I'm currently writing a kind of spiritual memoir. Not sure if I'll finish it or even publish it. But this felt like a section worth sharing here. For context, starting at age 10 I was involved with the audio visual crew at the large Baptist church where I grew up. I ran sound boards and other such equipment. This story comes out of that work. —Charles

One of the major events of our year was “the Singing Cross.” So, like several Baptist churches of a certain size, we had a Christmastime play and choral performance known as the “Singing Christmas Tree” which involved the choir dressing up in like colonial-era costumes, positioning themselves inside an enormous multi-story Christmas tree built on the stage area of the church, singing various Christmas carols and hymns while actors (church volunteers) re-enacted the Nativity story. As far as I know, the First Baptist Church of Pine Hills was the only church to apply this same concept to an Easter-time performance that featured a set of wooden risers built into an enormous cross that dominated the stage. Flanking it on either side were sets built to look like an ancient Middle-Eastern town and house interior on one side and the tomb and Calvary of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial on the other.

It was very elaborate. And a tad corny. The choir would wear former bed-sheets turned into Biblical costume, singing medleys and hymns while actors (church volunteers) performed a Passion Play. While the roles of Jesus and Pilate and Mary Magdalene were generally fixed (because the latter two were singing parts, but Jesus was played by a guy who happened to look a lot like the Caucasian images of Jesus one sees; he was one of the only people allowed to have a beard in our church), the other roles were sought after. I kind of always wanted to be one of the performers (I liked the Roman soldier costumes), but because I was one of the “Sound Guys” I always had backstage duty.

When I was around 17, I had been given a bit of a promotion for this performance: I was to be in charge of lighting. The cross itself was trimmed in rope lights and there were lights for the various sets on the stage. My job was to be positioned underneath the cross and run a box. I’d wear a headset and Ed would call out my cues and I’d hit the requisite switches to adjust the lights according to what was happening.

The area under the cross was cozy. It looked like the area underneath bleachers or an unfinished basement with wooden beams all around. Above me were the stepped platforms that our 100-member choir would be occupying during the performance. The wood would creak and crack from the weight, the same sounds as if someone is working on your roof. I had a little puka at the transept area of the cross where I would sit. I pretended that I was in a space ship, receiving commands from mission control in my headset. We had a week of rehearsals and I got very comfortable in my little capsule, the cues becoming second nature.

Day of the first performance I bring my mom backstage to show her everything and to show her where I’d be stationed. My mother is a bit… let’s say “overprotective.” Since I was an only child she worried and fretted over lots of things. I could tell she was uneasy seeing where I was. Are you safe? was the question in her eyes.

Around that time my friend Eric showed up. He was playing one of the thieves crucified next to Jesus, the one who didn’t have any lines. He was 6’2”, lean, and wearing only a white cloth around his waist. He looked around the underside of the cross and said “I wonder what would happen if this collapsed?” My mom’s eyes widened.

Thanks, Eric.

The show was about to begin. The lights dropped, Eric returned to his area off-stage and my mom joined my grandparents in our usual balcony front-row pew. I tucked into my space, donned my headset, and waited for my cue.

The beginning of the performance left me with little to do. There was some narration and then the choir would be processing in and making their way up and into the cross. Once the lights were set for that section, there was a stretch where I had nothing to do but listen. I began to lay down, which had me going long-wise to the cross, my head underneath the stage-right section. But I worried that I might fall asleep and miss my cues, botching the first night of the performance. So I sat up, leaned forward, and cupped my hands to the headset, listening to the music. I could hear the creaks and cracks of Biblically-dressed bodies ascending the hard wood of the cross.

Then there was a different sound. Deep. I felt shaking.

I opened my eyes and instinctively looked to my right, where I had laid my head moments ago. It was there that I saw a mess of splintered wood and a pile of polyester Bible robes writhing around. One guy was dangling from above, holding on to dear life. Not sure if the whole thing was coming down or not, I threw off my headset and ran out from under the cross, stage-left. The side door was blocked by a plywood representation of the Upper Room. There was a gap between that and the cross. I saw a sea of stunned faces. I was about to head out when I heard my boss Ed’s mantra in my head, the mantra of all stage-hands: You are not to be seen. So I went back toward the cross. But there was no getting through the moaning disoriented mass. I decided that Ed’s words did not apply here and so began to make my way toward the stage.

