It might be that I’m exhausted, it might be that things are really busy but as I sit and write and rewrite this understand I’m not entirely sure how to address what I feel we need to talk about. I’ll start out by telling you about one of my best friends in Seminary and how he had a profound influence on me as a minister. There have been a lot of people like him who have shaped who I am as a minister and who I am as a person. It’s likely that most of us have those people, who have helped to develop us and our faith to where it is, and where it is going. I can’t say that I would or would not be in ministry without his influence but I can say that I wouldn’t be who and what I am without him.
His name is Rob. Rob was perhaps one of the most well known and liked men in Holland, Michigan. He was so well known that it became common for him when we were together to have to ask who someone was because he had no clue who they were. It truly felt like myself and others were the entourage of a celebrity. He was without a doubt one of the kindest and most loving people that God has ever created. Although he might have struggled with you if you were a michigan state or ohino state fan (PS those aren’t misspellings, I’m just honoring him) You see when he was born he had heart issues and bore the scars of the surgery he needed at University of Michigan Medical Center.
But there were and are people who look at Rob and don’t see the loving caring man he is. There are those who see him and think of him as something else something other. I remember one interaction when we were hanging out and a fellow seminarian approached me about hanging out with him at a bar. FYI, Rob only drank one kind of beer, Root Beer. The seminarian questioned whether he should be with us because…… and that is where the other student paused. He wanted to say something but thankfully he checked himself. You see Rob has Down Syndrome.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t live on his own, have relationships, have girlfriends. It simply means that he has a disability. It doesn’t mean that he is anything other than a child of God who created him. It was Rob who asked me once while we were on a walk, about what the full implications were for us because Christ died on the cross for us. He didn’t want the Sunday School easy answer he wanted depth and substance in my answer. I think because of that question and my answer we walked about five miles that day.
Now I could write to this about how wonderful he is and everything else but I want to talk about those who would use otherness on him. Those who would use a six letter word that sadly has not gone away. You could call him out for being too much of a Michigan fan, or that he needed to take less time getting ready or whatnot. But never use the R word to describe him. When we other one another, and use labels and titles to disparage and denigrate one another we dismiss the person. That doesn’t mean we can’t disagree or dislike. What it means is that we shouldn’t use terminology that others.
You might not like the politics of someone. You might disagree with them. But take the person for who and what they are. I don’t care if you are democrat or republican, because you are a Child of God. The more we can embrace and help one another to embrace that the better our world will be. None of this will fix everything in the world. But it will bring a measure of the light of Christ into it. May we all embrace those around us as Children of God even when we disagree with them. May we also embrace the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ as we seek to help the world to be better. Amen.