Let All Who Will, Hear!

A Theological Statement for Hearing Accessibility

by Robert L. Walker

"Oh, no!" said the high school student as she saw a man wearing hearing aids. "I hope I'm not in his small group!" It was the opening afternoon of a week long church youth camp. To her horror, she was assigned to the learning group co-led by two clergypersons, one of whom was the hard of hearing man, who also lived with low vision.

This young person, a daughter of The United Methodist Church, had an attitudinal barrier against hard of hearing people. She is not alone. That emotional wall is found wherever people gather to work, learn, play, and pray.

The wall is found in Scripture as well. The Book of Leviticus, a document that includes the sublime command to love our neighbors as ourselves (19:18), also pronounces harsh rules that exclude many neighbors. Innumerable actions and conditions are named that label persons as unfit for fellowship with God or God's people.

Prominently proscribed are those who live with handicapping conditions. Throughout Leviticus¹, named for the priestly order of the tribe of Levites, much concern is given to physical perfection. Sacrificial offerings of animals or vegetation must be free of "blemishes"; so also must be the priests who represent and serve the community in its worship of God (21:20).

It's the professional priests and not the lay people who are to be free of "blemishes"; however, even priests are human beings, allowing us to infer that, for Leviticus, anyone is flawed who has a missing, malformed, or malfunctioning body part. Not every possible condition is named; nevertheless, we can infer that for the Hebrew Bible the word "blemish" is a euphemism for anyone's condition that leaves her or him "differently abled."² That includes Deaf, late-deafened, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind people.

Given this biblical endorsement of discrimination, it is hardly surprising that persons and their societies everywhere have excluded supposedly blemished people from social and religious community. If God considers those who are Deaf or have a hearing loss to be lesser persons, then how can we fault those who erect or fail to remove social and religious barriers against equal employment opportunities, adequate schooling, membership and ministry in the church, and more?

But, it must be said, the Bible is inconsistent in its understanding of God's attitudes toward supposedly blemished folk. Moses, the revered leader of what ultimately became the Jewish people, dating from around 1200 BC, had a blemish. He needed the services of a speech therapist (Exodus 4: 10).³

While there is no concrete evidence in the New Testament, we can, nonetheless, suppose that the apostle Paul suffered from a partial blindness that escaped healing in his Damascus Road experience. In an interesting conclusion to his Epistle to the Galatians, Paul says, "See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand (6:11)!" His are the words of someone well educated, but suffering from low vision that called for a scribe to write in his behalf; and, when he did take pen to hand, he wrote in large letters in order to see his own script.

Then there is Jesus, noting how scoffers might insist that if he be a physician healing others, then let him heal himself (Luke 4:23). Heal himself of what? Some kind of blemish?

It is Jesus' ministry that, for would-be Christians and their churches, asks us to abandon a spirit of exclusion for one of inclusion. Christ urges us to show hospitality that mimics God's hospitality toward all persons, regardless of their external or internal conditions. We meet this message in Jesus' encounters with people living with an illness or handicapping condition.

One of them was a man born blind (John 9:1ff). It's a fascinating story of theological sparring and of compassion triumphing over condemnation. At the story's end we can only conclude that those who will not see God's all-embracing spirit are blind.

The story exposes the error of supposing that all physical disabilities and ills are God's punishment for sin, either that of the encumbered one or of her or his parents. Conventionally, religious folk assumed that such persons could never be cured or even helped, lest they be guilty of interfering with divine justice.

It was Jesus' good friends who asked him about sin and punishment, wondering whether the fault lay with the blind fellow or his parents (v. 2). Jesus pushed the question aside as irrelevant, since neither the man nor his parents were at fault. For Jesus, the man's blindness called not for condemnation, but for the work of God (v. 3).⁴ And, what is that work? Allow us to suggest that God's work is to welcome all of us at the banquet table in the divine household; and for us not to follow God's lead in hospitality is itself our greatest sin (cf. Luke 14:13, Ephesians 2:1ff).

"Sin" means separation from God. A careful reading of the biblical incidents reveals the fundamental insight that all sin involves being loveless. Sin violates the commandment that has two sides to the one issue, namely, to love God and our neighbors (Luke 10:27); hence, to refuse to love separates us from God and neighbor.

Further, sin is the failure to love in the agapic sense of the word, meaning to care and serve the other in whatever is her or his condition, irrespective of whether that love is deserved or returned. Agapic love imitates God's love for us. In the Hebrew Bible, Hosea's remarkable love for his unfaithful spouse is the paradigm for God's love that is unlike humankind's penchant to scrutinize others' fitness and withhold care if they are found wanting (Hosea 11). In the Christian gospels, Jesus' constant rejection of supposed laws that exclude people who are "different" reveals God's dictum that love (agape) is the "will to be in community"⁵ with all persons without exception.

