Friday after Ash Wednesday: Comparing

Gospel: Matthew 9:14-15.

Today, John’s disciples indulge a brief foray into comparative religion: why aren’t Jesus’s followers observing the same dietary customs that they and the pharisees do? Taking today’s reading alone, it might seem that their questioning is motivated by the sort of benign curiosity that underpins modern sociology. In context, however, it is the second time that Jesus’s dining rights have been questioned since he sat down to start eating in verse 10: first the Pharisees questioned whether he should be eating with the sinners (v. 11), now John’s disciples emerge to question whether he should be eating at all! The food is growing colder by the moment, but Jesus—it seems—is simply refusing to enter into the sectarian squabbles of competitive religiosity. 

Our Lord’s response re-frames the question, by shifting the accent of the discussion from the content of their religious practices (a ‘what?’ question) to the personal centre of their faith (a ‘who?’ question). If we really want to understand why Christ’s disciples do the various odd things that they did (and still do), description of religious customs—important as they undoubtedly are—will only take us so far: the internal logic of our religious practices derives from our personal encounter with the Lord, an encounter that we deepen by our Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and alms-giving. A theology that remains at the level of ‘what?’ questions may well be too cozy, too disconnected from the question of who Christ is, and who we are in the light shed by his cross and resurrection. 

The logic of comparison has its place, but it soon becomes toxic if we are trapped within it. Often, it is the logic of comparison that entrenches us in jealousy, envy and resentment. If only we had someone else’s stuff (their gifts, talents or possessions), we’d feel more secure in who we are. We perform this comparative manoeuvre so routinely that we risk missing how damaging it is: by reducing another person to what they have—however partially or temporarily—we blind ourselves both to their personhood and to who we are, rejecting the unique gift that the Lord has bestowed on us in favour of seeking to re-create the world in our own image (or, perhaps, in the image of someone else). This sort of comparison, which corrodes our communion with one another and chips away at our happiness in the Lord, is certainly something that’s worth giving up for Lent.