Recently I attended a presentation about neurodiversity and the church by Rev. Sarah Griffith Lund. She’s a pastor in the United Church of Christ and also serves on the national staff of the UCC as the Minister for Disabilities and Mental Health Justice. In her book Blessed Minds Lund explains that ‘neurodiversity’ is a ‘big tent’ word that more and more people seem to appreciate using to describe their experiences. 1 She writes about the neurodiversity in her family: “Between my husband and me, in multiple generations … we have bipolar disorder, depression, complex PTSD, anxiety, Autism, ADHD, stuttering, and addiction. She says, “I know what it is like to wear a mask to church and pretend everything is fine, covering up my own difficulties, differences and pain…” And she asks all to consider, “Is the church a safe place when it comes to taking off the mask and letting your neurodiversity show? Or do people in your church feel social pressure to mask and pass for ‘normal’ whatever that is? In what ways?” 2
I want to be up front that I don’t identify as neurodivergent, and that there are aspects of the experiences of others who do that I will never fully understand. I have been doing a great deal of reading and learning lately, though. I’ve come to understanding “masking” as putting on an act that mimics neurotypical norms. An autistic person who is masking, for example, might make eye contact and engage in small talk even though it is uncomfortable. They might become exhausted by the constant overstimulation of their senses by noises, lights, smells, food textures, or the feeling of clothing. They might refrain from doing the things that could help them cope with these experiences because others find their repetitive sounds or movements weird or even threatening. Masking is exhausting and dehumanizing; it keeps a person from being fully themselves and it gets in the way of them making genuine connections with others. When people are forced to mask, we all experience a loss. On the other hand, when we allow each other to unmask, we all receive gifts. We can embrace many ways to do things, and many versions of a meaningful life.
Today’s parable about the rich man and the overseer is a head scratcher. No matter what angle you read it from, there are aspects of it that are puzzling. It’s possible there’s just something wrong with the story, that scribes made a major error somewhere down the line. To me, though, it really sounds like a Jesus original. Because, frankly, all of Jesus’ parables are challenging. They all force us to examine our assumptions. And they all resist neat and tidy interpretations.
The story makes a bit more sense if we remember that in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus clearly views the accumulation of wealth as unjust. Biblical scholar Barbara Rossing offers some illuminating historical context: “Rich landlords and rulers (of Jesus’ time) were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law. […] Jesus’ hearers would know that the debt contracts included exorbitant interest hidden from illiterate peasants. Today, analogies may be high-interest student loans, predatory pay-day loans, or harsh austerity measures imposed on countries whose citizens had no role in agreeing to a debt.” 3
So maybe the point of this story is that everyone was trapped in a corrupt system—the overseer, his boss, and the poor peasants they exploited. Nobody can do the “right” thing in a simple clean way within an economic system such as this one. When the overseer reduced the debts, he did it not out of compassion, but to save his own skin. Was that wrong? Was that right? It was a “crafty” move, one that forced the rich man to make a pivotal decision. Those who had received debt relief assumed it was with the boss’ approval. Was he going to reinstate the debt or would he play along and take advantage of the social capitol he gained from showing kindness? The end result of the overseer’s scheme was that everyone involved had more friends, more good will and more happiness.
Perhaps Jesus told this parable as a way of critiquing the very act of “possessing”. In so many places in Luke’s Gospel, he called his disciples to give away their possessions. I don’t think he intended them to be destitute. I think he wanted his community to resist the lure of ownership and accumulation, and instead to share with each other and depend on each other. In Jesus’ mind, to be “wise in the ways of the world” and “trusted with possessions” meant to boldly and creatively intervene to transform a system that was hurting everyone. This is what the crafty overseer and his boss collaborated to do, even if they did it unintentionally and for the wrong reasons. This reading is reinforced in the First Nations Version, given that the indigenous worldview sees land as a collective resource and rejects the accumulation of wealth. That’s what I hear in these lines: “use the possessions of this world to help others in need, who will become your friends. Then when possessions run out these new friends of Creator’s good road will always welcome you into their homes.” And, “You cannot be loyal to the Great Provider and to possessions at the same time.”
In Unmasking For Life, psychologist and writer Dr. Devon Price points out that our capitalistic system defines a meaningful life according to neurotypical norms, and that being neurodivergent often has economic consequences. He says, “Autistic self-discovery can be a kind of rebirth. When each of us learns that we are not ‘broken,’ just disabled, an entire new way of life opens up before us. [… We realize that] we don’t have to aspire to be high achieving to somehow ‘make up’ for our disabilities. We aren’t failures if we require regular support in order to stay housed, fed, bathed, and healthy. […] We aren’t cursing disappointments to our parents if we never want to be married, have kids, or get rich. We can live with our friends, subsist on the handful of ‘safe’ foods that we love, hold down part-time jobs while devoting our real energy to our hobbies, cry openly when we’re hurting and go to sleep in a race car bed the whole rest of our days if we want.” He concludes, “Neuroconformity is imprisoning—but unmasking is for everyone.” 4
In his parable Jesus calls us to take up the challenge of finding crafty ways to intervene in the unjust systems that oppress us all. He urges us to be deeply skeptical of simple binaries. Our perceptions of right and wrong, good and bad are themselves culturally conditioned. It’s easy to be lulled into making moral judgements based on what we perceive to be “normal” or “abnormal” rather than a deeper compass. And we must engage in what philosophers call “situational ethics” All of our choices must be made in real life, in the practical circumstances in which we find ourselves, not in some idealized vacuum.
At our most recent board meeting, we adopted a new mission statement for First Church. These few words will help us stay focused on our purpose in this particular time and place and they will allow us to communicate clearly and succinctly about who we are. You heard it at the beginning of the service. “Cultivating a community for all to belong, rooted in Jesus’ way of love and justice.” An important part of cultivating belonging is allow one another to safely unmask, that is, to actively resist the rules of a society that is trying to force us all to be the same, and to do things in only one way. Jesus calls us to question our obedience to the systems that rule our world and define what is a good and meaningful life. He wants us to interrupt the status quo of possessing in order to form a community of mutual support in which we can all share in the gifts of the Great Provider.
Amen.
1 p. 18
2 p. 6
3 Commentary on Luke 16:1-13
4 pp. xxi–xxii