Disability rights activist and author Amy Kenny challenges the implications of Jesus’ healing of “the blind man” in John 9, whom she refers to as Zach or Zechariah, which means “God remembers.”
Zach is so much more than his blindness…. Structurally, the focus [of John 9] is not on the physical but on something deeper and richer that Jesus offers to Zach. It is true that Jesus cured people’s bodies as part of his ministry, but this passage is often misinterpreted to perpetuate the notion that disabled people require physical modification to be complete. Jesus’s ministry is not all about a physical cure but about holistic healing.
Today, we typically think of illness (and sometimes disability) as biological, with Western medicine set up to find and cure disease directly…. Folks in Jesus’s day thought about healing in much broader terms. They talked about healing as restoring relationships and integrating someone back into social and religious systems. The Greek word often used in Scripture for healing is sozo, which means “to make whole” or “to save.” It’s the same word used to talk about salvation. Jesus’s healing is not purely about a physical alteration but about reestablishing right relationship between humanity and God and, hopefully, between individuals and community. Healing allows people to flourish. Modern medicine still recognizes the difference between curing and healing. Curing is a physical process…. [Healing] focuses on restoring interpersonal, social, and spiritual dimensions. It’s lengthy and ongoing because it’s a process of becoming whole….
Zach received a physical cure … when he emerged from the pool able to see, but his true healing does not occur until much later in the chapter when he declares, “Lord, I believe,” and worships Jesus (9:38). That’s the moment he’s restored through a conversation with the living God and is finally able to reach the place of worship he’s been excluded from. Jesus is always tearing down the boundaries we put up, and here Jesus reveals the unnecessary barriers of kingdom exclusion. Everyone is now welcome at the table!
Kenny writes of the fullness of God’s image found in the diversity of people’s physical and mental abilities:
To assume that my disability needs to be erased in order for me to live an abundant life is disturbing not only because of what it says about me but also because of what it reveals about people’s notions of God. I bear the image of the Alpha and the Omega. My disabled body is a temple for the Holy Spirit. I have the mind of Christ…. I don’t have a junior holy spirit because I am disabled. 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. Maybe we need to be freed not from disability but from the notion that it limits my ability to showcase God’s radiance to the church.
| The Idol of Politics: The God Gap |
 Click Here for AudioFor decades, sociologists and politicos in the U.S. have noted that a significant percentage of religious believers vote for one party while non-believers vote for the other. They called this the “God gap.” The common explanation for the God gap is that certain strongly-held religious beliefs and values drive people—particularly Christians—to vote for the political party espousing similar views. Simply put, the common assumption is that a person’s religious beliefs determine their political beliefs. New data compiled by Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, challenges this explanation. Her recent book, From Politics to the Pews, says that our faith often doesn’t determine our politics, but rather our politics determine our faith. Margolis points to research indicating that most Americans’ religious beliefs are not set until relatively late in life—often after marriage and parenthood. Political beliefs, on the other hand, are shaped in late adolescence and early adulthood. That means a person’s conservative or progressive political convictions are usually defined long before their religious convictions. Margolis says that as a result, when later deciding their religious beliefs, Americans will often let their political views determine their spiritual identity; political conservatives are more likely to embrace evangelical Christianity and political progressives are more likely to remain religiously unaffiliated. Why does this matter? This research reveals that many of us hold our partisan political identity as more foundational than our Christian identity, and that cable news channels are shaping young adults’ beliefs more permanently than their churches or youth ministries. In other words, politics is now occupying the space in our lives that rightfully belongs to God. The real God gap is not between political conservatives and progressives but between those who claim the identity “Christian” and those whose identity is actually shaped by Christ. DAILY SCRIPTURE REVELATION 2:2–5 1 PETER 2:1–10 WEEKLY PRAYERThomas Ken (1637–1711) O our God, Amidst the deplorable division of your Church, let us never widen its breaches, but give us universal charity to all who are called by your name. O deliver us from the sins and errors, from the schisms and heresies of the age. O give us grace daily to pray for the peace of your Church, and earnestly to seek it and to excite all we can to praise and to love you; through Jesus Christ, our one Savior and Redeemer. Amen. |
