Not long ago I asked you to consider irony. Tonight, I want to ask you to consider paradox.
Interestingly, a paradox can either be described as sound reasoning that leads to illogical or contradictory conclusion; or a paradox can be described as self-contradictory reasoning that leads to a well-founded or true conclusion. It’s a paradox that a paradox can be described paradoxically as a paradox. What fun!
Christian Faith is full of paradox: if you want to find your life you must lose it; those who lose their lives for Christ’s sake will find them. This is the classic Christian paradox. There are others.
Ash Wednesday is really a paradox, hidden a little beneath ashes. For, the most solemn and distinctive declaration of the day “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” is something that we believe to be true, but it is not at all what we want you to subscribe to as a matter of belief. In fact, the most important thing you can do with the ashes that are sprinkled on your head tonight is to get rid of them, and try to forget that I ever put them there.
For all intents and purposes, Ash Wednesday looks like our own collective memento mori: the ritualized Christian reminder that you die. But, of course, the last thing I would want you to take away from our observances tonight is the reminder that we all die. For, every single gathering of Christians is an opportunity for us to whisper or shout into one another’s ears another reminder altogether: memento vivere: remember that you live! It’s a paradox.
Saint Paul was entirely comfortable with paradox, having been a persecutor of the church who became its great apostle. Saint Paul was no idiot. He knew that the call of Christ had entangled him in paradoxes galore. He prayed for strength and relief, and Jesus told him: “I hear your prayer, but my grace is sufficient for you; and my power is made perfect in weakness.” That’s paradox. And it cannot have been easy for St. Paul to accept. But he did. And then he changed the world, in Christ’s Name.
St. Paul also knew what paradox looks like to smart people who have their lives and the world figured out. It looks stupid. It looks like you are making stuff up as you go along. It looks like… don’t you understand that we can see how your faith doesn’t make any sense!?! Don’t you see, how even if we accepted the terms of your argument as somehow logical, they would still lead to an illogical, absurd and contradictory conclusion: that when you die, then you go on to a new life. Paradox, St. Paul, it’s paradox! Oh, St. Paul might say in response, paradoxically, I see it as a self-contradictory proposition that nevertheless leads to the truth! So, yes, it’s a paradox!
Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul pointed out a few other paradoxes that ring with authenticity and hope, if you ask me. “We are treated as imposters, and yet are true;” he wrote, “as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”
Paradox! It seems like it should be a song from Fiddler on the Roof, but it comes from the wrong end of the Bible. It’s a song that would be sung as the faithful, who are supposed by their neighbors to be imposters, unknown, dying, punished, poor, and empty-handed, are actually shown (in a feat of marvelous choreography) to be true, well-known, alive, un-punished, rejoicing, enriching, and in possession of everything that matters.
If it seems to you that what you are about to receive is a pinch of ashes on your head, I beseech you to look more deeply at the symbol. What you are really about to receive is a pinch of paradox. (You can see that I am working out the lyrics of the song for the musical already.) Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Because when you remember that you are dust, you may also call to mind whose breath it was that gave life to that dust. You may remember that you were made for paradise - that was God’s choice for you. You may remember that, like me, you inherited the estate of self-centeredness, self-obsession, self-serving, and self-enmity from our first ancestors, who might have kept their desires fixed on God, but who always had the option not to. (It’s like there was a paradox, right there in paradise.)
Memento mori. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. But don’t remember it too well. It’s a paradox. Memento vivere. Remember that you are dust and that you will die, so that you will never forget that you carry God’s breath in you, and that you will live! It’s a paradox. It’s two pieces of apparently contradictory information that turn out to lead to a conclusion that’s marvelously, beautifully, deliciously, paradoxically true!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Ash Wednesday 2021
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
