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Friday, February 28, 2020

Christ in the Wilderness - 1st Sunday of Lent

Ivan Kramskoi's Christ in the Wilderness (1872)
Matthew 4:1-11
At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert
to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights,
and afterwards he was hungry.
The tempter approached and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
He said in reply,
“It is written:
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil took him to the holy city,
and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him,
“Again it is written,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
At this, Jesus said to him,
“Get away, Satan!
It is written:
The Lord, your God, shall you worship
and him alone shall you serve.”
Then the devil left him and, behold,
angels came and ministered to him.

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One of my favorite paintings is Ivan Kramskoi’s 1872 Christ in the Wilderness. It depicts Jesus sitting on a stone near the end of his forty days in the desert looking utterly broken and in misery. “There is nothing festive, heroic, or victorious” about that Jesus, one art critic wrote. It is hard to believe that “the future fate of the world and of all living things is concealed under the rags of that miserable, small being.” 


Our Gospel reading this week directs us to this Jesus who, tempted by Satan in the desert, is also sleepless, shivering, and hungry. “If you are the Son of God,” Satan challenges him, “command that these stones become loaves of bread” (Mt 4:3). The premise of Satan’s argument is especially potent: “if you are the Son of God...” Don’t we often use the same premise, not necessarily to tempt Jesus, but to plead with him? “If you are the Son of God, cure my migraines…” “If you are the Son of God, heal my father’s cancer…” “...dissolve my depression; stop the wars; contain the diseases.” “If you are the Son of God…” “Are you not the Son of God?” 


In the face of all this, it can be very confusing and painful to see Jesus just sitting there ― as he does in Kramskoi’s painting ― himself awash in the same pain and devastation. Somedays I want to shout into that painting what one of the criminals who was crucified with Jesus shouted at him: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and save us!” (Lk 23:39)


So why doesn’t Jesus turn the stones into bread? Why doesn’t he dissolve all our troubles? Why is he just sitting there? 


When Kramskoi’s Christ in the Wilderness was first displayed in a public exhibition, many critics noticed that Jesus’ face was painted to look just like the face of the artist. It had the same sharp lines, the same angled cheekbones. It was Kramskoi. Some people were offended. But Kramskoi was not trying to elevate himself ― he was not trying to say that he was as righteous as Christ. He knew that was delusional. 


What he meant to convey, rather, was that Jesus is truly one of us, that Jesus desires to identify with our stories. Jesus has a human face that is like ours, a story like ours, agonies like ours. The larger point is this: the fact that Jesus is sitting on that stone at all ― the fact that God is, like us, a tired and broken human being ― is precisely his answer to all our pleading: he is in solidarity with our pain. The reason he won’t take any food is because he wants to be as broken and hurt as any human could be. God wants to place himself in the fray of human misery, not above it. It is true that God is not necessarily going to dissolve all your suffering, but he will experience it with you. This is what Kramskoi was able to depict so vividly: the migrainous, cancer-ridden, depressed Jesus ― the Jesus who looks exactly like you and me because he is racked with all the same miseries.


We often think of Lent as the time where we participate in Jesus’ suffering in the desert. But ― in light of all this ― it is much more important that we see Jesus’ forty days in the desert as his own exhausting effort to participate in our suffering. Lent is that time where we remind ourselves that Jesus decided to suffer alongside us. Lent is that time where we go back into the desert, not so we can grind it out and earn points before God. That’s delusional, offensive even. On the contrary, Lent is the time where we go back to the desert so that we can see and unite ourselves with the Jesus who is refusing food in order to be in solidarity with us, with all of us who are starving, cold, and hurting.


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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Friday, February 21, 2020

You Must Be Perfect - 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:38-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.
When someone strikes you on your right cheek,
turn the other one as well.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand over your cloak as well.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go for two miles.
Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

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Many Christians have been puzzled by Jesus’ words at the close of today’s Gospel: “You must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). This is unattainable, isn’t it? Christians very clearly affirm that all of us will sin. And doesn’t Jesus’ entire ministry grate against this kind of thinking? His parables, the way he treats sinners ― it all privileges mercy over against a kind of “lift-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps” brand of spiritual perfection. So what’s going on here? How should we interpret Jesus’ exhortation to perfection?


To answer this, let’s look at the examples Jesus gives leading up to his words here. He tells us that when someone strikes you on the cheek, you should just offer them your other cheek too. And should someone sue you for your inner garment, you should just give them your coat too (which, by law, you could not also be sued for, because then you’d be naked!). This almost makes Jesus’ words even more unsettling. Not only does he want us to be perfect, but perfection looks like taking two shots to the face and going around naked! Again, what’s the point of all this?


