With New Eyes

In this article Donald Senior, C.P. explores denial of access to full participation in the activities of the human community as a form of suffering. He views it especially through the sufferings of the disabled, both in the present situation, and especially also in the New Testament healing stories. From this examination he draws some conclusions about a proper sense of mission among able-bodied and disabled Christians.

Reading the biblical text with new eyes. Modern biblical studies have been enriched by learning to approach the text from different vantage points. The advocate of historical criticism may read the text from a historian's point of view--seeking to find in and behind a biblical passage the historical situation that formed it. We can also read with new understanding when we become aware of some of the assumptions of our own cultural, social, or political experience.

Reading the Bible from the vantage point of the disabled can also open up new ranges of meaning. Take, for example, the story of the paralytic in Mark 2:1-12. It is a classic example of inaccessibility. The crowds of (able-bodied) people who block the entrance of the home where 3esus is preaching make it impossible for this stretcher-bound paraplegic to enter (Mk 2:1-3). His friends mount the roof, haul him up on top, make a hole in the roof (or remove the tiles in Luke's version: see Lk 5:19), and lower the man down to the inner circle where Jesus is teaching.

It is a bit amusing to see the discussion of this passage in most commentaries. Inevitably, they note that roofs in ancient Palestine were thatch (or tile in the wider Greco-Roman world in which Luke may have been more familiar), thereby explaining the action of the paralytic's friends. But this, of course, is not the point of the story, and is certainly not one a disabled reader would catch. Thatch or not, lowering a stretcher through a hole in the roof is not the ordinary way to enter a house! Yet any disabled person who seeks to be active in church or society can supply lots of stories like this one- entering a church through the sacristy (or, worse, having to be carried up the front steps like a child), coming into a lecture hall by means of a freight elevator and then through the kitchen or utility room before being able to join the "normal" people who come in the front door. The friends who help the disabled man gain access to Jesus refuse to be turned away by yet another closed entrance. They get him into the room even if it means carving a hole in the roof. Their tenacious commitment to the disabled man and their determination to gain him access moves Jesus to care for the paralytic (Mk 2:5).

One can also detect another level of inaccessibility in this story. The attitude of the religious teachers who scruple over 3esus' claim to forgive sins (Mk 2:6-7), all the while ignoring the disabled man who waits expectantly, is also typical. Where an explosion of new life is taking place, they miss it. Very often the suffering persons with disabilities experience is not due to their physical condition-which can become second nature to them and, with ingenuity and grit, quite manageable. Much of the acute suffering connected with their disability can come from the reactions of able-bodied persons who treat them as less than human or, worse, ignore them altogether.

Being excluded is a form of suffering, one often more de-humanizing and more painful than physical disability itself. To be excluded from participating in a group or function diminishes a person. Exclusion implies that someone is less than human, not capable or worthy of participating in normal discourse. It is a form of suffering that disabled persons in particular are made to bear.

We return to the issue of access. Here, too, several dimensions of meaning can be in play at the same time. Physical barriers such as a flight of stairs or a curb can keep a wheelchair-bound person from entering and participating in a particular human activity. And even if one gains physical entry, attitudinal barriers can still deny a person access to full participation. When the issue is one of entry into a church the levels of meaning can be all the more complicated. In some instances, to be sure, the failure to insure access into a church for the disabled can be mere oversight or a lack of sensitivity. But keeping in mind the symbolic dimensions of human illness and the human body itself, one can at times detect a more serious issue underlying the failure to provide accessibility for those who are physically or mentally handicapped. The altar is the place where the community assembles and images itself before God. All is to be proper and dignified. For some people, often unconsciously, a broken body implies moral guilt or at least an imperfection unsuitable for a sacred place. This is particularly true among fundamentalist groups who often assume that sickness is the result of sin and that a cure can be effected if the sick person were to have strong enough faith in God. But even among mainline Christians such attitudes can be present, even if hidden beneath the surface. Our God can be imaged as the God of "wholeness", the all perfect, all beautiful, all powerful God--a God that becomes a projection of our body-conscious culture. Weakness, whether physical or moral, can have no place before such a God.

