Imagine for a moment if the church stopped wearing the lenses of ableism, ​​discrimination that favors able-bodied people.

Have you ever considered how our resurrected Christ was still a wounded one – a disabled one, even? Jesus may have risen from the dead – Alleluia! – but he was not without his wounds and scars. 

“Behold My hands and My feet – It is really me!” Jesus says to his disciples when he first appeared to them on that very first Easter.

Our guest today is Dr. Amy Kenny, who says that much of the church has forgotten that we worship a disabled God whose wounds survived resurrection.

Dr. Kenny is a disabled scholar and a Shakespeare Lecturer whose research focuses on medical and bodily themes in literature. Amy is a scribe for Freedom Road Institute for Leadership and Justice; serves on the mayor’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Taskforce in California; coordinates support for people experiencing homelessness in her neighborhood; and is launching Jubilee Homes OC, a permanent supportive housing initiative in her local community. Her forthcoming book, My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church, shows that the church is missing out on the prophetic witness and blessing of disability – and until we cultivate church spaces where people with disabilities can fully belong, flourish, and lead, we are not valuing the diverse members of the body of Christ.

Here is my conversation with Dr. Amy Kenny.

[Full transcript coming soon.]

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

A Blessing:

I would like to bless all those whose bodies have been minimized, politicized, sexualiz​​ed, objectified, and criminalized.

May each of us learn to find peace in our bodies, our bodies that bear God’s image, in our bodies that were made good.

May we practice kindness toward these bodies we have been given, and may we practice kindness towards the bodies of one another.