Tag Archives: accessible to all (A2A)

The Man Born Blind, The Pharisees, and Jesus

by Rev. Kelli

The Man Born Blind, The Pharisees, and Jesus

John 9

Preached at New Hope UCC, Deland,FL on January 19, 2014

 

I want to start by thanking you, and your pastor, for inviting me to speak today. I recently meet your Associate Conference Minister, Sara Lund. When she learned I would be in your Conference, she asked if I would willing to preach and speak about UCC Disabilities Ministries, the UCC Mental Health Network,and the UCC’s  commitment to be “Accessible to All” or A2A. I told her that I would.

I bring you greetings this morning from the UCC Disabilities Ministries Board. I also come to you as a person born with mild cerebral palsy, which mostly manifests as a mild speech impediment; as a person who has acquired disabilities; as a person who has been a caregiver for people with disability; as one who has been a support system for persons with mental health concerns. And I come to you as an ordained minister, a hospice chaplain, an activist, a scholar, and yes, there is yet more they I could say. I share these aspects of myself not to toot my own horn, not only to give you some introduction of who I am but also to show you that no one person can be described in any one way.

When it comes to our text for this morning the notion that people are very complex and have many attributes to share with the world is something we want to keep in mind. Our scripture this morning is a very complex text. It was traditionally a text used to teach about Baptism in the early church (1). But what kind of text is it? Is it a healing story? Is it a miracle? Is it about a sinner being being saved? Is it about blindness? I think those are all good questions. However, I do not think those are questions I will strive to answer today. Instead I would like to talk with you about who the people in this text are. The man born blind, the Pharisees, and Jesus. All of these persons are complex, just as we are.

Let us start with the man born blind. We know more about him than we do about most of the people whom Jesus encounters in the gospels. We know he was born blind.

We know that he was at least of an age to be considered an adult. We know both his parents were alive—they too appear in the text. We know that he begged for a living.

We know that he was known to the community even though he was excluded from the community because he lived with blindness, thus his need to beg. And we also know that through this encounter with Jesus this man had a spiritual conversion and came to understand who Jesus was.

But there are also some important things that we do not know. We do not know if he had ever heard of Jesus before this event. We do not know if he wanted to be sighted–This is one of the few instances in which Jesus heals a person without first asking permission, or being asked, to do so–and we do not really know what happened to this man after he became sighted.

For many people with disabilities, the things we do not know about this man are very important to think about. In the UCC we talk about churches becoming “Accessible to All” and while this means that we want our worship spaces to physically accessible, it also means that we want our church congregations—our people to be accessible, and welcoming to people with disabilities as well. In this sense A2A is as much about the understanding and hospitality with which we greet one another as it is about our buildings.

One of the mottos of the disability rights movement which you will hear in the UCC is “nothing about us without us”. This means people with disability want to be consulted about the things that affect them. So we wonder how did the man born blind feel about becoming sighted? He was not consulted before hand. We do not know how it changed his daily life,the text does not tell us that we only know how it changed his spiritual life for he proclaimed Jesus a prophet to the council of Pharisees. Which was a very bold thing for someone of his social standing to do. Some say his response to the Pharisees shows his wit and intelligence traits he had that were not related to his disability or that he developed as survival mechanisms living with blindness. (2) Perhaps one of the most important things this text tells us about the man born blind is that it was his encounter with the person of Jesus, and not his physical healing that led to his conversion and understanding of who Jesus was.

It is through the man born blind’s discussion with the Pharisees that his understanding of who Jesus is made clear. So who are these Pharisees? The Pharisees in the text are the religious authorities who are expected to uphold the laws and traditional customs. They question not only the man who had been born blind, but his parents.

It seems strange to us that after talking with the man himself the Pharisees call for his parents but it may be according to social custom. There are many places around the world where to this day people with visual impairments are not qualified to be legal witnesses because they are blind and it is assumed they cannot identify the perpetrators of crimes against them (3). This may play a role in why, globally, women and girls with visual impairments are statistically the most likely to become victims of sexual violence. (4)

Certainly this group of Pharisees is behaving as a legal board, for they call the man born blind back a second time. This is when the story turns sour—at least as I read it.

