I believe, help my unbelief!

Sermon Notes, Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021. Proper 19 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, "I believe; help my unbelief!" Mark 9: 24 One of the charges brought against the Gospel writers is that they took liberties with historical facts to advance their own agendas. They embellished Jesus' life, added miracles and such, so that the early church might grow, and they would personally thrive. However, the Gospels are full of examples where Jesus and the disciples appear in a less than flattering manner. Today's Gospel reading from Mark contains several of these. We see Jesus rebuking the crowd and voicing frustration at their lack of faith. We hear him sounding defensive and indignant to the father of the demon-possessed boy. We see the disciples unable to do the very thing that Jesus gave them power to do. All that points toward the veracity of scripture. Nothing is white-washed. No one put the proper spin on these stories. But it also forces us as Christians to admit that our understanding of Jesus may need adjustment. How do we account for the "lapses" in his behavior when he appears less godly and more like us? Have we, in effect, divorced him from the world he came to save, and for which he voluntarily humbled himself? A close reading of Mark's Gospel story is in order. Our lectionary excerpt begins in ambiguity. And when they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. Who are they? Peter, James, John and Jesus are returning from the mountain-top experience of the transfiguration. As they approach civilization again, they are confronted by a spectacle of confusion and loud voices. The crowd is riled up and the rest of the disciples are right in the middle of it. We can't read this without hearing echoes of another time when a mountain top experience dissolved into chaos. Moses descending from the mountain of God with the Ten Commandments heard and saw the Israelites cavorting around the golden calf, with Aaron and his priests in the center of the revelry. God was angry. Moses was angry. The sublime moment on the mountain top seems artificial when confronted by the reality of man's depravity. It would take more than a restored tablet to straighten us out. In Mark's story Jesus and his chosen ones face confusion and frustrated failure. The disciples were recently sent off to practice new gifts among the people. Gifts of healing and gifts of rescue. They came back to Jesus and reported that they were able to heal the sick and cast out demons in His Name. But now they are stymied. Facing a young boy held tightly in a demon's power, they could do nothing. The crowd vents anger at them. The father despairs. Their own confidence is shaken, and Jesus is nowhere to be found. Until he suddenly appears, and all that anger and frustrations turns to face him. And someone from the crowd answered him, "Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able." He came with his son to find Jesus, but Jesus wasn't there. He was into Plan B before Plan A had even been tried. The disciples too were able to cast out demons, but this time no exorcism happened. Nothing happened. And so the story might have ended except that suddenly Jesus appears and hope is reborn. The father spills out his frustration and pain before Jesus. And what does Jesus do? He gives the man his own dose of frustration. "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me." No matter how we try to sweeten Jesus' words, the bitter tone persists. Jesus' compassion is buried for the moment beneath his resignation. His compassion will surface. He will cast out the demon. But how we wish he were more consistent, more like the Jesus who had pity on the 5000 hungry people listening to his preaching, or the solitary girl accused of adultery and about to be stoned, or Mary choosing the better part, or the woman at the well. Let's be honest. We've had doubts about Jesus' lack of visible compassion before. When he didn't drop everything to save his dying friend but lingered another 3 days away. When he said, "You will always have the poor with you." When he slept in the foundering boat while his disciples fought for their lives. When he told the mother whose child lay dying that he hadn't come to feed the dogs. As I consider this answer to the father's plea, I must ask who is Jesus speaking to? Who is the faithless generation that weighs him down so heavily? The disciples. Who could not do what they were commissioned to do? The crowd pressing around him who seemed more interested in spectacle, another miracle and I was there to see it. Or maybe even the demon, the evil emissary, whose boss had troubled him on and off since his time in the wilderness. Who would trouble him again greatly at Gethsemane, who was always waiting for a more opportune time to attack. Or the father whose faith is weakened by his long endurance. Or all of these together. And we might include ourselves as well, when our faith wavers. Will we allow Jesus to be frustrated with us? Is he disappointed in us at times? Can we bear his harsh glance as well as his loving embrace? It is a question that Mark's Gospel asks us. So Jesus takes the boy and witnesses the worst that the demon can do. He convulses him and leaves him as though dead. The father has seen it all too often and can stand to see it no more. "But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us." V. 22 This should be the moment when Jesus' heart breaks for them. But instead, Jesus stuns the father and us with his rebuke. "'If you can'! All things are possible for one who believes." In our reading from James today we stand judged by our faith if it is unattached to works. So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Js 2:17. But there are times, and this is one, where faith itself is hard work. Faith needs to be strong when it is up against strong evil. Jesus tells the father that he needs to believe more deeply than he has ever believed before. To believe that God can act in the face of a lifetime of misery, against the visible and damning work of Satan, to save one as good as dead, requires hard work faith. Jesus challenges the man if his faith is of that mettle. He answers Jesus with words that have resonated across the centuries with every believer who has faith, but also knows that it can be weakened, and found wanting when most needed. "I believe; help my unbelief!" Bishop J.C. Ryles takes a close and penetrating look at our world of belief and unbelief. At all the vulnerabilities present when we need to depend on our faith but doubt its substance. He writes, What shall we do with our faith? We must use it. Weak, trembling, doubting, feeble as it may be, we must use it. We must not wait till it is great, perfect, and mighty, but like the man before us, turn it to account, and hope that one day it will be more strong. "Lord," he said, "I believe." What shall we do with our unbelief? We must resist it, and pray against it. We must not allow it to keep us back from Christ. We must take it to Christ, as we take all other sins and infirmities, and cry to Him for deliverance. Like the man before us, we must cry, "Lord, help mine unbelief."1 Two lessons from this story in Mark: One, Faith is a verb and we must work at it in the way that we work to be followers and disciples of Jesus. Jesus expects nothing less of us. And two: That Jesus came into our messy world and allowed the world to affect him, just as it affects us. He had to do that. He had to confront the same mess that we confront, in order to save us from it. We see his frustration because he experienced frustration, just like us. His incarnation was to be fully human as well as fully God. God above us is also God with us. Amen. 1 Ryle, J. C. (1859). Expository Thoughts on Mark (p. 183). London: William Hunt. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------