All Saints Anglican ~ Invercargill

DISABILITY AWARENESS  SUNDAY                                                                    20^th June 2010

 A MESSAGE FROM A STROKE VICTIM

The Revd Dr Laurie Barber.

                   I am a stroke victim! In the twinkling of an eye I lost my ability to speak, the power of my right hand, and I was disorientated for months.  Recovery was slow, but medical expertise, speech therapy, and above all the painstaking devotion of my wife, sped my recovery.

I will never be the man I was! I look back with longing at the now distant days when I was an acclaimed public speaker, confident author, and master of repartee. But I have much to thank God for! I am alive! I can again talk, however slowly to those who care to listen.  I can still write. And I can be of vicarious use to others. I have found that self pity is an useless exercise!

Sometime, after the Christmas following my stroke, I was “struck” (the word is chosen with care) by a Gospel reading about Zechariah’s experience in the Jerusalem  Temple – before the birth of his son – John the Baptist. (You can read the happening again in Luke, chapter 1.)

While in the Temple Zechariah was suddenly struck dumb and the people outside the Holy of Holies became alarmed at his long absence inside. Of course, they did not know what was going on.

I think that the so called “Act of God” within the Temple was a stroke. He was without voice and disorientated until shocked out of it by a family row about the naming of his son. Then, and only then, was he able to explode, “His name is JOHN!!”

Meditating on the Zechariah story I began to reflect on the conjunction of frustration  and eagerness that is the burden of every stroke victim.

1.    The UNEXEPECTNESS of strokes (usually out of the blue) is shocking for victim and family.  In my personal experience, only two weeks before my stroke my GP pronounced me in excellent health, going so far as to say, “I wish I was as healthy as you!”

2.   The usual response, when coherence returns, to complain, “WHY ME?” Thoughtful stroke victims after a while turn this around to “why NOT me?” What should I be immune from the chances of life?

3.  Stroke victims ARE IMPATIENT, FRUSTRATED, PRONE TO ANGER, AND ARE SOMETIMES DEPRESSED. (I am! Ask my wife!)

I wonder how Zechariah felt?

Was he impatient with a family who argued about the naming          of his son?

Was he frustrated at his inability to put them right?  

 Was he depressed by his reduction in status? (An impaired priest was not allowed to serve in the Temple)

I wonder if he, too, found that some people forget that stroke victims are not stupid, merely impaired? Not stupid, just handicapped! Their minds may be alert,  but their handicap is their control of word formulation. The words may sometimes emerge disjointed, broken, slow, and unclear.  Be patient!!

 Now comes the conclusion of this brief sermon:

Our Lord Jesus Christ had to do with neglected and ailing humans — with lepers, the dumb, the deaf, the depressed, the outcastes — even with Simon Peter’s mother-in- law!

On this Disability Sunday our Lord reminds his Church  that those “struck”  by what is wrongfully called “an act of God” are deserving of Christian care and encouragement.

Let them be:

 ACCEPTED as gifted members of the Body of Christ.

 RECOGNISED as co-workers in the building of the Kingdom of God.

AND BE GREETED AS CO-EQUALS — IN THE FRATERNITY OF MISFITS THAT ARE CHRIST’S REDEEMED– HIS CHURCH !!.

 AMEN