For Jesus, human beings too often live by a misguided logic of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” ― if someone wrongs me, I get to wrong them back. Jesus’ command to debase yourself instead of retaliate undercuts all that. “You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies (Mt 5:43-44). Jesus wants to introduce a new logic, a logic of mercy.


Jesus’ command to “be perfect” is meant to gather together all the radical things he’s said about loving your enemy. What it means to “be perfect,” then, is to love your enemies, is to love the people who despise you. The point that Jesus seems to be making is not that it’s somehow incumbent upon you to lift yourself up by your bootstraps and make yourself perfect like God is perfect. Obviously, no one can do that. Neither are you required to present some impossible spiritual résumé upon your death. 


The point Jesus seems to be making, rather, is that when you do these kinds of thingswhen you turn the other cheek, when you find a way to love your enemy, when you forgive someone who has seriously hurt youyou are moving toward perfection, even if you have not yet finally arrived there. Being merciful toward one’s enemies is the road to perfection. Indeed, we should notice that, in Luke’s Gospel ― when Jesus’ same teachings on turning the other cheek are recorded ― Jesus finishes with this: “Be merciful even as your Father is merciful (Lk 6:36). Jesus appears to use the word “perfect” interchangeably with “merciful.” To be “perfect” is to be merciful.


Look closely at what Jesus says in today’s Gospel. “You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. First and foremost, then, Jesus has been describing for us the way in which God is perfect. And the way in which God is perfect ― the way in which God loves ― is by forgiving those who have wronged him, by loving his enemies. Recall Jesus’ prayer while he is being nailed to the Cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). 


Indeed, when we learn to love our enemies we begin to move toward perfection. We begin to look more like God. We begin to bear a resemblance to our heavenly Father, our Father who is perfect, even if we know that ― this side of heaven ― we will never ultimately arrive at perfection. 

And here’s the thing about Jesus’ command from today’s Gospel ― “you must be perfect.” Grammatically, in the original Greek, the command is in the future indicative. That means it could be translated as, “you will be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” So perhaps there’s a broader way to interpret Jesus’ words: they are a promise. We don’t need to squint to see that our lives today are far from perfect. But Jesus’ words are a promise that someday they will be. His words are a promise that someday ― unless we shipwreck our whole faith ― we will love in a way that is reminiscent of the Father’s love, even if that’s not until the next world.


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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Friday, February 14, 2020

What's Wrong with the Pharisees Anyway? - 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:17-22; 27-28 (5:17-37)

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses
that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.
But I say to you,
whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment;
and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ [empty-head]
will be answerable to the Sanhedrin;
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’
will be liable to fiery Gehenna.
...
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall not commit adultery.
But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
...

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Behind Judas and those who had Jesus arrested, the Pharisees are normally viewed as the great antagonists of the Gospels. We always find them arguing with Jesus, usually about how to interpret a particular Jewish law. We should not underestimate how heated these arguments became. It seems like, on every other page, we read about how “the Pharisees went and took counsel about how to destroy him” (Mt 12:14). 

The interesting thing about the Pharisees is that modern Christians often drastically misunderstand them. We need to remember that, in Jesus’ time, there were a number of schools of thought within Judaism. In the New Testament, we sometimes also hear about the “Sadducees.” But there were also the “Zealots” and the “Essenes,” as well as others. These were all movements or philosophical schools within Judaism with their own particular theological ideas and their own desires for what Judaism ought to look like.

Here’s the odd thing: compared to the others, the Pharisees were, without a doubt, the school of thought closest to that of Jesus. They agree on which books belong in the Bible; they agree on the nature of the afterlife; they agree on the need for a “kingdom of God” in this world. Indeed, as the celebrated Jewish scholar Lawrence Schiffman has pointed out, “it is striking that Jesus’ complaints throughout the Gospels are mostly directed at the Pharisees, yet his ethical preaching most resembles that of [the Pharisees]”! So what gives? What’s so wrong with the Pharisees anyway?

More often than not, we totally misunderstand why Jesus and the Pharisees fought with each other. We usually think the Pharisees were rigorists ― that they never allowed exceptions to the law ― and that Jesus was flexible. This is decidedly wrong. It is true that the Pharisees were very meticulous when it came to following Jewish laws, but Jesus’ dispute with the Pharisees was not about when or how often it’s acceptable to break the rules

This week’s reading reveals just the opposite. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus insists that “until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law. [Indeed,] whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Let’s be clear: this is what the Pharisees have been preaching. They’re loving the Sermon on the Mount so far!

