Seeds of Justice
Interdependence and Disabled Leadership:
God’s Invitation to Moses

Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost • October 20, 2019
Reading: Exodus 3:1-15 (adapted from New International Version)
Naomi Madaras, guest preacher

Today I’m going to talk about disability. Before I get into exploring this scripture, I want to give a brief definition of ableism. Ableism is any type of discrimination against people with disabilities. This might look like isolation: not allowing disabled people into a building by not having an elevator, for instance. Ableism also looks like telling disabled people they must be “fixed” or at least want to be “fixed” in order to live a good life.

So, let’s talk about Moses. Let’s actually go back to the beginning for a moment: Moses, on a mountain, with his flock. I love that this story starts with animals. Moses is tending the animals of his father-in-law, the priest Jethro, and brings the flock to Horeb, the mountain of God. Different translations say Moses’s flock was sheep or goats, but for the sake of the story let’s imagine it was both sheep and goats, both animals common in ancient times.

It’s a lot of work to care for sheep and goats without a fence. You have to look out for stragglers, show-offs, and babies that get easily distracted. When I first heard this story as a kid, and after watching the movie version, I imagined Moses leaving his flock behind to talk with God. But when we read the text we see no mention of Moses deserting his flock. So perhaps the burning bush is next to the sheep and goats as they graze and forage on the mountain named Horeb. Let’s imagine the sounds of chewing, baa-ing, and even bells playing in the background as Moses’s conversation with the burning bush unfolds.

At this time in the lives of ancient peoples, the relationship to the earth is extremely important. Though we still depend on the earth, living in Manhattan makes it hard to connect between the food on our plate and clothes on our back with the animals, vegetables, and fibers that nurture us. But as soon as as God talks to Moses, God reminds Moses of this connection. “Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing is holy ground.” Is there any ground unholy? The ground feeds people, sheep and the goats alike. If it weren’t for the top ten inches of dirt known as topsoil, we would not be able to survive. And God chose to speak to Moses through a bush (a bush!) which also relies on topsoil to grow. All of us, even God, depend on those ten inches of topsoil.

So Moses is standing barefoot, toes in the dirt, surrounded by the animal sounds of sheep and goats on a mountain, and listens to a voice called “I am” from a bush on fire. He listens to a voice called “I am” from a bush on fire! I imagine he must have been shocked at this unusual experience. Then God tells him: “Go back to Egypt, the place where your family was slaughtered and their murderers raised you. Go back to the land where you were stolen from your family, the land where your people have been enslaved, and lead the charge against their oppression. Go back to your people with whom your cultural tie was severed and rebuild it.” Moses is a displaced person at this point, living with his wife’s people miles and miles away from Egypt in the land of Midian. He is living a relatively calm life with his new community and his flock, and God asks him to upend his entire world and return to a place that scarred him. Perhaps Moses has traumatic memories of his experiences. Perhaps the memories of his parents and grandparents stick with him--a trauma passed down generation to generation.

When God tells Moses he has been chosen to lead his people out of slavery, Moses asks God “What if they do not believe me?” He says: “I am slow of speech and tongue.” We will never know the details of Moses’s body. But here we get a chance to imagine, based on clues in the text. Let’s take Moses seriously, and imagine him as a person with a disability. Maybe he has a stutter or a cognitive disability, perhaps he slurs his words. There’s a trend in biblical studies to see stories of disability in the Bible as only metaphors, but this can be a harmful way of looking at it. If disabled people only get to be metaphors, they never get to be people.

Writing disabled people out of the Bible is an aspect of ableism because it keeps disabled people from seeing ourselves represented in sacred text. Excluding disabled people from the Bible is no different than excluding them from buildings by having inaccessible entrances. When we instead allow ourselves to take this passage literally, we make way for welcoming disabled and able-bodied people alike to build the kin-dom of heaven among us.

Now, God’s response to Moses is complicated. God asks Moses: “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord?”

This is such a challenging passage. Like many challenging Bible passages though, ignoring it will not make it go away. This is how I want to approach this: I see this statement as God taking all disabled people under a wing. God consecrates, ordains, blesses, loves, and yes, creates ALL bodies. Bodies that use sight over sound, bodies that touch rather than see, bodies that sit more than stand, bodies that don’t always fit the violent and ableist worlds humans make. At the same time, I do not believe God ordains the type of violence that disables people. God does not poison people with lead paint, break their bones from hard labor, or starve them as they cross the border. It’s a tricky line to walk: how do we uplift the innate blessedness of disabled people, while fighting against systems that harm and make life more difficult?