That’s when I heard it. When everyone heard it. What would become a sort of meme that followed me for years and still makes the occasional appearance when I’m around old church friends.

Sharon had stopped playing the organ by the time I made my way to the stage. She was a consummate professional and had continued playing even as maybe thirty people vanished into a cruciform void before her eyes, as she tried to process the event as it transpired. It so happened that we had a camera trained on her at this moment. We recorded the Singing Cross every year and sold tapes of it. The footage of Sharon playing through disaster lives forever in my mind. But even Sharon knew that the performance was over and quit playing, leaving behind the sheerest silence I have ever heard in my life. Interrupted by a single voice, shrill and panicked.

The voice of my mother.

Most people know me as Charles. In school I was Chuck. But at home, to my grandparents and my mother, I was Chuckie. It was this name, screamed out from some primal maternal space within my mother, a scream that still echoes somewhere in the cosmos, emitted from the corner of Pine Hills Road and Powers Drive, that resonated the cavernous silent space that was the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Pine Hills.

She stretched out the vowels to their auditory conclusions. That night, the name Chuckie both died and was born anew.

I ran to center stage. To my surprise my mother was already making her way there. I thought she had lept off the balcony. She did not. But she did later admit she considered doing so. I reached out for her, she hugged me then grabbed my hand, squeezing it with adrenaline and making me understand those stories of mothers lifting cars to grab infants from underneath them. The only person who made it down as quickly as her was my grandfather. He was “Chuck.” I’m named after him, receiving the diminutive version of my name only as a matter of clarity and convenience in my family.

“Daddy!” my mother said. “I’ve got him.”

I don’t know if this is accurate, but the image I have of my grandfather from this moment is of him standing next to the pile of fallen choir members. He’s using a wide-leg stance and is holding a Bible robed choir member by the back of their collar and the back of their rope belt, chucking them to the side in a manner fitting of his name as he tried to get to what he believed was his grandson buried under the rubble.

My mother yanked me out the side door, sat me down on a curb outside and demanded that I tell her I was okay.

“I’m okay.”

She was shaking and crying. I can’t blame her. I had just been inches from death. The section of the cross that collapsed was maybe two feet next to me. Had I laid down my kids would not be currently arguing about video games in the next room.

Amazingly, no one died. Some broken bones though. 911 was called. The news showed up. They reported that a large “crucifix” had collapsed. This irritated me at the time, but now I wonder if wasn’t accurate in a way. After all, there were bodies on that cross.

The next day I arrived at the church to help salvage what we could. It was there that we learned what caused the collapse. The cross was kept in storage and reused every year, reassembled according to instructions. Someone had put on a brace backward and so drilled a new hole into it to make it fit. This single hole affected the structural integrity enough to cause a collapse, even though it had been fine for all the rehearsals in the days prior.

The church decided that the show must go on. The choir, of course, did not return to the cross. But it remained on stage for the remaining performances. Empty, broken, a string of lights dangling into the chasm on the left-hand side when viewed from the pews. All the result of a single mistake that compounded. This would turn out to be evocative of things to come, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

***

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Jesus #Church #Anglican #Episcopalian #Christian #Baptist #Orlando #Florida

Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, a pretty substantial observance in the Christian world related to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It is observed on March 25 because it is nine months away from Christmas, which underscores its traditional importance: the Feast of the Annunciation is associated with the Incarnation.

One of my acquaintances from seminary once posted on social media that Christmas is not the “Feast of the Incarnation,” rather the Annunciation is. Because, according to tradition, this is the day that Our Lady, Saint Mary, conceived Jesus—the day that He first took on human flesh, incarnate as God in the womb.

I like this reminder for a variety of reasons (not least my own particular “pro-life” leanings that I seldom talk about; the New Wave Feminists are probably the closest articulation to my convictions on this subject, if you must know). What a powerful notion, that God dwelt in the womb of a woman for nine months and some change. This is even more theologically rich when we consider the traditional Jewish belief that a fetus is not its own life while still in the womb, meaning that Mary herself (for a time) actively participated in the Incarnation of God.

However, I have a bit of a nit to pick with all of this: I’m not convinced that the Annunciation is when the Incarnation happened.

The Church has long observed two key feast days related to Our Lady’s pregnancy: the Annunciation and the Feast of the Visitation. The former recounts the time the Archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be the mother of God; the latter is the story of when Mary visited her cousin, Saint Elizabeth (who herself was already pregnant with Saint John the Baptist), and both recognized Mary as the mother of God and the incarnation of God taking place in her womb.