Compassionately, Jesus illustrates agapic love with an object lesson featuring the man born blind. He cures the man, demonstrating that God has not barred him from the divine community or life's abundant gifts (w. 6-7).⁶ Let it be asserted that Agapic love is God's 'work," and ours too. Our Christian and churchly calling is to do the works of love so that all may see.

Also, so that all may hear. Compared to blindness and other illnesses or injuries dealt with in the gospels, we have but one story of curing deafness (Mark 7:32-37). We do, however, have two references to Jesus having healed several deaf folk, cited in his message to John the Baptist's disciples (Matthew 11:5, Luke 7:22).

Mark's story is familiar to persons living with deafness or limited hearing. Difficulty with speech occurs in those born with hearing loss, but also among those who lost their hearing before language skills were fully formed. Curing all degrees of hearing loss is, for the moment, impossible. Electronic aids and cochlear implants help but cannot "fix" the inability to hear well.

It is at this impasse of curing deafness that Mark's story (like the account of healing the blind man) departs from today's experiences. Let it be said, however, that while there may never be a "cure," there can be a "healing."

In her book, The Irrational Season, Madeleine L'Engle expresses that thought as she tells of her own blindness. L'Engle was not cured but she was healed when she accepted her blindness in the realization that she remained a whole person and a beloved daughter of God.

In Mark's story, Jesus exclaimed, "Ephphatha!" Aramaic for "be opened!" to the man who could not hear well. Let Jesus' command be exclaimed now to those who are spiritually deaf to God's love that makes them whole, despite their physical hearing loss.

And let "Ephphatha!" be exclaimed to the church that has not heard the way Deaf, late deafened, hard of hearing, and deaf-blind people hear. Those who are culturally Deaf hear, with eyes and hands, their own unique American Sign Language (ASL). Deaf-blind people may hear with a tactile version of sign language or finger spelling (signed into the palms of their hands).⁷ Oral deaf persons hear through speech reading (also called lip reading) and visual aids. Late-deafened people hear with visual aids such as captioning, and hard of hearing people hear with hearing aids, assistive listening devices and visual aids.⁸

The community around the deaf man in Mark's story was itself deaf until it heard, and helped the Deaf man hear, the Good News of God's all-inclusive love. Any church today is remiss in doing the "works of God" when it turns a deaf ear on Deaf, late-deafened, hard of hearing, or deaf-blind people.

Let it also be said that every church is "hearing" when it welcomes the healing of its own attitudinal deafness. With its ears now open, as the Deaf man's ears were opened, that church will hear its own ministry and mission with persons who live, worship, and servedespite their hearing loss as gifted members of Christ's ever-new earthly body (1 Corinthians 12:27).

At the end of the week of church youth camp, the high school student sought out the hard of hearing and partly blind minister. She told him of her first-day dismay and her desire to have nothing to do with him. She apologized, saying that the week had proven to be the best she had ever experienced in several years of attending church camps. Grace-- God's love-- transmitted through human grace had revealed and cured her spiritual deafness. Now she had ears that could hear.

In the name of God in Christ, let all who will, hear!

This theological statement was written by Robert L. Walker, D. Min, who lives with Usher's Syndrome (causing hearing and vision loss). Assisting with the paper was Nancy Kingsley, who is late-deafened and a frequent writer in the field of hearing accessibility and spirituality. Much of Nancy's work appears throughout this booklet. Both are members of the United Methodist Congress of the Deaf's Standing Committee on Church Promotion: Late-Deafened and Hard of Hearing People.

Notes

¹ Tradition attributes authorship to Moses. Modern scholarship reveals that Moses could not have been its author. Most likely the book is the work of the priestly order of Levites, was composed from centuries of oral tradition plus numerous writings, and was edited into this book, one among the first five in the Hebrew Bible that are together called the Torah.

² There is, here, a problem of semantics. American society labels all "differently abled" people as being "disabled." That word, however, does not properly identify all who live with what may also be called a handicapping condition; nor does it suit persons who were born deaf, blind, or with missing fingers, toes, limbs, or other parts of the body. For our purposes, sensitivity toward this "naming" of a condition permeates this discussion and the other papers in this packet.

³ The verse is: "But Moses said to the Lord, "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue." Opinion is divided over the nature of Moses's problem, ranging from stuttering to pronunciation impediments.

⁴ "Work" is the New Revised Standard Version's translation; other versions translate the word as "Glory".

⁵ The phrase is Daniel Day Williams's, in his The Spirit and Forms of Love.

⁶ On the surface, this story is no more than an account of a miraculous healing. It can be wondered why those born blind or later blinded are not now cured. That the story occupies a large part of the Gospel According to John causes us to look more deeply into the story and see its larger message of naming the sin of excluding anyone from God's grace. That disregard for God's people is the blindness that needs and can receive healing.

⁷ Depending on the cause and onset of deafness-blindness, some persons living with this condition have residual hearing permitting the use of hearing aids and assistive listening device, as well as some visual aids to hearing.

⁸ A glossary of terms and articles on helping persons with hearing challenges are found elsewhere in this resource.