June 10, 2012
Year B, Proper 5
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“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, but is guilty of an eternal sin....”
I
love it when Jesus gets all fired up.
And here, today, we are at the climax of the first act of Jesus’ life as
told by St. Mark. Or as Ched Meyers, a
noted Catholic Bible scholar calls it, the climax of Jesus’ “first direct
action campaign.”
Mark is fantastic.
He starts out bang – bang – bang.
Jesus is baptized by John, starts calling disciples, and begins healing
and preaching. His popularity grew and
soon throngs of people crowded around Him wherever he went and whenever He
taught. (Remember the paralytic being
lowered through the ceiling because they could not get to the door? That is in Mark 2. He was popular.) His popularity was such that the Pharisees,
here called the “Scribes” had gotten wind of Him, and came to challenge Him;
first about eating while others fasted, then for healing the man with the
withered hand in the Synagogue on the Sabbath.
After that healing the text reads, “the Pharisees went out and
immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.” Right off the bat, the pressure was on, and
rising.
So in this heightened state of anxiety, Jesus makes his
way home and we are in our passage for today.
First, his family comes. They had
heard people saying that he had “gone out of his mind,” and they wanted him to
come home. Imagine if your son or sister
or cousin, whatever, went from being a mild-mannered, I don’t know, carpenter
maybe, to being the messianic leader of an apocalyptic anti-imperial cult? The end is near, repent and believe. There were a lot of these guys running around
at that time, messianic figures, prophets and holy men, revolutionaries (like
Barabbas). We might appreciate their
words and admire their leadership, but no one wants to be related to a
religious wacko or a revolutionary. It
messes up family systems. I can imagine
His family saying, “For God’s sake, please come home with us before you get
yourself in real trouble.”
Then the Pharisees come…
The stakes get higher. And they
accuse him of being possessed, a grave accusation because it never works out
well for those accused of demonic anything.
This climax reveals the truly revolutionary Jesus. The non-compliant Jesus. The breaker of convention. The bringer of things new. With political acumen that is the envy of
Karl Rove, Jesus turned everything on its head.
Attack the strength, right? Isn’t
that the Rovian way? At the end of this first act, two strengths were apparent
that stood in the way of Jesus fulfilling his vocation: family and Temple.
It
was a kinship society. Everything was
based upon family and familial networks of relationships. Your ability to
survive in that society was based upon family.
I am not going to get too deep into the kinship aspect of this passage
today. It is Father’s day next week and
it seems imprudent to preach on family loyalty as an affront to God between
Father’s and Mother’s Days, though E.O. Wilson’s new book, The Social Conquest of Man should be put in conversation with this
passage. In any case, we are off of
kinship and back to kingship.
What
the Temple (and the kingship it represented) did was provide the framework (the
law and ritual) within which family systems and the entire civil society
operated. The Romans knew this. They
were smart imperialists and let Herod and the Sanhedrin continue to rule as
client governments. They let the Temple
operate in almost al of its splendor.
Unlike we Americans who summarily dismissed the entire Iraqi army when
we invaded, leaving an embittered, highly trained and unemployed (read
immanently available) foe to contend with, the Romans kept their friends close
and their imperial conquests even closer.
In this passage in St. Mark’s Gospel, Jesus takes both of these forces
on, saying no: kinship and kingship are not what is most important, God is. (This is exactly, exactly what Samuel said in
our Hebrew Bible passage for today).
Kinship and Kingship.
This is what Jesus faced. Both
potential sources of tyranny. Both with
real power in everyone’s lives. And this
brings us to the heart of this morning’s passage. The “house divided” stuff… Jesus is being an
aggressive debater. The Pharisees said
that He cast out demons by the authority of demons and Jesus pointed out that
that is silly; demons don’t cast out demons.
And binding the strong man? Jesus
was alluded to as the stronger man by John the Baptist, and the stronger
man needs to contain, bind the householder, the Temple, and do what needs
doing. But unforgiveable sins? Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? What is that all about?
