For a brief period early in my life, I preached a Sunday sermon. When I left that vocation behind, I could not imagine ever wanting to write a “sermon” again. The current times have changed all that. In the face of Post-Truth, Donald Trump, FoxNews, and the intentional de-semination of un-Truth, the best defense we have to redeem ourselves and our world is biblical language. 

 “Truly I tell you, all sins and blasphemes will be forgiven for the sons of men. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, but is guilty of an eternal sin. He said this because they [the Pharisees] were saying, ‘He has an evil spirit‘.” Mark 3:28-30

In most legitimate Christian contexts it is not popular today to use terms like evil or demonic.  It is with good reason. So often those terms have been turned upside down by the “leaders” of the ironically named Christian Right (Heretical Wrong) and applied to what is merely human weakness, little sins (lowercase “s”) which are merely personal failings with little consequence beyond the individual.

Little sins are forgivable. True evil is not.

These words from Mark tell us what true evil looks like, and make clear why it is truly unforgivable.

Every word Jesus spoke was Truth because every word was from the Holy Spirit. The Pharisees who did not like hearing the Truth tried to deceive the people into believing that the Truth was something other than what it was. This is the definition of demonic, the intentional distortion of Truth, of what is holy and good and beautiful.

The Pharisees were committing the unforgivable sin because they were knowingly trying to distort Truth to lead the people astray.

This is the Sin (capital “S”) against Reason that Donald Trump, FoxNews, and the current members of the Administration commit almost every time they open their mouths. This is the sin that some members of the G.O.P commit every time they work to delegitimize the science behind Global Warming. This is the Sin that the tobacco executives committed when they knowingly tried to distort the dangers of tobacco. This is the Sin the NRA and their lawmaker lackeys commit when they prohibit the study of the true cost of gun violence. This is the Sin that GOP leaders commit when they falsely claim voter fraud to make it hard for minorities and the poor to vote.

This is the Sin that holocaust deniers commit. This is Sin that Christian Nationalist “leaders” (the modern day Pharisees) commit when they deny Evolution and the Big Bang.

This kind of Sin can only be committed by leaders, and by the wealthy and powerful. It is why Jesus said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

In this world, those to whom much is given… much is expected.

Truth sets people free. So the temptation is always there for the rich and powerful to distort Truth to keep what they have. Oil company executives are tempted to distort the Truth about Global Warming because they feel like they have so much to lose. Gun manufactures are tempted to intentionally  distort the Truth about guns because they feel like they have so much to lose. Catholic Church leaders were tempted to distort the Truth about sexual abuse because they felt like they had so much to lose. Donald Trump is tempted to distort the Truth about…just about everything because he feels like he has so much to lose.

The Irony, of course, is that by choosing UnTruth, they actually lose everything.

Yes, brothers and sisters, Evil does exist. But it never has the last word.

Judgement Day is coming. And as Jesus said in Luke 17:2: “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”