Sunday, March 20, 2022
Sunday Reflection: Man of Sorrows and Joy
The painting above was done in 1560 by the Spanish artist Luis de Morales, who was also known as "El Divino." It shows Jesus at rest.
There is a cross behind him (somewhat subtly) and a hammer and nails at his feet. When I saw the painting yesterday at the Minnesota Institute of Art I took the hammer and nails to be the tools of a carpenter, of his trade. It struck me as a depiction of Jesus resting after a day of real work, with his fate alluded to in the background.
The official description beside the painting, though, said this:
With legs crossed and chin cupped in hand, Luis de Morales’s Jesus is both regal and melancholic. He sits among the instruments of his torture and death: the column to which he was tied during the Flagellation and the cross that he carried and to which he was nailed. But rather than recreating the narrative of his sufferings, the painting shows Christ removed from those events, meditating on the objects that had inflicted his pain. As such he serves as a model and mirror image for the pious beholder of the painting.
I'll be honest: I like my take better. Perhaps I am not a "pious beholder of the painting," but I'm ok with that. What is deeply compelling to me about Jesus is not just the divine but the human within him, the sense that the things we feel-- hunger, joy, the good tiredness after a day of work-- were things that he felt in a very physical and spiritual way. Here was a savior who knew what it meant to build a house.
God is in this world and understands the happiness and hardships we feel. The Jesus in the painting, the one I see, offers more reassurance of that than any theologian's missive.