Literally, what Mark put together here was a declaration
that those who oppose Christ, who speak against His message, who equate His
ministry with the work of Satan, are guilty of an unforgiveable sin. If the Word and Work of Jesus were the work
of the Holy Spirit, then to say “He has Beelzebub…,” that his work was demonic
in nature… that is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. “Do not doubt me little men,” is what he is
saying, “I speak for the Holy Spirit
and to speak against that is unforgiveable.”
In that moment, in that specific exchange this is what Jesus is talking
about, “Do not doubt me,” but right here and right now, how does this matter to
us?
Mistaking
the devil’s work for God’s? We do that all the time. And the devil is not pitchfork and horns; by
“devil” or “Satan” we mean the dark side of human nature, willful distance from
God and light and doing what is right.
And constantly we are deceived (or deceive ourselves) that we are doing
what is right when its not. I think of
the rhetoric around tax cuts for the wealthy, the rising-tide-lifts-all-ships
malarkey… sounds good, divinely compassionate even, but it is a lie, it is the
work of the evil one that convinces us that the most privileged among us
reneging on their social contracts is good for the whole. We constantly mistake Satan’s work for God’s;
but of course we do, that’s how Satan works, trickery, appealing to our
self-interest, laying out false paths of least resistance, tempting the lesser
angles of our nature. But mistaking
God’s will for evil, calling the movement of the Holy Spirit the work of the
Devil, actively working against that which is actually a right and a good and
joyful thing… now that is blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, that is
what tells us is unforgiveable.
Knowing
what is right and doing the other thing; this is the primary site of sin
against the Holy Spirit. And this is not
so much an individual issue: “I know I
should not have a third cupcake, but…”
It is not that. If it were, Heaven would be empty and somewhere else
would be standing room only. But rather
I think of the bus tour that a group of Roman Catholic nuns just launched to
make a case of heath care for all.
Pretty revolutionary: everyone should have medical care when they need
it. Well, they drew the attention of the
Holy See and have been officially censured, being directed to spend more time
working against contraception and abortion and less time working for the
poor. As one nun said, “it is a badge of
honor to be accused of working too hard for the poor.” And the Holy See has again earned a very different
sort of badge.
Why
is this kind of blasphemy so bad, unforgiveable, even? Well, look back to the scene. Jesus would have been surrounded by a mass of
people. Rough people, by most
standards. He was always surrounded by
rough folks, the subaltern: the diseased, the homeless and destitute, the
possessed (by demons or mental illness), prostitutes, traitors and
collaborators, every sort of person living on the fringes of society, every
sort of untouchable. They approached him
with open eyes and ears and hearts to match their open hands and empty
stomachs. And they approached Him as a
friend, teacher, a Messiah. The ones who
stood outside, though, on the edges throwing barbs and accusations, claiming
expertise on things religious, denying the power of His work… the clean, the
educated, the empowered… the inability, or more even, the unwillingness to know
or learn the difference between the Holy Spirit and the demonic, the
unwillingness to even try to discern the will of God; that is the problem. That is the unforgiveable sin.
If
it gives life; if it heals; if it makes children genuinely happier and
healthier and helps big people get along better, to love more and deeper and
more complexly; if it leaves only footprints and takes only memories; if it
does no harm… you have to, you have to pay attention. If it does otherwise, you can bet it did not
come from God. To think that war can be
holy or even just, to deny the changes afoot on in our Earth systems, to even
claim the justice of austerity that doesn’t demand the greatest sacrifice from
those who have the most to give as well as are most to blame… all I can say is
that unforgivablity leaves marks that lasts a long time.
I
will end with a poem by the great Jesuit ere-do-well,
Daniel Berrigan:
For every 10,000 words
there’s a deed
floating somewhere
head down, unborn
Words can’t make it
happen
They only wave it away
unwanted
Yet Child, necessary one
Unless you come home to my hands
Why hands at all?
Your season your cries
are their skill
their reason
AMEN
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