I Have Other Work To Do

“A Way of Living” Lectionary; Week of the Sunday closest to July 13

(I switched Lectionaries today, just because. This is the Lindisfarne Community Lectionary, Year One.)

1 Samuel 22:1-23

22 David said to Abiathar, “I knew on that day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, that he would surely tell Saul. I am 'responsible’ for the lives of all your father’s house.

Acts 23: 26-43

(his Excellency the governor Felix to Paul) 35 he said, “I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive.”

Mark 3:19b-35

28 “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter;  29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—  30 for they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.” (NRSV)

28-30 “Listen to this carefully. I’m warning you. There’s nothing done or said that can’t be forgiven. But if you persist in your slanders against God’s Holy Spirit, you are repudiating the very One who forgives, sawing off the branch on which you’re sitting, severing by your own perversity all connection with the One who forgives.” He gave this warning because they were accusing him of being in league with Evil. (The Message) 

Moral Responsibility.

My Zen teacher was talking about that, very compellingly, last week. He said, “You can never avoid making choices, and there are always consequences.”

I picked out all the excerpts above because they are all about moral responsibility.

David acknowledges that he spoke irresponsibly in front of Doeg, when he knew that Doeg would tell the king, and the king would do something awful. If David had gone off quietly and waited until Doeg was gone before he spoke to the priest, then Abiathar’s family and all the priests might still be alive. The point is, that he saw Doeg, and if he had thought about what he knew about Doeg at the time, he would not have done what he did. But he didn’t think! I know the worst things I have done in my life were due to that very failure. I knew, but I was in a hurry, or I was flustered, or I was thinking about how angry I was or how afraid I was, instead of taking my time.

The governor Felix is a careful judge. He makes sure that he has jurisdiction before he agrees to hear the case, and he protects Paul against the lynch mob that is after him. He takes the moral responsibility that David failed to take. It’s his job, and he goes about it honestly.

Jesus makes it very plain that there is not a single thing that can’t be forgiven, except for the refusal to be forgiven. It’s a kind of paradox. I never understood “the sin against the Holy Spirit” before. It’s not that God is refusing to forgive, it’s that we are seeing things all upside-down and backwards. It’s that what we believe contradicts reality. It’s the only kind of wickedness that masquerades as goodness. It’s not that God won’t forgive it, it’s that it’s a frame of mind that has no room for forgiveness. It’s an attitude that calls good evil, and evil good. As long as we are that mixed up, there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that we can find forgiveness, because we are denying that forgiveness exists. We are putting our delusions in the category of certainties. We are twisting time, truth, and eternity all out of shape to create a domain in which hatred and treachery go around masquerading as decency and benevolence. We are refusing to see things as they are, and take moral responsibility.

So, we can’t even understand forgiveness until we stop fooling ourselves. I keep thinking of the dwarves in C.S. Lewis’s book “The Last Battle,” who can’t see that they are sitting in an open place filled with light, because they are so locked into the idea that they can’t be ‘fooled’ that they believe they are still sitting in a dark, musty stable shed. Their refrain is, “There’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.” Even when Aslan gives them a magnificent feast, they turn it in their minds into old turnips and moldy hay, and the rich red wine into water from the donkey’s trough. All Aslan can say is, “They will not let us help them.” And then he pronounces the eternal judgment on the pathetic dwarves, “Come, children. I have other work to do.”