EZEKIEL 2:1-7

PSALM 123

2 CORINTHIANS 12:2-10

MARK 6:1-6

Sermon – July 9, 2006

We often give thanks for and celebrate our talents in church. We celebrate Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and give thanks for those who lavish parental talents on others. We celebrate people involved professionally in education on “Education Sunday,” health professionals on the Sunday closest to St. Luke’s Day in October, animals and those who love them on St. Francis Day, members of First Aid Squads and Fire Companies on the second Sunday in September, and there are many other ministries “in the world” we could celebrate.

We also regularly give thanks for the many and varied talents people bring to ministries in church – from accounting to altar guild to fellowship to construction to music, to name just a few. All this is appropriate. It is good to recognize those who offer their talents in the service of God in the church and in the world.

But today I’d like to reflect on something different.

How can our disabilities draw us closer to God? How can our vulnerabilities be something we offer in thanksgiving to God along with our talents? How can our areas of awkwardness or even incompetence help us to serve others better?

We are constantly assaulted by ads offering us “sure fire ways” to cover up or eliminate perceived deficiencies in our looks, our behaviors, even our vocabularies, as though our present state was shameful. Self-improvement, in fact, is almost an American religion .

But there are some parts of ourselves that we may not be able – or willing – to improve. There are some parts of us which may not be “fashionable” but we may not actually need to improve, despite the imploring of the TV pitchmen and pitchwomen.

Do we need to try to hide these from God – or from the church? We can and should offer our best to God – but what about the rest of ourselves?

God loves all of each of us. Not just what we or someone else thinks are our best parts or greatest abilities. And our disabilities can be great gifts to others, too.

The most memorable sermon I experienced as a college student was not one I heard, it was one I saw. We had a guest preacher at Christ Church, Oberlin one Sunday who preached in American Sign Language, with someone who interpreted into speech for hearing people. The interpreter then translated the hymns into American Sign Language.

It was all so beautiful and spiritual. I stopped singing – hard for me – and watched the beauty of the music, the translation of words into deeply evocative signs. Likewise the sermon was like watching a movie with subtitles in which the original language of the movie is so compelling and beautiful and evocative that you sometimes forget to read the subtitles. It was like that. That was the first time I had experienced worship in another language – almost in another dimension – and it broadened my whole notion of what good worship was.

If it wasn’t for deaf people wanting to see a sermon in their own language I would never have been able to receive that gift. Christ took that disability and spoke through it. As he said to St. Paul, quoted in today’s Epistle, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Christ Church, Oberlin, was also where I learned about “passing the peace.” We didn’t do things like that where I grew up or in the prep school chapel I attended as a teenager. And as an Oberlin honors student and a religion major, no less, I thought my faith learning was going to be primarily intellectual.

Wrong.

Passing the peace is about community, about how we are all equal in the sight of God however society looks at us, about how, unlike in India, there are no “Untouchables” in the Christian church.

I learned that later in books in seminary, but I really learned it in my gut at Christ Church, Oberlin. It was here that eight developmentally disabled young women who lived in a group home owned by the State of Ohio came to church, every week, and they passed the peace. Every week. All of them. With big smiles, great warmth and great enthusiasm. To everybody.

It may have taken two of their IQ’s to add up to mine, but they taught me. They “thawed me out,” and the whole rest of the church. They gave us a precious gift. If it hadn’t been for their disabilities, the rest of us would not have had the ability to really “get it.” “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Fast-forward to 1990, the year Leonard came to church. He had been in a wheelchair for 11½ years after an automobile accident. We invited him as a neighbor when we dedicated the wheelchair ramp which led to the old building, before the 2002 construction made this structure easily and fully accessible on each floor. He came, sat in his wheelchair, and the chalicer and I took communion to him. Until…three months later, in August, 1990, I saw him sitting in a pew. We got to sharing time and I said “Anybody have anything to share?”

Leonard stood up and said, “I’m sitting in a pew. And I’m going to walk to the altar rail for communion.” And later, he became an usher. Walked a little slower than most ushers, but so what?

Leonard gave us gifts. One gift was his inspirational determination. I told him how uplifting his determination to work hard in physical therapy and not to quit was, and he replied succinctly, “If you quit, you die.” Another gift was his status, as literally, a walking Bible Story. Healing still happens. Our God reigns. “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk.”

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

Want to know what clinched it for us when Deacon Barbara was considering coming here? I’ll tell this story while she’s away. Heather was the Crucifer at the 10:30 service that Sunday. Deacon Barbara figured that if St. Barnabas was the kind of place which could take a teenager who wanted to be an acolyte and made it happen, even if she had cerebral palsy, St. Barnabas was her kind of place.

On of our great “St. Barnabas moments” was when our acolyte master, Tom Carr, emerged from the recesses of a closet with a wooden cross which he held aloft triumphantly saying, “I found a cross Heather can carry!” Her disability - and her determination – inspired Tom to seek and find. And I shared that story with the Diocese of New Jersey’s Youth Ministry workshop, so it may inspire others to be more open to the willingness to serve of people who used to be written off.

God doesn’t write anyone off. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

St. Paul had tons of abilities. But without weaknesses, I think he would have been insufferable. Our weaknesses remind us how we need other people – and how much we need God. Those who think they can do it all – nobody can, really – may be tempted to believe it, and turn themselves into their own little god. Self-idolatry is the worst kind.

If we’re in touch with our weaknesses, we know that we can’t do it all, and that we don’t have to. God loves us just the way we are. We don’t have to pretend to be Superman or Superwoman.

And if we’re in touch with our weaknesses, we may find they are vehicles for growing closer to God, and to others, and vehicles for giving gifts to others in ways we may never realize.

That deaf preacher and those developmentally disabled women couldn’t have imagined that I would remember those Sunday services over 30 years later, not what they meant to me. They let Christ’s power be made perfect in their weaknesses, because when they were weak, then they were strong. Christ’s power shines through the others I mentioned, too.

Christ’s power can shine through each and every one us, too, through our strengths – and through our weaknesses.

Just pray and ask Christ how his power can be made perfect – in our weaknesses.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, NJ