After the Pharisees question the man and his parents, this time they start with an imperative command “Give Glory to God!” It is a statement which puts a knot in my stomach not because the man is being asked to Glorify God, but because it sounds like a self-righteous command. It was the role of the Pharisees to see that all things glorified God, but the text bothers me because there is no dialogue here. In the text, it is a council of authority ordering around a person whom the community considered to have no legal standing, because he was blind, to do something.

This interaction of the man and the council of Pharisees reminds me of a youth in San Diego who maintains a blog and documents each time someone comes up to him in public lays hands on him, prays, and demands that he stand to walk. (Most people don’t realize this still happens, it does.) Not only when the Pharisees issue this command but when they go on to suggest that the man born blind was born in sin we should feel uncomfortable. For this is a clear example of bullying a person because of their disability and the text tells us it done by the religious structure itself.

To often we sit in church, we read parts of scripture that are uncomfortable and we think, thank goodness we don’t do that in our church. The problem is we do. Well meaning church going people too often find themselves bullying others especially people with disabilities. One Sunday, when I was still using a cane and preaching at my home church one of the trustees, who I’d know for years, came up to me and said “stop using that cane, you don’t need it”. He did not know the specifics of my medical needs. He was a bully.

Last summer I was on the delegate floor at the UCC Synod. One of the resolutions we were to vote on at Synod was becoming an anti-bullying church one of the other delegates who knew I was representing UCCDM at synod said to me “you don’t really have a disability, but its nice that you speak up for those who do.” I told him I did have a disability his reply was “no you don’t”. So we had to have short tense conversation. I told him he was a bully.

It did not feel good to me to have that conversation at church. But it reminded me that even in our churches we are not as aware of the hidden disabilities of our church members as we should be. When you know the small needs of another you are truly in community.

There is another person in this text—its Jesus. It seems to me that in this text we see one of the stranger things Jesus does, it is a Sabbath day when no work is to be done, Jesus walks up to blind man and puts mud on his face and tell him to go wash in the pool known in Hebrew as “sent” (5). We understand why the early church may have used this text to talk about baptism.

But then Jesus disappears for much of this text. It is not until after the man born blind has been questioned and driven out of the  community that Jesus reappears. And what Jesus does is sit with the man who had been born blind Jesus welcomes the man and sits in community with him to tell him about the Son of Man and Son of God.

Jesus soothes the stings of exclusion. Jesus’ words about the those who see becoming blind seems to be an admonition to not be so self assured, to not be so self-righteous that one becomes exclusionary.

It is Jesus in this text who shows us the way to be church, the way to be loving and community minded. It is Jesus who is not only welcoming but seeks out those excluded because they may have a history of disability, or any other reason. It is Jesus who reassures the man that he too has a place in the Kingdom of God, and that Jesus has come into the world to assure him of this.

It is Jesus my friends who calls us to radical hospitality and radical welcome. It is Jesus who sends us all in search of new vision. It is Jesus who comes to be with us when we feel we have been driven out for following proclaiming his work in our lives.

So my, friends, it is because of Jesus’s work in our own lives that UCCDM seeks to encourage all settings of the UCC to be “accessible to all”, to include people with disability and mental health issues, not only in our building but in our fellowship and leadership. It is because of Jesus that I ask you to join in this work to open the way to full inclusion in your local church for the local church is the heart of the church. This where inclusion welcome matters most.

So thank you for including me today, thank you for thinking about your building, and thank you for considering all aspects of accessibility (A2A) and joining in this journey to inclusion with us.

####

Endnotes:

(1) Black, Kathy. A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability. (Abington: Nashville, 1996.) 76.

(2) Ibid, 72.

(3) Ibid, 70.

