Two men went up in a hot-air balloon one May morning. Suddenly they were enveloped by clouds and lost track of where they were. They drifted for what seemed like hours. Finally the cloud parted, and they spotted a man below them on the ground.

"Where are we?" one of the passengers hollered down. The man on the ground looked around, looked up at the balloon, looked around some more and then yelled back, "You're in a balloon."

The two balloonists looked at one another and then one of them yelled down again, "Are you a philosopher?"

"Yes," the man hollered up from below.

The other balloonist said, "How did you know he was a philosopher?" His friend replied, "No one else could give an answer so quickly that's so logical and yet tells you so little about where you are and where you want to be!" ("On Being Religious", Donald J. Shelby, May 27, 1984).

I don't want to be hard on philosophers. But if that story has any hint of truth, Jesus was not a philosopher. He did deal in paradox which is a favorite tool of philosophers, in seeking truth. Yet, he had a way of using the simplest examples from daily life to make plain the truth of his paradoxes. If you're going to find your life, you're going to have to lose it, he said. "It is only in giving that you receive." "If you want to be first, you must become last." "If you're going to be master, you must become a servant." And all of those paradoxes are wrapped in one: We must die if we want to live.