Naming the Work of the Holy Spirit

Readings: Mark 3:20-35, Apocalypse Revealed 723 (see below)
Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

The gospel of Mark, as a narrative, really gets down to business quickly.  Literally, we have turned ONE page from the start, at least in my bible, and Jesus is getting into all kinds of trouble. He has already been baptized by John, called his disciples, preached all over the place and healed many people of various diseases and maladies, including leprosy and paralysis, eaten with a (gasp) tax collector and other sundry sinners and challenged the religious authorities on the subject of the Sabbath. Jesus has been very busy, and people are taking notice. Large crowds follow him around, and we start our text for today with the acknowledgment they were preventing him from even doing normal things like sitting down at a table to eat.  Understandably, Jesus’ family is concerned.  They do not yet understand what he is trying to do.  Their time will come, as Jesus’ brother James will one day be the leader of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, after Jesus’ death.  But for now, they think he is out of his mind.

However, his late-to-the-game family is the least of Jesus’ troubles. The religious authorities and the political elites are already plotting to kill him.  By page three of the gospel. They are actively looking for reasons to denounce him and trap him, and we are treated to one of those arguments here. They recognize that Jesus is performing miracles that are beyond human means. They see the transformative nature of his works. But they attribute the power of these accomplishments to the devil. They see him heal people and free them from possession, and they call such work satanic. Jesus exposes the ridiculousness of their assertion.  Hell does not stand for human freedom and human thriving; why on earth would the devil participate in such work?  Hell seeks dominion and enslavement, not healing and not liberation. It doesn’t make any sense. Then Jesus says “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…”
Now, this is quite the pronouncement, seemingly in conflict with Jesus’ words and actions so far, based as they have been on the necessity for repentance and the availability of forgiveness. So, blasphemy must be pretty bad then, to elicit such a response. What is blasphemy though exactly? It is sort of an umbrella theological term, which at best can mean irreverent behavior towards that which is sacred and at worst cursing and reviling God and what God stands for.  And clearly, it is this second more troubling and serious end of the spectrum that Jesus is talking about. 

Because we are not talking about the ubiquitous OMGs that seem to clutter our cultural landscape.  Certainly, taking the Lord’s name in vain is not to be encouraged but habitual and relatively unconscious blasphemy is very different from what Jesus is talking about here in this text.  Swedenborg makes a distinction between blasphemy that originates in the understanding and blasphemy that originates in the will.  And I quote (1):

“The second kind are the ones which are so horrible, not the first. Those that come out of the will by way of the understanding spring from evil of life, whereas those that come solely out of the understanding and not at the same time out of the will spring from falsity of doctrine or from the illusions of the outward senses that deceive a person set fast in a state of ignorance.”(1)

Ignorance and thoughtlessness do not condemns us. True blasphemy is never just a misunderstanding, one cannot trip and accidentally blaspheme. Neither is it blasphemous to be skeptical about God, or even wrong about God. Paul, author of many biblical epistles, is an excellent example of this. He started out as a devoted Pharisee persecuting Christians because he thought it was the right thing to do. But as soon as he had a spiritual experience, heard from Jesus that he was in the wrong, he immediately changed his behavior completely. His will was to be zealous for God, even as his understanding led him to work against God. But since his will was not for himself and his own power and rightness, then as soon as he understood his wrongness he transformed his behavior.

However, it is entirely another thing to see and recognize the work of the Holy Spirit for what it is and call it satanic as we understand the religious leaders in our story to have done, to see resurrection and re-creation, God’s main work in this world, and to say that it is worthless and treat it with contempt. To say essentially that the vulnerability and struggle of re-creation is fundamentally the wrong way to go. We might take the German Christian church during the rise of Nazism, as an example. The German Christian church actively allowed Nazi ideology to permeate and twist the gospel. Nazi flags were hung in churches, strewn upon altars. They took the Word, full of God’s bestowal of worthiness on all creatures, and deemed it inadequate, claiming that the Nazi interpretation of the gospel, based on purity of race, was the true fulfillment of the Word.  They took God’s depth and breadth of love and made it narrow, made it an excuse for domination and superiority.  It is an understatement to call this an over-reach, even though it was. It was also blasphemy of the worst kind.  The only way to justify such a disparate interpretation is from a will for power, for nothing else can cause God’s name to be taken up in the spirit of exclusion and death. This was not a mistake in interpretation, this was not an honest disagreement, this was the will for power twisting the gospel into its exact opposite. This is blasphemy. Taking the vulnerable, transformative, resurrection message of the Jesus and making it about the dominance of one people over others.