(4) Women with disabilities presentation at the Ecumenical Disability Advocacy Network Pre-Event, General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Busan, South Korea, October 29, 2013.

(5) Black, 68.

 

Disability and Diversity-Access Sunday 2013

by Rev. Kelli

On Access Sunday this year I was invited to speak to a local congregation about disability and diversity. Below is the talk I prepared, I did not follow it completely in speaking but it is my thoughts on the matter. I am available to speak with congregations about accessibility and disability ministries.

I am Rev. Kelli Parrish Lucas and I want to thank you for asking me to speak with you this evening. I was asked to speak with you this evening about the issues of disability and diversity—I am especially happy to have this talk with you this evening as today is what the UCC calendar calls Access Sunday, which is a day to celebrate accessibility in local churches; it is also the beginning of disability awareness week which concludes a week from today with Mental Health Sunday . So by further way of introduction let me introduce myself as a person with disabilities I was born with disabilities so I grew up with all the social stigma of disability but as I grew I was also well trained to pass as a person without disability; I have also acquired disabilities as adult and been a caregiver for persons with disability and mental health issues. So I come to speak with you about the diversity of disability as a person with disabilities. As I believe you were told in preparation for this evening, I also serve on the Board of Directors for the United Church of Christ Disability Ministries, for who I am the Secretary; and I am engaged in the ecumenical work of disability advocacy through EDAN a program of the World Council of Churches.

In many ways I am still musing about how to speak to you about the diversity of disabilities. (Because of our limited time I am going have to be rather general so please write down your questions to ask later.) Disabilities and all that is included as a part of that is a very broad spectrum, but that does not mean it is relative and we can say we are all somehow “disabled”. I say that up front because I think that as we look at what disability is there is the temptation to make it into something that includes all people, and it simply is not. Disability is a social location experienced by living in the world in an individually unique way, and yet that experience of being  uniquely different from everyone else is an experience that is shared by roughly 1 in 5 persons world-wide or 20% of persons. I also want to say a word about mental health. Mental Health issues affect 1 in 4 families, or 25% of American families. While disability does not guarantee that a person has a mental illness, often times the social stigmas, effects of bullying and/social oppression/discrimination that people with disabilities commonly experience lead to the development of mental health issues—btw I have read some statistics that suggest that bullying of youth with disability is more common then the bullying of any other youth, including GLBT youth. Similarly although having mental health issues does not necessarily mean that a person with mental health issues has another form of disability, many mental health issues have physical effects and may lead to temporary physical disability as part of the mental illness. I am going to talk about later about the specific work that UCCDM and the UCCMHN are doing together. But for now, I just want to underscore for you what these statistics mean—it means that for every 100 people in your church, 20 people likely have some type of disability and 25 likely have or are in a family with a person with mental health issues—and there is likely some over lap of these persons.

If we had more time I would ask you at this time to tell me what a disability is and I would write that all out for us to see, we don’t have time for that, so pull what it is you think a disability is up in your mind. Have you got it? Good, but we won’t have time to share that right now, but hold it for your small group discussions. There are two definitions of disability that I find to be very very useful.

1. “[a] firm definition of ‘disability’ underlies the authority of the ADA, which defines ‘individual with a disability’ rather broadly. A person may be considered disabled if he or she has (a) has a physical or mental condition that substantially limits one or more of the major life functions, (b) has a record of such impairment, or (c) is perceived as having such an impairment. Even if the impairment is no longer present, the individual may still be considered disabled. [Arthur Shapiro, Every Body Belongs: Changing Negative Attitudes Towards Classmates with Disabilities, (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 1999) 263.]

 and, people with disabilities have developed the following definition of disability, which is used in the ecumenical movement

2. “Impairment: Lacking all or part of a limb, or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.

Disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities.” [Arne Fritzon and Samuel Kabue, Interpreting Disability: A Church of All and for All, (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2004), ix-x.]

