The Pure in Heart

*Over the next several weeks, I will be reflecting on the beatitudes of Jesus

~Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God~

Modern people have a tendency, when we read Jesus here ― “blessed are the pure in heart” ― to assume he is talking about sexuality. “Blessed are those who are chaste, who keep themselves free from lust.” Purity here, we often think, means “sexual purity.” Our culture is hyper-sexualized and so we assume our preoccupations were Jesus’s preoccupations. But they were not. Certainly the Christian tradition has lots to say about sexual morality. But the Church Fathers did not interpret this beatitude as a teaching on sexual morality. This isn’t what Jesus was doing here. 

So what was Jesus up to? What would Jesus’s listeners have understood by this beatitude? As a matter of fact, this beatitude is remarkably Jewish. Indeed, an ancient Jew would have understood Jesus’s words here in a radically different way from most contemporary Christians. 

We should start by looking at the promise Jesus makes. He says the pure in heart will “see God.” For the Jews, there is only one way to “see God.” One sees God at the Temple in Jerusalem. 

In the Old Testament, God’s literal presence hovered over the Ark of the Covenant. As the Ark travelled with the Israelites through the desert, the presence of God could be seen as a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22). When the Israelites encamped each night, they placed a tent around the Ark called the “Tent of Meeting,” because that was the place where God and humanity had “met.” When the Israelites made Jerusalem their capital and organized their lives around the Temple, they placed the Ark of the Covenant ― with God’s presence above it ― right in the Temple’s center. By Jesus’s time, the Ark of the Covenant had sadly disappeared from the Temple. But the Jewish mind would still have gone to the Temple when one talked about “seeing God.”

More than that, when Jesus says, “blessed are the pure in heart, they shall see God,” he is actually alluding to an Old Testament passage from the psalms that most Jews would have picked up on straight away. The passage is actually a reference to everything we have been describing so far. It’s a reference to God’s presence in the Temple and the human desire to behold him there. The Temple was built on top of a hill (Mount Zion), and so the psalmist sings: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart” (Ps 24:3-4).

In ancient Israel, in order to participate in Temple worship, one needed to be ritually pure. This is partly why the text says only someone with “clean hands” can stand in the holy place. But they must also have a “pure heart.” And this is precisely what Jesus calls to mind for his Jewish listeners ― it is the “pure in heart” who will see God.

But there is something different about Jesus’s beatitude. He goes beyond the psalm. Remember, the Ark of the Covenant is not present in the Temple anymore. The presence of God is not in “the holy place” as it once was. So where can someone go if they want to see God? In short, to Jesus. In the Old Testament, God was present in the Temple over the Ark of the Covenant. Now, God is present in the person of Jesus himself.

In the Old Testament, one needed a certain kind of purity ― clean hands and a pure heart ― to enter the Temple and meet God. Jesus seemed, throughout his ministry, to downplay ritual purity rites like washing. But one still needs to be pure to meet God, Jesus says. Only those with a heart singly devoted can see God. Only those with a heart not muddied up with devotion to other gods ― money, ideologies, etc. ― can finally access the “holy place” and “see God.” And, now, what a pure heart gives one access to is so much greater than the Temple. It gives one access not to a pillar of fire or a column of smoke, but to Jesus. It gives one access to the personal presence of God. Not just now, but forever.

---

~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.

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email (Note: you must verify the confirmation email!)

The Sweaty and Dirty Fingers of Jesus - For Divine Mercy Sunday

In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II dubbed the Sunday in the Octave of Easter “Divine Mercy Sunday.” The feast is named on account of the visions of Jesus that were given to his fellow Pole, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska. Fourteen times, St. Faustina says, Jesus requested a feast of Divine Mercy on precisely the Sunday following Easter. Some sixty years after Faustina’s death, the Pope instituted the feast.

But what exactly is the Church celebrating when it commemorates divine mercy? Are we sure we know what forgiveness and mercy are? In the creed, we mention “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” We ask God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We go to confession. But the words “mercy” and “forgiveness” have become so common we’re sometimes unable to attend to their essential meaning. They’ve become  Christian platitudes.