Access and the gospel healing stories. Reading through some of the Gospel stories on healing and seeing them with the eyes of the disabled can offer a whole new perspective on their significance. Each of the healing stories has several levels of meaning and can be approached from various angles. On one level these stories illustrate the divine power that courses through Jesus and thereby affirm his identity as the Christ and Savior. They also reveal he is a compassionate redeemer, moved by human suffering and committed to eradicating it. Some of the stories also serve to distinguish Jesus from his opponents: they scruple over points of the law while he is driven by mercy for God's people. Each evangelist brings other dimensions of meaning to the stories as they insert them into the narrative flow of their particular Gospel.

But many of these stories also illustrate the kind of human suffering that disabled persons and many other minorities in society feel--exclusion and isolation--and Jesus' response to it. Examples abound. The leper (Mk 1:40-45) dares to approach Jesus and ask for cleansing, even though Leviticus demands that he not mingle with the "clean11 (Lev 13:45-46). Jesus' immediate reaction is to touch the sick man--thereby establishing human contact with this isolated and tabooed human being. In many of the healing stories, Jesus' gesture of touch is not a mere healing technique but a bold act of communion, reaching across a barrier of isolation to draw the sick or disabled person into the heart of the community. In that act the man is cleansed and is instructed to go to the priests as the Law demanded in order to certify his cure and thereby to be fully restored to society (see Lev 14).

The story of the Gadarene demoniac is another classic example of isolation (Mk 5:1-20). The mentally deranged man lives far from his home village, haunting the cemetery, wailing, and beating himself--a terrible picture of human isolation and abjection. Jesus liberates him from his tormenting demons and restores him to his family and village. The astounding climax of the story comes when Jesus commissions the man to preach the Gospel in the Decapolis region– the first Gentile to be made a missionary in the Gospel (Mk 5:19-20; the technical word for "proclaiming" the Gospel is used to describe the man's activity). The man's journey from total isolation to total empowerment and reinsertion in his society is complete. The healing of the woman bent double in Luke 13:10-17 is another excellent example. While Jesus is preaching in a synagogue, a woman enters who has been severely disabled ("bent double", the Gospel notes) for eighteen years. Jesus immediately interrupts his preaching to go and touch the woman (another daring act of solidarity with the disabled woman) and to heal her. Significantly the story does not stop here. The manager of the synagogue is indignant at Jesus' action and turns his anger on the woman: "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day" (Lk 13:14). He apparently finds it easier to attack the woman than to confront his real target, Jesus. It is often the case that viewing a person only through their disability can depersonalize and desensitize our view of them: thus the woman becomes known simply by the label, "the woman-bent-double." Because he fails to see her as a human being, worthy of respect and love, the synagogue manager is unable to rejoice in this woman's liberation; instead, he publicly humiliates her.

Jesus sharply confronts the synagogue manager by affirming that the woman is a "Daughter of Abraham", worthy of every respect--certainly worthy of the consideration the manager would unconsciously give to his farm animal! (See Lk 13:15-16). Her disability has not robbed her of her dignity as a human being; she has every right to come to the synagogue and every right to have access to the divine power present in Jesus.

Many of the healing stories illustrate another important dimension of the struggle for access. Very often the sick or disabled person displays an active, aggressive stance in seeking access to Jesus. The woman with the hemorrhage is a good example (see Mk 5:24-34). She has suffered from a "flow of blood" for twelve years. In a society where cultic purity was important, her illness meant not only physical discomfort but exclusion from cultic activity. When Jesus passes by, she seizes the opportunity and is determined to touch the cloak of the healer. That active attitude wins her Jesus' blessing: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease" (Mk 5:34). The Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30; labeled a "Canaanite" in Matthew's version, an even more estranged title, see Mt 15:22) is an outsider--a Gentile. Jesus seems reluctant to extend his ministry across the boundaries of culture and history that separate Jew from Gentile. But the woman, fiercely committed to her sick daughter, refuses to be stopped by any of these barriers. She demands--and gets--from Jesus access to health for her child. Once again, such determined action is labeled "faith" by the Gospel (Mk 7:29; Mt 15:28). The same active dynamic can be found in Bartimaeus, the blind man of Jericho, who is refused access to Jesus by his entourage of disciples, but lifts his voice over their protest and gains Jesus' attention and healing power (10:46-52). Here, too, it is Bartimaeus' active "faith" that has made him well (Mk 10:52).

