Boundless Grace
AM Psalm 30, 32 • PM Psalm 42, 43
1 Samuel 22:1-23 • Acts 13:26-43 • Mark 3:19b-35
Chapter 3 of St. Mark’s gospel contains, for me, the most difficult and troubling verses of the whole Bible. In verses 28-30, Mark relates a scene that most of us might prefer to skip. But I’ll tell you what, through years of considered thought, I might even say “fear and trembling,” I’ve come to think Jesus is talking about in this passage.
Wherever Jesus goes, whatever he does, he is hounded by the scribes and Pharisees, who not only question his authority to heal but, worse, accuse him of doing so in league with “the prince of demons.” He is fed up with these critics, so he warns them, “In truth, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven…, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” These are hard words, repeated closely in Matthew and Luke, and surprising, coming from our Lord who has just compassionately healed a leper, a paralytic, and a man with a withered hand.
In my youth, I had a pastor who said there is no “unpardonable” sin, that Jesus isn’t talking about a specific sin, rather a spiritual state. Accordingly, no one is outside God’s grace, forgiveness—Love—except by choice, and that God’s love is always there, in the person of the Holy Spirit, waiting for us to say “Come in.” Only we can cut ourselves off from that limitless love. I soaked up those welcome words from that good Baptist minister decades ago, but it wasn’t until one night in 1984, when I saw the movie production of Peter Shaffer’s play “Amadeus,” that I witnessed the personification of an unrelenting resistance to the spirit of God’s love, in the character Salieri.
Salieri, a devout Catholic, has promised to live faithfully to God, expecting in return that God will make him a great composer. When he meets the upstart Mozart—impudent, insolent, crude—, and hears his music—so beautiful that he believes Mozart’s boast that it appears fully-formed in his head, waiting only to be transcribed—Salieri decides God is mocking him and vows to take revenge on God by destroying His young genius.
Convinced that God has given this gift to the wrong person, Salieri breaks Mozart’s spirit and causes his death, depriving the world of ever more magnificent compositions. In the end, the unrepentant Salieri also dies, a sick and bitter old man, convinced he has defeated God. But God’s grace, embodied in Mozart’s glorious music, on and on surrounds him, and in that packed theater, not one person stirred as the credits scrolled down the screen the last ten minutes. It was hard to believe anyone in the audience that evening didn’t feel the limitless love of God, a love that would never let even a Salieri or a single scribe or Pharisee go.
Written by Kay DuVal
Kay gives thanks for all the people who have helped her along her way to know the limitless love of God.