Bring Out A Blind And Deaf People! (Isaiah 43:8-15) Series

My daughter is wrapping up a in interesting class right now on how to be an effective teacher for students with special needs. There are students who are disruptive. There are kids who struggle to focus, and learn. There are also kids who have disabilities, of one type or another. With these kids, teachers, the administration, and the parents need to work together to figure out what the students with disabilities can and can't do. And the goal is to include them with other students in as much as possible. Most of those students can't do pre-calc, or physics, but they can be a part of music classes, or PE. Teachers need to work with parents, and administration, and figure out what they can and can't do, and set them up to do as much as possible.

I've caught just bits and pieces of this from proofreading her papers, but I've found her class really helpful in a couple ways. First, you never say, "disabled people." You say, "people with disabilities." That sounds like word games, maybe. But a disability doesn't define you. You're a person, who has that thing. The second thing I found helpful, was just realizing how hard people work in the school system to include people with disabilities, as much as possible. The things they can do, we should make sure that they can do. And the things they can't do-- it is what is.

Our passage today is about people with disabilities, sort of. Yahweh is talking about a people who are blind and deaf. I've known blind people, and I've known nearly deaf people. If you have one disability, or the other, life is hard, and you need help. There are things you can and can't do. But if you have both, life is mostly about what you can't do. If a student is blind and deaf, a teacher will find that there's not much she can do without working one on one, and without a lot of extra training.

I say all of this as an introduction here, for two reasons. The first, is I find myself nervous talking about disabilities like I'm going to, just because of my daughter's class. And I just want to make it clear that I'm trying very hard to be sensitive to all of this.

The second, is that it's helpful to keep in mind from the start that every disability keeps from people from living a typical human life. There are things that people with disabilities can and can't do. And that's a key idea for today's passage.

The one last thing I want to say before diving in, is that this is the type of passage where it's easiest to understand it, if we pretend to be the original audience, and don't worry so much about ourselves for quite a while. So I'd just encourage you to put on your sandals and tunics, and imagine yourselves to be God's people, stuck in Babylonian exile.

Let's start by reading just Isaiah 43:8:

(8) Bring out a blind people, [Isaiah 42:16]

while eyes, they have,

and deaf,

while ears belong to them.

Our prophet opens this little section by a call, to some group (probably the divine council, but it's perhaps best to not make too much of that here), to bring out a blind and deaf people. Now, when we, God's exiled people in Babylon, hear this, we find ourselves thinking that the prophet is talking about us. Let's flip back to Isaiah 42:18-20, and remind ourselves how "we" have been talked about (NRSV updated no reason):

18 Listen, you who are deaf,

and you who are blind, look up and see!

19 Who is blind but my servant

or deaf like my messenger whom I send?

Who is blind like my dedicated one

or blind like the servant of the LORD?

20 He sees many things, but he does[c] not observe them;

his ears are open, but he does not hear.

So we've already heard that we are blind, even though we have eyes, and technically see things. And we are deaf, even though we have ears, and our ears are open. So when we hear this new prophetic word, back in 43:8, we probably find ourselves feeling a little attacked. We are almost certainly being talked about, but the way God describes us isn't how we want to see ourselves. At the same time, we can't be quite sure who this group is. It's open at this point, and that openness helps us to keep an open mind. Who is this group? What does God want with them?

So God calls out for the blind and deaf group of people to be brought out. And the reason they need to be brought out, instead of just drawing near, is because people who are blind and deaf-- people who have both disabilities-- are going to need a lot of help. They can't see where they are going, right? And they can't hear, to come toward a voice, or take directions. People can overcome blindness or deafness, but the combo is rough. We find ourselves thinking about Helen Keller.