9 June 2024 Mark 3:20-35
“People will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” Mark 3:28-29
The Church has never tired of saying that Jesus is kind, compassionate, a friend without limit, boundlessly merciful. The Church has never tired of inviting people to enter into the sweet joy of so benevolent and tender a Savior. The popular machinery of the Church carries this message almost exclusively.
People reading the Gospel, of course will find that message there. It is one of our sanest and soundest instincts to seek out the compassion of God. We are broken, and cannot repair ourselves. We are indeed completely without hope, except in the tender mercy of God, and so the Church is entirely justified in turning that face to the world.
But let us say that some poor, lost soul is attracted by this message, and finds peace in the Church, and the Church in its compassion puts a New Testament into the poor sinner’s hands. That sinner will find the most thumbed pages to be full of the compassion which attracted him in the first place. The cleaner pages, however, will have much more besides, verses which grab him by the collar, pull him close and hiss, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23). He may feel the whip of small cords on his back as he flees from the temple, with Jesus shouting something behind him about turning his house into a den of thieves (Matthew 21:13). G.K. Chesterton said that “The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel is like the power of millstones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them” (The Everlasting Man, p. 212).
That includes the very teaching about mercy that the Church finds so very attractive. It also has some edge to it; it also stings. “All sins and blasphemies will be forgiven” (Mark 3:28). All. That includes the sins committed by the people who caused the pain that drove the poor sinner into the Church in the first place; they will be forgiven, too. The people who hurt you get compassion as well. The only requirement for divine mercy is to want mercy, and believe that Jesus has it to give. Period. The “sin against the Holy Spirit” is to not want mercy. Those people never show up asking for it. But if they do, they get it.
The mercy of Jesus is a radical mercy, for it means that Jesus already loves the people who hurt us, and He wants them as much as He wants us. We are inclined to want Jesus, and want Him not to want the people who hurt us, the people who hate us. Jesus isn’t offering that. He never has, never intended to. The Church is not an escape from the people who hurt you. The Church is a place where you learn to love them like Jesus does, to find that the very love that healed you also heals them.
The radical mercy of Jesus doesn’t just comfort you, but also alters you. The Church is not a place where you are just an object of compassion, but a place where you become an instrument of compassion. It isn’t a place where you are merely received and welcomed. It is a place, more importantly, from which you are sent, and sent with a message. That is what the term “Apostle” means. The Church is not a haven for the broken, but a moving vehicle that we are invited to jump aboard. Any who want the mercy of Christ are invited to jump aboard, including the ones we don’t like. That’s the grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel. The rugged mercy of Jesus soothes some things, and crushes others.
That mercy is the only game in town. The sin against the Holy Spirit is to watch that bus go by, or jump off because we don’t like some of the other passengers.
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