We are still going to talk about what disability is for a moment but I want to start moving into disability  and the UCC. The UCC has been involved in addressing the issue of disability through an active disability ministry for at least the last thirty years. The most recent General Synod resolution about disability, called “The Called to Wholeness in Christ Resolution”, was passed in 2005 and it calls on all expressions of the UCC to become accessible in the spirit of the ADA. This means our Synod has called for local congregations to work for the full inclusion for all persons with disability–

This includes: Physical disabilities, Developmental disabilities, Mental/Emotional disabilities (including mental illness, brain disorders, autism, depression, anxiety, ect.); Mobility disabilities (arthritis, back issues, use of canes/walkers/wheelchairs ect.); Auditory/hearing impairments; Vision impairments; Temporary disabilities; Hidden disabilities (things people don’t/won’t talk about); Disabilities brought on by accidents or age; and anything else missing from this list.

Guiding churches in doing the work of becoming accessible and inclusive of all persons with disability is part of the work done by UCCDM. The UCCDM has a designation we call A2A. Churches who want to be A2A are asked to work through a curriculum/resource packet to help the congregation gain a better understanding the breath of the diversity of disabilities, how to be welcoming and inclusive of people with disabilities, and how to be prepared to make appropriate accommodations when necessary. This resource packet is called “Any Body, Every Body, Christ’s Body” it is free and you can download it from the UCCDM website. The UCCDM Board acknowledged that while accessibility for churches often means making physical accommodations, the majority of work involved in becoming accessible is related to what we term becoming “socially accessible” to people with disability and this is a process of learning and integrating disability etiquette.

Many people do not realize or forget that up through the 1970’s people with disabilities were prohibited from public spaces under what were called “ugly laws”,  confined to institutions (sometimes w/o consent), denied the right to marry due to eugenics laws, and that people with disabilities were not guaranteed access to public education until 1973. As you can guess there is still much work to do in society before we reach the full inclusion of people with disabilities and persons with mental health issues—but there is actually more work for us to do in our churches. When the ADA came into existence it was supported by the churches, but most people don’t realize that the clergy supporting the passage of the ADA also worked to exempt churches from the implications of the law; the result is that in addition to churches being among the most racially divided places on Sunday mornings, churches have become the most inaccessible places in our communities.

The UCC and UCCDM have been heavily involved in area of civil rights for people with disabilities; just as all groups of people who go through a civil rights process seem to reclaim. language and even rename themselves as a group, the disability community has done this as well. The UCCDM through the A2A resources have sought to establish the use of what the disability community calls “people first language”, and that handout is on the table for you. People first language is language that names the person, or theologically the humanity, of the person about whom one is talking or writing before defining that person by their disability, as previous terms did. People first language is the standard within the UCC and within the disability community—I will tell you that some disability scholars with disability are using other terms and the language within the disability community is in flux, but people first language will not offend, so its safe as a rule to use in all settings.

So I just want to close with a very brief description of the larger work of the UCCDM. The UCCDM has fostered a renewal of the UCC Mental Health Network, which this summer changed their name to the Mental Health Network. Some of the other projects that the UCCDM is actively engaged in are….[this has been omitted from this post, please see uccdm.org for more information about UCCDM activities]

So that is just a little about the diversity of the disability community, disability history, civil rights, and how disability is part of the life the UCC. I am going to stop and open it up to questions. 

Widening the Welcome is Coming!

by Rev. Kelli

Widening the Welcome 2013 Postcard

The Fourth Widening the Welcome: Inclusion for All Conference sponsored by UCC Disabilities Ministries and the UCC Mental Health Network. A Pre-Synod event will be held Thursday, June 27, 2013 in Long Beach, CA. 8am-8pm. Exact location to be announced.

Speakers will include Rev. Susan Gregg Schroeder, Founder of Mental Health Ministries and Rev. Kathy Reeves, Coordinator of the Ecumenical Disabilities Advocacy Network–North America, a program of the World Council of Churches.

Save the date, more details to come!