Both stories are recorded in Saint Luke’s gospel. Now, Luke is a very detailed evangelist (that is, gospel writer). Of all the known gospels, his has the most historical detail. The tradition is that he traveled around and interviewed the surviving disciples of Jesus, while also reviewing other written materials (like, perhaps, Saint Mark’s gospel), in order to give a fuller account of the life of Jesus. As a result, Luke’s gospel is the only one that contains an actual birth narrative for Jesus; it’s also the only one that gives us any real details of Saint Mary. Saint Matthew’s gospel focuses a bit on Saint Joseph (Mary’s husband), but the actual birth of Jesus is merely referenced, not told.

This is all to say that Luke has an eye for detail and tries to give us as much detail as he can. All the major events of the life of Jesus have an actual story in Luke’s gospel. If the Annunciation is meant to be the story of Jesus’ conception, it’s an odd way of telling it because it seems to happen “off camera.”

Take a look:

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a city in Galilee, to a virgin who was engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David’s house. The virgin’s name was Mary. When the angel came to her, he said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” She was confused by these words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Mary. God is honoring you. Look! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. He will rule over Jacob’s house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.”

Then Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen since I haven’t had sexual relations with a man?”

The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son. Look, even in her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. This woman who was labeled ‘unable to conceive’ is now six months pregnant. Nothing is impossible for God.”

Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her. (Luke 1:26-38, Common English Bible)

Notice that the language is all in the future-tense. It’s the language of expectation. So, right off the bat we can see that, based solely on the text of the Bible itself, the Annunciation does not capture the when of Jesus’ conception.

The next thing to happen in the story is that Mary up and leaves to see Elizabeth, where Elizabeth notes that her baby (the fetal Saint John) “leaps” in her womb at the sound of Mary’s voice. Modern English translations tend to phrase Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary like this: “God has blessed you above all women, and he has blessed the child you carry.” (Luke 1:42, Common English Bible) So, if we follow the tenses of the language we’ve been given, we are led to believe that somewhere between Saint Gabriel’s announcing and Saint Elizabeth’s greeting is when Mary became pregnant. Again, the Annunciation is not the place where the conception of Jesus takes place.

Now, Elizabeth’s greeting is elsewhere enshrined in one of the most beloved prayers in Christianity, the “Hail Mary:”

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. (emphasis mine)

This is actually the literal translation of the Greek words. Why English translations don’t like using figurative language anymore is a topic for another time, but this phrasing does not necessarily imply that Mary is currently pregnant since “fruit of the womb” is not necessarily tied to time the way “the child you carry” is.

So here’s my assertion: it is during the Visitation that Mary conceives Jesus. I base this entirely on the language of the gospel text and what we know of Saint Luke. As already noted, it would seem out of character for Luke to include such foreshadowing language from Gabriel and not give us the pay-off. But I do believe he gives us the pay-off.

Look back to what Gabriel says to Mary when she asks “How will this happen?”

The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Luke uses similar language in the first chapter of Acts. In the midst of the risen Jesus giving instructions to His disciples as He is preparing to ascend into Heaven, he tells them:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. (Acts 1:8 Common English Bible)

In the very next chapter this is fulfilled when tongues of flame alight on the heads of the disciples and they begin to speak in different language, filled with spiritual ecstasy.

So, let’s look again at Mary’s story. She’s been told that she will become a virgin mother, the Mother of God; the sign for this will be when the Holy Spirit comes over her and she is overshadowed by the power of the Most High—language quite evocative of what Luke says about Pentecost in Acts.

Now, consider what happens after Elizabeth’s greeting. We’re told the Holy Spirit has filled Elizabeth, herself uttering an ecstatic proclamation, recalled in that first half of the Hail Mary prayer. So the Spirit is present and what does Mary do? She has an ecstatic Spirit-filled proclamation herself.

We call it the Magnificat.

It is my conviction that the Magnificat is intended by Saint Luke to evoke the moment that Mary conceives Jesus. I also think that it is no coincidence that he has this happen at a moment where there are only two women present, perhaps underscoring the miraculous nature of this. There’s no man to be found, or even suggested (as some like the heretical bishop, the late John Shelby Spong might, with his assertion that Mary was raped, perhaps by a man named Gabriel, and that this is the church’s way of trying to turn tragedy into triumph). Rather, God enters our world in the presence of two women, both enraptured by the Holy Spirit.

