THE WORLD’S MOST PROFOUND PARADOX

THE WORLD’S MOST PROFOUND PARADOX (March 12, 2006)

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Mark 8:35

Jesus has just asked the most important question in the New Testament: “Who do people say that I am?” And Peter has passed the test with flying colors: “you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But instead of rewarding Peter, Jesus begins to tell him exactly what “being Christ” means: that he will suffer, that he will be rejected, then be killed, and then after three days will rise again. This information just didn’t fit with Peter’s preconception of what “Messiah” should mean. Messiah to Peter didn’t mean suffering, it meant the end of suffering, freedom from the Romans, a return to a golden age, such as the Jews knew under King David. Forbid it, Peter says.

But Jesus turns on him, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Imagine those harsh words to his number One disciple. One moment Peter is being praised for getting the answer right, and the next moment he is being strongly criticized. “Your mind is not fixed on divine things,” says Jesus. In other words, his coming suffering and death is part of the “divine things”. It is necessary.

Then Jesus moves on even further, to talk not only of himself but of his followers: “if any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me….those who want to save their lives will lose it, those who lose their life for my sake, and the gospels, will find it.” It is one of Jesus’ unforgettable sayings, and it is at the heart of what the Christian message is all about. It is the world’s most profound paradox.

St. Francis captured this paradox in the famous prayer. “For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

The trouble is we fight to preserve the self, to gain recognition, and we seem incurably tuned in on ourselves. Jesus gives us a new way to think -- a way of salvation which frees us from bondage to ourselves. As one of my teachers, Dr. Paul Lehmann, said, the world’s slogan is “self-realization through self-acceptance” but Christ’s way is “self-acceptance through self-giving.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr and theologian, described Jesus as “the Man for others”.
Last Wednesday night a group of us watched the video “The Eight Deadly Thoughts”. One of the deadly thoughts is avarice.

The point Diogenes Allen made in the video is that avarice is deadly because it cuts us off from being the generous persons we were intended by God to be. As God is generous in sending his only Son to die for us so we are called to be generous. He made the point that church stewardship programs would be a lot different if they focused on this idea, that we show how much the message of God’s generosity has penetrated our minds by being generous ourselves. The issue is not “raising money” but living into the paradoxical idea that it is, as St. Francis said, “in giving that we receive.”

It is well to remember that Peter had all the right words: You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. But the right words were not enough without the discipleship which follows. The old childhood lesson of how to spell JOY is always relevant. Jesus first, others second, yourself last.

John Calvin said the heart of the Christian life is self-denial. “We are not our own,” he said, “therefore, neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own; therefore let us not propose it as our end, to seek what may be expendient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own, therefore let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God’s; to him, therefore, let us live and die….”

If people know one thing about Lent it usually is that this is the time people give up something. They deny themselves some pleasure they usually enjoy, say, chocolates. It is a very small way of pointing to the larger truth that Lent is about discipleship, which begins on focusing on what Christ gave up for us, and leads inexorably to what we give up for Christ.

The great profound paradox, of course, is that just as Christ gave up himself for the salvation of the world and received the crown of glory, so we too through our giving of ourselves actually gain far more in the satisfaction of a life well lived.

Many times people find that when they look back over their lives the times they were happiest were not the times things were easiest but in fact when they were scrimping and doing without to help their family, or to do for others. Many who rushed off to help after Hurricane Katrina, and others who contributed generously, said they were answering some kind of inner call. We were just meant that way.

This is the way to understand the Cross itself, Christ’s self-giving for us and our salvation is in fact a mirror of this great truth, so paradoxical, but a truth which has nonetheless been understood in some deep sense by every parent who has labored self-lessly to build a home or worked long hours or gone without so that the kids could be fed and clothed. We are meant for others, and nothing teaches that more clearly than the Cross of Jesus Christ itself.

I believe families which choose to bring their children to church do so because deep down they know that in addition to learning the stories of the Bible and the story of salvation their children will learn that being a “real person” means thinking of others, even giving of themselves for others. There is no place where that will be more clearly learned than in a community which focuses its whole life around “the Man for others”.

In the early 1960s a Mexican-American named Cesar Chavez came on the scene as the first successful organizer of farmworkers. Like Dr. King, he was deeply committed to justice and to non-violence. He transformed a local labor struggle in California into a national cause. Chavez himself came from an impoverished large family who lost their small farm in the southwest in the Depression. He attended thirty-seven schools but he never got beyond the seventh grade.

Farmworkers were the poorest and most exploited of American workers and they were deliberately excluded from most labor laws. They were practically invisible until Edward R. Murrow did his famous documentary on them, “Harvest of Shame”, which aired around Thanksgiving one year. Their plight is still difficult, but they have many more protections now, as a result of Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers. Chavez gave himself to the cause and never personally profited. He lived on $5 a week plus basic expenses, just as all the other organizers, and he suffered tremendously.

But he said this to his United Farm Workers: “When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of manliness is to sacrifice ourselves for others in totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man is to suffer for others. God help us to be men.”

Cesar Chavez had captured the essence of the world’s most profound paradox, a paradox which is nowhere more visible than the Cross of Jesus Christ itself.