Sermon for June 6, 2021 2nd Sunday after Pentecost House of Prayer Lutheran Church

Mark 3:20-35; Genesis 3:8-15 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone

I was sitting in the bleacher seats watching my son’s baseball game. Another family was sitting nearby in their lawn chairs on ground level, near the garbage can. Their little boy--who wasn’t very interested in watching the game--tried to throw a little rock into the garbage can. But he missed, and it bounced off the garbage can and landed near his grandmother. She was startled by the sound, and not knowing who caused it, she looked around and said, “did somebody throw a rock?” The little boy looked right at her, and with the fear of getting in trouble washing over his face, he said, “I didn’t throw a rock.”

My point here is not to pick on this little boy for lying, but that I couldn’t help but chuckle, because his reaction--lying about something he’d just done--immediately reminded me of the story of Adam and Eve, and the way they lied to God and didn’t take responsibility for themselves in the Garden of Eden. But really, Adam and Eve, or the little boy at the baseball game, are not so unique. The story resonates because it is so universal. Everyone who has ever lived has had something they’ve lied about, or something they’ve done to try to evade responsibility for.

And ever since Adam and Eve, God has been inviting, nudging, or even commanding humanity to turn away from the sin, selfishness, and divisiveness we so often fall into--and instead to turn towards the partnership and commitment to the well-being of others that comes from being able to ask for forgiveness and to offer forgiveness.

God is so committed to healing the human family through the power of forgiveness, that he even sent his Son Jesus into the world--yes, to willingly go to the cross on our behalf to forgive our sins--and also to invite us to follow him through the power of the Holy Spirit into the new life that is possible when we fully surrender ourselves to Jesus’ way of living. And it was this invitation to follow him, and in so doing, to become the kind of human family that God has always desired for us, that we see an example of in today’s gospel.

There’s a lot going on in this passage, and some of it is very hard to understand. It might help to back up just a bit, to see what happened earlier in Mark chapter 3. Jesus has been traveling all around Galilee. He’s been healing people, restoring people to their full dignity as human beings. He’s been getting popular, with people coming from all around to be cured by him, to have demons cast out of them, to see for themselves what this guy is all about. Jesus also knows that to really get his message out, he would need help--so of all the people who’ve been following him, he chooses 12 as apostles to share the load.

Now, none of this (in itself) was unusual. These are the kind of things you might expect any holy person to do, and they are the kind of things the prophets of Israel had done for thousands of years. But the thing is, Jesus wasn’t doing them according to the normal rules and expectations of his place and time. He was operating by different priorities, and therefore upsetting the status-quo. Lots of people really liked it--while other people were getting really mad about it.

Some were mad enough to accuse Jesus of being crazy. His family even tried to get him to stop because they didn’t like all the unwanted attention he was bringing to them. Other people even accused him of being demon-possessed as well as guilty of committing evil acts.

So Jesus stands up for himself. “If I’m Satan” he says, “how could I be healing people? If I’m crazy, how could I be bringing well-being to people who are suffering? If I’m lying to you about the nature of my message, then why am I taking responsibility for my actions?”

And then we get to verses 28 & 29. And I’ve known many people--perhaps some of you among them--who get very worried about what Jesus says here. “People will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter.” (OK, Jesus, I’m with you there!) “But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Woah--wait a minute! Maybe you start thinking about that time when maybe you blasphemed the Holy Spirit. Or that time you did something really bad that you don’t think you could ask forgiveness for. And maybe you wonder, am I guilty of an eternal sin?

Verse 29 is one of those verses in the New Testament that is very hard to translate directly from the original Greek. There are some various possible shades of meaning in several of the Greek words. There are even a word of two that most English translations kind of leave out.

So I’d like to offer may best take at a translation from the Greek, and I think it’s a pretty good way to understand it. Here goes: “But whoever may blaspheme towards the Holy Spirit in no way has the age of forgiveness but instead is subject to the age of sin.”

With these words, Jesus is hearkening back to his original mission statement in Mark 1:15, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Jesus is reminding people of the nature of the kingdom of God that he came to bring into the world, and the way into this kingdom is not by way of force, but by the way of humility--turning to God and seeking his mercy and love. Jesus is talking about: Do you want to be part of the age-old way of sin--symbolized by Adam and Eve--where you keep finding ways to lie, and evade responsibility, and divide people from each other? Or do you want to be part of a new way of being (which is actually the original way that God intended before Adam and Even started lying)? This new way is the “age of forgiveness” that Jesus and his apostles have been going around teaching and doing examples of. Do you want to keep with the status-quo and stay stuck in the “age of sin”? Or do you want to join Jesus and rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance in working for the healing, dignity, and well-being of the whole human family?

Regardless of the day or age, we always have a choice as to which way we want to commit ourselves to. Through our faith, stirred up within us through the Holy Spirit, Jesus invites us to commit ourselves--not to Adam and Eve’s way of sin--but to Jesus’ way of forgiveness that he taught and modeled.

In committing ourselves to the way of Jesus, we will always be a work-in-progress. We’ll never do it perfectly--we are, after all, always learning from Jesus. We don’t get to take his place. But with his help, we can grow and learn day by day to take a leap of faith, and surrender ourselves to Jesus’ way of forgiveness, of honesty, of responsibility for ourselves, and responsibility to others, as the Holy Spirit leads us into the future as one family of God.