So
much of life is either/or. There seems to be no escaping it. Either you order
the cheeseburger with French Fries or you go for the pepperoni pizza. Either
you root for the Hokies or you pull for the ‘Hoos. Either you vote for the
Republican or you vote for the Democrat. Either you accept the job offer and
uproot your family to move to a new state or you turn it down, and risk being
let go. Either you decide to marry this person, choosing to be with them for
the rest of you life, or you don’t, and decide to remain single for at least a
while longer. Either you’re still alive,
cured of the disease that creeps within or you’re not, and your loved ones are
planning your funeral. So much of life is either/or. We find ourselves facing
forks in the road, trapped by decisions and defined by dilemmas—either ones we
make ourselves or ones that are made for us. It is impossible, if not greedy
and indulgent, to wind up with two different or opposite things at the same
time.
So
much of life is either/or, and yet God’s ways toward us, by contrast, are
usually both/and. With God, all things are possible, and so we find our life in
him so much of the time is, in fact, about being two different or opposite
things simultaneously. We are both lost and
we’re found. We’re in bondage to sin and
yet we’re free. Upon reflection, we realize we are a both sinner and we’re a
saint. God’s kingdom is now and it is also not yet. As Jesus points out, we are
to both practice our faith fervently and
also make ourselves look like we’re not.
The
fancy, SAT word for a both/and scenario is paradox. It is the ability for two
otherwise contradictory things to exist at the same time. And there’s probably
no one better than apostle Paul at using and explaining paradox to illustrate
what it means to live as a Christ-follower. In one of his letters to the church
in the ancient Greek city of Corinth, when he tries to clarify his own faith
and how it effects others’ perception of him as he serves them and proclaims
the gospel, he actually lists a long string of these both/and statements:
“We were seen as both fake
and real, as unknown and yet well known, as dying, yet look!—we are alive!...as going
through pain yet always happy as
poor, yet making many rich, as having
nothing and yet owning everything.”
One
might say it sounds both confusing, and
it somehow makes complete sense. What Paul means is when you know you’ve been
reconciled to God because of what Christ has done, you find yourself almost
always at odds with the broken world around you. Others see your actions and
values—values which emphasize compassion for others and serving the lowliest—and
interpret them as making no sense in a world that lusts after things like personal
fame and material wealth. They are blind to the fact that there is actually
great joy to be found in such a way of living. The world around looks at how much
some of great faith have given up, sees how they share with the less fortunate,
and therefore find them utterly destitute, unaware of the reward they receive
through serving, unaware of the reward they is storing up in heaven.
Living
as two polar opposite things at the same time is what Paul says people of faith
become accustomed to now that they have been reconciled to God through Christ. They
are living, breathing paradoxes. Even though they are still sinners, they are also
still becoming the righteousness of God.
And
that’s the root of this paradox. Because, you see, it is not just an imperfect
world that is at odds with God’s new creation in Christ. We must also admit there
are still parts of ourselves in conflict with the peace we find through faith. That
is, this is not just a matter of how others perceive our both/and qualities. It
is we, ourselves, when we’re honest, who are constantly living this tension.
That
is one reason why the ashes which will momentarily mark our foreheads so
appropriate. They themselves are a paradox. Ashes are at once a symbol of death
and decay, a bitter remnant of a life that is over, and yet also an agent of
cleaning and cleansing. They are something that cultures, including ancient
Israel, have long used to show repentance, shame, and guilt, and yet out of the
ashes new life can arise. Ashes are both a sign of our mortality and of our
eternal hope in Jesus. We are not in this life either dead or alive, either
condemned or saved, but both dead in sin and alive in Christ at the same time. We
are both declared guilty, trespassers, and also saved for eternal life. And
when we hear that to God we are both one and the other, it allows us to be
honest about both: real about our sin and what it does to us and others, but
also hopeful about what Christ provides.
Another
person who dealt a lot with the both/and nature of the life of faith was Martin
Luther, a devoted student of the apostle Paul. So much of Luther’s theology, which
is being revisited in a special way this year as it 2017 marks the 500th
anniversary of the launch of the Protestant Reformation, which Luther
effectively began, is built around these paradoxes of Christian faith. Luther
had a deep understanding of his inner brokenness. He even had a special German
word for it: Anfechtung. Difficult to
translate directly into English, Anfechtung
was Luther’s way of describing the way the soul is tormented by this ever-lingering
sense of doubt and despair and hopelessness regarding his or her condition (to
be honest, most words in German sound like despair and hopelessness). He writes
of it in a line of “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” when he says, “no strength of
ours can match [evil’s] might. We would be lost, rejected.” Luther’s own sense
of Anfechtung was often psychologically
crippling, especially in his early years.
I
was unable to find any proof of this, but I would imagine Luther loved Ash
Wednesday. The rituals and meaning of this worship service would have resonated
for him, the ashes a sign of just how corrupt his feelings of despair had left him. And yet, we can imagine he would
have loved the fact that the ashes were marked in the form a cross: there could
be no clearer sign of a gracious God, one that had found him in the suffering
of His Son. We are not either destined to death or claimed by God. Luther
emphasized that we are both at the same time: dying, and yet rising…ever being
drowned in our baptism, and ever being lifted up to new life…knowing our
separation from God is always there, and also knowing that we’ve been
reconciled.
The
last act of Luther’s life, was to travel to his hometown in the winter of 1546 in
order to help two of his brothers reconcile to each other. He was in very poor
health, but made the journey anyway. He managed to succeed in getting his
brothers to come back together, but in the end it was too much for him and he
began to die. We know from the things he wrote and said in the last days and
hours of his life that he was still tormented by Anfechtungen, by that inner worry of doubt in God and despair. Here
was a learned man, fluent in scripture, responsible for reforming the church in
many ways, and still unsure of God’s eternal care. A note he scribbled on a
napkin two days before he died ends with the words, “We are beggars. That is
true!” Those are the last words he wrote, after writing hundreds of thousands.
For
him, until the end, faith in God still involved paradox, and that was good, for
it still ultimately pushed him into God’s arms of mercy, fully relying on
grace. He wasn’t either saved or totally rejected, but both/and: both a holy child
of God and a beggar for his forgiveness.
So
this Ash Wednesday, this Lent, this whole life in Christ, let’s try to remember
we live as “both/and” people in an “either/or” world. “Either/or” has its
place, I suppose, for things like ordering food and choosing a spouse. However,
when it comes to God’s loving actions toward us and knowing we’re reconciled to
him, let’s realize we’re caught the tension of a blessed paradox which will one
day—one bright day with no more ashes—be resolved. We are both lost and found,
both guilty and forgiven. Having nothing yet possessing everything. We come forward
and kneel at the rail, ashes on our heads, and hold our hands out like beggars…and as beggars who have become very rich.
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
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