This morning we begin a new sermon series called: “HumanKind: Be Both.” Over the next few months, Luke and I will work our way through the stories of Genesis and what they tell us about what it means to be both human and kind.

We will also be making connections throughout to welcoming people with disabilities, as we work towards making our church Accessible to All this year.

So, today we are starting at the very beginning, with the first thing that God has to say about what God created. It is good. Seven times the author repeats this idea to us: “God saw that it was good.” Compared to other ancient creation myths, where humanity exists mainly to serve the gods, or as a byproduct of their issues with each other, a God who purposefully makes things that are “good” is an idea which sets Genesis apart. It tells us that God created us with purpose and care, speaking each thing into existence and declaring that it is of the value and worth. A declaration that made me think of the moment captured on your bulletin cover. Right after I got here, Kristin Metcalf and I were delivering food to families from Garfield elementary in the rain. When, all of a sudden, we saw this beautiful double rainbow in the sky. It wasn’t a perfect moment, we were soaked, but as I looked up at the sky I thought, “wow, this is good.”

So, what does that “good” even mean? Because it certainly doesn’t always feel like everything is good. Sometimes it feels like I might have some notes for God the next time they set out to create a universe. Especially when it comes to humans, it feels like we are made with lots of issues and unbelievably fragile. It feels like the minds and bodies we’ve been given are the source of way too much conflict and suffering for them to be good.

I think it’s all too tempting to compare ourselves to an unobtainable standard, because we live in the world of “harder, better, faster, stronger.”

So, anything that requires people to slow down, or take extra steps, or that breaks the mold of society becomes a problem to overcome, even if it is our bodies.

When our actual bodies or minds don’t meet the expectations set for them, because we are disabled, or neurodivergent, or anxious, or queer, or a million other things, we may be made feel like we have failed at being human, as if that were even possible.

The culture we live in values being self-sufficient, or to put it plainly not having needs, which has a really negative impact on people with disabilities, whose needs are more visible than most. This is one point made by Dr. Amy Kenny in her book, “My Body is Not a Prayer Request.” It is a really good read, full of her stories and experiences as a person who is disabled. The thought of just standing up here and reading it to you did briefly cross my mind, but I don’t think you want to be here for that long, so I’ll lift up my favorite parts instead.

She wrote this book as an invitation to faith communities to rethink their unintentional ableism and to learn from the embodied wisdom of disabled people who live with bodies and minds that are viewed as less-than. In it, she talks about her own experiences with churches: places where her wheelchair isn’t always welcome, but where others feel welcome to put their hands on her to pray for her, or to tell her that God could heal her, but only if she does X, Y, Z, first.

She writes about everything she has been through to try to “cure” her disability, but explains that on most days, her disability isn’t even what she struggles most with, it’s how people treat her because of it, even at church. It’s being treated as an inconvenience when she asks for accommodations to be made for her, or being accused of faking her disability if she doesn’t look disabled enough when she parks in a handicap space. It’s being called dramatic if she asks someone not to use the word “lame” as an insult, and it’s also being called an inspiration for simply living her life like everyone else does, as if she ever had a choice in the matter.

The way that people treat her as a disabled person reveals an underlying assumption that disabled people must be miserable because of all the things they can’t do, and that the world would be better off if disabilities didn’t exist at all.

Now, you might already be thinking, that’s not me! I don’t think that. But Dr. Kenny wants us to take seriously how deeply that idea is embedded in our culture and maybe even our Christian beliefs. Ableism can be hard to see. It stems from the perception that disability is bad, pitiful, or shameful. It is viewed by many as the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone, but Dr. Kenny is not miserable. There may be things she cannot do, but as she writes, “It is not my inability to walk or stand that disables me. Rather, I am disabled by the fact that buildings are structured with stairs, narrow hallways, and curbs, making them difficult for me to access on wheels.” Difficulty in life alone does not make people miserable: but ignorance, rejection, discrimination, and prejudice do.