When we hear the word “mercy,” we assume it means something like the psychological decision to “forgive and forget.” It’s something that takes place in the mind. Indeed, the person doesn’t need to be standing in front of you in order for you to forgive them. But how useful is that conception, really?

A few weeks ago, when Pope Francis asked the world to join him in prayer for a world suffering under the grip of this new coronavirus, he directed our attention to the image of Jesus sleeping in the storm-tossed boat (Mk 4). “Do you not care if we die?” the Apostles yelled at him. It is a powerful scene. It is a scene that is often invoked in times of crisis, a powerful reminder of the peace Jesus offers: “Why are you afraid?” 

But we often neglect to reflect on what Jesus and the apostles were actually up to that night. Why were they in the boat in the first place? Jesus had the apostles travel with him across the lake where, after this stormy night, they reached the opposite shore in the morning. Upon arriving, he delivered a man there from a legion of devils (Mk 5:1-20). But then, oddly enough, Jesus and the apostles got straight back into the boat and returned to the side of the lake they’d come from (Mk 5:21). 

Now Jesus could have healed this man from a distance. He healed the centurion’s servant that way ― “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” (Lk 7:6). What this means, then, is that the entire purpose of that terrifying night time voyage was to encounter this single man in need of God’s healing presence. [1]

And we should notice that, as Jesus was climbing back into the boat to return to the other side, he turned to the man and said one last thing: “Go home to your friends. Tell them how much the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he has had mercy on you” (Mk 5:19).

“Tell them how he has had mercy on you.” We should allow Jesus’ words and actions here to rewrite our conception of mercy a bit. Mercy is not something that only takes place in our heads, something we can do without getting dirty. Jesus put the apostles through a treacherous journey in order to be physically present with this man, in order to have mercy on him. More than that, though, mercy does not necessarily have to be about forgiving someone who has wronged you. It can also be about drawing near to someone who has been beaten by the world, someone who is “living near the tombs,” like this Gerasene demoniac that Jesus healed (Mk 5:3). To draw near to them, to enter into their pain and accompany them toward someplace new is an act of profound mercy, even if no sin has been present.

We have seen that the entire purpose of the apostles' stormy voyage was to bring the merciful and healing presence of God to just one man. But this is just a microcosm of Jesus’ whole life. Indeed, the entire project of Jesus’ terrifying earthly “voyage” – his Incarnation – is to encounter you with his merciful presence, and to encounter you in person. The Incarnation is God’s grand insistence that mercy is best delivered not from afar, but up close. The Incarnation is God’s grand affirmation that your trauma is worth visiting in person, that your sins ought to be healed by his presence and not simply by declaring them forgiven and forgotten.

It is Divine Mercy Sunday. We should remember that God could have had mercy upon us in any number of ways. A teacher of mine liked to say that God could have declared us forgiven via a loudspeaker from the moon: “I’m OK; you’re OK!” But that’s not who God is.

The great affirmation of Christianity is that “God has visited his people” (Lk 7:16). And God has visited them in order to hear us confess sins with his own ears, to cast out our demons with his own mouth, to look at our pain with his own eyes, to wipe away our tears with his own fingers. And he has done this, not metaphorically, but literally ― with sweaty and dirty fingers. The living God has run his fingers through your misery. Indeed, it is in the sweaty and dirty fingers of Jesus that one begins to see what it means to truly forgive someone. It is in the sweaty and dirty fingers of Jesus that one gets a glimpse of the nature of the God who would not heal us without also holding us. And it is in the sweaty and dirty fingers of Jesus that one can begin to see most vividly the true nature of mercy. 

---
Endnote:

[1] See F.X. Durrwell, In the Redeeming Christ, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 127-128.

---
~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.

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email (Note: you must verify the confirmation email!)

Be Not Afraid?

