The Good Drag Queen
Jesus’s “love commands” in the book of Luke - love God and love your neighbor as your self - are followed by the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus tells this story to answer a “religious expert’s” challenge - “ah, but who is my neighbor?” he queries.
Speaking to an audience of comfortably religious people, relatively confident in their moral uprightness, Jesus means for this story to shock, even offend them. We the modern listeners, not understanding all the cultural nuances embedded in the tale, tend to miss its boldness. So let’s listen again, imagining Jesus speaking to the comfortably religious in some mainstream American church.
Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas. His car broke down in a lonely stretch of road, and the first passers-by, instead of helping him, beat him up, took everything he had, and went off, leaving him on the side of the road, half-dead. Luckily, just a bit later a church pastor was driving down the same route, but when he saw the injured man, he just swerved to the other side of the road and kept driving. He would call 911, he told himself, when his phone had better service. Then another religious type, a worship leader in her church, happened upon the grisly scene; whispering a few words, some thoughts and prayers, she also avoided the injured man.
Finally a drag queen traveling the same road stumbled upon him. When she saw the man’s condition, her heart went out to him. She gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then she lifted him into her car, took him to the nearest hospital, and stayed until his condition stabilized. Before leaving, she spoke to the hospital administrator, saying, ‘Take good care of him. Here’s my cell number - if there are any problems, any questions about the cost of his care, call me, and I’ll take care of it.”
“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the injured man?”
“The one who treated him kindly,” the religious expert responded.
Jesus said, “Go and do the same.”
This is the story of the Good Drag Queen, paraphrased from Luke 10:25-37.
Friend, how does this story challenge or comfort you today? Have you, like the Good Drag Queen, been labeled and othered, pushed to the margins? What does it mean to you to hear Jesus lift you up this way, make you the center?
Or have you too often been the comfortable, the complacent? What might Jesus invite you to learn from those you’ve been taught to disregard, to fear and push aside?
Talk with Jesus about these things - what it might look like to love God, your neighbor and your self today.