The Jesus Story and Living with Disabilities

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The Jesus Story and Living with Disabilities

Herb Montgomery | May 23, 2025

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Our reading this week is from the gospel of John: 

“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

 The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,” (John 5:1-9)

In her book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability, Nancy Eiseland writes, “Living with a disability is difficult. Acknowledging this difficulty is not a defeat, I have learned, but a hard-won accomplishment in learning to live a life that is not disabled. The difficulty for people with disabilities has two parts really—living our ordinary, but difficult lives, and changing structures, beliefs, and attitudes that prevent us from living ordinarily” (Italics/emphasis added, p. 13). This week, I want to push back against two things that make “living ordinarily” difficult for folks with disabilities: the way the Jesus story was originally written and specific Christian attitudes and beliefs. 

First, I understand that whomever the gospel authors were, they were writing the versions of the Jesus story in our sacred canon today within the context and setting of their own time and culture. I get that. Nonetheless, how the Jesus story is often told when it comes to folks with disabilities is still damaging. We can tell the Jesus story in a more life-giving way for this community, and we must. It’s not optional. Everyone will eventually experience disability. It makes sense to address and ease this experience that is or will be so common, and does impact everyone in some way whether as care receiver or caregiver.

Let me give you just one example of the four gospels’s language. When Matthew’s gospel refers to religious leaders that were complicit in political and economic harm against the vulnerable people in Jesus’ society, it portrays Jesus telling the people, “Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14). 

In passages like this, the gospels use blindness, deafness, the inability to speak, and the inability to walk as metaphors for something sinful or erroneous while characterizing mobility, vision, and hearing ability as righteous, whole, just, or holy. This language characterizes folks who live their daily lives with any of these disabilities as somehow of less worth or value. And it is akin to how Blackness is often equated with evil or sin (i.e. “the black sheep of the family)  while whiteness and light is equated with righteousness or holiness. These racial implications have been promoted by those who subscribe to White supremacy for centuries. But it’s not especially righteous to have no disabilities. Being disabled is not a metaphor for being evil, sinful, or broken.

In this week’s passage, John’s gospel uses the man who couldn’t walk to set up a conflict between Jesus and the powerful in his society over Jesus healing the man on the Sabbath and Jesus’ relation to the Divine. I wish the gospel writers had given this man a name in a way that would have affirmed his humanity and worth, but he is instead presented as a nameless narrative object that only serves as a plot point in the larger story. This pattern also repeats in the gospels. The synoptic example is in Mark 2:1-12, and both Mark and John include a variation of Jesus’ instruction: “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home” (Mark 2:11, cf. John 5:8). In Mark, the story of Jesus healing a man who could not walk is at the center of a discussion on forgiveness. Here in John, it is used to discuss Sabbath observance and Jesus’ divinity: “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).  

Over and over, disabilities are a theme in the gospels. The gospel authors characterize Jesus as reversing disabilities and using disabilities as a metaphor for things we need liberation from. And the gospel authors use Jesus’ interaction with people with disabilities to provide a context for other theological debate of that time. 

Although I wish the gospel authors had handled disabilities with greater care, the evidence Jesus repeatedly gives for the authenticity of his teachings is his interactions with people living in poverty and people living with disabilities.

For example, when John the Baptist’s disciples question whether Jesus was really the one they had been looking for, Jesus replies, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Matthew 11:5, cf. Luke 7:22). In Luke’s gospel, Jesus’ gospel is defined in itself as good news the poor, liberation for the oppressed, and the restoration of sight for the blind (see Luke 4:18). This challenges me another level. 

I grew up in Christianity, and heard the gospel more times than I can count. But it wasn’t until much later, as an adult, that I ever heard the gospel as good news for the poor or good news to people living with disabilities. The good news was presented to me as universal, for all, poor and rich alike, because it had precious little to do with the material, economic, or political world around us. The gospel I grew up hearing about had zero specific application to the poor or those with disabilities, because it was solely about giving everyone forgiveness of sins and the assurance of heaven. That forgiveness and assurance never needs to mention poverty or disabilities, and in fact, the gospel I grew up with never did.  

