The Most Reverend and the Most Irreverent.
Or
What I saw in Church.
I rather liked this window that I saw in the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Hornby, in Richmondshire. It depicts a scene from the story of The Good Samaritan. Passing by a poor unfortunate man who has been beaten and robbed is a Priest and a Levite. In the story they are not travelling together but I guess window space did not allow for a more expansive approach to the narrative.
Jesus told the story of The Good Samaritan to illustrate his answer to the question, 'who is my neighbour?’ An important question as we must love our neighbour, and we wouldn’t want to be caught out loving the wrong person, or indeed not loving the right person.
Jesus’ answer is that anybody in need is our neighbour, although sadly the Priest and the Levite don’t see that. The victim is eventually helped by a man who is a Samaritan, who are a religious and ethnic group that most nationalistic Jews would have looked down on.
In telling this story Jesus not only illustrates who we are to love as our neighbour, he also affronts conventional contemporary propriety and notions of rightness. The Priest and the Levi are supposed to be the good guys and the Samaritan is supposed to be the bad guy, the Priest and the Levi are figures of religious status and authority, the Samaritan is a figure of scorn, yet it is the Samaritan who demonstrates the godly virtue of mercy.
What I like about this window is I think the artist gets this, I think he gets the antiauthoritarian, table turning cheek of the story, as he has placed on the figure on the right’s head what looks like a Bishop’s Mitre (big hat) turned sideways. Is that figure also reading a bible? And dressed in the Priestly robes of an Anglican Minister?
The artist is perhaps giving us enough to make us wonder, but not too much as to get him into trouble with the Rector of the Church, or any passing Bishops.
The other figure looks respectable enough but perhaps the references made in that window are lost on me, perhaps the garb of a wealthy merchant?
Christianity should be irreverent. Jesus constantly exposed the hypocrisy of religious self-righteousness, to the great irritation of the establishment, but more than that, at the heart of Christianity is the figure of Son of God stepping out of heaven to walk on earth with men and women as their brother.
As Charles Wesley so brilliantly wrote,
“Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.”
Christians can only ever have managed to be affectedly self-important and moralising by wholly missing the point.
Big hats and fancy robes are a real challenge to a Christian Minister, how do you wear them and remain a faithful disciple of Jesus? How do you reconcile being a Reverend with the foolishness of God?
Perhaps for those of us inclined to see the world through Monty Python eyes the big hats and fancy robes help highlight the absurdity of human pomposity and the breath taking humility of God. If Priests are to be a fools for God then perhaps it is right that the Church dresses them as such.
Or perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I have misunderstood the window, perhaps a Victorian stained glass window artist would never have poked fun at such a worthy and elevated office as that of Bishop…and perhaps I am indeed a very worthy and reverent Reverend.
You may go.
Commentaires