1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15) Psalm 138 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Mark 3:20-35

So we do not lose heart.

Even though our outer nature is wasting away,

our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 

2 Corinthians 4:16

With the passing of the principal feasts [Easter; Ascension Day, the day on which the Resurrected Jesus ascends from our earthly view after spending 40 days reappearing to his followers; the Day of Pentecost, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to rest upon all who would follow Jesus Christ, guiding us in the fulfillment of our commission to spread the Gospel message; and Trinity Sunday, which we celebrated last week, our feast affirming our belief in the three in one – God the Father; God the Son; and God the Holy Spirit] we now settle into what the Church refers to as ordinary time.  What a pleasant thought after these preceding 15 months – ordinary time.

This sense of order is one of the important aspects that draws many of us to the Episcopal Church; we don’t do things randomly and haphazardly.  And, I always like to point out this particular Sunday that begins our Ordinary Time in order to emphasize our need to settle into systematic and intentional Bible study as an intricate part, in fact a highlight, of our weekly worship.  In the coming weeks and months, we will walk rather chronologically through our Old Testament lessons, Paul’s epistles to the early churches, and Jesus’ earthly ministry as recorded in the divinely inspired words of St. Mark.

We emphasize that the Bible, from beginning to end, is the account of God’s creation and redemption of his people.  The Bible is not the compilation of random unrelated stories.  The Bible is not to be seen as a separate Old Testament and New Testament.  The Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, contains the history, poetic revelations, and prophecy of God’s people culminating in the New Testament – the redemption of all God’s creation through the incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – from beginning to end, all one account of our creation and redemption as children of God.

And, so, we begin our ongoing study with our lesson today from 1 Samuel.  Much history has transpired for the people of Israel.  Time and again, they had entered into covenant with God; time and again, they had fallen away and broken the covenant.  By the time of Samuel who was the last of the judges, the twelve tribes had moved into a more settled lifestyle progressing from the nomadic lifestyle under the patriarchs and their sojourn in the wilderness to their arrival and possession of the Promised Land of Israel.

Their desire now was to have an earthly king to rule over them – an earthly king like those of neighboring nations.  God was displeased by their request; we read God’s words to Samuel, “they have rejected me from being king over them.  Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods.”

Despite the impassioned warnings, the Israelites were determined; they made Saul their king in Gilgal.  This would be a temporary boost to their outer nature, but in so doing they were thwarting their inner renewal; they were acting for themselves, discounting their need for God’s guidance.  The Israelites would have an earthly king to rule their lands and their hearts.  Why, then, would they need God?  God’s chosen people would now be like other nations.  Just how is it that God would bring about their inner renewal?  The quest continues.

Centuries later, in our Gospel lesson from Mark, Jesus is speaking of this same state of mind that had possessed the Israelites of Samuel’s times.  It is a state of mind that desires the replacing of that that is of the Holy Spirit with that that is earthly and separate from God.  In blunt terms, it is seeing evil as goodness and goodness as evil.  The legalistically obsessed scribes in our account this morning tried to label Jesus’ actions of casting out demons as an action of evil while reason assures us that evil cannot, in fact would not, desire to cast out evil.

In our account of the Israelites, it is not so much that an earthly king for their people was an evil thing, but that this earthly king represented their rejection of God as their true and only king.  In a similar way, the scribes in this confrontation with Jesus cannot distinguish goodness from evil.  Their willingness to understand is clouded by their earthly agenda to uphold their power over the religious traditions as they determine the traditions need to be upheld.

This state of mind is a closed wasteland to the action of God’s spirit – a state of mind in which we sacrifice good for evil – when our earthly desires circumvent the renewing action of the Holy Spirit.  This closed mindedness, Jesus says in our lesson from Mark, is the unpardonable and eternal sin.  When we, as humans, choose to partake in this ongoing sin – when we, by choice, habitually reject God in favor of earthly desires and obsessions, this ongoing sin becomes the wasting of our heritage as God’s people, an unpardonable and eternal rejection of God – And, God respects our will to reject him.

The struggle between the evil and the good is the dilemma that, at worst, is the basis of our rejection of God and, at best, causes our continuous wholehearted search for guidance and renewal.  It is a struggle between idle meaninglessness and escalating joy.  Even our closest relationships with family members require this priority toward God’s guidance and renewal.

In the years following the Resurrection and the Ascension and the first Christian Pentecost, the faithful people of the church in Corinth were coming to a better understanding of their need for God.  The Apostle Paul encourages them to hold to the faith and embrace the renewal that was promised them and is promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.

The ordinariness of our lives requires the acceptance of the passing away of the old – the smooth wrinkleless skin, painless joints and clear minds, our treasured possessions, the earthly power and prestige revered by the youthful.  These are the stuff of our earthly existence.  But as we wholeheartedly search for God’s guidance, we no longer fall into the snare of our instinct to determine our own good.  We trust our renewal to God through whom our inner nature is being made ready for the eternal weight of glory day by day.

So, do not lose heart; an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure is prepared for us.  The Apostle Paul assures us, our earthly tent will be destroyed; but, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  The Lord will make good his purpose for you.