B is for blasphemy

Let’s say you live in the great land of Saskatchewan. It happens to be the September long weekend. And on this weekend you are at Taylor Field wearing a jersey of blue and gold. Now in unison I hear you all cry out, “BLASPHEMY!”

Similar situation: It is this same Sunday, you are on your way home to watch the Labour Day Classic, when you realize that you don’t have the necessary green and white munchies to watch the game. You stop in at the local Sobeys (because their logo is green) and are lamenting to the person in front of you in the line at how long this is taking. Said person turns to you and asks why you didn’t come in earlier. Your reply: I was at church. Said person gives you the hairy eyeball whilst proclaiming “I don’t believe in all that God business.” Now in unison I hear you all cry out, “Meh. To each his own.”

 

It’s funny how the word blasphemy has been turned around for us.

To get all fancy with you for a moment, let’s look at the etymology of the word blasphemy. It comes from the Greek blasphemia which simply means to speak harm. So while you’re not wrong in using the word blasphemy to express the horror of cheering for the bombers; it certainly does speak measures as to what we deem to be important.

Prepare your minds to go way back in time to a time before times: A time called the Old Testament. In your hands you will find an old crumbling book called Leviticus. In this book, in the 24^th chapter you find something disturbing. You find something which talks about speaking harm against God, and as a result facing death. It gets worse than that as you read on to discover that there is no turning a blind eye even for those that don’t believe. Blasphemy in this book is a really big deal! It’s so important that even those people who seemingly don’t know any better are called to be punished for speaking harm against God!

You return back to modern day Saskatchewan and you’re still a bit shaken up by what has happened. You worry about what you’ve said, and you’re afraid that you deserve to be punished by death too! Let’s be honest here, you absolutely do! You and I have both said things that blaspheme against the name of God. We have broken the first commandment so many times that we can’t even keep track anymore! There is of course something even greater at work in our lives. Although we realize that we deserve death for the things that we have done, we also remember that we have a loving saviour who died for all of our sins.

Let me recount a personal story. Whilst on my internship I was doing a children’s message one Sunday morning. During this message I was telling the kids about no matter what sin you have committed, Jesus will forgive you. Of course I had one young boy who was obviously smarter than I was and piped up, “What about the unforgivable sin?”

So, what about the unforgivable sin? What do we do with the passage in Mark 3 (and the other synoptic gospels) that tells us about the sin that can never be forgiven? What does it mean to speak harm against the Holy Spirit?

To see the Holy Spirit at work we can look at verses like Matthew 3:11 or John 3:5 which tell us about the gift of faith that we are given through the Holy Spirit. It is this gift of faith which saves us. Through the gift of faith we are forgiven. But as with any gift, it can be rejected. We don’t have to keep, use or believe in the gift of faith. This is when we start treading on dangerous ground, when we blaspheme against the Holy Spirit.

When we deny the power of the Holy Spirit, we deny the miraculous nature of Jesus, we deny ourselves the forgiveness of sins. This unforgivable sin is not saying that we are unworthy of forgiveness, but rather it’s us saying that we do not want to be forgiven.

Rather than leaving you with the fear of your salvation ringing in your ears, I want to leave you with the reminder of Romans 8:38-39 “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The threat of blasphemy, so speaking harm against the faith giving power of the Holy Spirit is real, but the promise of salvation, the sacrifice of Christ is still stronger.

I like my faith like I like my coffee…bold!

It seems like whenever someone refers to me as bold; it’s never for a good reason. When my mouth works before my brain, my questions are referred to as bold. I might make a bold decision with my wardrobe (I still maintain my green shirt under my purple plaid shirt was a great choice!) Although people stop themselves from directly critiquing, the use of the word bold conveys their disapproval.

So why then am I advocating a boldness in faith? Do we really need more reasons to be critiqued for our faith?

Let’s look at the word bold in a different light. Turn in your bibles (or click the nice hyperlink) and go to Ephesians 3:12. Not just boldness, but confidence!

Now for me confidence in faith times comes up in two different ways.

1. Internal Confidence
2. External Confidence

Let’s look at #1 first.

