Maranatha, come, Lord!

 

One of my favorite books, required reading in seminary, was Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan. 

This is not tall tales folk superhero Paul Bunyan the lumberjack and his giant blue ox Babe, this is John Bunyan, English Puritan preacher in the 1600s, who wrote Pilgrim’s Progress, that we studied at Camp Weed summer 1952, and I was bored to screaming tears. 

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners bleeds personal anguish as Bunyan struggles with Jesus saying “whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”. Even though it's perfectly clear because Jesus says it totally in context of this event in which he is charged as Beelzebul, demonic, satanic, and in direct response to that charge - - for two thousand years, preachers and scholars and ordinary people have lifted it out of context and tried to identify "the unforgivable sin".  

That can be a problem for verse-proof-texting literalist inerrancy Christians like John Bunyan, whose religious focus is sin, accepting Christ as Personal Savior so their sins are forgiven and they are Saved, “as sure for heaven as if they were already there”, a take on Jesus thankfully foreign to the Episcopal Church. 

John Bunyan is obsessed, driving himself insane trying to identify that unforgivable sin, to make sure he does not commit it. In fact, he is so obsessed that, almost out of his mind with worry and fear, he decides to commit every sin he can think of to be sure he has committed the unforgivable sin and be damned and doomed and done with it, so not have to agonize over it any longer. 

To me hilarious, it was the sin/guilt obsession of Puritan Christianity. Speaking for myself, though these days I may be deemed Politically Incorrect in my very existence as a privileged white American male, I have no sense of guilt, or shame, no ongoing mindfulness of myself as a sinner, I’m trying to live my life in the love of God, and I know you are too. As Father Steve said in his sermon last week, and quoting Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s unending theme, it’s all about love, and that's ALL it’s about. How people are treated. We have NOT loved God with our whole heart; we have NOT loved our neighbors as ourselves, and we are loved anyway, just as we are, the way we are: you are not to worry about the unforgivable sin!

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about this morning. What I want us to see, which folks in our Sunday School class already understand, is this new season we have just come into, not summer, but the church’s Pentecost Season. I want you to see what it’s all about. 

Our liturgical color is green, which traditionally is a color of the Holy Spirit, because it’s a “growing season”, the growing season of the church year, when we are to be leading people to Christ by living our Baptismal Covenant in such a way that people see Jesus in us. You do not have to knock on doors and hand out Bible tracts and ask to come in and share Jesus, what you are to do is live according to WWJD, “What Would Jesus Do?” You already know that, and we keep saying it because it’s The Message, it’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Love God, Love Neighbor, live seeing Jesus in others and so they see Jesus in you. 

But that’s still not my main point this morning. 

My point is what Eucharistic Prayer A calls “the Mystery of Faith” -> 

Christ has died. 

Christ is risen. 

Christ will come again.

That’s what the Pentecost Season is about in the church. At Christmas we celebrate Jesus’s birth. At Easter we celebrate his resurrection from the dead.  At Ascension Jesus leaves, and there’s a void, a spiritual vacuum until the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost. This spring (and BTW we do this symbolic spiritual exercise every year, it’s our ecclesiastical cycle), this spring we went through that. With Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and here we are: what now? 

Well, there’s a strong spiritual sense. After Jesus leaves, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, we enter the Spiritual Age, the Age of the Spirit. We the church are now in the Age of the Holy Spirit, and we will be in the Age of the Spirit until the Second Coming, when Jesus returns:

We remember his death,

We proclaim his resurrection, and now 

We await his coming in glory.

When? When will Christ come again? We do not know! Saint Paul was confident the Second Coming was imminent, would happen in his lifetime. 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15: Paul says the trumpet will sound, Jesus will come in the clouds, everyone who has died will be raised, and they, and those who are still alive, will meet Jesus in the air for judgment. Those who “pass judgment” will be saved into the new eternal Kingdom of God on Earth. Paul was an apocalypticist, that’s what Paul believed and taught. Giving people the chance to be saved is why Paul tried to bring Gentiles to believe in the God of Jesus and so be eligible for salvation into the new Kingdom when Christ returns. 

Pentecost Season, the Age of the Holy Spirit as we await Christ coming again. The church season is to help us keep mindful of that!

Again, Paul thought it would be in his lifetime. That was over two thousand years ago. We are still waiting. When? WHEN? 

Do not concern yourself about it. It’s not our business. It’s God’s domain, God’s dominion. So Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. We are ready. I am ready. You are ready. Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come! The gospel of the Lord!

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Sermon/homily in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, Sunday, June 6, 2021, Proper 5B, the Second Sunday after Pentecost, the Rev Tom Weller. 

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark (3:20-35) (cf MT 12:22-32)

The crowd came together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.” And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.

“Truly I tell you, 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”— for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”