UNPARDONABLE SIN

Matthew 25:33 – Peter said to him, “Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you.”

I, like many children, used to lie a lot as a child. I lied to get out being punished for something I did, to get something I wanted, or out of fear that I had done something wrong. That’s not particularly unusual. However, I matured. I don’t lie that easily any more. Many people do not, and they risk committing what Howard Thurman, in his book Jesus and the Disinherited, calls the unpardonable sin. In discussing Jesus telling those who accused him of casting out devils by the power of the devil that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” Jesus

suggested that if they continued [saying that] – and they knew such was not the case – they would commit the unpardonable sin. That is to say, if a [person] continues to call a good thing bad, [they] will eventually lose [their] sense of moral distinction. (italics mine.)

They will lose their sense of moral distinction. And a person who loses their sense of moral distinction also loses their sense of self, their sense of being a person in a community, their sense of connection to others, their sense of responsibility to others, possibly even their very humanness.

What does that have to do with Peter’s reaction? I mean, how many of us would react exactly the same way! How does this connect with lying? Glad you asked. No one wants to think that they are cowards or that they will hurt a friend and mentor – God! – in this way. And yet, we all have the capacity to do so as well as the capacity to be faithful. Peter’s refusal to reflect rather than react, to deny rather than think through Jesus’s words, are a form of lying, to himself as well as to Jesus and the other apostles. Peter has no self-awareness.

So, what, you might be asking.

The thing is, Peter’s denial mirrors our own (sometimes). We often want to deny our faults and highlight our strengths. Even to ourselves. Yet, keeping one’s sense of “moral distinction” requires self-reflection, self-awareness, thinking over our actions and apologizing and making amends where necessary, recognizing ourselves as part of a larger community with obligations to that community, especially the most vulnerable. This, to me, is a big part of what it means to follow Jesus.

As with people, so with nations. Being a mature nation requires recognizing our faults as a nation. Plainly put, The US has never had the courage to face what Jim Wallis calls our “original sin,” but I call the rot at the core of our foundations. Every inch of land in the US was stolen from the native peoples who already lived here, sometimes after we killed them with smallpox. (If you didn’t know, look it up and be disgusted!) Slavery and white supremacy are baked into the constitution with the 3/5ths compromise. (Look it up and be disgusted!) The Civil War was fought over the right to own slaves, no matter what people say now. Slavery was baked into the constitution of each and every state that rebelled. (Look it up and be disgusted!) Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Tulsa Massacre (which used to be called the Tulsa race riots to make it seem both sides were at fault), the Civil Rights struggles of the 60s and the decades-long effort by Republicans to roll back those accomplishments. The truth is that the rot has seeped up from the foundations and into the structures; the walls, the windows, the floors. It colors our view of everything. It’s our inability to look at this rot in that allows it grow and threaten the entire structure.

And it starts with small actions like Peter’s furious denial that he would ever desert Jesus.

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