I think one way to answer this question is to see how God responds to Moses and the suffering of the Israelite people. God has witnessed the pain and disabling conditions of Egyptian society and cannot stand it any longer. Surely Israelite enslaved people have been blinded, beaten, and lost use of their legs in slavery, and God does not consecrate this oppression. Yet when God calls Moses to lead, God does not try to “fix” Moses’s disability or tell him to change. God does not magically alter Moses’s mouth or tongue. No, God chooses Moses exactly how he is.

An important point I want to make is that Moses only brings up his disability as a limiting experience when he is asked to go back to a traumatic place. For many people with disabilities, it’s not necessarily the reality of disability that’s painful. It’s the cultural response to the disability. Our world is not built for Deaf people, for Blind people, for people who can’t communicate in the ways we expect them to. Moses’s disability does not impact his shepherding skills, perhaps it even makes him more attuned to the flock’s needs. It’s when he’s asked to go back to a place not designed for his disability--the land of Egypt, where he fears Pharoah and his adoptive family will not see him as a leader--that he encounters a roadblock.

Even though God chooses Moses, Moses is afraid. He does not trust himself to be a leader, and upon hearing this, God gets angry. Maybe this is because God sees the incredible potential in Moses and is frustrated he would throw that away for fear of failure. But God does not give up on Moses even when angered. God tells Moses to rely on his brother Aaron to act as an intermediary between Moses and the able-bodied world in his quest for liberation.

This is a profound moment. Not only does God provide for Moses, but God also makes clear the need for interdependence. In our world today, there is an expectation that independence is the clearest marker of success. This expectation is another brick in the ableist wall, saying that you must be independent to be happy. But do we ever really make it on our own? I think the answer is no. There are always people who support us, our ancestors, family, friends, chosen family, even animals. Neither humans, nor sheep, nor goats, nor even a burning bush is fully independent. We all rely on each other to keep living.

The path Moses takes in listening to God’s call is a path of interdependence. Though Moses is held up on a pedestal as the leader of the Israelites, he certainly does not do this alone. Moses becomes a disabled leader, and God calls Moses and accommodates him. In the Quaker tradition that I am a part of, we see God as the Inner Light. This Inner Light lives within each person. It is an intimate and profound link to the Divine. I like to think God knew Moses profoundly--knew what Moses was capable of, watched him caretaking animals, and knew what Moses needed from God. God sanctifies Moses’s disability and Moses’s accommodation.

Thinking about disability in a new way means understanding disability not as an intrinsically bad or isolating experience, but thinking of our society as a place that isolates and makes painful the experience of disability. Accommodations are one small, meaningful, and sometimes Divine step toward manifesting the Beloved Community. God accommodates Moses, listens to Moses, and chooses Moses. God calls Moses to leadership, not as the lone champion of the Israelite people, but as part of the divine partnership between Aaron and Moses: two brothers leaning on one another for support.

If the era of lone champions and social justice superheroes ever existed, it cannot sustain itself for long. We need each other to survive. A disabled leader like Moses teaches us that it is ok to be overwhelmed. Doubt is part of the path. But even in the most frightening encounters with the unknown, we do not have to go alone.

Imagining a more interdependent society allows us to imagine a world that not only accommodates but also celebrates the wisdom of disability, and the myriad, Divine possibilities of our flesh. God ordains, blesses, and consecrates each body that God knows so profoundly well. God stands, walks, crawls, and wheels with us. God cries, laughs, speaks with their hands, sings through cowbells and baa-ing, and stammers in ways we learn to understand. At the same time, God stands against any institution that binds us to unjust suffering--whether slavery, white supremacy, or ableism. The Divine Spirit accommodates us through companionship, listens to us in all our being, and does not abandon.

May we find God in the goat pasture, on the face of a mountain, in the togetherness of our people, in the power of interdependence, and in the complex and divine world of disability. May we uplift the blessedness of all bodies while building a world that leaves no body behind.

Copyright © 2019 by Naomi Madaras
All rights reserved.

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