THOSE AT THE EDGE…
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I am not as clear as I should be whether I am disabled or handicapped. After forty years of having an artificial leg, I really should have sorted this out. I have a physical disability and sometimes a social handicap, or is it the other way around—a physical handicap and a social disability? The language only matters if it makes people’s lives easier, or harder.
Certainly, there has been considerable improvement over forty years with regard to the welfare of those of us with a severe physical problem. There have been immense technical developments—I used to have a rigid lockable steel tube for an artificial leg. Then I had a mercifully lighter and more flexible wooden one that bent more naturally (and broke rather easily).
Now I have a swanky affair with titanium parts, so valuable it somehow
belongs to the government (I signed a form to say they get it back when
I’ve finished with it—whatever that means!).
It’s not just amazing, it’s so liberating, transforming, for
those of us who are the beneficiaries. Think how the bionic ear must change
the lives and worlds of those who wear it for the first time. More prosaically,
we are all familiar with the rows of studs on platforms and elsewhere
to guide the blind: what compassionate and imaginativeperson thought of
these? I am glad to see the ramps making access easier for those in wheelchairs,
although, ironically, for me slopes are the worst ground surface. And
slippery slopes don’t bear thinking about, but I guess that’s
true for us all.
The social acceptance of the handicapped/disabled is more complicated. In the past, people could be shut-ins because they were shut-out. Inclusive policies and education have changed attitudes, changed understanding, changed hearts. The kingdom of heaven can be active amongst us in legislatures (perhaps surprisingly) and classrooms (of course).
But all is not well yet. I’m used to people’s glances which imply ‘he’s different’, and it’s true that I am, but they also can imply ‘He’s separate from us’. Maybe this glance is an instinctual and spontaneous act of self-protection, saying ‘Please God that never happens to me’ (the ‘Please God’ is optional). I catch myself doing it with regard to people with different disabilities from my own. Knowing about this (as in some measure I do) does not automatically stop it happening. I too can push people to the edge and say, ‘Well, I am not like that’.
Not like Jesus crucified, to put it bluntly.
The gospels show Jesus’ life and death struggle with those who think they are in the centre and on behalf of those who find themselves on the edge. Again and again Jesus moves to heal people whose disabilities have handicapped them; the lepers are classical examples. After the miracle of physical healing, he tells them how to get back into the society that protected itself against them: ‘Go and show yourself to the authorities’.
Again and again we see him befriend the social outcasts, like the woman who had many devils and wiped his feet with her tears. Jesus provokes the watching Pharisees even further by saying this is a example of how God is with us all, including themselves. ‘No thank you’, they say, or rather ‘No way’, or ‘Get lost’, and eventually ‘Let’s do this man in’. They are too busy watching for others not like themselves to notice themselves at all.
They are in the centre—of social life, of power, of religious status—and the centre is always anxious about the edge. Jesus’ actions and preaching turn this upside down. The loving Father has a special predeliction for those on the edge. Jesus even says the poor are blessed.
For the Pharisee in myself, it gets worse even than this. Look at what happens to Jesus. The centre has to get rid of him. He goes to the edge himself—he walks there freely and he’s pushed there. Gets killed off as a common criminal, at the killing grounds on the outskirts of the holy city, thanks to some regular injustice and to ruthless political by-play. He knew all along that this was how it would be.
For Christians, God help us (this is not optional), we are confronted with the fact that if we are to follow Jesus, we are going to end up like him. Whatever scrapes this is going to bring us to with the society we live in, it is certainly going to put us into some mighty scrapes with ourselves. The pharisaical spirit is tenacious in making judgments from the exclusive centre (it loves making judgments) and is in total conflict with the spirit that belongs to the poor, which keeps whispering that the edge Jesus has joined is where God is centred.
God’s locating himself in Jesus at the edge blows open, century after century, all those ideas and movements that claim to be the centre and worthy of our false worship. Constantly, Christians are given the radical call to challenge these claims. Thank goodness there can be people who embody something of this challenge by confronting what gives central importance to itself and claims to define what makes for a proper human being. To be almost trivial, think of the grip ‘body image’ has on people or on so much of our society (look at the way it advertises itself), and see how the disabled have to suffer it, and, please God, radically challenge it.
The people pushed to the edge, for whatever reason, have Jesus for company. Those of us looking for Jesus, looking to be with him, only have to go there or be there too. Some of us are there because of our disabilities and handicaps, and we too have to accept it, and even see it as the strange way God’s blessings come into our lives. The rest of you folk just have to choose.
If we cannot find Jesus at the edge, we won’t find him anywhere else; if we can, we will find him everywhere. The edge is everywhere; it’s in our own hearts, for a start. As a good a place to start as any.
This June we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart. For some reason, this feast has become associated with having special concern for the marginalised, the edge-livers, the people who bring us the truth about ourselves, and so open us to where a loving God is to found.
Sorry about the sermonising, but some stuff just has to be said.
