Bible reading with people with disabilities

What is it about?

In 2016, I took part in a major gathering entitled “Avec un handicap: passionément vivant1” at the pilgrimage-site of Lourdes, France. After having read the story of blind Bartimaeus in one of our discussion-groups, I asked the participants: “How would you respond if Jesus were to ask you: ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” Some of the participants were visually impaired. As such, I somewhat naïvely expected their answers to reflect said impairment: “I’d ask him to rid me of my blindness.” You can imagine my surprise, then, when the responses of the blind people in our group were eventually expressed: “I’d ask for a job. I’d ask for a girlfriend. I’d want him to help me find a flat.” Not a single participant asked to be able to see. This is not to deny that some people with a disability may well have a burning desire to see their disability disappear. Experience has taught me, however, that this desire should not be generalized. Hence the importance of Jesus’ question: “What do you want me to do for you?” Unlike me, Jesus doesn’t presume to know the answer. Nonetheless, in our group at Lourdes, we were all a little surprised by Bartimaeus’s answer— asking to “regain his sight”—and we wondered if we had correctly understood the blind man’s request. Our puzzlement triggered a process of re-reading the biblical text, the main points of which I will outline here.

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Photo by Luiza Giannelli on Unsplash

Photo by Luiza Giannelli on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is important to suggest different ways of reading the Bible when it comes to healing stories.