A Most Intriguing Paradox

A Most Intriguing Paradox

Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020

Scripture: Matthew 28:8

I’ve always enjoyed the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan. I guess in their time the spoofed some of the features of Victorian England. Today they’re pure fluff. They’re hardly serious. I’ve never taken the time to learn them, but I find pieces like “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” and “When I Was a Lad (The Ruler of the  Queen’s Navee)” to be great fun. Silly to be sure, but fun. Recently as I was reading Matthew’s account of the women at the tomb on the first Easter morning I was reminded of another silly but fun Gilbert and Sullivan song, “A Paradox, a Paradox, a Most Intriguing Paradox.” The supposed paradox in this little ditty is that a person born on February 29 could be decades old but have had only a few birthdays. Ha ha. A paradox.

There’s a much more serious and meaningful paradox in Matthew’s account of two women at Jesus tomb on the Sunday after his crucifixion. In that account Mary Magdalene and another woman identified only as “the other Mary” go to Jesus’ tomb. Matthew has all sorts of dramatic things happen there, an earthquake and an angel coming down from heaven who looks like lightning. Yikes! Pretty scary stuff. The angel tells the women that Jesus isn’t there, that he has been raised from the dead and is going to Galilee. Whereupon the women “left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell the disciples.” These two women are certainly his disciples too, but never mind. They run to tell the others “with fear and great joy.”

It’s that combination of fear and great joy that struck me as I read this text recently. Aren’t fear and joy contradictory emotions? How could these women have been feeling both at the same time? I know that when I’m afraid I’m sure not feeling joy, and I know that when I’m joyful I’m not afraid. Wouldn’t that be true of these two women also? I’d sure think so. So how can Matthew say they were feeling both fear and great joy at the same time?

He can say it because he’s giving us a paradox. A paradox is when two things that can’t both be true at the same time are both true at the same time. In Gilbert and Sullivan’s paradox a character is twenty-one years old, but he’s had only five birthdays because he was born on February 29. No one can be twenty-one and five at the same time. That makes it a paradox.

Now, this Gilbert and Sullivan paradox is perfectly silly and isn’t really a paradox at all, but in the realm of faith paradoxes can express quite serious and profound truths. In fact, every profound religious truth is paradoxical, or at least in Christianity it is. Consider: God is both utterly transcendent and immediately present at the same time. It’s not possible, it’s just true. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine at the same time. It’s not possible, it’s just true. Humanity time and again proves itself utterly unlovable, and God loves us anyway. It’s not possible, it’s just true. That’s what a paradox is. Something that isn’t possible but is true.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were both afraid and joyful at the same time when they saw the angel at the tomb and heard what that heavenly messenger had to say. They really did have reason to be both fearful and joyful. Of course they were afraid. People in the Bible are always afraid when they see an angel, but our women’s experience here must have been particularly frightening. First of all they felt an earthquake. I’ve felt earthquakes. Perhaps you have too. They’re frightening. At first you don’t know what’s happening, then you just pray it won’t kill you. Then there was an angel, but not some chubby cherub from a Hallmark greeting card. This one looks like lightning. Lightning, while it may be beautiful and look great in photographs, is pretty scary. I sure don’t want to get hit by it. So right off the bat these women had lots of reason to be afraid.

Then that scary angel told them that something absolutely impossible had happened. They knew that the Romans had crucified Jesus the previous Friday. They knew he was dead. They knew he’d been buried. That’s why they went to the tomb, to anoint his body with spices after the custom of their people. The angel told them that he wasn’t there, that he had risen from the dead and was gone, headed for Galilee.

Now, most if not all of us at least feel some apprehension when we’re confronted by something new, something unknown. I suppose these two Marys had faced unknown things in their lives before. Most of us have. I suppose they had felt apprehension or even fear before, but they certainly had never encountered anything like this. No one ever had. We’ve all known people who have died, and as much as we might want them to, none of them has ever risen from the grave. Yet a divine messenger told these two women that Jesus had done precisely that. What could it possibly mean? What would happen now? Did Jesus rise from the grave to do what he never did before he died, namely, raise an army and go to war with the Romans? Did he intend to seek revenge against the temple officials who had turned him over to Pilate with a demand that he be crucified? Or on the Romans who actually did it? If he tried any of those things what would happen? What would the Romans do? How violent would they get? Or maybe rather than any of that he’d come and make really tough demands on them. What would he expect of them and their friends now? They had no way of knowing any of those things. So of course they left the tomb with fear. That part of the paradox is easy enough to understand.

So is the great joy part. I mean, Mary Magdalene had been one of Jesus’ closest disciples, the Gospels’ efforts to disguise that fact to the contrary notwithstanding. We can assume that the other Mary had been a follower of his too. They probably thought he was the Messiah, that he had come to save Israel. But then the Romans killed him, and now some extraordinary looking figure had told them that he was alive again. What good news! What a joy! Their friend and leader wasn’t dead after all. They didn’t have to mourn him because it turned out he wasn’t dead. Halleluiah! The news of Christ’s resurrection certainly was cause for great joy.

Somehow these two faithful women felt both fear and great joy at the same time, and here’s the thing about that for us. God calls us to share the paradoxical emotions of the two Marys that first Easter morning. We experience Easter as a time of joy, and it is proper for us to do so. We sing “Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” Our Lord and Savior died to be sure, but he rose again and lives forever in the hearts and souls of his followers. We sing “where O death is now thy sting, where thy victory O grave?” In Christ’s resurrection we know that death does not have the last word, that like Jesus we live forever with God. Easter is  time of great joy to be sure.

But let’s not forget the other prong of Easter’s emotional paradox, the fear prong. Why should we feel fear at Easter? Because as I heard someone say once “Oh no! He’s back!” Why “Oh no”? Because during his life on earth Jesus made radical demands on his first followers and on us. Take up your cross and follow me. The one who would save his or her life must lose it for the sake of the Gospel. From Hebrew scripture: Love the Lord your God with your whole being and your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Yes, he also said my yoke is easy and my burden is light, but they’re easy and light only because he bears them with us. We can and should seek refuge and find comfort in Jesus, but when we really understand what he demands of us we quite appropriately feel fear as well. Living out those demands has gotten a lot of people killed. Even if doing it doesn’t get you killed it sure can get people mad at you. It presents us with profound moral dilemmas: What is the right thing to do in this particular situation? That’s not always an easy question to answer. Once I think I know what the answer is, do I have the courage to do it? That one can be even harder.

So be joyful at Easter to be sure, but don’t forget the fear side of the paradox. Jesus made great demands on his first followers. His Resurrection is among other things God’s sign and seal that Jesus really is the one we are to follow. His demands are God’s demands. So yes. Today feel great joy, but don’t forget the fear. Live in the tension between those two emotions. That is the call of Easter. That is the call of God. Amen.