Proper 5 Year B

Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness.

Mark 3:20-35

That passage from this week’s Gospel is one of those that will more than likely grab your attention. As soon as you consider this bold statement from Jesus about a sin that is unforgivable, your first reaction might be to think, My God it can’t be true, and then you’re almost certain to wonder if you’ve committed that sin or not!

This verse from the third chapter of Mark has brought more Bible studies to a screeching halt than probably any other in the New Testament.

Let me just say at the start that I believe it is extremely unlikely that any of us have committed an unforgivable sin whether blasphemy or otherwise. There I said it.

I’m going to ask you to look carefully again to verse 29. Jesus says, . . . but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never haveforgiveness.

Notice that the second clause in that sentence is passive in the sense that it doesn’t mention anyone withholding forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t say, If you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit– God will never ever forgive you.

He says you can never have forgiveness.

It is not that God regards such a sin as incurably horrendous.  Certainly more horrendous things have been done.  One only needs to watch or read the news, or as we used to say, Watch the film at eleven.

The authorities watched Jesus heal people time and time again, and yet they could not open their eyes and see the Spirit at work in him. Maybe the Scribes couldn’t handle the popularity of Jesus, but whatever it was, they never even seemed to try to be open to the light that Jesus offered.  One blasphemes against the Holy Spirit when one ignores the Holy Spirit.

The great New Testament commentator, William Barclay points out that if one lived in the dark long enough, one would lose the ability to see. Just as I found out the hard way when I was in physical rehab some years ago, if one stays in bed long enough, one loses the ability to walk.

And if one refuses the guidance of God’s Spirit often enough, one becomes, in the end, incapable of recognizing the truth even when it stares them in the face. They just couldn’t begin to realize that the truth was embodied in Jesus, the Christ.  How then could they ever come to know his unswerving forgiveness?  They could not have that forgiveness.

Someone once wrote: If our greatest need had been information, then God would have sent an Educator.

If our greatest need had been technology, then God would have sent a Scientist.

If our greatest need had been pleasure, then God would have sent an Entertainer.

If our greatest need had been money, then God would have sent an Economist.

But our greatest need was to know grace and forgiveness, and so God sent a Savior!

But if you forever close yourself off to the gift of grace.  If you need to kick the tires and check the warranty a few more times while God is trying to give away the entire inventory, then I suppose Jesus is absolutely right when he says today that you can never haveforgiveness.

I guess you could say that the only unforgivable sin is the one you won’t let be forgiven.  I confess that I’m one of those people who will tell other people that they are forgiven much more easily than I forgive myself.  If you find that resonates with your own life, then I have some advice for the both of us. 

By holding on to the past, by not letting go, we hold ourselves back.  

God is always on the move and so should we be.  If we really stop to think about it, what we have done in the past will never be as important as what we do next.

So, have you committed the permanently unforgivable sin?   NO!

I think I can safely say that because we acknowledge that there’s something so much bigger beyond ourselves.

It would be easy to look at this 29th verse of the 3rd chapter of Mark and say, AHA!  I knew it. I knew that God wasn’t going to forgive everybody. All the rules of justice that I learned while on the schoolyard paid off!  I knew that unconditional love of God still had conditions!

Someone, a grown adult, once asked me after one of my sermons on unconditional grace, If God forgives everyone, then why do we waste our time going to church, or working for God’s Kingdom or Praising God?

My answer went something like this:

If we go to church, work for God’s Kingdom and praise God because we believe that will somehow move ourselves ahead in line at the ‘pearly gates,’ then I think we do indeed ‘waste our time,’ and I would advise that we all go bowling, or fishing or whatever else might make us feel good.

We should go to church, work for God’s Kingdom and Praise God’s holy name because these are ENDS in themselves and not a MEANS to anything except demonstrating God’s unconditional love.

I look forward to the day when we stop looking over the shoulder of the person ahead of us to see if they got a better discount coupon than we did, and simply rejoice that God, through Jesus Christ, has given us a pretty darn good deal!

Yes, I love with pettiness, revenge, and a rewards and punishmentsense of justice from time to time, but my God is still bigger than all of that. I try not to sin. . .not because I want to earn heavenly merits, but because a sinless state, however temporary, is an end in itself.

I love God. . . not to cause God to love me more, but because loving God is a joy in itself. 

My dear friends in Christ, God sent a Savior because we needed to know just how much God is willing to forgive.  That forgiveness was available to Judas Iscariot, and Barabbas and Pontius Pilate. The choice was theirs.

 So, if you don’t remember anything else from this meditation, I hope you will remember this: the only truly unforgivable sin is the sin you won’t let be forgiven