I am coordinating this event. I will also be offering the following workshop at the event:

Spiritual Care for Persons with Disabilities and Those Affected by Serious Brain Disorders Associated with Aging

This workshop is a multifaceted look at providing pastoral care to people with disabilities (PWD). This workshop will provide disability culture and awareness information that all professional pastoral care providers should be aware of in providing pastoral care to PWD. This workshop will touch on some historical ecumenical responses to disability, particularly the shift in ethical responses to disability that affect care provided. Finally this workshop will address providing pastoral care to persons affected with dementia, relying on first and second hand accounts as available. (Developed for professional pastoral care providers, and accessible to lay people.)

United Church of Christ Disability Ministry Board—new member is also a WWSIC!

by Rev. Kelli

Today I got word that I have been invited (or is elected the word?) to join the Board of the United Church of Christ’s Disability Ministry! Something like this has been on my mind for a few years now so when I was approached and asked if I would be interested my response was “ABSOLUTELY!!” I’d been waiting for it. Now all that being said, I don’t have all the details on this new position, yet.

Nonetheless, I am excited to further the work of inclusion and access for people with disability within the UCC and to work with the UCC Mental Illness Network. I have been working with some of these folks on the Widening the Welcome 2, disability ministry conference planning team this year, so I know I will be working with some wonderful people! So excited!

Since presenting a workshop on Accessibility to All (A2A) at Southern California Nevada Conference of the UCC Annual Gathering two weeks ago, I have been thinking about how to differentiate and express the specific inclusion needs of people with disability as distinct from “Open and Affirming” (ONA).  I have been thinking this because I spoke with a pastor at AG who did not see the need to become A2A because the congregation was ONA. It is clear to me how these are not the same and how one does not equal the other. There may be similarities in dismantling the social stigmas faced by GLBTQI people and people with disabilities but they can not be approached in the same way–I mean you don’t have to create curb or pew cuts to open yourselves to GLBTQI folks into your church, and you may need to do that to welcome people with disabilities. Also often times GLBTQI come to church looking to be accepted as part of the “norm,” whereas this is neither always a possibility or desire of people with disabilities and mental illness so the move to inclusion and accessibility is more nuanced than mere welcome and affirmation–it may mean helping the congregation interact with someone whose mental illness or disability may manifest as in a socially awkward or even anti-social way. I see ONA as a step, but it’s not all the way to A2A. I look forward to pondering how to more clearly convey these distinctions to my wider church community, and learning from the other members of this board!

Did I mention I also started a second ministry position with hospice this week? Oy vey! I’ll be needing to update the bio soon! First a nap!

Kelli to Teach Workshop on A2A at Annual Gathering!

by Rev. Kelli

Just want to let you all know that I will be teaching a workshop entitled “Widening our Welcome: Becoming Accessible to All (A2A)” at the Annual gathering of the Southern California Nevada Conference of the UCC on Friday June 3, 2011.

The workshop description is as follows: This workshop will explore the UCC’s historical commitment to including persons with disabilities. An explanation the 2005 General Synod resolution calling upon the UCC to become “Accessible to All” (A2A) and how congregations can work towards becoming A2A, as well as specific tools/skills to enhance how we welcome people with disabilities and their families will be provided. Please come learn and discuss how and why accessibility effects how we present our churches to others on Sunday mornings and throughout the week.

If time allows we may discuss what the UCC Disabilities Ministries (UCCDM) and UCC Mental Illness Network (MIN) are teaming up to do to further the discussion of accessibility and mission of inclusion within the UCC. Come learn about what our General Minister Geoffrey Black calls “a movement within the movement of the UCC.”

Details on this event can be found here. If you can not make this event but are interested in the content, please contact me. This workshop can be taken elsewhere for presentation.

