Over the last month I have used the resources I developed for Disability Awareness Sunday twice. Both times I have come away with a few changes based on my own thoughts as I led the worship as well as on conversations I had afterwards. This Sunday one point particularly struck me.

I am very aware that when I talk about disability and especially Neurodiversity, it is from my own perspective as someone who is disabled, but in ways which are not always obvious to others and ways in which I can work around and mitigate for, even if that is more tiring for me. Sunday was a bit like that, several times over coffee I found myself having to explain why my ADHD diagnosis and learning to unmask now made masking harder and why I sometimes struggle to do things I used to take for granted. Explaining that and feeling that I had to justify it was exhausting.

however, there are people who, no matter how hard they try cannot hide or mask their disability or health condition. There are also people for whom it doesn’t matter what the church does, they can simply not attend an onsite service. Much of my preaching is about how we better enable those who could attend with some adjustment to do so. But we need to think more about how we enable those who are simply just not able to come to church and to participate in the “normal” life of the church. We are all indispensable and have worth regardless of what we are able to contribute.

On Sunday I ended up focusing a lot more on interdependence, worth and belonging than I had originally planned and found myself challenged by the number of times I try to go it alone and be independent rather than admitting that I am struggling and some help or even just some company would be rather nice.

So here is the edited version of my sermon.

…

To the church in the United Kingdom, from Paul. Sorry, not that one. Your brother in Christ.

To those who gather week by week, who sing and pray and break bread together, who care for one another and try in their ordinary and imperfect ways to follow Jesus. Grace to you and peace.

I’ve wanted to write to you for some time. I’ve witnessed the way we care for and support each other. The meals carried to a neighbour’s door. The gift of presence offered to someone who is struggling. What we do when we turn up for one another week after week is a genuine act of resistance and of hope. There’s already a lot of care, friendship and support among us, but that doesn’t mean everyone is able to belong in the same way.

Who is not here?

Around one in four people in the UK live with some form of disability. Physical disability. Sensory impairment. Chronic illness. Mental health conditions. Neurodivergence. That figure is almost certainly an underestimate, because stigma and fear of marginalisation mean many disabled people never name their experience as disability.

Of course, not everyone who is missing from a church building has been excluded. Some disabilities and illnesses make attending in person difficult, and for some people it simply isn’t possible. No amount of ramps, hearing loops or changes to worship will alter that. Belonging to the Church can’t depend on being able to get into a church building on a Sunday morning.

But there are still people who could take part if some of the barriers were different. It’s easy to assume that disabled people have simply chosen not to come, that the invitation has been open and they haven’t taken it up, without noticing the things which have made that invitation difficult to accept.

Maybe not deliberately. Through years of not quite noticing, though, we’ve sometimes built, sung and prayed as though the body we had in mind was always the same idealised body. Many church buildings are still difficult to access for wheelchair users or people with limited mobility. Hearing loops don’t always work. Sometimes somebody has to ask for the ramp, find the person with the key, or enter through a different door. These things can seem small when they don’t affect us personally, but they’re much less small when they happen every week.

The same assumptions can be carried in some of the words we use, including hymns many of us have sung since childhood.

I once was blind but now I see.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus.

He walks with me.

Some of these are amazing hymns. I’m not asking us to abandon them. But blindness is often used to represent ignorance, sight becomes understanding, standing represents commitment and walking becomes discipleship. Repeated week after week, these images become part of the way we imagine Christian faith and Christian bodies.

In John 9, the disciples encounter a man who’s been blind from birth and ask Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” They meet a person and immediately turn his body into a theological question. Somebody must be responsible. But Jesus refuses the explanations they offer. Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

We still ask versions of that question. Illness can become a battle to be won or lost. Suffering must have a purpose. Disability becomes a problem awaiting a solution, or something God has given somebody so that everyone else can learn a lesson from them. I’ve encountered enough of that kind of theology over the years to know how damaging it can be.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul, and yes, that Paul, describes the Church as a body and says that the parts which seem weaker are indispensable.

We live in a culture which puts a lot of value on independence. Being able to manage by ourselves is treated as something to aim for, while needing other people can feel like failure. I’ve heard people say many times that they don’t want to be a burden, and I’ve probably said it myself. But bodies don’t work independently. The hand needs the eye, the eye needs the hand, and the head needs the feet. Every part depends on other parts.

Our faith has often become quite individualistic as well. We talk about my faith, my relationship with God, my salvation and what Jesus has done for me. You can hear the same thing in plenty of the songs we sing, with a lot of I, me and my. None of that is necessarily wrong. Faith is personal, but Paul is talking about us. We are the body of Christ, we belong to one another and we need one another.

Sometimes I’ll be the person offering help and sometimes I’ll need somebody else to help me. Quite often both things will be happening at the same time. The balance changes as our lives change. Bodies change, illness happens, circumstances change, and things which were once easy can become difficult. None of that changes whether we belong. We can fall quite easily into imagining care as something which travels in one direction. There are people who help and people who need help. There are strong people and vulnerable people. There are those who give and those who receive. Paul’s picture of the body doesn’t divide quite so neatly.

Disabled people aren’t a group outside the Church who need to be brought in and cared for by everybody else. We’re already part of the body, and our belonging doesn’t depend on what we can do, what we can contribute, or whether we’re able to take on particular roles. Churches can be very good at caring for people, and I’ve seen extraordinary kindness, friendship and practical support in church communities. But care can still become paternalistic if we quietly divide people into those who give and those who receive. Paul doesn’t say that the parts which seem weaker matter because they might turn out to be useful. He says they’re indispensable. Their worth doesn’t depend on what they can contribute, and neither does their belonging.

For those of us who’ve spent years valuing independence, receiving help can be difficult. We may be far happier helping somebody else than admitting that we need them. We can worry that needing help makes us less useful, or that we’ve become a burden. But none of us was ever really independent. We depend on other people throughout our lives, even when that dependence is easy to hide.

We belong to one another, and we need one another.