Meditation

May 11, 2003

Meeting the Disabled Jesus

We did not want it easy, God,

But we did not contemplate

That it would be quite this hard,

This long, this lonely.

So, if we are to be turned inside out,

And upside down,

With even our pockets shaken

Just to check what’s rattling

And left behind,

We pray that you will keep faith with us,

And we with you,

Holding our hands as we weep,

Giving us strength to continue,

And showing us beacons

Along the way

To becoming new.

This prayer by Anna McKenzie speaks eloquently to many situations in life, including chronic illness. It is difficult, long and lonely, and at times feels like you have been turned upside down and inside out.

I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia 7 or 8 years ago. It is a chronic condition which, in me, manifests in difficulty sleeping, muscle pain, significant decrease in energy and stamina, propensity to infections, food and environmental allergies and depression. I often feel like a 45 year old person in an 80 year old body.

Getting a diagnosis after 4 years of symptoms was a relief, but realizing that, while the severity of some of the symptoms could be reduced, I would have to live with it for the rest of my life, was pretty overwhelming. I was stunned, angry, exhausted and depressed.

Spirituality, desiring to deepen my walk with God, has been a thread that has woven through my life for many years, so when illness struck, I brought that too to God. I wept, I yelled, and of course, I asked “why,” because it’s one of those questions we ask, even though we know that life is not predictable or “fair.” I developed a greater understanding of and need for songs and Psalms of lament. Such as Psalm 88:

I am shut in so that I cannot escape;

my eye grows dim through sorrow.

Every day I call on you, O Lord;

I spread out my hands to you.

O Lord, why do you cast me off?

Why do you hide your face from me?

Psalms remind me that we come to God with whatever is going on in our lives, and that I am not the only one who feels or has felt this way.

Illness is one of those things that unmasks our illusion that we have control of our lives. In many difficult situations, we cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose our response. We can stay angry, or we can see if we can learn something. We can resist or we can trust and open ourselves to new possibilities. I suspect that in some ways for me, no longer feeling I could trust my body, compelled me to more fully trust and surrender to God. Of course, it’s never as direct and simple as it sounds here. It’s one step forward, two steps back, slipping and sliding and trying to stay upright.

David Rensberger says that when we come into God’s presence as sufferers, we can learn who we are, in our suffering and beyond our suffering, and we can learn who God is.

Because we are finite, the only way we can understand God is through metaphor. When my understanding of myself and my world changes. I often learn something new about God too.

In the Luke passage that was read earlier, the disciples are discussing Jesus’ first two resurrection appearances, when suddenly he is standing among them and says “Peace be with you.” They are startled and terrified and think they are seeing a ghost. He says to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet: see that it is I myself. Touch me and see.”

Nancy Eiesland, in an article in the Other Side says “here was the resurrected Christ making good on his promise that God would be with us, embodied as we are—disabled and divine. The foundation of Christian theology is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet seldom is the resurrected Christ recognized as a deity whose hands, feet and side bear the marks of profound physical impairment.

The resurrected Christ is a disabled God—one who understands the experience of those who are disabled or wounded. Jesus Christ, as a living symbol of the disabled God, shares in the human condition; he experiences in his embodiment all our vulnerability and flaws. Jesus experiences human limitation and helplessness. His own body is wounded, scarred, disfigured and distorted.

I can hear Jesus saying those words to me when I am angry and frustrated about not being able to do something, and wondering what the future holds. “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see.” Hearing those words, nothing changes and everything changes. I still can’t do whatever it was I wanted to do, and I am still uncertain about my future, but I am reminded again that God walks with me on this path, understands pain, frustration and loss, and holds my hand when I weep.

In the poem I began with, Anna McKenzie asks God to show her some beacons along the way to becoming new. Beacons serve to both guide and light our way, to allow us to see things we wouldn’t see otherwise.

Emily Perl Kingsley wrote a story about the experience of raising a disabled child which I think can speak equally strongly to illness and disability and which has been a beacon for me.

She says you look ahead at your life full of dreams, hopes and plans.

And it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip -- to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The Gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After much eager anticipation, you finally get on the plane.

Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“HOLLAND?!? you say. “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay…

…So, you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away….because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things…about Holland.

In the Mark passage of the feeding of the 4000, a great crowd has gathered around Jesus. He calls his disciples and expresses compassion and concern because the crowd has been with him for three days without anything to eat. He is afraid that if he sends them away hungry they will faint on the way.

His disciples reply, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert? He asks them, “How many loaves do you have?” “Seven.” they say. He orders the crowd to sit down, takes the seven loaves and, after giving thanks, breaks them and gives them to his disciples to distribute. They also have a few small fish which he blesses and they then distribute. The people eat and are filled and there are seven baskets left over.

Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples how much is needed to feed the crowd. He asks them what they have. I can imagine that standing in that crowd of thousands of people, seven loaves and two puny fish felt ridiculously inadequate. And yet Jesus doesn’t berate them for not having more, he takes what they have, gives thanks for it, and makes it enough.

Do we believe that Jesus can take whatever gifts and abilities we have, no matter how paltry they may seem, bless them and make them enough?

So I am learning who I am, with illness and beyond illness. And I am learning who God is, the God who suffers and the God who both transcends and transforms suffering. The God who provides beacons on the way to becoming new and who will take whatever I have and make it enough.