And this is what there is no coming back from, no forgiveness. What we are capable of understanding about God stems from what we love and value. When we try our best to love God, and not our self-as-center, we might make mistakes of understanding but we are inherently open to correction because in our love for God we submit our understanding to God, we submit our own interpretations and preferences to God’s mission for the universe.  Therefore our understanding of God’s truth can and likely will change over time. This is part of our spiritual journey, our trajectory of transformation and growth. But this will not happen if our will loves ourself and our own ego above all else. Growth and change is then threatening to our sense of ego-power. We will prefer that which is static and certain for that can be more easily controlled. Being created anew is inherently uncontrollable because it involves a surrender of self, and to the self that is focused on power, such surrender is impossible. And so the blasphemy that calls God’s creative and transformative character hellish cannot be forgiven because this kind of blasphemy rejects the whole premise of forgiveness, rejects the whole notion of transformation, rejects the goodness of re-creation at all. It is a self-inflicted wound, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The lack of forgiveness comes not from God. God cannot turn away from us. As we heard in our reading, it is against God’s nature.(2) The lack of forgiveness for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit comes from rejecting the idea of vulnerability as useful, repentance as necessary, and forgiveness itself as a way forward into new ways to love.

Notice also, that Jesus, as testy as he sometimes gets, does not take these affronts personally.  He sees himself as part of God’s larger movement for all of creation, and therefore exposes the heart of the worldview that these religious leaders espoused.  It seemed that they were objecting to one troublesome man, but Jesus points out that to be against the healing and liberation that he, Jesus, brings is also to be against the whole trajectory of the Holy Spirit, to be against the character of God. The whole of the cosmos expresses God’s creative power, and every part of the universe participates in its own on-going creation, and Christ is just one part of that larger picture.

The Holy Spirit is calling us all to take part in the adventure of on-going creation. Like all adventures, it won’t all be sweetness and light along the way, but the horizon is ever expanding if we are willing to let God lead us.  And perhaps it will serve us today to think about where we are throwing up roadblocks to our own re-creation.  Where we have convinced ourselves that rightness is better than vulnerability, where we have convinced ourselves that we are so chosen and blessed that we need not stoop to care for the forgotten, where we have convinced ourselves that true Christian love is fanciful and ill-advised.
Because, blasphemy is not an act that comes from nowhere, it comes from what we have chosen to love and value. When the self is loved above all, then the movement of the Holy Spirit towards others is incomprehensible. Though it is hard sometimes, when we choose to love God, we choose to love the principles of expansion, inclusion, surrender and redemption, we choose to love the existence of a creative and blossoming universe.  And so praise be to God, the creator of wonders.

Amen.

1. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 9222:4
2. Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity 56

Readings:

Mark 3:20-35

20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” 22 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.” 23 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 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. 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” 30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.” 31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” 33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. 34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Apocalypse Revealed 723

For blasphemy symbolizes a denial of the Lord's Divinity in His humanity, and an adulteration of the Word, thus its profanation. For someone who fails to acknowledge the Lord's Divinity in His humanity and falsifies the Word, but not intentionally, does indeed commit profanation, but lightly. But people who claim for themselves all the power of the Lord's Divine humanity, and for that reason deny His Divinity, and who apply everything in the Word to acquiring dominion for themselves over the sanctities of the church and heaven, and for that reason adulterate the Word - those people commit serious profanation.

True Christianity 56

…From these few points you can see how insane people are who think that God can condemn anyone, curse anyone, throw anyone into hell, predestine anyone's soul to eternal death, avenge wrongs, or rage against or punish anyone…In reality, God cannot turn away from us or even look at us with a frown. To do any such thing would be against his essence, and what is against his essence is against himself.