Living In Paradox

 Lately, I have been working on an important spiritual practice.

I have been working on holding that two opposing ideas can both be true.

In this world, we are often told that we have two options.

And we must choose one or the other.

We are told that it is right and wrong for every situation.

We are told that we must decide what one emotion we will have for a given situation.

Most of our faith is put to us in this way too.

We have to choose.

We have to choose which side we are on, and what is the right way to believe.

 

For example, have you ever answered one of those political surveys?

They give you a topic and then ask what you think or feel about it.

And it is always only two choices.

I really dislike those because I often don't think either of the solutions they offer.

I remember one time I was taking one of those surveys, and I was talking about how I felt and thought about a particular subject.

The pollster said, "Sir, you have to just pick one of the answers?"

 

Life is not as binary as we are told.

It doesn't have to take it or leave it.

My way or the highway.

This or that.

 

I really started to think about this after my mother died.

Because I often felt two emotions at the same time.

I felt extremely sad and extremely grateful and even glad.

Sad that my mother was no longer here on this earth with me.

Sad that I can't go and talk to her and get her advice.

Glad that I had her as my mother.

Glad for all the things she did teach me.

Glad that I was blessed to have her love.

Two seemingly opposing emotions at the same time.

 

Maybe our emotions and our thoughts have room for paradox.

Maybe we actually experience paradoxes more in our lives than we want to admit.

What if our faith was built around this idea that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time?

 

It would start at the cross.

It is here that we see paradox most strikingly.

Jesus is strong by being weak.

The king of our lives is the one who dies on a cross.

A sinless savior is killed as a criminal.

Jesus saves us by giving up his life.

Today in our Gospel we hear people mocking Jesus because he saved others, but seemingly can't save himself.

Jesus did miraculous things for people.

He healed people from physical and emotional trauma.

He fed 5,000 people.

He calmed storms, and walked on water.

He walked among us as one of us, even though he was God.

Power comes from serving and letting go, and not commanding and ordering others around.

And in Luke's Gospel here is Jesus on the cross actually saving others.

Here is Jesus telling a criminal that he will be in paradise.

The cross is filled with contradiction.

It is filled with paradox.

No wonder the Gospel writers don't really try to explain its meaning.

Instead, the show us what it was.

Instead, they let it stand as it was.

And they let us work through what it means for us.

 

Some have tried to make the cross only about one thing.

Jesus died on the cross to save us from sin and death.

That is the sentence that we hear most often.

I believe that.

But it isn't all the cross means.

It isn't all it has to say to us about our faith in God.

The cross says so much more.

And perhaps we don't have to make it only say one thing.

Because it is also an example to us of what it means to follow Jesus.

It is also God's way of laughing at evil and saying it has no real power over us.

It is also God's way of showing us that there is more to life than what the world says is power.

It is also God's way of showing us the true nature of God's love for us.

I could go on and on.

But the point is that it is all those things for us.

 

In our lives, we need paradox so much.

Because what I have found is that one thing is never enough to explain all the things I have to face in this life.

One emotion is not enough to explain my pain at losing someone I love.

One thought is not enough to explain how I feel about the issues that we face in this life.

One idea is not enough to solve the problem I am facing.

One way of looking at life does not explain all the complexities of the reality of people's existence.

One word is not enough to explain my faith.

It is complicated and needs more than all of that.

 

I fall into the either/or category very easily.

And it is often at my own peril.

I will sometimes make declarative statements.

At the time they sound good.

And then later on I will say the opposite, and someone (usually my wife) will remind me that I just recently said the opposite.

Then I have to confront that I am either a liar or that life is more complicated than I wanted to admit.

 

The cross always confronts our ability to make everything easy.

Or to make us comfortable with absolute statements.

On the cross, God took away our self-righteous talk, and our self-justification.

Instead, we are left to confront the parts of ourselves that are the two thieves on either side of Jesus.

Both of them are wrong, but one with a declarative statement about how the world works.

The powerful use it for their own good.

The other sees sin in himself and confesses his need to be remembered for something.

On any day I can be either of those two people.

One day totally confident in who I am and what I am doing.

The next realized that I don't know anything.

One day I will believe I figured out how the world works.

The next realizing that it can also work in other ways.

 

I believe holding things in paradox is an important spiritual practice.

It keeps us away from absolutism.

It keeps us honest about ourselves and our ability to make sense out of everything.

It keeps us humble.

It shows us our need to be remembered by God.

It helps us to see our neighbor's life and hold it in high regard even when that is not our life experience.

 

If you are confused by life.

If you are searching for spiritual help.

I want to suggest to you that you too can hold two opposite things in tension.

I know that doing that has helped me mourn.

It has helped me to love my neighbor as myself.

And it helped me to start at the cross because it is there that I am saved.

I am saved from myself, from my need to be a know it all.

It is at the cross where our king dies to save us.

That paradoxical statement is the truth that leads us to paradise.

May the cross be the place where we are remembered by God, where we give up our need for simple answers, where we learn to love our neighbors, and where we are saved.

Amen