All and Together: My Sermon

My dear friend Joe posted a sermon on his blog, good idea, so I thought I'd follow in his example. The is the sermon I preached in the Chapel at CST on April 10, 2008. My friend Jeri told me it was a "magnus opus"! I don't know about that but what I do know is that the Sprit MOVED in the chapel that day! I know I was caught up in it.

All and Together Kelli Parrish Lucas
Acts 2: 42-47
Kresge Chapel / Claremont School of Theology
April 10, 2008

Over spring break, I was asked to help with an activity for a mentoring program for a program matches youth with disabilities and professionals with disabilities to explore ways to navigate our not - always - so – accessible – society. I went.
When I arrived, a lawyer with cerebral palsy was giving a presentation, he was speaking about the rights people with disabilities have to access public spaces and institutions under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

It was a scene that moved me--not because there was a man doing an ordinary thing with incredible effort—but because I know what a diagnosis of CP means it means a world in which people too often say “you can’t”, “you’ll never”, “you shouldn’t”or worse “let me” without any considerations of your own desires, and absolutely no concept of your personal determination.

After the program ended, I approached this lawyer to thank him for his presentation and to pose a few questions. I had introduced myself but had not quite finished my question, when he interrupted me asking: “You’re not, studying to become a minister are you?” When I nodded my head and said, “Well, yes, actually I am”. He rolled his eyes, let out a sigh, and set about answering my question.

To an outsider of the disability community, this may seem strange; but it is not.
Given the context, I knew his was not a response to my vocation as much as it was a concern for my sanity. Far from questioning my call, as a person with disabilities, to ministry, his response was one of pity for me having such a call, in the first place.

You see, as an educated person and disability activist, he was aware of something about religious communities, something religious communities are often oblivious to; something that religious communities don’t like to talk about, even when they are aware of it. As a lawyer, he knew the loophole that exempts churches from ADA compliance. (It is an open dirty secret, that far too many churches take advantage of.) He also knew / that as a result of this, Churches are often less accessible to persons with disabilities than the rest of society is!

This paradox of exclusion within the Church brings me to the Acts of the Apostles.
As we know, the book of Acts recounts the growth of the churches throughout the Roman Empire. Chapter two of Acts begins with the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the gathering of the first converts to Christianity at Pentecost. It is a scene full of diversity, as it recounts the nations and languages of all present. We can almost imagine the variety of shades, shapes and sounds of the people present. The section of this chapter we look at this week gives us insight into how the early Christians lived together as a diverse community.

Acts 2:42-47 reads:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, and to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. Awe came upon every one, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all as any had need. Day by day as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

This devotion to teaching, fellowship, praying, and going home to break bread sounds, almost as if it could have been written about our lives here at CST. Many of us have brought the proceeds from our lives, or hopes thereof, to be here. Like the first converts, we have brought all we have and devoted ourselves to the work of the gospel and the church as it is in this community. We, too, are in this together—ALL of us.

But who were these people of the early church? Were they really like us? Our text does not tell us about the individuals in the early church. We know who they are only through the larger context Acts 2: 5-12, tell us that these people were not only from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean areas of the Empire but they were from Africa, Asia, and Arabia--“every nation under heaven” (5) they were of all hues and spoke all languages

At the end of our text, we hear that “day by day the Lord added to their number.” It as if the text wants us to remember that it is not our task to call people into the Church—for God does that—rather our task is to be ready to be hospitable to those who come to our communities.

But whom does God send to the Church?

Our text tells us that the church was filling up with “those who were being saved”.
Now, we know that throughout the ancient world, and in some of churches today, it was believed that one of the signs of sin was thought to be physical or mental disability. We also know, from the gospels, that an aspect of Jesus’ ministry was healing. In Mark 5:19 Jesus told the man released from a legion of mental illness to “go home” and “tell” what God had done. In Luke 17:14 Jesus sends ten lepers to the priests so they could be welcomed and integrated back into community. Time and time again, Jesus freed people from the social stigmas of disability which excluded them from society.

The early church was full of such people. God called them.

So how can we, as the modern Church be as radically welcoming as Jesus? How can we be hospitable?

One of the things that we can do is to watch our language.

Shortly after I was born, I was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy. Most people do not know this you see, when I was a baby and started doing baby things that weren’t expected the nurses at the hospital nicknamed me “the miracle baby”—and much to my dismay, it has stuck. This is often what I hear in response to my story—and why I stopped telling it.

I invite you to think about this theologically—I don’t want to take miracles away from anybody, but what does it mean to call a person a miracle? Do we really want to imply that people with disabilities who do ordinary things are any more miraculous in their existence than anyone else? Do we really, theologically, want to perpetuate stigma?

In Truth, I am not any more of a “miracle” than anyone else here today.

Everybody has to find their particular way of being in the world, but we often make this more difficult by defining how people with disabilities are in the world by using language that speaks more of physical conditions than spiritual realities. We can avoid this by speaking of individual persons rather than disabled bodies. We can say “disabled” rather than that old “H” word, (handicapped). We can remove the terms “retarded” and “normal” from our vocabularies. We must speak of doing things “with” people with disabilities rather than “to” or “for” them. There many ways we can disable stigma by the language we choose. The church has the responsibility to seek out the fullness of such language --and to speak it as well--as it is spoken by people with disabilities.

We all know persons with disabilities who are members and leaders of the church. Some have “hidden disabilities” or illnesses that we may not see. We may not know about their disability --unless they tell us. And this, too, is a tender thing. For people within the disability community know that not only are our churches not as accessible as they could be, but that even within the church the social stigmas attached to disabilities—the true disabling of people—Remains.

So, how do we respond? And is it any wonder that people with hidden disabilities remain silent?

That people feel compelled to hide themselves, even within the Church is disturbing, but it is not surprising. In 2000, a study by the National Organization on Disability revealed that “[s]lightly less than half (45%) of people with disabilities say they never go to a place of worship compared to [only] 35% of people without disabilities.” This, in and of itself is a commentary on our churches and the Church as whole. What it might mean that the Christian community, which once grew by reversing the social affects of disability now reaches less than half of persons with disability? Perhaps it is a hint or even an expectation, for the church to grow with the evangelistic message of inclusion. But it also indicates that the Church needs to confront the pains it has caused by excluding and, sometimes, mistreating people with disabilities whom God has sent to abide with the Church.

As, I read our text as a person with disabilities, I am mindful of . . .the lawyer who shrugged the Church off as hopelessly inaccessible, the millions of people with disabilities who have been told that they have not been healed because they lack faith, and of the people with disabilities who have been told that they cannot minister because the Church cannot see what God is doing with them and persists in questioning whom God calls.

And I wonder, what Moses, what Paul, what woman possessed by seven demons have we dismissed?

Then, I pray, that through the Holy Spirit we may not be the same, but that we may be open to all and together as we are.