“Deaf, Mute, and Disabled (NOT)”

I begin my reflections with two quotes that set the subject of disability at the center of our concern:

Cultures which challenge dominant ideas of the ‘abled’ and ‘disabled’ make us aware of the social construction of our categories. For the most part, dominant hearing discourses constitute what is ‘normal’ and deafness constitutes a deviation from that norm, a ‘disability.’

           - Louise J. Lawrence, “Sign and Sources: Reading Matthew with Deaf Cultures” (2011)

It is a non-deaf world which has created deafness as a subject of discourse.

          - Gillian Gregory and Susan Hartley, Constructing Deafness (1991)                                          

Keeping these quotes in mind, today’s texts concern the functional impairment of hearing and speech. The connections between the 4 parts of the Liturgy of the Word concern people with disabilities and the voices of a prophet, a psalmist, an apostle, and Jesus. As instruction is a function of learning, how do these readings function –for good or ill—as disability metaphors and healing narratives?

Isaiah encourages those who are afraid to “be strong of heart,” God will save you. I wonder, in what way? Well, in God’s time, as Isaiah has it, with this ‘saving’ the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear, the lame shall leap, and the mute shall sing. For normate/non-disabled people this seeing, hearing, leaping, and singing may have more to do with their coming to appreciate neighbors whom they have ignored or taunted as well as holding the kind of images they have previously conceived about disabled lives as unclean, unworthy, and unacceptable in ‘polite company.’ But here, the metaphors of disability are used to bring God’s concern for the failures of community leaders to do right by people with disabilities and, yes, the most vulnerable serve here as a trope for the prophet’s objective. Even so, Isaiah identifies with a people who have been oppressed by the failures of those charged to support their neighbors with a staff for community care.

Our Psalm reminds us that our God is keen on those who are downtrodden. … He sets the captives free, he gives sight to the blind, and he raises up those who are bowed down. These captives are the anawim: the disabled, the forgotten, the lowly, the oppressed, the poor. Praise the Lord, O my soul, for your kindness toward me.

In James’ letter, the members of the assembly with gold rings and fine clothes are challenged to not ignore those assembled whose dress is plain and maybe tattered. James reminds his audience then and now that God does not make distinctions between those who offer their thanks with a large sum or with a widow’s mite. Rather, God looks to the generosity of the beloved community and especially towards those whom the dominant world rejects –the widow, the orphan, the disabled, those who have fewer resources to offer on account of their paucity, … but it is these anawim whom God has chosen to inherit the Kingdom.

With Mark’s gospel we find Jesus leaving the district of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast (parallel to and west of the city of Damascus), heading inland to the Sea of Galilee by way of Bethsaida and the Decapolis, 10 cities from Damascus in the North to Philadelphia in the South. The Decapolis then and now included diverse communities of Jews, Arabs, Nabateans, Armenians, and Romans who were and remain polyglot. Some have speculated that this circuitous route to Galilee was to avoid confrontation with juridical leaders of the Sanhedrin who were disturbed and challenged by Jesus’ authority to teach the people and to cure their ills – a boon for them.

Our unnamed man, let’s call him Gideon, in the Gospel was apparently known to his neighbors. Aware that Jesus was in town, some men of the Decapolis brought Gideon who was both deaf and clumsy of speech to Jesus and they begged Jesus to heal him. Like other disabled persons, because he could neither hear nor speak clearly, he was vulnerable (just like people with developmental, physical, and other sensory disabilities) and perhaps dependent on others to advocate for and to protect him from harm. It is good that Gideon had friends and a community that cared about him.

I am grateful that, as the story unfolds, Jesus takes the man aside in private and away from the crowd, as well as from those who brought him to Jesus (I wonder, were they testing Jesus or were they confident in his power?). Surely, before he was healed the man communicated with others since, as often as not, each of us listen with our eyes, speak with our hands, express ourselves with smiles, ho-hums, or grimaces as our man Gideon would have done with his family, friends, and acquaintances. So, when Jesus took him aside it is as if Jesus wanted to know from Gideon himself what he wanted Jesus to do. It may not have been to give him speech and hearing, rather, it could have been even more liberatory with a conversion on the part of Jesus and the crowd (after all, cultures which challenge dominant ideas of the ‘abled’ and ‘disabled,’ just as they do with a ‘woke’ culture, make us aware of the social constructions of established racial and gender diversities). Thus, by way of a reversal, perhaps another direction for the healing was uttered, maybe it was Jesus and the crowd who began to understand the man’s manner of communication. The Ephphatha challenges us to welcome the deaf, the mute, the blind, and those with physical and/or developmental disabilities as they/as we are. By Jesus’ action in a disability perspective, maybe, just maybe, the Ephphatha freed the crowd from their language barriers such that they began to understand their man.

Finally, this Gospel brings us to the claims of universal salvation by its location in predominantly Gentile territory. It also brings us to God’s reversal of the normate and privileged tendency to exclude those who have been ‘othered’: no one is unwelcome in the Beloved Community. Rather, here our man Gideon, Jesus, and the crowd gain a new interpretation for care rather than cure, for appreciation rather than disrespect, and for love of all others who have been heavily burdened, bowed low, and oppressed for far too long.