The parable of the vineyard workers. Hurricane Irma. Hurricane Maria. The earthquake in Mexico City. What … if anything … might these have in common? Last Sunday I asked you … the congregation … to tell me about where and how you found God in the midst of a hurricane and its aftermath. We heard stories of acts of kindness and compassion between friends … and amongst strangers. We heard about seeing the other … no matter how different … as being in the same boat and being a fellow child of God. But what I didn’t hear were the questions … Why did one person get flooded out and not another? What about all the devastation in the Caribbean islands where poverty is rampant and infrastructure is weak? What about the 10 persons who died in a nursing home in south Florida? What about the feeling of despair that is overwhelming some people … some of my friends and neighbors? And now we can add all the questions about the earthquake.
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The definition of a “paradox” is a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true. A “chiasmus” is a figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second. An example of a chiasmus is: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” The name “chiasmus” comes from the Greek letter “chi” which is our letter “X” … it forms a crossing.
In the reading from Matthew’s gospel this morning we hear: For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. This is both a paradox and a chiasmus. A paradox because it would seem that one cannot save and lose, and/or lose and save, at the same time. And this is a chiasmus because of the switching of the words “save” and “lose” in the two parallel phrases of the sentence. |
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