People see her on her scooter and assume that what she needs is to be healed, but she responds in her book: “While my body is disabled, I am not in need of healing, I have already experienced that with Jesus. To suggest that I am anything less than sanctified and redeemed is to suppress the image of God in my disabled body and to limit how God is already at work through my life.”  She re-writes Matthew 25 saying: ‘Depart from me, for I used a wheelchair, and you gave me no ramp. I needed an accessible bathroom, and you said it was too expensive. I asked you not to insult me by saying lame and you laughed at me. I just wanted to be included, and you said it made you uncomfortable. Whatever you did for disabled people, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:41-45, revised).[1]

Dr. Kenny sees her disability as a blessing because it has allowed her to see life in a way that she could not otherwise. “The truth is that being disabled is hard, beautiful, heartbreaking, illuminating, full of loss, and full of life,” she writes. But people with disabilities are wise, because they know what able bodied people haven’t realized yet, that we can’t control our bodies, and that none of us are as invincible as we think we are. The vast majority of us will experience some form of disability during our lifetime, whether because of age, or an accident, or an illness, and that feels scary. It feels scary, because it threatens our independence, and we know that our society is not set up to support people with disabilities well. This fear makes it hard for people to see the image of God, the imago dei in Latin, in the whole spectrum of good human bodies. When confronted with the reality of disability, people become uncomfortable and distant, but the image of God is in everyone and in every-body. Bodies which are good regardless of how they appear or function.

In one interview, Dr. Kenny said, “I was told often by doctors that my spine and my leg and my body was crooked. I began seeing how crooked and jagged creation is, the way elm trees have snaking branches and maple leaves are ragged and kangaroos don’t walk but hop. I didn’t have any trouble thinking about those elements as beautiful and divine. Yet when applied to humans, disability was thought of as dangerous and sinful. That just didn’t make sense to me. So based on the idea that creation is delightfully crooked, I started to think about how my body, too, is made in the image of the Divine and its crookedness isn’t anything to be ashamed of.”[2]

The church has an unfortunate history of treating people with disabilities as outliers, and that accommodations for them is not worth our money and time.

It was pastors who fought against the Americans with Disabilities Act when it first came into law. But people with disabilities are not outliers. Dr. Kenny calls able-bodied people the temporarily non-disabled, because the only thing that is really normal in humanity is that our needs and abilities fluctuate over the course of our lives, it is in how we were made. Humans have always come in all shapes and sizes with many levels of ability and disability. Disability isn’t the problem, but a world that doesn’t value disabled people, or recognize their full humanity, or make an effort to support them in their daily lives, is a problem we can work to solve. And I wonder how we all might begin to feel about the goodness of our bodies if we could hold an attitude of acceptance towards their needs. Perhaps then we would be more aware of the rainbows in the midst of the rainstorms, and the goodness that lies within our diversity and complexity.

Perhaps our bodies and minds are not the biggest source of our suffering, but actually that all bodies and minds are not treated with the same level of kindness, respect, care, and belonging. Because God’s declaration that everything God made was good, came with no conditions. Disabled people are not a flaw in God’s design, rather the design is that we are all different, all flawed, all needy, and all good because God declares us so.  We all look like God.

I think that one call of the church is to help shift the narrative around our bodies by reminding the world that all people bear God’s image, and by living out the truth that we as human beings are all connected and utterly dependent on one another. We all have needs to belong, to be cared for, and to be included. So, as we continue on this journey of making our church more accessible to all, let us also take some time to work on our prejudices and assumptions. That way, as we make changes to accommodate more people in our midst, we can embrace them in all the fullness of who they are and all of the wisdom they have to share. Amen.

[1] https://www.preachweb.org/blog/half-human

[2] https://religionnews.com/2022/05/12/amy-kennys-my-body-is-not-a-prayer-request-imagines-a-disability-centered-church/