Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
People will occasionally ask me what my favorite part of being a pastor is. Easy: it’s only working three hours a week on a Sunday morning and goofing off the other six and a half days in my shop. In all seriousness, my favorite part of being a pastor is the unseen part: helping soothe a troubled conscience so the Christian can rightly see him- or her-self before God. Sometimes, a conscience is burdened by the fallenness of the world, and I get to remind them of the peace we have as children of God, knowing all things are in His hands - even in the midst of the craziness of all the things going on around us - and finding joy in God’s working in the small things in life. Sometimes the conscience is burdened when someone who sinned against them, and I get to speak of what it looks like to deliver mercy, living as forgiven in Christ, while also trusting God’s justice will be done perfectly, even if it is not in our timeline or lifetime.
But, sometimes the conscience is terrified by what he or she has done in a moment of passion, of not thinking as a baptized child of God, surrendering to the old Adam or old Eve – what the world might call “a moment of stupidity” – that they find themselves lost in despair. The spouse who had an emotional affair with a coworker, the student who lied to get another student in trouble just to get even, the alcoholic’s realization of how much their choices ruined relationships. All, confessing their sin, seeking a word – just a word – of grace, compassion and mercy. This is my favorite part of being a pastor: to be able to speak that word of grace, hope and mercy that is theirs in Christ Jesus, to declare sins forgiven at the cross, and they are redeemed and beloved by the Father through the death of His Son.
This came up recently as I correspond with a person who is an inmate in prison. This person is from a different part of the country and has no connection to this congregation or community. This person, a faithful and baptized child of God, did a crime that has resulted in decades of imprisonment. This person’s life has been destroyed, family relationships shattered, work and social relationships gone, career wasted. This person feels totally alone, separated from loved ones and terrified that these sins are so terrible, so heinous that even God has turned His back. This person’s conscience is so burdened, so overwhelmed, so broken and beaten, that its as if Christ is invisible through the fog of their sins. What do you say to this person, who remains a child of God even behind bars, who thinks they have done the unforgiveable?
Strictly speaking, there is only one sin that is unforgiveable. Jesus speaks of it in this morning’s reading from Mark 3: “whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of the eternal sin.” Much ink has been spilled and many words thundered about this terrible, terrifying possibility, with preachers placing an undue burden on the conscience of the child of God, leaving them to wonder if they are somehow damned. So, what is this sin? Simply, it is denying that one is a sinner who needs Jesus, the Savior of the World. It’s called blaspheming against the Holy Spirit because it is the Holy Spirit who enables the soul to believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. The Spirit calls and gathers people into the church to receive God’s grace and mercy, to be restored and made whole with God. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us, making us holy through Christ’s death and resurrection, by instilling in us the faith to confess Christ as Lord and trust that death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. Sinning against the Holy Spirit is resisting against His calling, denying His holy work through stubbornness, arrogance, or plain foolishness of the unregenerate mind. It’s the unrepentant equivalent of the three monkeys, refusing to see their sins, refusing to hear they are sinners, refusing to confess they are sinners who need a Savior.
By definition, only a Christian is concerned about this sin, because only a Christian cares whether or not they are guilty of it! A non-Christian, like those three monkeys, does not care that they are sinning by such a denial. This was true of the scribes and pharisees who denied Jesus. They were too busy branding Him as being demon-possessed to believe He could save them. Its true of anyone today, including Muslims, Jehovah’s Witness, Mormons, Buddhists, and even Jews who deny Jesus as the Son of God, Savior of the World and regardless how hard they try, they cannot save themselves from their sins.