These are strange and hard times. As of Thursday, the United States leads the world in confirmed COVID-19 cases, topping even China and Italy. Nearly 12,000 National Guard troops have been mobilized. In New York City, where the outbreak has been especially severe, even temporary morgues have been erected for the overflow. The scenes across our country are frightful.

In one way or another this has impacted you. More than 200 million Americans have been asked to quarantine in their homes. Already just this has proven to be much more than a time to playfully avoid cabin fever. An anxious grip is unbearably tightening. In just one week, 3.3 million Americans lost their jobs. Domestic and child abuse claims have skyrocketed. And as we continue to panic-buy groceries and cling to the television, a collective sense of panic is being shot through it all. The world’s blood pressure, so to speak, is catastrophically high. 

These days, Christians are over and over being reminded of Jesus’ words: “be not afraid.” Indeed, Jesus says some derivative of this seven or eight times across his ministry. “Be not afraid.” But the truth is that, for some of us, no matter how many times we remind ourselves, or pray over it, or try to embed it into our bones, we just can’t help it. We are afraid.

For many of us, this has become a time of incessant interior questioning: What is going to happen to me? To my mom and dad? My friend who has an autoimmune disease? My grandma and grandpa? Am I going to lose my job, or what will I do for work? When will I be able to hug my friends again? How long is this going to last? We are so used to having control. Now we have none. A lot of Christians are truly afraid. 

In light of Jesus’ words, are we all just bad Christians? 

It’s a lot more complicated than that.

The first thing you need to know is that, if you are afraid or even just find yourself worrying a bit, then you’re in very good company. We must not forget that the very same Jesus who encouraged us not to be afraid also experienced intense fear himself. In Luke’s gospel, we read that, just before his arrest, Jesus was so terrified and distressed about his approaching death that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground” (Lk 22:44). This is actually a natural medical phenomenon ― something doctors call “hematidrosis” ― which is brought on by extraordinary levels of panic and distress. We see this today among prisoners awaiting execution.

The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews describes how, just by being human, we all naturally suffer from fear. And, in the same breath, it says that “[Jesus] himself partook of this same [human] nature… for he had to be made like us in every respect” (see Heb 2:14-18). Of course Jesus had fears! Jesus was human! And as this scene at the Mount of Olives demonstrates, on the cusp of his arrest, Jesus ― keeled over and sweating blood ― was particularly agonized by the thought of his death ― “Remove this cup from me!” (Lk 22:42)

What this should teach us, first and foremost, is that it’s perfectly fine to be frightened. In fact, part of the reason Jesus’s heart was holy was that he was willing to have corners of it that were frightened and anxious. Jesus wanted to have a human nature. He wanted to experience what you experience, even if that meant fright or anxiety. And so the fearful Christian should not see herself as someone outside the boundaries of faithful Christianity. Indeed, the fearful Christian finds herself uniquely held within the anxious and frightened heart of Jesus. 

So it’s alright to be a bit frightened. It’s human. Jesus was, at one point, more frightened than you ever will be. Indeed, it’s unlikely that you’ve been sweating blood.

But, like I said, it’s complicated. We cannot let the words of Jesus simply pass by: “be not afraid.” 

So what do we do with this?

We must see that Jesus does not finally come to rest in his human fear. Fear is not his last word, so to speak. On the Mount of Olives, sweating blood and panicking, he prays to God the Father: “remove this cup from me!” But, ultimately, he hands his fear over to the Father: “not my will, but yours, be done” (Lk 22:42). Ultimately, Jesus comes to rest not in fear and anxiety, but in the hands of the Father. 

We all know that this is what we want. Right now, to ease that fear, we’d all like to place ourselves in the hands of the Father in an enduring act of trust. But I promise, try as hard as you'd like, you're not going to be able to do that on your own. You're not Jesus. You're not going to be able to do what Jesus did. You can ram his words down your throat all day long ― "be not afraid! be not afraid!" It will not work. Indeed, you will only find yourself even more frustrated and anxious. "Why am I still afraid?!"