Many persons with disabilities testify that well-intentioned religious people can subtly breed passivity in those who are sick or disabled. They can be encouraged simply to "bear" their suffering or to "offer it up". Bearing suffering and offering it up are authentic and powerful religious responses, but they do not exhaust the ways Christians can deal with suffering. Those who are ill can also actively participate in their therapy and cure. Those who are disabled need to be actively committed to physical and, if need be, psychological rehabilitation and should actively demand their rights and expect full access in the community.

In the Gospel healing stories both Jesus and the sick or disabled display this kind of active attitude. Jesus reaches out to those who are ill in order to draw them into the circle of his compassionate love. But the sick or disabled also actively struggle to gain access to that life-giving circle. Very often the ones standing between these two active impulses are, curiously enough, religious leaders. Instead of mediating access they impede it by the difficulties--religious or legal--that separate the disabled or ill person from access to new life. As Gerd Theissen notes in his study of the miracle stories, the very ones who should be the proponents of the "impossible" and the "miraculous"--the religious leaders– become the proponents of the limits imposed by the rational and the merely possible.

These stories of the quest for access are, in fact, redemption stories. They give us insight into the very nature of Jesus' mission. He came to open the way to the rule of God, providing access for those branded as sinners and "outsiders". The entire dynamic ministry of Jesus--his teaching, his healing, his confrontation with oppression and injustice--is captured in these stories. On the theology implicit in such stories the early church based its own universal mission to the Gentiles; it is not by accident that all of Jesus' encounters with Gentiles found in the Gospels are in the context of healing stories. Jesus is presented as the herald of a boundary-breaking God who offers to everyone--Jew and Gentile, able-bodied and disabled--full access to grace. Lessons for our ministry. Reading the Gospels from the vantage point of the disabled can be instructive. The plight of the sick and disabled is due not simply to physical pain but to the isolation and exclusion that often comes in the wake of serious illness or disability. To exclude is to dehumanize. The issue of access tucked into the Gospel stories is one experienced not just by the ill or disabled. Other minority groups can feel the same thing: they, too, can feel excluded and diminished by being denied their rightful "access" to the human community.

The stories also give direction for the Christian mission: like Jesus, and the sick and disabled who fight to be free, we are to be committed to gaining access for God's children. Sons and daughters of Abraham have a right to belong to the people of God, with all of the dignity and respect such membership implies.

The stories also contain a warning for those involved in the pastoral mission of the church. The religious leaders in the healing stories are part of the problem and not part of the solution. Instead of championing access they impede it. The church of Jesus the healer should be an accessible church. This implies a lot more than ramps or elevators in church buildings (although that is a good way to start, and a touchstone for the genuineness of our commitment to an open community). Our attitudes to the disabled and other marginalized groups in the community of faith can be a barometer of our status as a Christian people. If those whom Jesus reached out to in a special way do not have full access to our church, then one might wonder how "healthy" a community we are. Those who follow a crucified (and therefore disabled) Jesus should, above all, be a church not formed merely of the body beautiful but of beautiful people--able-bodied or disabled--made so by their access to God's home.

Editor's Note:

This edited article was reprinted with permission from "Suffering as Inaccessibility Lessons From the New Testament Healing Stories", by Donald Senior, C.P., in the November 1988 issue of New Theology Review, Volume 1, Number 4, Michael Glazier Inc., 1935 West Fourth Street, Wilmington, DE 19805.