So, if this is the case, what are we celebrating today? Why bother with the Annunciation?

Because the Annunciation is still good news. It’s the good news that our sins have not left us abandoned. God still chooses to be born among us, even knowing our wickedness. It is the good news that God has chosen a poor young woman to be the one from which God will take on our flesh. Not a person of wealth and power and influence. But someone of meager means, marginal and innocent.

Today we hear the good news that God refuses to be separate from us.

I think of this old tweet every year on this day. Credit to OP

***

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Jesus #Church #Anglican #Episcopalian #Catholic #Christian #Bible #Mary

I’m sorry to say that I was not very familiar with Saint Thomas Becket (also known as Saint Thomas of Canterbury) until recently. He’s quite an important English saint with a famous memorial altar in Canterbury Cathedral that marks the spot of his martyrdom (seen in the header image). His shrine is also the place to which the characters in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are traveling and sharing their stories. The liturgist Richard Giles feels that Saint Thomas should be the patron saint of England.

Thomas Becket (sometimes “Thomas a Becket”) was the archbishop of Canterbury in the late 1100s. He was the son of a Norman family and managed, with great ambition, to become a highly valued member of Henry II’s inner court. The king saw an opportunity when Archbishop Theobald Bec died. Henry figured he could appoint a kind of ringer in the senior office of the Church in England, and so he managed to get Thomas appointed—despite the fact that Thomas was not ordained to any clerical office at the time. Within days, Thomas was ordained deacon, priest, then bishop in order to take charge of the archbishopric. He came to this office in the midst of a time when the English monarchy was attempting to both exert further control over the church and gain further independence from Rome. But Thomas had a fairly dramatic conversion experience as a result of his impromptu ordinations and wound up eschewing the vainglory of the royal court in favor of faithfulness to the Church. Once Henry’s close friend, he became a thorn in the side of the king and was regularly opposing him on church-related issues, even threatening excommunication at one point.

The story goes that Henry II, in a fit of frustration (and after Becket had been allowed to return from a multi-year exile in France), exclaimed among some of his advisors and knights “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” (or some variation of this). Four of his knights took this as an order and made plans to assassinate Saint Thomas in the Cathedral. He was stabbed multiple times while Vespers was being chanted, the events expressed in gory detail by one of the monks wounded in the attack.

There are complicated elements in Saint Thomas’ story that carry overtones we still deal with today. Becket wanted “secular” legal systems to have limited authority over the clergy, preferring that the Church handle its own affairs. Such a practice has come to a head in the early 21st century where we’ve seen that when the Church is left to its own devices in terms of addressing clerical crimes, justice becomes elusive. However, at the same time, we also see the dangers inherent in a system where a government exerts control and influence over the Church. Becket was a champion of the established models of medieval Christendom, where monarchs were understood to be under the authority of the Church, with bishops serving as a kind check on kingly power. Henry II did not want to be held in such check and his frustrations with this idea ultimately led to the death of a beloved archbishop.

Thomas’ assassination is of a piece with other notable Christian leaders who attempted to challenge worldly power with the power of the gospel. Oscar Romero is one example, assassinated during Mass by right-wing political figures. Martin Luther King Jr. is, of course, another—assassinated because he became a more vocal opponent of the war in Vietnam and was beginning to shift his advocacy toward the exploitation of the working poor. Both saw their stances as being rooted in the gospel.

Thomas is a worthy saint for our consideration and devotion in our time. There is much pressure put on the Church (in all her forms) to capitulate to worldly powers. The radical right movements like MAGA and their ilk are the most current (and perhaps most egregious), but I’ve seen such pressure come from the left-side of things as well. Having grown up in a church quite given to right-wing political and social evils, I’m loathe to see a similar thing happen with more “progressive” churches like the Episcopal Church, where subscription to partisan talking points becomes seen as synonymous with “the gospel.” Indeed, I am of the conviction that faithfulness to Jesus Christ and His gospel will result in frustration from all forms of political partisanship. Jesus is one who disturbs worldly power, not one who makes it feel comfortable. If the Venn Diagram of one’s partisan politics and their theology is a circle, there’s a problem.

It is said that Thomas was prayerful and pious even as he was being struck by the swords. When the knights entered the cathedral, the monks wanted to bolt themselves in the sacristy for safety but Thomas would not let them. “It is not right to make a house of prayer into a fortress,” he said. After the third blow with a sword, one of the survivors of the attack recalled Becket as saying: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the church, I am ready to embrace death.”