There is really only one way to do this: Jesus must do it for you.

Think of it this way:

Jesus wanted to have a human nature. He was willing to experience the fear and anxiety you and I experience, even in an extraordinarily intense way. And when you and I experience fear today, we should see our fearful hearts as hearts that beat and live within his own heart. But Jesus did not let his heart come finally to rest within that place of extraordinary fear. And if our hearts are embedded within his heart, then neither will he let our hearts come finally to rest in a place of fear. Indeed, he will place our hearts where he placed his own, even amidst a bloodied sweat: into the hands of the Father. That is where we will find peace. That is how we can make an enduring act of trust. That is how we can “be not afraid.”

---

~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.

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email

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.

---

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.

---

~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.

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email

"They Were Fishermen" - 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew to Galilee.
He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea,
in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali,
that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet
might be fulfilled:
Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,
on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death
light has arisen.
From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say,
“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew,
casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
He said to them,
“Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
At once they left their nets and followed him.
He walked along from there and saw two other brothers,
James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John.
They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father
and followed him.
He went around all of Galilee,
teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness among the people.

---

Did you ever notice that Christianity has a thing with fishing? There are some pretty vivid examples in the Old Testament. The prophets, for instance, often threaten Israel’s enemies by insisting God will “put hooks in their jaws… and draw them up out of the midst of their streams… and cast them forth into the wilderness” (Ez 29:4-5). In the Book of Tobit, there’s a wild story about Sarah’s cousin who reels in a massive fish that, at the same time, is trying to swallow him whole, all while the Archangel Raphael cheers him on (Tob 6:1-5). They can’t all be winners, of course. Jonah was bested by a fish, gulped up by some mysterious creature of the sea (Jnh 1:17).

The Christian scriptures, too, are chock-full of references to fish and fishing. “What father among you,” Jesus said, “if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent” (Lk 11:11)? We should not be surprised, then, to find Peter and Andrew in today’s Gospel “casting a net into the sea” (Mt 4:18) and their friends James and John in a boat nearby. This is the Judeo-Christian thing. And Jesus stuck with the fishing metaphors throughout his ministry. He compared the kingdom of heaven to “a net thrown into the sea gathering fish of every kind” (Mt 13:47). He even told Peter once that he’d find a shekel for the Temple tax in the mouth of his first catch of the day (Mt 17:27). Clearly fishing was important to these people.

In his novel The River Why, David James Duncan joked about how the apostle John ― a fisherman by trade ― insists on telling us in his Gospel the precise number of fish the apostles caught the day they spotted Jesus, risen again from the dead, by the Sea of Tiberias: “Peter went and hauled the net full of fish ashore. There were one hundred and fifty three of them” (Jn 21:11). Mind you, he doesn’t say “a boatload” of fish, or “more than a hundred,” or “nearly a gross.” It’s precisely one hundred and fifty three fish. As Duncan jokes, in spite of all their excitement over Jesus’ resurrection, the apostles were not about to let their catch go uncounted: “one, two, three, four…” ― tossing fish from one pile to the next — all the way up to one hundred and fifty three. [1] This number must have been logged somewhere or so seared into John’s memory that ― some forty years later ― he could pull it out without problem for the composition of his Gospel: “One-hundred. Fifty. Three. Fish.” This statistic was that important to them. Today’s Gospel summarizes it perfectly: “they were fishermen” (Mt 4:18), plain and simple.

But think about that for a moment: the risen and glorified Jesus ― Lord of the Universe ― is standing on the shore with the apostles having just conquered death. And what are the apostles doing? They’re counting fish. “Seventy-six, seventy-seven, seventy-eight.” The point is this: I don’t think Jesus was offended by it. In fact, I strongly suspect he helped them count. Today’s Gospel reveals that Jesus first called these men when they were out fishing. Indeed, Jesus draws near to people in their particular identities. God kneels down to count fish with men. 

