Download LifeDate Summer 2023
by Pastor Christian Schultz
“At the heart of Christian belief lies a suffering, crucified God.”1 This assertion by the Lutheran ethicist, Gilbert Meilaender, puts human suffering, sickness, and disability into perspective. These are not good things, but through such painful trials, God reveals His incarnate love. What does this mean for Christians as we support our suffering, sick, and disabled neighbors?
First, we should define “disability.” Merriam-Webster describes physical and mental disabilities as various conditions that impair, limit, or prevent someone from participating in various activities. As Christians, this definition seems incomplete as we consider the subject scripturally.
St. John recounts the story of Jesus healing a man blind from birth. “Rabbi, who sinned,” the disciples asked Jesus, “this man or his parents that he was born blind?” But Jesus responded that the man’s disability was not a direct result of a particular sin. Rather, he was born blind so that “the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–3).
This very thing happened when the man believed God’s Word, washed in the waters of Siloam, and confessed his faith for all to hear. But following the miracle, a greater disability was revealed: the blindness of the Pharisees who doubted the miracle and rejected Jesus! Original sin produces physical and mental disabilities, like the man’s blindness. But it also leads to the deeper spiritual disability of blindness toward God, like the Pharisees.
As Lutheran Christians, we know and confess that we all suffer from original sin. Bodily disabilities are visible manifestations of original sin. To recast Merriam-Webster then, the disability of sin impairs, limits, and prevents sinners from participating in God’s divine life. The “healthy” and the “disabled” alike suffer the effects of Adam’s sin. Those with bodily disabilities simply have a clearer demonstration of that Fall.
How then might Christians offer support? The first step is to confess the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. God did not eliminate suffering from a distance. Instead, He Himself became man and suffered. Jesus stood with sinners. He talked with them. He touched them. Or, as the third verse of the beloved Baptism hymn “Children of the Heavenly Father” goes,
Neither life nor death shall ever
From the Lord his children sever;
Unto them His grace He showeth
And their sorrows all He knoweth.2
The historical Incarnation serves as the foundation for any support we give to those suffering disabilities: Jesus knows suffering and cared for the disabled incarnationally.
But the Incarnation is not merely a fact of history books. Sacramental Christians confess this doctrine every week. The Gospel is preached into the ears and hearts of even those who cannot cognitively understand. Water splashes over the forehead of even those who cannot hear. The bread and wine are fed even to those who cannot see their food. The Incarnation continually shapes how God serves all sinners, and how Christians serve their neighbors.
As we Christians serve our disabled neighbors, we cannot minimize their suffering, or we risk minimizing God’s suffering for that sin. Rather, we can fully acknowledge and grieve when abilities are taken away or when they are never even given. Even more, informed by Scripture, we seek to maximize care for the suffering.
Learn about your neighbor’s specific diagnosis. Ask how to care for individual needs. In the case of disabled children, offer to sit with the family through the service to engage the disabled or focus their siblings. Most importantly, help them to Jesus, just as the friends helped the disabled man through the roof (Mark 2).
The Incarnation forms our approach to disability. Sin produces earthly suffering, but the incarnate God gives grace through the Sacraments and His saints to overcome these evils. Meilaender concludes that sickness, suffering, and disabilities are not, in fact, the greatest evil: “That would be to lose God, to have reason to doubt His faithfulness to us.”3
People who suffer disabilities can quickly lose sight of our gracious and merciful God, doubting His love. As Lutheran Christians, we know and confess our suffering God. Through His pain we are redeemed. We cannot forget this heart of our faith as we support the disabled. Rather, we remind them of God’s faithfulness by pointing to the cross, by sympathizing in their suffering, and by looking forward to the coming restoration of God’s creation.
- Gilbert Meilaender, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013), 7.
- Carolina Sandell Berg, “Children of the Heavenly Father,” trans. Ernst W. Olson, in Lutheran Service Builder (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), 725.
- Meilaender, Bioethics, 130.
Rev. Christian Schultz is pastor of First Lutheran Church, Paola, Kansas.