Saint Thomas of Canterbury was willing to face death rather than capitulate; choosing the assassin’s blade over easy comforts provided by temporal power. When his body was removed from the nave of the cathedral and his episcopal vestments removed, his fellow monks discovered that Thomas wore a hair shirt underneath it all—a garment of great discomfort and used for spiritual discipline and penance. It was a sign of the deep devotion this man had. Do I have the same level of devotion? Do you? How willing are we to hold to the gospel that’s been handed down to us in the face of pressure, coercion, even death? This is a challenging question.

Faithfulness is not always easy. Saint Thomas, like Saint John and Saint Stephen before him, testifies to this fact. The powers of this world are more than ready to execute anyone in service of their claims to power—the testimony of which Saint Thomas shares with the Holy Innocents.

Again, the Christmas season is not all garlands, tinsel, gifts, and lights. It is also blood and travail. This dichotomy is quite strikingly expressed in the hauntingly gorgeous Christmas hymn “A stable lamp is lighted.” I have us sing this hymn every Christmas Eve as a reminder that Christmas leads us to Easter, but we have Good Friday as an unavoidable stop along the way. The first verse of the hymn is a beautiful exposition on the Nativity story:

A stable lamp is lighted whose glow shall wake the sky; the stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine; a barn shall harbour heaven, a stall become a shrine.

But the third verse takes us to Calvary:

Yet he shall be forsaken, and yielded up to die; the sky shall groan and darken, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry for gifts of love abused; God's blood upon the spearhead, God's blood again refused.

The saints of the first week of Christmas embody this tragic element. The babe in the manger will ultimately, despite His dedicated following and popularity, be rejected because He usurps the status quo, overturns the way-things-are. Certain people will “come and adore Him” only to a point. So long as He stays in that manger, things are fine. It’s only when He grows and enters a house of prayer to drive out corruption that certain people begin to reconsider their love and commitment of Him.

The final verse of “A stable lamp is lighted” offers us a powerful closing word:

But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high; the stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry in praises of the child by whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.

In the end, as Saint John testified, the way-things-are will ultimately fall away to a world made as new. The sorts of powers that kill innocents and saints will be unmade and the world will be set as it was made to be.

***

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.

#Church #England #Episcopal #Anglican #Christian #Theology #History

When it comes to the parable known as “the Good Samaritan,” we tend to do some weird things. First, we call it “the Good Samaritan” oblivious to the implication that we’re basically calling this “the parable about ‘one of the good ones’” (change “Samaritan” to any other ethnic designation and you’ll see what I mean). Secondly, we conflate the care shown to the unnamed victim with the Samaritan as though Jesus is telling us to extend care even to people we find “unclean.”

The story begins with a lawyer doing a very lawyer-y thing: attempting to clarify terms. This lawyer (in this case, a person dedicated to the study and interpretation of Jewish religious law, perhaps with a focus on its social dimensions rather than its ritual/religious ones) is said to “tempt” or test Jesus by asking Him how he can attain eternal life. Jesus replies with the summary of the Torah that He elsewhere calls “the greatest commandment”: love God with everything and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

To which the lawyer asks: “who is my neighbor?”

Jesus then gives a parable about a guy traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho (there’s nothing in the gospel to tell us where Jesus is when He delivers this parable, so I’d like to believe He’s in Jericho and is making a sly reference to the likely-from-Jerusalem lawyer who traveled just to pester Jesus with these questions). The guy gets robbed, beat-up, left for dead. We’re told that a Jewish priest crosses to the other side of the road and ignores the guy. This is followed by a “Levite” (from the historical priestly caste themselves, given prominent roles in the temple) who does the same. Then comes a Samaritan.

Now, I’m not going to assume that you know what a Samaritan is (and I say “is” here because Samaritans are still around). It’s a bit complicated, but they trace their roots to pre-kingdom Israel. They rejected the establishment of worship outside of Mount Gerizim as illegitimate, following developments began by the high priest Eli (the one who adopted Samuel). As a result, they reject many religious and cultural developments during the Kingdom period—including any “scriptures” written beyond the Torah (the “legal” books, the first five books of the Old Testament). This fostered centuries of animosity, made all the more pronounced by the fact that Samaritans never faced the exiles that the two kingdoms of Jews experienced. This led to them being treated as akin to “Gentiles” in many cases. But the two groups share the Torah and many cultural traditions. They also have their own priesthood and interpreters of the Law. Which means that it’s possible Jesus’ fictional Samaritan is a member of the Samaritan clergy, being held alongside his “peers” in the Jewish religion.

