The Disabled God - Rev. Daniel Hayward - April 12, 2026

The congregation celebrates Eastertide with joy, baptism, and a reminder that the resurrection shapes everyday life. The living Christ who was dead and now lives appears to the followers, turns tears to joy, and turns fear to courage. Baptism takes center stage as water becomes a sign of new life, welcome into the covenanted community, and initiation into the one body of Christ. The creed anchors these rites: God creates, reconciles in Jesus, works by the Spirit, calls the church to justice, and accompanies humanity in life and beyond.

Attention to the physical body threads the morning together. The risen Jesus shows his hands and side—wounds that confirm continuity with the crucified one and announce a transformed, embodied life. The gospel rejects ghostly or zombified accounts; the resurrected body speaks, eats, and welcomes touch, demonstrating that new life remains fully human even as it takes on new capacities. That same emphasis reframes disability: the risen body bears scars, and if God in Christ is embodied with wounds, then disability does not mark lesser worth or divine punishment. Instead, the wounded and disabled body becomes a decisive theological statement that God is present in human weakness and that brokenness belongs within the divine economy of redemption.

This conviction demands concrete change. If God embraces a disabled body, the church must dismantle barriers, revise symbols and practices that exclude, and affirm the full personhood of people with visible and invisible disabilities. The resurrection thereby offers practical hope: the promise of dignity, justice, and community for disabled people and their caregivers, and a challenge to resist cultural assumptions that equate perfection with value. The liturgy, baptismal promises, and communal welcome model a life formed by grace—one that calls the gathered to nurture, protect, and include every image-bearer.

Prayers, offerings, and final blessings send the congregation into daily life with the Easter charge: proclaim the risen Christ, live with respect for creation, love and serve others, and work for justice. The risen, wounded Christ remains the source of hope and the standard for a church that seeks to embody resurrection for all people.

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Key Takeaways

• 1. Resurrection turns fear into courage The resurrection meets grief and locked doors with presence that transforms emotional and spiritual paralysis into boldness for life. This change does not erase past fear but reorients it toward hope and action, trusting that the living Christ accompanies those who struggle. The renewed courage calls people to testify, serve, and worship without being driven by dread. [15:00]
• 2. Baptism inaugurates covenanted new life Baptism uses ordinary water to mark an extraordinary belonging: entry into the communal body of Christ and the ongoing life of the covenant. It signals both personal welcome and corporate responsibility—parents, godparents, and the whole community pledge to nurture faith and resist evil. As initiation, it ties individual identity to a communal vocation of justice and care. [23:41]
• 3. The risen body bears wounds The resurrected Jesus displays crucifixion marks to show continuity with the suffering servant and to affirm that new life does not erase suffering. Those wounds redefine holiness: the divine embrace includes scars rather than insisting on unblemished perfection. This image reshapes theology toward a gospel that sanctifies embodied vulnerability instead of ignoring it. [48:31]
• 4. God is a disabled God If the Word became flesh and the risen body remains marked by impairment, then God is present in disabledness rather than absent from it. This truth dismantles theological narratives that link disability to sin or divine punishment and insists that exclusion of disabled people is an affront to God. The church must therefore reform practices, worship, and structures to honor the full humanity of disabled persons and to live out resurrection hope concretely. [51:12]

Youtube Chapters

• [00:00] - Welcome
• [14:08] - Eastertide and Resurrection
• [15:00] - Risen Christ Meets the Community
• [21:06] - Creed and Corporate Belief
• [23:17] - Baptism: Meaning and Practice
• [30:25] - Baptismal Rites and Declarations
• [41:33] - Post-Easter Reflection
• [45:14] - Quasimodo Sunday and the Body
• [48:31] - Risen Body and Its Wounds
• [51:12] - A Disabled God and Implications
• [68:02] - Offering, Prayer, and Benediction
• [76:28] - Final Blessing and Send-Off

Bible reading: John 20:19-29 (NIV)
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Observation questions

1. What was the emotional state of the disciples when Jesus first appeared to them, and what was the first thing Jesus showed them?
2. What specific evidence did Thomas require to believe Jesus was alive?
3. How did Jesus respond to Thomas’s request for proof?

Interpretation questions

1. Jesus shows his wounds to prove his identity and continuity with the crucified man. What does it mean for our understanding of resurrection that Jesus’s new, transformed body still bears these scars?
2. The text says the disciples were together "with the doors locked for fear." How does Jesus’s appearance directly speak to and transform their fear into courage and mission?
3. Thomas is often labeled a doubter, but his declaration, “My Lord and my God!” is the most profound statement of faith in John’s Gospel. How might his story challenge our negative perceptions of doubt and questioning?

Application questions

1. The risen Christ meets us at the tomb and turns our tears to joy. Christ comes through our locked doors and turns our fear to courage [15:00]. What is a "locked door" of fear in your life right now that needs the peace and presence of the risen Christ?
2. Baptism signifies our rebirth in faith and our initiation into the one body of Christ [23:59]. As a member of this body, what is one practical way you can help "nurture, sustain, and transform" the faith of someone newer or younger in the faith?
3. The resurrected body of Jesus still bears the wounds of crucifixion [48:31]. If God in Christ chooses to be identified with a body that has scars and impairments, how should this truth change the way we view our own physical or emotional scars, or the disabilities of others?
4. The idea that God is a disabled God [51:12] is a powerful challenge to cultural assumptions that equate perfection with value. Where have you seen or perhaps even held the belief that a person's worth is tied to their physical or mental ability? How can you actively work to dismantle that belief in your own thinking and in your community?
5. The church is called to be the continuation of the risen body of Jesus [46:09]. If the body of Christ is meant to be a place of welcome and belonging for all, what is one barrier—physical, attitudinal, or practical—that might make it difficult for a person with a disability to feel fully included in our community? What is one small step we can take to begin removing that barrier?
6. The resurrection offers practical hope for dignity, justice, and community [54:03]. Who is one person in your life—a caregiver or someone with a disability—who needs to hear this message of hope and dignity today? How can you tangibly share that hope with them this week?