This will be real short tonight. The photo above comes from a website that shows just how much changing one can do on a human face, or a human body, simply by using Photoshop. My favorite one was the one above, in which a person who looks like he has seen the hard side of life is miraculously transformed into a person who looks as though he is a well off upper middle class person, maybe even rich. They even managed to trim his eyebrows!
But, all of a sudden, my mind took a sideways jerk. This past Sunday for the Orthodox was the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican. We all remember the story, the Pharisee saying that he was so glad that he was not like that other man. The point of the parable, of course, was to point out that he truly was like the other man, with the difference that the other man would be justified because he recognized his sinfulness and admitted it to God.
I found myself reflecting on how being a Pharisee is like doing a Photoshop of your spirituality. You go to church on Sunday and try to convince people that the real you is like the Photoshopped person. As it was said in the Wizard of Oz, ignore that man behind the curtain. You put on a good enough front that you hope that people will not see your imperfections. But, that is not so. Jesus would not have been able to successfully use the Pharisee as an example, if it were not that in the Israel of his time there were sufficient Pharisees who were like that Pharisee, that the generalization would be recognized and accepted. And so people recognized in his parable the image of the Photoshopped man, the false and inadequate spirituality that was present in him.
The Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican is a Sunday that encourages us to go before God with no false spirituality. It calls us to recognize that our real spiritual life is more like the photograph of the not-Photoshopped man than it is like the more perfect photograph. But, off in the distance, after we go through Lent, is the promise of Pascha and Pentecost. There is a promise that, if we come before God with the right attitude at this end of life, that someday we shall be like him. Instead of being full of false and inadequate spirituality, we will be full of the Holy Spirit. And, on that day when he comes again, we shall be like him; we shall be transformed. It will not be a false transformation, but a true transformation.
So, as Lent is about to start in less than a month, this is where it begins. It begins with admitting what we are now, rather than pretending what we are not. But, the hope is that someday we shall be what we are not now. Let us not forget that.
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