This was the very sea where these apostles first heard their identities being called in a new direction. This is where Jesus told them “I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). And it’s here, on this exact same shore, that Jesus, now resurrected, is bringing this call to fulfillment. It’s here, tossing fish into wriggling piles, that he sends them again. 

“One hundred fifty two! One hundred fifty three!!” Did they all smile at each other, amazed? I’ve often wondered what Jesus said next. Perhaps he said it again? “Peter, Andrew, James, John. Now, you must be fishers of men.”

---

Endnotes:

[1] David James Duncan, The River Why (New York: Back Way Books, 2016), 19-20.

---

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

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email

"You are coming to ME?" - The Baptism of the Lord

Matthew 3:13-17
Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan
to be baptized by him.
John tried to prevent him, saying,
“I need to be baptized by you,
and yet you are coming to me?”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us
to fulfill all righteousness.”
Then he allowed him.
After Jesus was baptized,
he came up from the water and behold,
the heavens were opened for him,
and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove
and coming upon him.
And a voice came from the heavens, saying,
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

---

Why in the world does Jesus need to be baptized? One of the principal reasons for baptism is the cleansing of sin. We read that people came to John the Baptist and “were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” It is described as a “baptism of repentance” (Mk 1). But Jesus has no sins to confess. He has nothing from which to repent. This is why John is shocked by Jesus’ request. “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?” (Mt 3:14)

Jesus’ reply is extremely important, even if it’s a tad cryptic. He tells John to “allow it for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). Fulfill all righteousness? What does that mean? The word Jesus uses for “righteousness,” in the original Greek, is dikaiosunē. It’s a word that would have stood out to the Jews listening nearby. It meant something specific. 

In the Jewish mind, dikaiosunē referred to God’s justice. God is “righteous”; God is “just”; God is dikaiosunē. These were all synonyms. But it meant more than that. God’s dikaiosunē also referred to the fact that he treated the Israelites with an over-the-top generosity. “I have drawn near to you with my dikaiosunē,” God told them in the Greek Old Testament. “I have taken you by the hand and I have kept you” (Is 42:6). Indeed, in the Jewish mind, part of what makes God “righteous,” is that, in spite of our failings, God still wants to draw near to us. He keeps us anyway. That is over-the-top generosity. That is dikaiosunē. 

But it’s still a little strange, isn’t it? Why does Jesus answer John the Baptist this way? How does it make sense that, when asked why he wants to be baptized, Jesus says it’s because of his dikaiosunē, because of his over-the-top generosity? How is it generous of him to get baptized?

In short, Jesus’ baptism reveals the over-the-top generosity of God because it reveals that he is human. Humans get baptized, not God. Humans have heads upon which we pour water. Humans have chests upon which we smear oil. God has neither. Until Jesus, that is. Jesus wants to be baptized because he wants to be like us. Jesus wants to be baptized because he wants to feel what you feel, to experience what you experience in the same way you experience it. 

This is more radical than you might be thinking. This is more than just water and oil. By his baptism, Jesus is affirming his desire to be like you in every way, to be like you in your pain, in your anxiety, in your sense of abandonment. Jesus has baptized himself into our condition, and our condition is radically broken. 

We should not be surprised, then, to read that John the Baptist actually “tried to prevent [Jesus]” from entering the waters of the Jordan (Mt 3:14). We want to prevent him from these miseries. But this is a mistake. It is a mistake to imagine that God will not be generous to us. 

We do the same thing everyday. We prevent God from descending into the deeper waters of our life, from entering into our misery. Not necessarily because we have hard hearts, but sometimes because ― like John the Baptist ― we’re certain he won’t be that generous to us. “You are coming to me?” we ask with John. Really? To me? The answer is “yes.” He has come to you. God has baptized himself into your life. He has poured your fears across his forehead and smeared your sins across his chest. It is a mistake to keep him standing upon the shore. It is a profound mistake to prevent him from entering even your muddiest waters.

Click here to subscribe to these reflections by email