When I’m talking internal confidence, I’m talking more about the confidence that we have in our salvation. It’s internal because it’s something that we believe and that is in us. For example, you’re reading through your bible and you come across a verse that really solidifies your faith, makes you feel good about yourself, let’s say a verse like 1 Peter 3:18. It reminds you that Jesus died for your sin and that you are promised life eternal in spite of all the crappy things you’ve done.

Unfortunately, if you’ve read that particular verse, more than likely you’ve read the one that goes before it too. In 1 Peter 3: 15 we are called on to the external confidence, the one that requires us to make known the reason for our faith.

This #2 reason is the one that calls for increased boldness.

Just to be clear, being bold in your faith, giving a reason for your faith doesn’t require you to stand on a street corner shouting out what you believe and condemning everyone around you. It doesn’t require you to make pamphlets, or go knocking door to door.

What it does require is you going outside your comfort zone…you can’t be bold whilst being afraid.

Your argument to me right now is going to be, “But I don’t know enough.” And you’re right, you don’t. You never will. Because you, like me, would like to have all the answers, to know the bible inside and out and to have the same amount of knowledge about all the different –ologies and –isms as 27 Religious Studies professors. What you want is an excuse to stay inside your comfortable bubble. Truth be told, I would like to do the same.

Unfortunately the bible calls us to give a reason for our faith, not to stare at the floor and hope that nobody ever asks us about it.

We are expected to give a reason for our faith, but we are not expected to go it alone. Matthew 10 tells us that in these situations we are given the words to say. Our words are those of someone much wiser, someone who can give the answers that we could never produce.

Our boldness in faith doesn’t come from us. Our boldness isn’t tied to our personality. The only way we can be bold in our faith is through the understanding of what Christ has done for us. In understanding our unworthiness, how we are all failures in our own right, we are led to the greatness of Christ and what he has done. Our boldness comes when we realize the reason for our faith is something so great that we just can’t keep it inside.

A is for Angels

Angels we have heard on high.

Angels in the Outfield

Touched by an Angel

Amanda.

All examples of angels in today’s society.

But what does that really mean for us?

We look for angels in all areas of our lives. Statuettes of angels crowd every corner of people’s homes. We talk about our guardian angel. We imagine our dead grandpa to be our guardian angel. We picture heaven and it’s filled with angels of every shape, size, gender and nationality playing their harps and drifting on their own personal cumulous.

Where are we getting this from?

When did this... 

...become this?

I would hope that my guardian angel would look more like Michael than a 12 year old teeny bopper.

Let’s first look at what an angel is. (If I were in a classroom this is where I would pull down one of those screen things and have a pointer)

So an angel is a part of God’s creation. They were created by God for a specific purpose. Believe it or not that purpose is not to help a rag tag baseball team. But we’ll get into that. As part of God’s creation they are beneath God. They aren’t meant to be praised. They aren’t God. They are made, not begotten.

Not only are they a part of creation, but they have been for a really long time. They are something that we are compared to but not something that we become. Just like there will never be another Amanda, the angels that we have are the angels that will be.

I already broke your heart by telling you that the main purpose of angels is not for the purposes of making baseball interesting (far too impossible) so why are they here?

Our guardian angel is a real thing. To what extent I couldn’t tell you but I’m sure I need 2 or 3. They’re present as messengers, as guards and even as warriors. Again I don’t think that puny girl up there is going to do much good against an army full of trained warriors.

God created angels with a purpose. He created them to guard, to guide, to be messengers, to be warriors. He did not create them as robots. As we see in several different records in scripture one of the angels took his responsibility as a perfect creation of God to a place that ultimately caused his downfall. The angel that you and I know as Lucifer was one that was created for a great purpose. He was in the upper shallot and was incredibly wise, incredibly beautiful and incredibly aware of his greatness. It was this awareness, this pride in what God had given him that caused him to believe himself to be like God, to be equal to God. This awareness awoke a desire to be greater than God and the slippery slope of free will descended into that of greed and pride; sin at its worst. This descent included several other angels and created Satan and his demons as we know it today.

God’s creation of angels is one that goes far beyond our understanding. It is unfair to place them as we have; as puny 12 year old girls playing harps, floating on clouds. They are capable of greatness, or even of the absolute forms of evil. They inhabit a role that is far beyond anything that we can properly understand.

And this, my friends, is the letter A.