Paradox speaks of inconsistency, absurdity, irony and contradiction. When you or I say or do or think something that at first seems to be absurd or preposterous, but in fact is true – then that is a paradox. An oxymoron like jumbo shrimp can be a paradox if the shrimp (meaning a small creature) is in fact the largest of its kind. Likewise, the larger half of a piece of pie isn’t really bigger than the other half or it isn’t a true half of the pie. But it may seem to be the larger half, if it is closer to you or it’s the one left on the pie plate (depending on your perspective – like the glass of water is half full or half empty).
But you cannot be “clearly confused,” act naturally, or be “found missing” any more than you can hear “deafening silence” or be “seriously funny.” Halloween stories say that Zombies are the “living dead.” But we know that’s just as absurd as “Microsoft Works,” “military intelligence,” tragic comedy,” an “unbiased opinion,” “virtual reality,” “original copies,” “same difference,” “constant variable,” “minor crisis,” an “exact estimate,” the “only choice,” a “working holiday,” or the “rolling stop” you explained to the police officer before he gave you a ticket for failure to obey the stop sign.
Just how did some of you make it through the “Great Depression”? If it was so great then why do we call it a depression? And how free is “free trade?” What kind of war is NOT waged with a “peacekeeper missile?” What is a “silent scream?” And how does the sports channel manage to show us a replay that is “taped live?” How does Charlie Brown manage to experience “good grief?” How was I going to convince my mother that when I wanted to look like a teen age idol – that “tight slacks” were the “bees knees” and that if I couldn’t wear them that tight – that they were a “near miss.”
If all this is going over like a “led balloon” then try asking your Senator why he or she approved more “light tanks” for the military, or why he didn’t tell you about that new tax hike, because it’s “old news” in our “peace force” efforts to bring the terrorists to “criminal justice” because they still have “weapons of mass destruction” well in hand.
Some of you might be looking at today’s scripture, asking yourself: If a sinner is justified by merely asking for forgiveness then why try to do anything else beyond mere existence in the eyes of God. But the truth is that God’s love and forgiveness is no joke. “A loving and forgiving God” is not an oxymoron although it may seem to be a paradox in the face of all the wrong that we humans are guilty of?
John 6:28-29 quotes Jesus with another paradox: “Then [the crowd] said to him, "What must we do to perform the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."
How can such an awesome creator God give us such a simple answer to what we must do for God: “believe in Christ?” I must have to do something. But the paradox here is that without a humble acceptance of God’s grace and mercy then I will become preoccupied with my own importance in God's kingdom, and not with the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is not saying that we never have to do anything more than believe when He criticizes the Pharisee and applauds the tax collector from humbly confessing his sins before God. Submission to God and faith in the One God is sufficient, pleasing, and what God most desires. But "Faith without works is dead" (James 2:17).
If confessing our sins is better than tithing, fasting and doing good works then why do them? If all I have to do is believe, how will anything ever get done to further God's kingdom?"
Jesus tells us in both of these passages that: When we lose ourselves in humbly confessing our weakness and sinful nature, but continue to seek to do God's will, then we will find life and bring others to find life, by walking in the Spirit and not in the Flesh..
Have you ever noticed how “God acts like He’s got forever” to do something you want done right now. When I catch myself thinking that way I have to remember that the paradox is that God DOES have forever to get anything and everything done. But my Pharisaical way of thinking expects that when I do something for God that I will get a pay-off and blessing in return right away. The tax collector in this parable doesn’t expect anything in return. He is naked before God – warts and all. He asks for mercy like the lepers we read about two weeks ago – asking for mercy and receiving a healing out of the love of Jesus.
So after 500 years of increasing slavery God tells Moses from the burning bush that “now the cry of the Israelites have reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them” (Exodus 3:9). In order to rescue the Israelites, God had been preparing Moses in the desert for 40 years for this ominous task. When Moses was ready, God began moving in more definite ways that would overcome our doubting minds. God lifted that humble man out of the wilderness to free His people.
Our tendency here at Dexter and in our private lives is to believe that nothing is happening if nothing appears to change. But God is always at work – regardless of programming and special events. If we remember that, then all our waiting on the Lord is not a paradox. It is the life of hope and the hope of life. It is a faith that sees beyond the dimming of these years to an everlasting promise.
Jesus came paradoxically as the promised Messiah from very lowly human existence, Simeon and Anna recognized the promise fulfilled of thousands of years since Abraham (Luke 2:21-38). Mary’s Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) tells of how her lowly state enables God to lift her to the highest glory as the “mother of God” (Theo Tokos).
Paradoxically, the sinner Publican is obeying the prophet Hosea’s command, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God (Hosea 14:1). This resembles the philosopher Ernst Bloch’s shocking paradox: "Only an atheist can be a good Christian." That means that we must abandon all other gods and to worship the one true God. The main difference between the tax collector and the Pharisee is that both were guilty of worshiping false gods. But the Pharisee was like the rich young man in Luke 18:18-25, whose riches were a god to him – just as keeping the law was a god to the Pharisee. Both of those “good Jews” put their faith in their own strength and good works.
Our false gods today includes unbridled consumerism – either we want what we don’t really need or we hold personal wealth in things above all else.
The greatest paradox in scripture is Jesus’ cry from the cross “God my Father, why have You forsaken me?” And yet we know by faith that God the Father has left his Son to die so as to give Him and all of us eternal life. Praise God from whom all blessings flow – even in death which promises life in our Lord and Savior.
Dear Heavenly Father, You are Yahweh the one and only true God, the God of all, of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Help us to see the obstacles that keep us from worshiping and seeking a personal relationship with You. Please blesses us all, Father, so that we may do away with the false gods in our lives and discover the wonder of seeing Christ in the faces of all people – in Christ name and being, Amen.
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