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.