Where does this leave us today who want to return to a more consistent definition of what it means to follow the Jesus in the story?

Let’s briefly consider the gospel stories’ approach to the two groups Jesus’ gospel is good news for. First, people living in poverty. Jesus understood that poverty is created by systems that the powerful and propertied create. His efforts in regards to poverty were systemic and communal, not private and individual. He called for the reinstatement of the Torah’s jubilee where debts would cancelled and lands returned to families who originally owned them. His call to deeper Torah fidelity in relation to economic justice was a call to radically redistribute wealth. And along the path toward that redistribution, he called those who had more then they needed to share their resources with those whose needs were not being met. It was a combination of systemic change and mutual aid on the way to change.  

For people with disabilities, his approach was similar. While there are stories of Jesus healing individuals and liberating them from their private and societal struggles to live life to the fullest, he also called for change in how his society thought about and treated people living with disabilities.  

He challenged societal exclusion and pushed toward accessibility: 

“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” (Luke 14:13)

He challenged how the exclusionary practice of those in power and how they related to those who had been excluded because of their disabilities:

“See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” (Mark 1:44)

And he challenged the theology behind how his society thought about and treated people with disabilities:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus. (John 9:1-3)

Healing or removing a disability as Jesus did for so many in these stories is not an option for many if not most of us today. But we can take a cue from the narratives and challenge theologies that shape the exclusion and mistreatment of those with disabilities. We can also push for accessibility and inclusion for fellow members of this diverse human family who live with disabilities, whether in our faith communities or in society. 

The Jesus story is complicated when it comes to our theology, practice, understanding, and relationship to our own disabilities and/or the disabilities of others. The Jesus story isn’t perfect on this topic, but there is still good we can glean from it to inform our justice work with and for people with disabilities today. No one throws away an apple because it has a core. You just eat the good flesh and discard the rest. There is good, too, in the Jesus story here: good that still calls us to create a safer, more accessible, more just, more compassionate world that is home for everyone, regardless of our differences.

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. In what ways do you feel the Jesus story could be told in more in more life giving ways for folks living with disabilities? Share and discuss with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone? 

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

As always, you can find Renewed Heart Ministries each week on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and Meta’s Threads. If you haven’t done so already, please follow us on your chosen social media platforms for our daily posts. 

Thank you for listening to The Social Jesus Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast please take a moment to like and subscribe and if the podcast platform you’re using offers this option, please leave us a positive review. This helps others find our podcast as well.

You can watch our YouTube show each week called “Just Talking”. Each week, Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and social justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking. If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking.

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Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

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New Episode of “Just Talking” Now Online!

Lectionary Readings in the context of Love, Inclusion, & Social Justice

Season 3, Episode 12: John 5.1-9. Lectionary C, Easter 6

Each week, we’ll discuss the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend in the context of love, inclusion, and justice. We hope that our talking will be “just” talking (as in justice) and that we’ll be inspired to do more than “just talking” during our brief conversations each week. 

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out.

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New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice. 

This week:

Season 2 Episode 21: The Jesus Story and Living with Disabilities

John 5:1-9

“Healing or removing a disability as Jesus did for so many in these stories is not an option for many if not most of us today. But we can take a cue from the narratives and challenge theologies that shape the exclusion and mistreatment of those with disabilities. We can also push for accessibility and inclusion for fellow members of this diverse human family who live with disabilities, whether in our faith communities or in society. The Jesus story is complicated when it comes to our theology, practice, understanding, and relationship to our own disabilities and/or the disabilities of others. The Jesus story isn’t perfect on this topic, but there is still good we can glean from it to inform our justice work with and for people with disabilities today. No one throws away an apple because it has a core. You just eat the good flesh and discard the rest. There is good, too, in the Jesus story here: good that still calls us to create a safer, more accessible, more just, more compassionate world that is home for everyone, regardless of our differences.”

Available on all major podcast carriers and at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/the-jesus-story-and-living-with-disabilities

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Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

 

by Herb Montgomery

Available now on Amazon!

In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.

Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.

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