Mennonite Weekly Review

Dave Gullman is pastor for Pleasant View Inc., a wonderful organization in the Harrisonburg, Va., area (started by Virginia Mennonite Conference) supporting people with disabilities. He recently shared a story of a “sermon” “preached” by one of the people he pastors, who has Down syndrome.

Melodie Davis writes for Mennonite Media in Harrisonburg, Va.

Many of the people connected with Pleasant View attend their own congregations each week, but one Friday evening a month they gather for their own “Faith and Light” service where they help lead worship services with Gullman as pastor.

The participants enjoy performing dramatic re-enactments of Bible stories. On one Friday evening, John, a man with Down syndrome, played the part of the younger, “prodigal” son (from Luke 15) who asks for an early inheritance from his father and then proceeds to “live it up” with prostitutes, alcohol and the like.

Gullman, as pastor, narrated the story. He said that shortly after the re-enactment began, “The story began to take on a life of its own.”

John, as the prodigal son, proceeded to dole out his inheritance to many of the worshipers gathered that evening and shared his root beer with worshipers. The narrator gently put an end to that to get on with the story.

As the story goes, the prodigal son realizes his mistakes and asks his father for forgiveness. His father welcomes him home and throws him a lavish party. The older son, who has faithfully worked for his father while the younger son is blowing his inheritance, becomes angry and stays outside of the party room.

Gullman intended for the drama to stop then, and he would speak briefly about the lessons learned from the story.

But John, playing the prodigal son, was not done. As Gullman retells it: “He sees his older brother on the outside of the circle and goes to him and acts out words of love and reconciliation.” He urged the older brother back into the circle of the party.

Gullman worried that things were getting a little chaotic that night “until I saw that John had understood the deeper reason for Jesus to tell this story: the younger son, in John’s interpretation, takes what he has learned from the father and extends that same love to the older brother.”

He concluded, “Once again, someone with a disability, when given the chance, has ‘preached’ the message of the night.”