UCC “Widening the Welcome” —Again…More ‘Firsts’

by Rev. Kelli

The UCC has a history of being a denomination of firsts! Thus, I lift up to you some new firsts that have occurred within the UCC. At the end of September approximately 300 people, from Maine to Hawaii, gathered in St Louis, Missouri for the “Widening the Welcome” Conference. It was the first UCC Disability Ministry Conference! It may have been the first disability ministry conference, ever. As I talked with other people in attendance it became apparent that this was also the first conference (religious, academic, or professional) that attendees could remember that brought the issues of mental illness/brain disorders and disability together for reflection, communion, and dialogue about the future of ministry and inclusion. In the disability and mental illness communities this gathering was rather a big deal!

Beside the breath-taking St Louis Arch that symbolizes what was once the gateway to new frontiers, UCC members, clergy, people living with and without disability and/or mental illness came together to reflect on the ministries of inclusion they were already involved with and to learn from one another how the local church might be more inclusive of people with disabilities or mental illness and their families. Keynote speakers included Dr. Sister Nancy Kehoe, a Clinical Instructor in Psychology who spoke about her experience integrating spirituality in the realm of mental health services and offered workshops on how this can be a practical and supportive ministry in local settings, and Dr. Debbie Cramer Assistant Professor at Iliff School of Theology spoke about disability theology. Rev. Dr. Jane Fisler Hoffman preached the importance of including persons, including clergy, with mental illness in our faith communities. Rev. Bob Molsberry challenged us to consider who the “guest” is and who the “host” might really be when we encounter people with disabilities in our churches. Rev. Peter Bauer was also a force at the conference reminding us that both traumatic brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder are huge issues for soldiers returning from war and that this presents a challenge to clergy who “4 times out of 10” are the first professionals who people with PTSD may seek help from, as well as being a challenge for congregations that have members returning from war or congregations that are engaged in ministry to military families and personnel. There were many more wonderful discussions and speakers at the conference–this is only a sampling.

The Widening the Welcome (WtW) conference was important in content and more about that can be found at the conference’s website (below), but it was also important in fellowship. For the first time people involved in doing disability ministry, those involved with the academic writing of disability theology, persons with disabilities who had been included in the church, those with disabilities or family with disabilities who sought deeper inclusion in the church, clergy with disabilities, seminarians with disabilities, and their allies were all gathered in one place. It was a time to reflect on where the UCC really was thirty-three years after passing its first Synod resolution about including people with disabilities and where we have still to grow as local churches and as a denomination into our 2005 Synod resolution urging us to be churches “Accessible 2 All”. In fact, bearing witness to this gathering, our UCC General Conference Minister, Rev. Geoffery Black addressed the conference, saying that the Disability Ministry and Mental Illness Network of the UCC “are a movement within the movement of the UCC”. True to that statement, a small group of attendees met, post-conference, to plan what the UCC Disabilities Ministries and UCC Mental Illness Network will bring to the 2011 Synod and to start planning the next “Widening the Welcome” Conference for September 2011.

The ‘movement with’ the UCC to “widen the welcome”, again, has begun. Stay alert for information about the Widening the Welcome 2 Conference planned for September 2011. And, if you are wishing now that you had had the opportunity to tap into the vast resources the first conference provided then I offer you the following ideas:

  • The keynote addresses and individual workshops at WtW were recorded for distribution and are available on DVD; for more information on how to obtain these resources go to the Widening the Welcome conference website at: http://www.moredomainsforless.com/wideningthewelcome/index.htm.
  • Connect with the UCC Disabilities Ministries or the UCC Mental Illness Network, both have websites with lots of information; and Widening the Welcome has a Facebook presence you may join.
  • Get involved in disability ministry! The UCCDM resource ‘Anybody, Everybody, Christ’s Body’ is a wonderful resource for people who want to learn more or lead a congregational study on including people with disabilities, and you can download it for FREE!

Finally, if this is an interest to you, reach out! I would love to connect and work with people/congregations who are interested in disability ministry. Above all the UCC Disabilities Ministry conference highlighted that as a communion of local churches we are resources for one another in learning to continue to bring all persons on the margins not only into our doors but also into full participation with the gospel, our congregations, and our many ministries.