November 13, 2005 Des Moines

Text: Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18

Seeing Lamplight

Is there such an offense that can be considered an “unforgivable sin?” Religions and their adherents have been debating that question for centuries. The Apostle Paul, on one of his missionary journeys, proclaimed that “By Jesus, all that believe are justified from all things” (13:39). Jesus, on the other hand, in his classically enigmatic way, nuanced that assurance with the belief that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people; but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” (Matthew 12:31-32, cf. Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10)

That “exception” has ever since turned ordinary disciples into theological bounty hunters, questing to uncover the true nature of this malignant “holy grail” of sins. What does it mean to “sin against the Holy Spirit?”

The people of Israel during the time of the prophet Zephaniah may well have put their finger on it – or sat on it, as the case may be. It doesn’t take a very astute student to read the passage we heard earlier and understand that things are not good in Israel. Even the bluntest emotional antenna can discern from the tone of things that God is mad. According to the prophet, God is about to put new batteries in the holy flashlight and start searching the side streets and closets for every last sinner that will be stacked up like cord wood for one grand sacrificial fire. It is an awful picture the prophet paints – wrath, anguish, devastation and ruin; a day of inky darkness, with the blood of the sinful poured out like dust, and human flesh shoveled out like manure from a barn.

So what is their grievous sin that will not be forgiven? What is the breach giving rise to these horrific consequences? In the part of the chapter we didn’t read, Zephaniah offers a few representative examples. The people have become more superstitious than faithful. They have begun to dress like their contemporaries – quite literally blending in as indistinguishable. Their concern for the poor and needy has deteriorated coincidently at the same time that the hub of their interest and energy has shifted from the Temple to the Jerusalem equivalent of Wall Street. In all but formality, they have become their non-believing neighbors.

But in a sense, those are only symptoms. The real disease is something still deeper. To describe it, Zephaniah uses an image from the winemaker’s craft: the people have come to “rest complacently on their dregs” as one translation puts it; they are “settling on their lees” according to another. The dregs – or the lees – of wine are the dense sediment of the grapes – skin and mash – with which new wine is allowed to sit for a carefully determined period in order to gain color and body before being poured off into another vessel for the remainder of its fermentation. Left too long on the lees, wine becomes thick and syrupy and subject to mold.

Such, according to the prophet, is the character that Israel has taken on – thick, indolent, sickly sweet, and moldy. Hardly a flattering characterization of the “chosen people.”

But lest the point be lost in the metaphor, Zephaniah drives the message home: “You have decided that God doesn’t matter – that God is impotent, indifferent, or perhaps simply absent. But whatever, the result is the same: You say in your hearts that "The LORD will do neither good nor harm." And that, finally, may well be as bad as it can get – perhaps even so much as unforgivable – that God is finally and simply irrelevant. Or as a student put in class one day, “Sure, I believe in God. I just don’t believe he does anything.” Anything – good or bad; punishment or reward. Just…nothing.

I’ll confess to no small amount of discomfort with the idea of preaching from this passage. I much prefer promises like, “Take my yoke upon you and I will give you rest,” and “In my father’s house are many dwelling places.” I would far rather explore the stirring proclamation that “God so loved the world that he gave is only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life;” and the enlarging assertion that “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

Knowing my discomfort with Zephaniah and his ilk will give you some window into the challenges I face with other things like parenting, the criminal justice system, personnel management, and the like. The rub, for me, is punishment, or “discipline” if you prefer – accountability for actions. Intellectually I recognize that actions have consequences; if you stick a fork in the wall socket you get shocked; if you lay your hand on a hot stove you get burned. I know that if you beat a dog it’s not going to curl up and nap in your lap. I know that when you stay out past curfew you need to be grounded or some more creative equivalent. And I know that consequences are the teachers that help us learn from our mistakes.

I know that; but when it comes to imposing or even tolerating such consequences, I’m simply not much good. Abstractly I know that people who break the law have to be held accountable, but when I go and visit Gary Western in the Polk County jail, all I can think of is how pointless it seems, and how both he and society would benefit more by some other, more constructive and less stagnant consequence. I know there is a price to pay for mistakes, but talking to him through the glass partition, I just want him out. The mitigations are far more resonant with me than the litigations.

And so Zephaniah, all about accountability and disastrous consequences, is hard for me to stomach. Described by some as “the saddest book in the whole Bible” (Calkins, 1947, 69), Zephaniah snaps tight the rope of divine indulgence with the message that there won’t be any more slack. God, this prophet reminds us, is both merciful and just; patient, but above all, present; not at all the absentee, impotent vapor that the prophet’s audience – and more than a few contemporary believers – are tempted to conclude.

I know there are some in this environment of religious extremes who credit God with absolutely everything – from parking spaces close to the door, to victories of favorite teams; from the ability of last year’s winter clothes to still button, to the cancellation that miraculously opens up a time tomorrow at the dentist. There are some who see God’s hand fanning every hurricane wind, generating every earthquake tremor, and propagating every new virulent disease as divine punishment for their own pet list of unforgivable sins.

My sad suspicion, however, is that there are far more not simply in the church but also in the church who more resemble the focus of this text: those indolent and sometimes decadent ones who rest on their lees – the literally and theologically syrupy and thick who have become settled and comfortably satisfied that God will do neither evil nor good; that merely ceremonial and largely irrelevant, God will finally do nothing.

To all of us, then – both those entrenched in their spiritual disregard, and those who simply drift off, on occasion, in that direction – Zephaniah offers a useful corrective. God is not only present, but active; full of justice as well as grace; generous, but also accountable. Lest we get a little too drunk on what the great hymn describes as the “wine of the world,” it’s good and sobering every once in awhile to look up and see the light, and recognize it as the very lamp of God – searching…and seeing…and like any good parent, interposing a little constructive discipline on occasion.

I don’t think that makes it unforgivable, but it does make it rather sobering. I can stand to be sobered – as, perhaps, on occasion can you.