Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle remind us to focus not on our impairments, but on the gospel itself.
Impairment is not an obstacle, but our thinking is.
Thomas Gallaudet with Henry Winter Syle
One of the remarkable things about Jesus is that he is utterly unconventional when it comes to the goodness of God.
Teachers of his day were walking around telling people that they were condemned by some imperfection. That one’s impairment is proof of some notorious sin. Otherwise, God wouldn’t have done that to you.
Over the course of his relatively short ministry, Jesus rejected that thinking, welcomed the outcasts to join him, and proclaimed a message of a God of grace, goodness, and generosity of spirit. A God who wouldn’t, couldn’t, be so petty, small, so mean.
The other teachers took to scripture, of course. There they could find proof for their condemnations of neighbors. See right here? This is the bad fruit of a bad spirit! Jesus would simply challenge their fundamental hermeneutic to either trap them, or force them to admit their own cruelty.
the critics
In a sense, it should be unsurprising that the church would so frequently take the position of Jesus’s critics rather than follow Jesus’s lead. It is quite easy to read the Hebrew Scripture ourselves and overlook what Jesus directly argues. Just as it is to twist the idea of love to include saying hateful things and claiming they are “said out of love.”
For Gallaudet and Syle, the idea of serving the underserved was obvious, if not obviously unconventional. What they faced wasn’t twisted theology. It was the elevation of practical concerns to replace ancient biases. To serve the impaired, well…that’s difficult. We do a lot of talking? How could they join us if they can’t hear?
It is simple to extend the idea out—we do it all the time.
What can we do? If they can’t see, how do they know what’s going on? If they can’t climb stairs, how are they supposed to get in?
I have friends who received the same response Syle received—that an impairment to their bodies would make it hard for them to serve the church.
If you can’t hear, how can you care? If you can’t climb stairs, how can you celebrate at a raised altar?
There’s something unimaginative in these questions. They sound credible, concerned. We want to look out for each other, of course. But there’s also something gross. As if it is OK for the church to discriminate in ways others can’t? Like that’s even a good thing?
Really, these questions scan like they’re reasonable. But they are no fundamentally different than priests telling people that God must be punishing them. It doesn’t match Jesus’s vision of God at all.
What Gallaudet and Syle show is the proper place for practical considerations. They aren’t an excuse to keep people out. Or to avoid changing to meet the needs around us. We use practical wisdom to help us find and meet those needs with grace and compassion.
The elevator story
One of the stories my Dad tells from many years ago involves our old church, built in the 19th Century. It had a lot of stairs to navigate. Like, a ridiculous number of stairs outside and inside. It was gorgeous, but inaccessible. One day, a person in a wheel chair asked how he would be able to join the church.
Well…good question. Dad didn’t want to reject the guy. He also didn’t want the church to be sued under ADA. So, with vestry approval, they put in a lift elevator that was inside the building and would make the church, Fellowship Hall, and restrooms all accessible.
My favorite part of the story is that the man who asked about accessibility only came a few times and then left for good. But Dad laughed it off. Like it was an ironic twist. Like the elevator had to be done anyway. Almost as if it were better that it wasn’t tied to this one person.
Accessible
Accessibility isn’t exactly the point of the story. It isn’t the point of Gallaudet’s or Syle’s stories. We’re called to a ministry that is imperfect because perfection is an ideal, not reality. Because difference doesn’t define us or disable us.
It’s a story about seeing a need that isn’t being met, a desire that is unrequited.
And instead of saying That’s impossible or There must be something wrong with them, they set about trying to make God’s dream for us more accessible and God’s love more real.