A paradox: losing your life to find it
I want to start with a question: do you know what a paradox is? Roughly speaking, a paradox is a fact or a saying that seems to go against logic. I say “seems” because on the surface it looks contradictory, but when you look at it closely you realize it makes sense, that it carries a message. The Bible has its paradoxes too: it presents spiritual truths that seem to contradict each other but that hold a fairly deep meaning.
And it seems to me that the thread running through today's passages is exactly a paradox: losing your life in order to find it. It sounds a little contradictory at first, right? But it has to do with a radical surrender, where death is the indispensable requirement for experiencing true life and the provision of God.
Now, what is going to die? What are we taking to its death? It could be the ego, the self, our own plans, our own comfort. To find out, I want to suggest that we walk through these minutes like someone making a couple of stops and then taking a road: two stations and a road.
First station: the altar
At the first station there is an altar: the altar Abraham builds to offer up his own son. The first times I read this passage, when I was very young, I thought what a lot of people think: “wow, how cruel, right?” If you read it quickly, it can look like a capricious God who takes away the gift he gave you. Last week we saw how Abraham and his wife were far too old to have children, and yet they are granted one; they are given a promise. And now, in Genesis 22, God says: offer him up as a burnt offering. You could react: “don't toy with my emotions; you give me a son just to take him away?”
But the truth is the Bible does not speak of a capricious, tyrannical God. It speaks of a God of the covenant, a faithful God. If we stay with the story of a cruel God who snatches things away, we're left with only the preface of the book, with the introduction, never seeing a little further. That's why I want us to take the psalmist's point of view.
“I will sing of the Lord's great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself. You said, ‘I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your line forever and make your throne firm through all generations.’” — Psalm 89:1-4 (NIV)
If you read the whole psalm, do the exercise of taking a pencil and underlining how many times the word “faithfulness” appears. That same God who established his faithfulness in the heavens, that same God whom the holy ones praise for his faithfulness, is the same God who made the promise to Abraham. He is a faithful God. That's why, when Abraham obediently builds the altar and lays his son on it, the voice of God is heard stopping him and providing a ram. That ram will be the offering. The provision was revealed after he surrendered, after he let go.
What would our Isaac be?
At this first station I'd like us to ask ourselves: what would our Isaac be? What would we lay on the altar? What would we be able to pull away from ourselves —something valuable, something important— to leave it there and trust in God's provision? The One who asks me to let go is the same faithful God, the same One who in the beginning gave me what I didn't have. He is not a God who wants to take from you, out of spite, what is yours. He is a God who first gives you everything —he owns it all— but who, when it comes to the kind of relationship you're meant to have with him, needs you to let go of something, to place something there, on the altar.
The pruned vineyard
Maybe this image of a man walking up a mountain to sacrifice his son feels very distant to us. Let me offer you an illustration. When Vanessa and I got married, we went to Mendoza for our honeymoon, at the end of September. For those who don't know, the grape harvest in Mendoza is in February and March; the harvest festival is held in March. But when we went, winter had already passed and the vine had been pruned. We visited a vineyard and, honestly, it wasn't as pretty as you might imagine. The nicest thing in the photo was my wife, because behind her you could see a whole lot of plants that looked dry, lifeless, with no leaves, almost just stumps. The landscape didn't look pretty at all; it looked like there was no life there.
I'm a complete amateur when it comes to agriculture, so looking at those branches I thought, “there are some vandals out here breaking the plants.” But it turns out that pruning is the most important process for the plant to bear much fruit, in abundance. What I was seeing in September wasn't the end: it was only the prelude to the great harvest of February. And the same thing happens to us. When we're invited to hand over something valuable, something as much our own as our very life, we don't want to let go of it, because we're only seeing the prelude; we don't see what comes much later, what God can do.
Second station: the funeral
Then we come to Romans. What looked like a test of faith in the Old Testament, the apostle Paul, in Romans 6, turns into the very identity of believers. Paul argues that baptism is not only a rite of initiation and welcome into the church, but a burial.
“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” — Romans 6:4 (NIV)
Baptism pulls us out of the old world, ruled by sin and death, and plants us all at once into a new creation. In short, what Paul is saying is that there is no true life without a funeral first. We are joined to the death of Christ so that sin loses its legal dominion over us. There's no new life without first passing through a wake, through a funeral. And I ask you: who wants to go to a funeral? What do we find there? Pain, sadness, everyone dressed in black, doubts, uncertainty. It's not the best scene. And yet what Paul lays out is that, if you want a true life, you first have to pass through the funeral.
