A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO A CHURCH LEARNING TO WALK AGAIN
Photo from Unsplash.
Throughout the pandemic, social commentators and church folks alike have used the analogy of learning to walk again as a way to describe our collective recovery from COVID-19. Recently, studies and articles have been published speculating on whether or not the Church will ever fully recover, with the big question being: Will people come back to church? (1)
While this analogy has been dropped, as folks search for a new analogy to describe this moment, I think there is more to unpack. As someone who had the unfortunate experience of having to learn to walk again, I’d like to suggest that there is a word of encouragement in considering this analogy further.
But before we begin, a mention about the limitation of this analogy.
In his recent article, “Rejecting Curative Time: The BCP, Disability, and ‘Usefulness’” Jacob May offers a helpful corrective: encouraging the church to reconsider prayers for healing found in the Book of Common Prayer that promote a theology of curative time. May calls our attention to Alison Kafer’s important critique of “curative time,” which “casts disabled people (as) out of time, or as obstacles to the arc of progress, but once rehabilitated, normalized, and hopefully cured, we play a starring role: the sign of progress, the proof of development, the triumph over the mind or body.” (2) That, then, creates a one-track trajectory for those with “disabled mind/body” as “one cured or moving towards cure.”
As May surmises, referencing a prayer in the Ministration to the Sick (BCP, 460):
“The movement out of physical weakness is paralleled by a movement towards ‘strength’ of faith and repentance from sin. Physical deficiency implies a spiritual deficiency, and a linear, lockstep path out of each.”
I deeply appreciate this compelling caution.
What I do wish to offer, though, is a word of encouragement to a Church who sees herself––as a collective body, for good or ill—through the lens of curative time, a Church that is desperate to get back to the way things were. While my personal story is one of near-full recovery, I also bear in mind friends and family who have suffered illness or were born with physical differences yet assuredly possess the fullness of human dignity and fully bear God’s unmarred image.
My hope is that these five tips will, in light of COVID, encourage the Church body amid an extended pandemic and beyond curative time.
5 Tips For Learning To Walk Again
1. You Will Never Be the Same: Warning Against Spiritual Nostalgia
My first orthopedic surgeon looked at my swollen knee and said that I would have a permanent limp. My second orthopedic surgeon looked at the x-ray and said I might be able to get back to running (time would tell), but that my knee would never be the same again.
There is a sort of reckoning that we all have about the fragility of our bodies. On the one hand, our bodies have the ability to heal and recover, while on the other, their design includes fragility––and, ultimately, mortality. While we know that our bodies will not experience immortality on this side of the eschaton, we tend to overlook this reality for the Church body. In this moment, when Church leaders are struggling to get back to the way things were, we do well to take stock of our corporate fragility, and even name the temptation of spiritual nostalgia.
Spiritual nostalgia is not new to the Episcopal Church. Generation X and Millennials grew up on it. Before COVID, we were taught about the glory days in the 1950’s, the days when the pews were full and the streets were paved with gold. In almost an instant, the glory days of old have morphed from the 1950’s into the pre-pandemic church—the days when we did not have to live with the constant nagging questions of COVID time, the days before the words “adaptation” and “mitigation” were a thing. And if we’re not careful, the next generation of leaders will be just like the last as they continue to look back to what was, as opposed to accepting that our corporate body will never be the same. This acceptance will help the Church to be ever open to the church body’s becoming.
My word of encouragement for the church is to just accept that we will never be the same. The sooner we accept that we may have permanent limp, the better. The sooner that we become open to the possibility that we may never run again, the better. Like Jacob, whose blessing came through struggle––whose very limp was part of his blessing––the Church’s limp is a crucial part of us becoming the people that God is calling us to be.
2. God’s Power is Made Known in Our Weakness
For those of us who have had the unfortunate experience of having our bodies or faculties not work in the ways that they used to, we have the embodied knowledge of weakness. We know vulnerability and what it is like to be the person in the ditch. We know the impulse to get out of the ditch as fast as possible. For those of us who have had to accept our body’s fragility, we also know God’s grace, power, and beauty to be found there––in fragility and finitude––if we could only receive it.
As a Church body, we love to see ourselves as the Good Samaritan. While COVID sent us into the ditch, many of us are tired of being there. My word of encouragement to Church leaders is: before we get out of the ditch, and strive after that elusive quest of spiritual nostalgia, let us just dwell in our feebleness. Before we try to grow the Church with our professional programs, high-quality sacred music offerings, hip young clergy hires to attract young families, and capital campaigns, let us take a breath and receive this new posture of weakness. Let us recognize this kernel that has been planted in the shell of the old.
It is from this place of circumscription that we can experience the boundlessness of God’s mercy, as St. Paul experienced amid his thorn. And so it was he received a word from the Lord, despite his pleading to the contrary: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). For a Church learning to walk again, may we be reminded of God’s capability amid our inability––learning to walk once more by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).
3. Physical Therapy’s Wisdom: Don’t Fear Weakness and Pain, Lean In
Physical therapy involves both cursing and beseeching, frustration and hope, fear and faith, trust and obedience, pain and promise. With our body’s fragility set beside the hope for recovery, patients are encouraged not be afraid of their weakness but to lean in. By committing to exercises that rebuild muscle and stretches that break up scar tissue, physical therapy teaches a patient to get used to pain––motivated by the hope that on the other side of the pain is promise and transformation.
My word of encouragement to those who may feel like they are limping along is to not be afraid of your weakness, but to lean in. Promise lies on the other side; if not in this life, in the life of the world to come. As we continue to focus on the fundamentals of the faith, to strengthen the church’s atrophied muscles––as we continue cry and curse to break up the scar tissue of spiritual injury––let us lean into our weakness knowing that this is part of our transformation. With Christ and in Christ, let us learn unfettering obedience in what we suffer (Hebrews 5:8).
4. Two Steps Forward and One Step Back is Part of the Journey
I have heard Church leaders using this cliché a lot. As churches toggled back and forth from in-person to virtual to in-person back to virtual worship and fellowship, all have felt the disappointment in having to take a step back. Linear thinking can be tricky, especially with our inherent bias toward up-and-to-the-right progress.
As one of my doctors recently told me: “every step, however small and in whatever direction, is a cause for celebration.” No one but God knows what the post-pandemic Church looks like. But what we can do is to give thanks for each step we take, knowing that each step is a gift––not a given. Every step in any direction is cause for celebration, for God’s faithfulness to us (often in spite of ourselves) will be revealed no matter what.
5. Embrace Your St. Thomas Moment
As you will recall, Thomas struggled to believe that Christ was resurrected: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). A week later, Jesus visits Thomas, and, beautifully, Jesus’ resurrected body has wounds. He tells Thomas: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).
In this moment, let us embrace our St. Thomas moment. Let us confess our doubt and fears. Let us admit when we do not know whether to believe that the Church body can or will experience resurrection. Let us pray that God will help our unbelief. And, as we encounter firsthand the truth and beauty of the resurrected Christ, may we behold his wounds as we acknowledge our own.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-pandemics-lifestyle-health-religion-cd5fbac2318cb58e1d5ec4a5d1c00ecc
“Within this frame of curative time, then,” Kafer continues, “the only appropriate disabled mind/body is one cured or moving towards cure. Cure, in this context, most obviously signals the elimination of impairment but can also mean normalizing treatments that work to assimilate the disabled mind/body as much as possible. The questions animating a curative temporality include: Were you born that way? How much longer do you have to live this way? How long before they invent a cure? How long will a cure take? How soon before you recover?”
