March 21, 2002

“What’s Your Handicap?”

Funeral for Bill Andersen

I missed the Ecumenical Lenten Service last Wednesday. I had a cold and just didn’t feel like going out. The next morning I was in the office. The secretary’s daughter was sick so I was alone in my office with the door closed. I was talking on the phone for about half an hour to another pastor. It was one of those pastor conversations that dwells too much on problems, conflicts, irritations, debates, disputes, arguments, the things St. Paul warned us not to get into. When I hung up I was feeling pretty irritated. I was thinking, “People are just no good. All they want to do is make trouble.”

I opened the door and there was Bill Andersen asleep in the chair. He had fallen asleep waiting to see me. I woke him to find out what he wanted. I was afraid he needed a ride somewhere and I had too many things to do already. He had a little bag in his hands.

He woke, stood up unsteadily, and asked how I was feeling. I told him I was much better. Then he pulled out of the bag a beautiful card with a cross of nails on it. He handed it to me and I saw that it had a magnet on the back. I read the poem on it. It was very moving. Then he gave me a little bag of cookies and explained that you handed these out on Wednesday night. He wanted to be sure I got my cross and my cookies.

When Bill died on Monday, it was from internal bleeding resulting from the cancer he had been fighting for over 2 years. The nurse said the bleeding didn’t just begin on Sunday. It had been going on for some time. You see what this means? When Bill came to my office on Thursday he was probably already beginning to lose his strength, yet he made the trip from his house to give me my cross. There I was strong and healthy complaining about stupid little things, and there was Bill three days away from dying and worrying about how I was feeling.

I’m going to take that cross to the jeweler and have it put on a chain so I can wear it. I have several crosses I have collected over the years from different places. One I bought at the National Cathedral in Washington when I was visiting there. One was given to me for graduating from seminary. None of them will ever mean as much to me as this one.

Thanks for the cross.

Bill lived with a handicap. He was deaf all his life. I know it wasn’t easy for him, because I spent a good bit of time with him and Doris. I saw other people’s reactions. They treated him as though he was crazy, or dangerous, or just to “weird” to bother with. Of the people who really knew Bill, I don’t know any who didn’t love him. But strangers passing hear him in the store looked as though they were afraid of him and wanted to get away.

There are two definitions of “handicap” that are popular in our world. One comes from golf. The other comes from society in general.

In golf, to have a handicap means that the other golfers are saying, “We see that you’re not quite as good at the game as the average person, so we’re going to give you an advantage. We’ll take a few strokes off your game so you can compete on a level playing field with other golfers who are more experienced. As you improve, we’ll reduce your handicap until you don’t need it any more. Meanwhile, come out on the course and enjoy the game with the rest of us.” Isn’t that nice!

Then there’s the world’s definition of handicap. This says, “We see that you are deformed and so we don’t expect you to be able to compete with “normal” people. You will fall behind, be treated like a freak, and will have to settle for a considerably lower standard of living than the rest of us.”

I don’t know about you but I sure like the golf definition of handicap better than the world’s definition.

In fact, there is one handicap that we all have. It isn’t a physical handicap, nor is it a mental or emotional handicap. It is a spiritual handicap. It’s called SIN. That’s right. Whether you know it or not, every human being in the world is handicapped. Unfortunately, many people don’t know that they have this handicap of sin. That’s because it is so universal. Since everyone has it, and every person you see every day is affected by it, we learn not to see it. It becomes “normal” for us.

Now, in the case of physical or mental handicaps, that would be a good thing. In fact, that would be a wonderful thing. Like if a deaf person lived in a whole community of deaf people, he would eventually lose the feeling of being handicapped, since his whole environment was set up to deal with deafness.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if the whole world could be that way for handicapped people? If they could live their lives completely free of ever feeling odd, or inadequate, or unable to live life as fully as anyone else. If they could go about their business without anyone looking at them like they were from some other planet, or getting angry and impatient because they took a little longer to communicate, or to negotiate a stairway, or to get in and out of the bathroom. Wouldn’t that be a better world for all of us?

But when it comes to our spiritual handicap, sin, it is very dangerous to become blind to it. It will dominate and destroy our lives all the more if it is not recognized. The handicap of sin is quite unlike any other kind of handicap. It destroys our relationship with God, and our relationships with each other, a fact which is spelled out at some length in the Catechism in the back of our Prayer Book. You should read it some time.

So, this is the curious situation we live with. The physical and mental and emotional handicaps that a few people struggle with are the ones we should be most willing to overlook, and yet they are the ones that people react to in the most cruel way. Meanwhile, the spiritual handicap of sin that everyone has and that we need to be most aware of and most cautious about is the one that we completely ignore. Go figure!

The good news is that there is a cure for our spiritual handicap, and it is available to everyone, regardless of your physical ability, regardless of your mental quickness, regardless of what kind of medical insurance plan you have. The cure is not a therapy or a medicine, but a Person. The cure for sin is Jesus. Jesus gave His life to set us free from the curse, the punishment, and the spiritual deformity of sin. Bill Andersen knew that. And although he may be called handicapped in the physical sense, spiritually Bill was one of the healthiest, most truly “normal” people I have ever known.

This community is going to be worse off because Bill isn’t here any more. He preached the Gospel as well as anyone I’ve ever known. He preached it by the way he lived. His giving, caring spirit was a testimony to Jesus living in him. The rest of us will just have to take up where Bill left off.

If you haven’t invited Jesus into your life to work this kind of life in you, you still have time to do that. I can’t think of a better tribute to Bill than for those who knew him to follow his lead, follow Jesus.