The slave and his death certificate
I want to show you another illustration. In ancient times, if a slave escaped from his master, even though he had run away he was still under his master's legal jurisdiction: if they found him, they could claim him back and even punish him. There were other ways to be set free, but can you guess what total freedom was? Death. Paul is making that connection: while you are a slave, no matter how far you run you're still under the power of your master, sin. But once you're dead, if sin comes to claim you, you can tell it: “sir, here is my death certificate; I was baptized, I died to sin, you no longer have any power over me.”
That's the point: sin no longer has any legal right over us. When it comes to demand our obedience, it no longer has authority, because legally we are dead. And it's not only about dying: we rise to a new creation, to a new life. That's why it now makes more sense to begin with a paradox. Careful, though: I'm not talking about despising this life in community —we eat together, we laugh, we play volleyball, we go on retreats, we enjoy life—. I'm talking about life lived on our own terms, the life that separates us from God, the life of disobedience; those things we don't want to give up.
The road: discipleship
After these two stations, I want to suggest that we take the road. And when I talk about the road, I mean discipleship. In Matthew 10, Jesus makes quite clear what he asks of his followers.
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” — Matthew 10:37-39 (NIV)
There's the paradox again. In the first century, taking up your cross meant walking straight toward death. Jesus warns that discipleship can bring division, because it will require us to put him first, above our most intimate ties. The disciple is not above the teacher: if the glory of the King of kings passed through Golgotha, the road of his followers cannot avoid that same cross. If we say we want to follow Jesus —and he, being God, being King of kings, walked humbled all the way to Golgotha with a cross on his back and was crucified—, how could we ever think that for us it will all be a stroll, as if we were at Disney? Clearly, it will require us to let go, to set some things aside. And these questions are quite personal: I'm not going to tell you exactly what you have to let go of; I have my own things to set aside, my own struggles.
The trapeze artist
One last illustration: have you ever been to the circus to watch the trapeze artists? It's fascinating. The trapeze artist starts by grabbing one bar, standing on a platform, and to reach the next one, at a certain moment, he has to let go. And it's frightening, because for an instant he hangs in the air, with no support, alone. But the other bar is up ahead. You have to let go of the bar of the old life to grab the new one. Radical discipleship is like that: to catch that second bar —which we could call life in the kingdom— there has to come a moment when we let go of the first one completely: our old life, our own plans, our control. For a few seconds we'll hang in the empty air, with nothing to hold on to, feeling vertigo, abandonment, surely fear. Finding life in Christ requires that instant of faith in which we let go in order to then hold on to him. Abraham left his son on the altar, and immediately God provided. Paul says that the self you cling to has to die, so that you can then have true life in Christ Jesus.
Four ideas to take home
Through a friend's influence, I read several books by N. T. Wright. There's an idea that comes up again and again in many of them: the gospel doesn't offer a way to improve your old way of life, but a completely new way to be truly human. I was thinking about what we call our outfit. Imagine that one day I decide to completely change my outfit, the way I dress and carry myself: you'll see me with a shaved head, or suddenly wearing a tie, I'll change my whole look because “that's what my new life demands.” But that outward change is not what the gospel offers. What the gospel proposes is a completely radical and absolute change so that we can become truly human again; that is, so that we connect with God's purpose, with what we were created for. And guess what: we were not created to sin, to be slaves. We mess up, yes, but that is not our true purpose.
I want to leave you with four ideas to sum up what we talked about this afternoon:
God demands to be at the absolute center of our lives. It can sound radical, but it isn't about picking fights with your family. The question is who comes first: the gift, or the One who gave it? Don't focus so much on the gift, but on the One who gave you the gift.
We must put our “Isaac” on the altar. We have to identify what it is we need to lay there, and then beg God for his provision.
Consider yourself legally dead to sin, and take up your cross every day.
Let's be like the trapeze artist who lets go of the bar of the old life to grab the bar of true life.
The kingdom of God advances, but not by force; it advances through voluntary surrender. Jesus gave himself up voluntarily; we too voluntarily let go of what we cling to, that life we think is ideal. And it turns out God can offer us a far better version of that life. So let's draw near to God and, this week, sit with these four ideas. Will you pray with me?
