Pentecost 2

Pentecost 2 (Mark 3:20-35)

“Whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven.”

The origin of sin and death is separation. God the Father designed our world and our species to live and move and have our being in a forever friendship with God the Son by the indwelling presence of God the holy Spirit.

The co-eternal Son united divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to bring reunification. The fruits of reunification are compassion, kindness, sharing, caring and humility. Jesus healed people and forgave them of their sins. He spoke with everyone including the people the righteous considered to be under divine judgment. He proclaimed the universal unconditional love of God in a society that knew that God hated the unrighteous and would only bless the righteous.

The religious leaders reacted to Jesus by insisting he was in league with Satan. They could not criticize Jesus for his teaching or his behavior. So, they slandered him. They demonized him, which is to say they claimed he was in league with Satan and the demons so regardless of his words and actions he was evil.

Moses and the prophets observed that human beings are lost in separation from God. It is not that particular sins produce the separation. It is the separation that produces the particular sins. Perhaps the most subtle and most powerful sin is hubris, what the ancients called fatal pride. Fatal pride defends itself though the posture of invincible ignorance.

Hubris is the unforgiveable sin because hubris cannot conceive that it needs forgiveness. It is unteachable, rigid, inflexible and uncompromising. It will identify personal bias with the will of God and then demonize any one or any other source of information that contradicts its assertions.The Prophets record how the political, religious and mercantile interests of their time hired false prophets to contradict the message of the true prophets. The false prophets did not have to be convincing. They just needed to be able to sow doubt and confusion in order to paralyze action.

In this passage, Mark records how the political, religious and mercantile elites raised the stakes of hubris by describing the words and works of Jesus as demonic. They could not find fault with the words and works so they demonized the person. Tragically, the person they demonized is the very person who could set them free from sin and reunite them to God.

The dark underside of hubris is fear. The ruling elites in Jesus’ day feared he would treat them the way they treated other people. They feared that underneath the velvet glove of kindness and compassion there was the mailed fist of wrath and condemnation. From the place of invincible ignorance they told themselves: no one is this good. Everyone works the angles. And, the only way for Jesus to become the king his followers claim him to be is to destroy us.

In the end, contrary to all evidence and absent of all fact, the ruling elites convinced themselves Jesus was really evil. They justified his torture and execution from the place of invincible ignorance.

The essence of original separation (original sin) is the desire to be just like God in the categories of knowledge and power. This is an ongoing spiritual process in our species and in our souls. The power of original separation lies in hubris. Hubris exalts itself. It assumes the posture of being exceptionally blessed by God. It ignores its own imperfections while denouncing the shortcomings of others.

Jesus once described this spiritual state by saying: why do you obsess about the speck you see in your brother’s eye while you ignore the log that is in your own eye. That log is hubris, fatal pride. Hubris eventually forms a soul that not only will not repent but cannot repent. It cannot repent because it believes it is exceptional and has no need to question its beliefs or behaviors.

Hubris perpetuates separation. It advances and expands separation. It teaches the way of us vs them. It adopts confrontation, conflict and conquest as the only way of defending itself and doing God’s will. It cannot accept even the possibility it may be wrong. Hubris is the ultimate blasphemy that rejects the very essence of God, the plan of God and the image and likeness of God imprinted on the souls of every human being. That is why hubris is the only unforgiveable sin. The soul lost in hubris isolates itself from all input the Holy Spirit provides to help it move away from the place of invincible ignorance to the place where even the smallest seed of humility can take root and begin to grow.

We all need to be aware of how the seeds of hubris enter our souls, take root and attempt to crowd out the seeds of faith, hope and charity. The best way to do this is to pray the prayer Mary taught Jesus, Jesus prayed daily and then taught his disciples. That prayer is: Heavenly Father not my will by Thy will be done.

What is the will of God? The will of God is universal unconditional love manifesting in our lives through the threefold path of love. That threefold path is worship, helping other people, and growing in grace. This is a new and very different way of living that is nurtured and fed by the sacrament of humility. The sacrament of humility is Holy Communion. God the Father expresses the humility of Jesus to us by sending the Holy Spirit to our altar to transform bread and wine, the fruit of the earth, into the body and blood of Jesus, the medicine of immortality,.

We express our humility by coming to the altar of sacrificial love as we sacrifice our time to meet the eternal in a singular moment of time. That humility in union with the sacrament delivers us from the temptations of hubris and the power of separation.  Hubris never agonizes over its own sin. It obsesses over the sins (real or perceived) of others.  God the Father calls us in Jesus to become his forever family, his brothers and sisters, by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit who rescues us from pride and sets us free to pray: not my will but Thy will be done…. And, above all,  to receive the humility to know the difference.