Nancy Eiesland and a Disabled God

There is so much about God that I don't know or have ever thought about before. I have been a part of a church for my entire life and in full-time ministry for more than twelve years. I could recite the books of the Bible in the first grade and my family is stacked with ministers.

That sort of spiritual familiarity can easily give way to an intellectual laziness. And that's when hubris and arrogance can gain a foothold because you can begin to think and feel like you know all the right answers (or have at-least heard all the right answers) since you have been around faith for so long.

I am thinking about all of this because of an obituary I read in the NY-Times this weekend. Nancy Eiesland (pronounced EES-lund) died at the age of 44 on March 10th (most likely due to genetic lung cancer). Ms. Eiesland had 11 surgery's by the time she was 13 years old due to a congenital bone defect in her hips. At that young age she realized that pain was to be her lot in life.

Ms. Eiesland would grow up to be a wife, mother, sociologist, and theologian with a Ph.D. from Emory's Candler School of Theology. At the time of her death Ms. Eiesland came to believe that God was in fact disabled. Her view was articulated in her influential 1994 book "The Disabled God: Toward Liberatory Theology of Disability." The core idea of her work centered around Luke 24:36-39 where Jesus, risen from the dead, invites the disciples to touch his wounds.

"'In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,' she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued - he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing."

I didn't Google Ms. Eiesland's book or any controversy it may or may not have whipped up in theological circles. Instead I just allowed myself to be taken aback at an insight to a Biblical story I have known literally my entire life, but have never considered in the way Ms. Eiesland suggests. I am in awe of the scriptures and the minds that study them in the hopes that God may be made more known.

The obituary describes a life of a woman who saw the disabled as being ignored by the church and society. From High School to her death she accepted the challenge of advocating for the disabled and creating a theological "place at the table" within the church. Ms. Eiesland is another reminder that God's truth and power can only be glimpsed when all are empowered to learn, listen, and speak of God's truth. This morning a woman in a wheel chair, whom I have never met and who I never heard speak, planted a seed of thought in my mind that will forever alter how I think about one of the most vital occurrences in the Bible. May God be praised, and may Ms. Eiesland family be comforted.