Illness, Caring, and Disability by Meaden Bernadette;

Author:Meaden, Bernadette;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd LTD
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

When Thomas wanted proof that Jesus was who he said he was, he did not ask Jesus to perform a miracle and show his power. It was the marks of suffering which Thomas accepted as proof of Jesus’s authenticity, and thus his authority. In our ordinary lives we too can find that when people have been through suffering it makes them more qualified to speak on certain subjects, and so in a sense gives them more authority.

Bill Braviner is a vicar in the Church of England who has struggled with significant anxiety and depression. In a book he coauthored, Pilgrims in the Dark, he writes that one of the things which helped him when he was at a very low point in his life was watching the film The Passion of the Christ.

One Easter Saturday, when he was too ill to attend a church service, Bill took the DVD down from the shelf and started to watch. He found himself weeping as he saw Jesus being rejected and mocked, feeling a profound sense of connection with his suffering. Then, in the brief resurrection scene, he saw, and really appreciated for the first time, that the risen Jesus still bore his wounds. Something began to change for him, and over a period of weeks he continued to think about the film.

Bill writes:

I knew that watching The Passion of the Christ had been significant, and that there was something profound in that very short resurrection scene. It was when I was reading some of the gospel passages about Jesus’ resurrection appearances that realisation dawned regarding what was so significant: it was that Jesus was risen with his wounds. To be wounded, damaged, scarred, beaten up by life – these were things Jesus took into his resurrection, into the heart of God. Suddenly, something in my heart and head went ‘bang!’ and I realised I was acceptable. I realised that this great failing of mine, this crumbling and falling and woundedness, this anxiety and depression and mental dis-ease, this was all stuff that Jesus had wrapped up into that resurrection, and I needn’t be ashamed of these wounds, or fearful of them. I could bear them in resurrection life. That was profoundly healing.3

Bill remains a vicar and is now disability officer for Durham diocese. Together with two friends he went on to found the group ‘Disability and Jesus’, which aims to ensure that people with an illness or disability are not only accepted or included in the church but are welcomed into positions of influence and leadership. Their motto is ‘A church without disabled people is a disabled church’ as they feel strongly that the churches are currently missing out on the gifts of many people with experience of illness and disability. The other co-founders of the group are Dave Lucas, an access auditor and low-vision awareness trainer who is himself blind, and Katie Tupling, who has cerebral palsy, is vicar of two parishes in the Sheffield Diocese and is also the diocesan disability officer.

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