But what happens next is more surprising yet: Jesus explicitly insists that he is even more rigorous than the Pharisees. Jesus starts by reminding his listeners of one of the Ten Commandments: “You have heard it said, ‘you shall not kill.’” This is ― for most of us anyway ― a pretty easy law to keep. Just don’t kill anybody. Yet Jesus keeps going: But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.” Jesus deepens the meaning of the law so that it reaches to the heart of the matter. Killing begins with anger. The angry person is guilty too.

It is the same just a few moments later: “You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Again, he deepens the meaning of the law: adultery begins with lust.

So the interesting thing ― the shocking thing even ― is that Jesus is way more strict than the Pharisees. It’s not just that you can’t murder or commit adultery, like the Pharisees insisted. Christians need to root out anger and lust from their lives too. What’s wrong with the Pharisees, then, is that, for all their meticulousness, they do not go far or deep enough. They do not go to the root of sin in order to “root it out.” Even the journey toward sin is sin. And so it’s not that the Pharisees were too rigorous. It’s that they weren’t rigorous enough. Jesus himself says as much: “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” 

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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Friday, February 7, 2020

On Salt and Evangelization - 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:13-16 (13)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It i
s no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot....


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Unless you want to develop heart disease, they say you’re not supposed to eat more than 2,300 milligrams of salt in a day. That’s unfortunate. Salt is delicious. Salt elevates the flavor of food. That’s why my mom gets mad at dad for salting her cooking ― “it doesn’t need salt!” And have you ever looked at the sodium numbers for your favorite restaurants? They’re humongous. They might as well measure in “light years.” Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure you can cook healthy and enjoy it. But salt is good. 

Jesus tells his disciples they’re supposed to be “the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13). They are supposed to elevate the flavor of earthly existence. It’s an odd way for the Christian to think about life, isn’t it? It’s odd to think that Christians are called to make life delicious. They are supposed to make life flavorful ― they bring it to life, so to speak. If you want to keep the cooking metaphor: Christians aren’t supposed to be cold, dry, or bland. You don’t necessarily have to be the life of your party, but you do have to salt and cook your meat! 

There’s no shortage, of course, of Christians who do not make life delicious. The Trappists of Kentucky tell an old story about one of their monks being in a sour mood. They say that, during a period of contemplation, when silence was expected from the brothers, a certain monk’s quiet pouting was poisoning the whole community. One monk finally broke the silence: “Brother! Enough! Christians have no business being sad!”

But this holds not just among monks. It holds when Christians go out and engage with the world. Christians are too often sad and angry about the state of things. We sometimes think we’re called to convince the world it’s wrong about everything, that our vocation is to take up arms against every error. It is true that there is a time to be indignant about errors, but it’s not all the time. “The Christian is cheerful,” St. John Henry Newman used to say, “and he is easy.” The Christian’s warmth and “easiness” seasons life. And the great assertion of today’s gospel ― perhaps counterintuitively ― is that the world is won over to Jesus, not by combat, but by a little salt. A gloomy or combative Christian wins over nothing. It’s like the monk said: Christians have no business being sad. 

And that is just it. It is true that there is suffering in the world, that we are disappointed with things. We have not yet arrived at that place where God will “wipe away every tear” (Rev 21:4). But for the Christian ― even in this world ― there is so much more reason for joy than there is for sorrow or anger. For the Christian, joy is the decisive theme of the universe. And the reason the Christian is joyful is not just because she knows that the disappointments of this world are all passing away. Indeed, the Christian is never overcome because the cause of her joy is Christ. The cause of the Christian’s joy is her constant contact with the one who makes life glorious. Joy is the last word. [1]

When people encounter this kind of joy in Christians ― this kind of hope ― life becomes delicious. The salt of a Christian reveals that life has flavors they never noticed before, that life is glorious to live. When people encounter this kind of joy, their life is elevated. They want to be around Christians. They want to be Christians.

Jesus says that, one way or another, Christians are salt. “But if salt loses its taste… it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Mt 5:13). Either we will season the entire world or we will be thrown down and trampled upon. In short, if you’re not seasoning ― if you don’t make the world delicious ― people will discard you. You’ll either elevate people’s lives ― you’ll give them hope and a reason to live differently ― or they’ll toss you thoughtlessly on the sidewalk so as not to slip on the ice. Put another way, you’ll either make Jesus deliciously present in people’s lives, or you’ll see him once more tossed to the earth, forgotten and unnoticed as people trample about their days. 

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Endnotes:

[1] See Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2001), 464.

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~Anthony Rosselli (PhD cand., theology, University of Dayton) writes out of St. Luke and Ascension Parishes in Franklin County, Vermont. These columns are archived here.

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