to stop and think about the verse which reads, “For you created me and shaped me, gave me life within my mother’s womb.” What God could create such children as I met at Earls House Hospital, how could they know that God loved them and understood their needs and experiences? If God is “biased to the poor,” the title of the late Bishop David Sheppard’s book could he also be biased towards the disabled?
The penny dropped a few weeks later when a dear friend offered me her insight and experience of coping with and understanding disability from a Christian point of view. She explained that in the resurrection narratives seldom is the resurrected Christ recognised as a God whose hands, feet and side bear the marks of profound physical impairment. In our joy at Easter we tend to overlook these mutilations. His scars (“with what rapture gaze we on the glorious scars” as Charles Wesley’s hymn has it) were not removed from Christ’s resurrected body on that first Easter morning. They were there, shown to the disciples, touched by Thomas and presumably taken up with Christ into all eternity. The events that took place on the Friday before might also suggest that God was not in an able-bodied form as he was nailed to a cross, his broken, torn, disfigured body pinned down. Could this image of a disabled God both in his crucified and resurrected body be a helpful and comforting image for disabled people I wonder? He is so much like me, like us. But when we come to think about it do we, as able-bodied people have an able-bodied God as our primal image. Surely God’s promised grace comes to us through a broken body, a crucified body which is at the centre of our mission, prayer and practise. If this God whom we worship could be imagined as disabled as well as divine do we need to re-think our symbols, metaphors, rituals and doctrines so as to make them accessible to people with disabilities?
There are many Christian writers who reflect on such a subject, one of my favourites is Nancy Eiesland[1]. She argues strongly that disability is not in any way a consequence of sin. She sees the scars of Jesus as verifying this claim: Jesus did not sin yet became disabled. The invitation to touch Jesus’ hands and side show that the taboos against disability are to be rejected and that shallow expressions of sympathy and pity are inappropriate. The disabled God provides an impetus for transformation and liberation in the lives of people with disabilities as the London 2012 Paralympians have shown, just as the resurrection of Jesus provides an impetus for liberation and transformation in the world. The stories of the crucifixion and resurrection also lead Eiesland to reject the notion that God has absolute power; she argues instead that God is in solidarity with people with disabilities and others who are oppressed. This is a God who has experienced and understands pain and rejection.
As we approach the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Paralymic Games perhaps these thoughts and the image of a disabled God might give us fresh thinking as we applaud the success of our golden, heroic Paralympic athletes.
Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working
in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist
Circuit
[1] Dr
Nancy L Eiesland is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion at Candler
School of Theology, Emory University, and Atlanta. Disabled herself she is the
author of the critically acclaimed book the Disabled God: Toward a Liberation
Theology of Disability (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994). She lectures on
disabilities worldwide.
