Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind." And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons." So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: "How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin." He said this because they were saying, "He has an impure spirit." Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother."
(Mark 3:20-35)
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It sounds so un-Christians, and, frankly, so lacking in grace. Really, the very idea of an "unforgivable sin" just doesn’t sound like something Jesus would talk about. He was all about forgiveness, after all. And the Bible actually tells us that Jesus was the grace of God come down to earth. And yet, for all that, he says that "whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin." Well, that’s heart-warming. Especially on a Sunday when we’ve gathered together here, as God’s children, as followers of Jesus, with the table set before us, ready once again to receive the elements as a sign of the grace of God that’s come down to us. And on this Sunday, we’re confronted by the concept of an unforgivable, eternal sin. It just doesn’t fit. It’s jarring. To the extent that we have a comfort zone to our faith, this definitely pushes us out of that comfort zone. Which may not be a bad thing, actually. A comfortable faith isn’t necessarily what Jesus wanted us to have I’d say. But still, "unforgivable?" That’s harsh. Really harsh. It’s made all the hasher by the fact that Jesus doesn’t really explain in any great detail what this unforgivable sin is. And maybe that’s the origin of legalism - the anti-grace kind of thinking that a lot of Christians fall into and that seems to characterize what many non-Christians think Christianity is about: the fear of sin, to the point at which our faith becomes little more than a moral code presided over by a God and a church that’s always ready to punish us for our sins. Billy Graham, in a book entitled simply The Holy Spirit, described the effect of this way of thinking quite well:
"When my father was a young man," he wrote,
he attended a revival meeting in North Carolina and became convinced through a sermon on this subject that he had committed the unpardonable sin. And he lived with this awful thought for many years. He agonized over it, was frightened by it,and thought of himself as a doomed man who could never repent of his sin.
Unforgiveness (even the fear of it) is a horrible thing to live with - especially when we’re convinced that it’s God who is unforgiving!
And yet, here - before us - we have "the means of grace." That’s what our sacraments are. Baptism is a means of grace - it symbolizes our acceptance by God. Communion is a means of grace - it symbolizes God’s never-ending welcome to come to him and be refreshed by him. God’s grace is extended without condition and without limit. That’s what we proclaim week after week whenever we come together - the unlimited access we have to divine grace, and its unimaginable depths. But now we’re confronted with the possibility of a limit to grace, and what exactly do we make of that?
As always, it’s the context that matters. In the passage the crowds have surrounded Jesus because they have just witnessed him driving evil spirits out of people and healing them of illnesses - setting them free, in other words, from the things that held them in bondage and restoring them to wholeness and dignity. And in the midst of the crowds that surrounded him were a group of Pharisees who accused him of being in league with the devil. In the passage, even his own family thought something was wrong. Asark wrote, they thought Jesus was "out of his mind." But the Pharisees had gone further and accused him of being satanic. That’s who the comment about the unforgivable sin was addressed to. To blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to have a completely depraved sense of the divine - to see that which is clearly of God and which obviously further God’s purposes and to accuse it of being satanic. Or it could be the reverse - to take that which is clearly evil and declare it to be good, or even of God. It’s unforgivable not because God won’t or can’t forgive it, but because if one knows the truth - as the Pharisees did because they had seen it with their own eyes - and still rejects it, then one has cut oneself off from the truth - and ultimately it’s the truth that sets us free. We don’t have to know the whole truth, but we can’t cut ourselves off from knowing the truth.
As long as we’re seekers of truth, we’re also able to avail ourselves of God’s grace. If we’re unsettled at the prospect of an unforgivable sin and disturbed by the possibility that we might be guilty of it - that in itself is probably a sign that we aren’t guilty of it. We’re still in touch with the Holy Spirit; still being drawn to the truth we find in Jesus. What we find in this passage is that in Jesus the Spirit of God is at work. That much we knew from the beginning, in the sign of the descent of God’s Spirit upon him at his baptism. God has revealed who Jesus is; God’s promise is that in Jesus’ journey among and with us God will be at work. To question or reject that presence and the signs of God’s kingdom on this journey is to miss out on the good news that God has in store for us. But we see the signs of God’s Kingdom among us. Today, we see it in bread and wine - reminders of God’s grace: a grace that came to us and remains with us in Jesus.
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