When many Christians hear the word healing, they imagine Jesus restoring sight, mobility, or speech. These stories are powerful, but they have often been interpreted in ways that unintentionally harm persons with disability—suggesting that disability is something to be fixed, erased, or prayed away. Disability theology invites us to look again, to read scripture with fresh eyes, and to discover that the Bible’s vision of healing is far richer than the simple removal of impairment.
A recent Wednesday morning celebration of Holy Eucharist and the Weekday Eucharist Lectionary gave me the gift of preparing a sermon on Mark 3:1–6. As you read this passage, you can cut the tension with a knife. The Pharisees are watching to see if Jesus will heal on the Sabbath. They suspect he will, and they are there to catch him. When Jesus enters the synagogue and encounters a man with a withered hand, the stage is set.
Before any conflict unfolds, the insights of disability theology help us notice something essential for our understanding of the passage: the man is already there. He is not brought in as an object lesson. He is not a prop in a theological debate. He is a worshipper, a member of the community, someone who belongs in the synagogue before Jesus ever arrives. His presence is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be honoured.
This is one of the gifts of disability theology—it teaches us to pay attention to who is already in the room, whose presence has been overlooked, and whose story has been flattened into a symbol. The man in Mark 3 is not introduced as a sinner or as someone in need of fixing. He is simply present, whole in his humanity. Yet in the eyes of the religious leaders, he becomes a test case. In the eyes of Jesus, he becomes a neighbour.
When Jesus asks, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?”, he is not merely debating Sabbath law. He is exposing the posture of the community toward those who live with embodied difference. Is it lawful to restore, include, and honour? Or is it lawful to ignore, exclude, and treat someone’s life as secondary to our systems?
This question echoes throughout the Gospels. Jesus’ healings are not about erasing disability but about restoring community. In the ancient world—as in our own—disability often meant exclusion: social, economic, and religious. Jesus confronts those systems, not the bodies of people with disability. Healing, in scripture, is never merely physical. It is social. It is relational. It is communal. It is about belonging.
In Mark 3, Jesus does something profoundly important. He calls the man to the centre—not to expose him, but to reveal God’s heart. And then he says, “Stretch out your hand.” Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say, “Stretch out your good hand.” He does not say, “Hide what is withered.” He invites the man to bring the very part of himself others have learned to avoid, pity, or judge. Jesus invites him to bring his whole embodied reality into the centre of God’s healing presence.
This is the heart of disability theology: God does not erase disability to make people acceptable. God confronts the systems that marginalize disabled bodies in the first place. The healing is not the point. The restoration of community is the point. The exposure of hardened hearts is the point. The revelation of God’s compassion is the point.
For the Diocese of Niagara, this matters deeply. Sadly, I have heard the stories of many Christians with disabilities who have experienced churches as places of pity or invisibility rather than belonging. Rethinking healing helps us shift from narratives of cure to practices of solidarity, accessibility, and welcome. It invites us to ask not, “How do we fix people?” but “How do we remove the barriers that prevent people from flourishing?”
The invitation of Jesus—“Stretch out your hand”—is not only for the man in the story. It is an invitation to each of us and to our diocese. Jesus invites us: stretch out your hand. Stretch out your compassion. Stretch out your imagination. Stretch out your welcome. Healing, in the way of Jesus, is not about returning to “normal.” It is about revealing God’s justice—a justice that centres the marginalized, restores belonging, and refuses to let anyone remain unseen.
Holding Things and Letting Go