What this means is that all three figures who encounter the victim are subscribers to the same legal injunctions. They all would agree that “love God; love neighbor” is the most important commandment. They would also all likely agree that caring for an injured person takes precedent over other ritual/legal issues.

See, the common interpretation of this story is that the priest and Levite are ignoring their obligations to help a person in need because it risks rendering them ritually impure by exposure to blood, etc. And I think that this is where we see the conflation with the victim and the Samaritan because we are conditioned to focus on the “uncleanness” aspects of the story. The Samaritan helps the “unclean” bloodied person because he is already “unclean” himself—he has nothing to lose! But the Samaritan holds to the exact same ritual purity codes as the other priest and Levite. Though those two see him as unclean, he does not. Rather, he’s the one who’s doing a better job of following the Torah’s teachings about mitzvot.

We can only speculate about the reasons for the other two guys’ refusal to help the victim. They could be concerned about ritual purity, but Jesus depicts them as leaving Jerusalem, implying that their ritual duties are over. Martin Luther King, Jr. notes in one of his speeches that this road was a dangerous road and it would not be out of the ordinary for robbers to leave a bloodied victim in order to lure more people into a trap to be robbed. If this is the case, then the priest and Levite are (perhaps justifiably?) concerned for their safety and following a sort of conventional wisdom. Regardless, both views underscore that the Samaritan assumes a degree of risk to help this guy—either ritual purity or personal safety.

He cleans and dresses the guy’s wounds, loads him on his own animal, and takes him to an inn (risking derision by entering a Jewish city to do so). He pays and then offers to pay more until the guy is completely well.

This is when Jesus puts a question back to the lawyer: which of the three was a neighbor?

Notice that Jesus isn’t asking “can you stomach caring for an unclean person?” He’s instead getting the guy to see an example of neighborliness that goes beyond the artificial categories of “priest” and “Levite” and “Samaritan.”

Notice also that Jesus never once uses the word “good.” This isn’t about how to be a good neighbor. This is a story about how to just be a neighbor. There are no degrees when it comes to neighborliness.

Jesus adds the layer of “Samaritan” to the story in order to challenge the guy who claims to know “the rules” but these “rules” have a tendency to bias him toward certain people. And this challenges us because we tend to slap descriptors and adjectives on people in some bullshit quest to define them as deserving of our love and care. Jesus exposes that labels are just labels; actions are what define a person.

The priest and the Levite are guys who are supposed to know the rules better than anyone else. The Samaritan? He plays fast and loose with the rules—to the mind of the priest and Levite and even the lawyer himself, if he took the rules seriously he’d not be a Samaritan. But the priest and Levite, using some unknown excuse, abdicate their responsibility to help a person in need whereas the Samaritan actually takes the rules seriously—he is the one who manages to see himself in the victim and thus fulfill the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Who was a neighbor to the victim? “The one who demonstrated mercy toward him,” says the lawyer.

***

I’m writing about this parable because it’s been on my mind since reading about the number of supposedly “Christian” educational institutions expelling kids for various LGBTQ-related things. Either refusing them diplomas days before graduation because they came out or brought a trans-person with them to prom. So many “Christian” individuals and institutions fail to follow Jesus’ simple command about neighborliness. I mean, according to the linked story about the girl expelled for bringing a trans boy to prom, the Georgia Baptist school she attends “claims its core values are “love for God, neighbor, and self” and “respect for people, property, and ideas.” But these are presented as simply a pile of words. Like the lawyer, they seek to define “neighbor” in ways that fit their preconceived notions rather than hear Jesus’ challenge to our arbitrary definitions.

Seriously, swap “Trans-person” in for “Samaritan” and re-read the story. Hell, make it a story about a pastor and a Christian school principle as well. The meaning still stands: who is the neighbor?

The one who demonstrated mercy.

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus says.

#Christian #Theology #Bible #Episcopal #Church #trans #faithfulness #LGBTQ

The Rev. Charles Browning II is the rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He is a husband, father, surfer, and frequent over-thinker. Follow him on Mastodon and Pixelfed.