I don’t watch the Olympics, so I initially missed the Current Thing among social conservatives of drag queens reenacting the Last Supper during the opening ceremonies in Paris.
But even though I’ve done well lately to insulate myself from social media nonsense, the outrage du jour is hard to avoid completely. Well, now I’ve seen it, and as someone who goes to church every Sunday, I think if Jesus were walking around today that those are exactly the people he’d be spending time with, not the Pharisaical among his supposed followers.
He came for everyone, and his chosen were always the downtrodden and oppressed. He dined with the outcasts of society then; he’d dine with our outcasts now.
I know what it says in Leviticus, etc., I’ve read the whole book. And the same passages that describe these issues also warn of dire consequences for eating shellfish and mixing fabrics, yet one never sees social conservatives railing against the ungodliness of cotton-poly blends or lobster rolls. Either way, the point of the new covenant is that it washes away the old, and throughout all four Gospels, Jesus referred to these issues exactly zero times.
What did he talk about instead? Avoiding judgment and professing love for one’s neighbors. And he talked about it a lot. He would have loved every one of those drag queens, neither would he have condemned them. And if social conservatives really want to take up his cross and follow him as they so often claim, then they would do likewise.