Third Sunday of Advent
Scripture Reading for Today:
Before the Break of Day
by Ty Ragan, Psy.D.
When the messengers left, Creator Sets Free (Jesus) spoke to the people about Gift of Goodwill (John):
“What were you looking for in the desert wilderness? A frail reed blowing in the wind? 8 Did you see a man in soft clothes? Behold, the ones who wear soft clothes live soft lives. 9 Were you looking for a true prophet? Yes! He is a true prophet but also much more!”
Matthew 11:7-9 (First Nations Version New Testament)
What is a true prophet? The frail reed is the religious system of oppression (amongst others) of Creator Sets Free Day. This is Jesus pointing out the failings of a system of life that created barriers to community, barriers to being viewed as a full person, worthwhile in life. He points out that these things are happening not because cure is the only way to be included in life and have value. Rather, a challenging of the visceral and violent system of segregation for those with disabilities. That their lives illustrate the created image of God. Even with the high esteem his cousin John is held in, these are the folks that matter the most (essentially, the person has value for being a person, not due to status).
John’s life had illustrated something we can miss in advocacy; it aided in platforming through his own privilege of his religious community (Essenes) and, being the son of a Temple attendant. John was able to point towards Jesus, who would be viewed in a more non-personhood light due to his own family origin story. I ponder what internalized bias John had to overcome to speak so powerfully, and how it impacted others to see Jesus.
I ponder these words in the intersections of my own life, the different labels we use to differentiate, to other, to remove from value. As a Dad, this is the work of life I journey with a son with medical complexities, I have seen the systems of oppression when those designed to affirm, uplift and cure fail him.
In the summer of 2022, he entered a 28-day hospitalization where we almost lost him. For anyone who has travelled the Epilepsy life, knows of the fear of SUDEP (sudden death due to Epilepsy). During this time, my spouse had to be a constant advocate that no, his baseline was not tubes and lying in bed barely responsive. His baseline was a lively and loving person. On reflection with female presenting doctors, it sounded and looked like internalized misogyny that they would not hear the words of Mumma Bear. As she would spend days, I would work full-time and come to provide respite and spend nights. Then the dark call came, the feeding tube via his nose had become dislodged (these are placed by feel by the clinician to go through the nose, down the throat and to the stomach). They couldn’t get it back in due to his scoliosis, so the established system’s decision was simply not to insert the tube for nutrients and his anti-epileptic medication.
This was the phone call I received on campus, as I left my class to head to the hospital. My son’s medical team had deemed his worth to be okay with starvation and lack of medical care. Back and forth with medical teams throwing up their hands, pointing to their expertise and credentials as nothing could be done, as they would retraumatize the passageway of the tube with no success. Ableism, like Jesus’ actions disrupted 2,000 years ago, once more rearing their head in the journey of a young life battling for—life.
Day would become evening, evening would become night. The medical attendants would shush the students with their suggestions of using x-rays to guide the tube for success, as being inexperienced and not knowing they were of the wrong pedigree.
Sound familiar in what was echoed about Jesus, that his cousin John would point towards him in spite of this signal of society. In the dark still of the night, pushing the nursing staff for my son’s life, knowing the longer without medication and sustenance, the more stress on his already battered system. A doctor finally coming in, shocked when they do the pity inquiry of it’s hard to be met with a John moment of my own, “so is it because he’s disabled or Metis that you’re okay if you kill my son?”
They fled the room.
Silence. That still eerie feeling of the liminal space.
A bureaucrat comes in. Patronized with sympathy like pity and faux empathy that the groups Jesus named were also patronized with. The reaffirmation there is nothing that can be done. Patronizing is the worst part, it’s hard being a Daddy.
“Bull shit. I am a Dad, and you will address me as Dr. Ragan. The student pointed out the way to do this. You and your experts refused to listen.”
Silence.
Not a rampant rage, the seething fire that they could see in my eyes, that this was not a winnable, pacifiable space.
Platforming through the ingrained misogyny, through the ingrained status hierarchy. The one thing they were not expecting was because of how I dressed, how I presented, how we were as a family, with our interests. Privilege. Presenting as a white-cis-gendered-male, and now the label that shook the system and showed allyship to the student, the innovator. The only one in the conversation who authentically saw my son as a person and how to help.
What gives the hopeful presence of Jesus?
An overnight team, finally, listening. A moment with a student, surprised to be heard and affirmed in their knowledge application. A technician firing up a machine. A tube bringing blessed nutrients and medications for the fight for life.
Allyship.
This is the light in the darkness of Advent. As we ponder these words of Matthew, one must ask, how are you called to break a systemic injustice today so that a full person can be seen, heard, known—and live? For that is the true prophetic voice and living into the example of John for us today.
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