In the 6th Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Lead us not into temptation.” At first glance, that seems as if we are praying God preserves us from breaking, for example, the Ten Commandments. Yes, but I think it is a deeper temptation than that. In his Small Catechism, Luther teaches that the petition means, “that God would guard and keep us so the devil, the world, or our sinful nature would not deceive us nor mislead us into false belief, despair or other shame and vice…” Now, remember: satan means “father of all lies,” and his greatest deception is that we cannot be forgiven, the worst despair is that we are outside God’s grace, and the worst shame of all is to think that we have lost God’s love and we now belong to the evil one. This leans back into the 5th petition, “forgive us our trespasses.” Notice: not “forgive us some, many, or a few” – there are no qualifiers at all – but forgive us all our trespasses. Don’t fall into the deception that this means the socially acceptable sins, the polite sins, the little ‘uns that, relatively speaking, wouldn’t make the front page of the Mission Valley gossip section. When we pray, “forgive us,” we also mean the nasty stuff, the things that are so embarrassing that the devil dances with glee, the stuff that you can only hope never sees the light of day, the things you try not to even think of, the sins that satan twists the conscience to say, “forgive us out trespasses, but not this one.” Those are the sins we speak of in the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive me for those sins, Father, for the sake of Christ Jesus and His death on the cross for my salvation, and let me not be tempted to think anything else than that they are fully and completely washed away from me in His blood. And, as the same time, it leans forward into the 6th petition, “deliver us from evil,” where, Luther says, we pray the Lord rescues us from every evil of body and soul, and to which I would add “and mind,” preserving in us the baptismal promise that we are, indeed, His beloved children.
And, you want to know what’s funny – when the penitent soul recognizes that he or she has sinned against the Holy Spirit, that until that moment he or she had been denying His work of creating faith, of believing Jesus as Savior, of trusting Jesus forgives completely without his or her merit or worth outside of Christ, and when that soul repents, confessing and trusting solely in the merits of Christ’s death on the cross, in that moment, even that unforgiveable sin is forgiven. Christ died for sinners, remember, without qualification of quantity of quality. That man who was crucified next to Jesus had cursed the Savior all day, but in his 11th hour, turned and confessed the innocence of Christ, pleading to be remembered by the Lord. “Today –“ not when you get yourself squared away, when you prove yourself worthy, when you show me just how sorry your are – “today, when you can’t do anything about it except trust I will forgive you, today, you will be with me in paradise.”
Faith is a remarkable thing. Because it is a gift of God, it does not rely on our strength at all. In fact, in some ways, a weak faith, a quantitively small faith, a faith that is empty of anything and everything except the hope (capital H!) of Jesus is the greatest faith, because everything else is stripped away. “Life narrows down, and crisis comes. Suddenly, only one thing matters, and there, in the narrow place, stands Jesus.”[1] This faith, the small faith, the weak faith, the crushed and bruised faith, that clings to Christ alone is great because its strength rests in the strength of Christ’s faithfulness in the redemption of the world. “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling,” we sing. King David, when confronted with his adulterous and murderous sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, her husband, confessed how terrible his sins were against both God and man. Yet, he was able to pray, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17) Isaiah, speaking of the Servant (whom we know to be Jesus), writes “a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench” (Is 42:3).
So, back to the question: what do you say to the child of God who is despairing, convinced that he or she has committed this terrible sin against the Holy Spirit? To the point, what do I say to this person, this child of God who is free in Christ even while imprisoned behind walls and bars?
Here’s what I wrote:
“You are a great sinner; Jesus is a greater Savior. You are guilty, yet Christ has set you free. Your sins deserve punishment; you are paying the price temporally, but Christ paid the eternal price. You may be abandoned by those whom you love but God will not abandon you. Jesus suffered that on the cross for you. Your faith may be small and it may be weak, but it rests in the nail-pierced hands of Jesus who will neither crush nor break you; instead, in your weakness, His strength is made perfect. If you feel you can’t hang on, He clings to you, His beloved lamb, and holds you close.
Then, I closed my letter with this: And, the same promise that was delivered to you in your baptism, is delivered to you today. As a called and ordained servant of the Word, I announce the grace of God to you. In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Depart in peace: your sins are forgiven. Do you believe this?”
My prayer is, that when I receive this person’s next letter, it begins with the prayer, “Yes, I believe…help my unbelief.”
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