Mark 9:14–29
14 When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16 He asked them, ‘What are you arguing about with them?’ 17 Someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.’ 19 He answered them, ‘You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.’ 20 And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21 Jesus asked the father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. 22 It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ 23 Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’ 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’
25 When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!’ 26 After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. 28 When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ 29 He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
I want to let you know right away that I will not be talking about exorcisms today and you've all seen the movie, so we don't need to repeat that. But most scholars agree that this is really not an exorcism. It's a likely a child who is struggling with epilepsy. And while most of the story seems to be tied up with arguments and human power struggles, it's really the boy's father, and I think, we need to be focused on him and Mark’s interesting strategy to get us to think about the power of prayer.
None of us is a stranger to praying for healing for a loved one and that sometimes prayers are answered, and healing does take place. Other times our prayers do not have the outcome we had hoped for. As we mature, hopefully, we grow out of this childlike understanding of prayer as a transaction where “if we're good enough, God will give us exactly what we want, especially when we ask for it”. Depending on experience, we either learn about prayer as a relationship with God that has its ups and downs or we give up on it and decide instead to continue to take matters into our own hands, because we don’t always get what we want when we pray for it.
Additionally, I've been increasingly made aware that most people that I visit or pray with over the phone have absolutely no trouble asking for prayers for others, but struggle mightily being able to open up and name what they want for themselves and their faith journey, apart from healing from a particular illness.
I want to look again more deeply at the father and his maturity. He is both an inspiration and a model for us, for in him we can see an honest profession, as well as a confession: “I believe, but help me in my unbelief”. He's professing his trust in Jesus, while also confessing that he's not strong enough to fully trust and turn himself over to Jesus and Jesus’ authority and power regardless of the outcome.
Scholar Pheme Perkins puts it like this: “Unbelief as well as fear, are the main barriers to true faith”. I don't know about you, but some days I resemble that remark and the last two years have exacerbated that for all of us, because our fears have been increased. It has really stressed all of our faith journeys and even, perhaps, increased our lack of hope.
Author Joyce Rupp calls this ‘the demons of discouragement’. In her book, Fresh Bread she writes about this more specifically. “The demon of discouragement trips me up in hectic times. Takes my heart apart. Dumps out all of my hope. The demon of discouragement points fingers at my weakness, jaws its mouth at my errors and threatens to undo me. The demon of discouragement despises sunsets and rainbows, relishes rancor, fights to hold on to my moody darkness and loves to see me when I'm weary. The demon of discouragement fails, though, to have the last laugh…[for I know God} and God's love outlasts all of these demons.”
Somewhere along the way most of us have been taught or decided that if we had “more” faith, then things in our lives would be better, if not maybe even perfect. And our intellect knows that's not true, but the child inside each of us may still be hoping and yearning and longing for the one thing that we just still haven't gotten on our Christmas list.
Rupp, in one of her early books on prayer, paraphrases the ‘help me in my unbelief’ by saying, “The first thing we can pray for is to pray to be open. If there is an openness, then wondrous transformation can take place. If the mind and heart are closed, little can happen and we end up holding on to our weaknesses and our self-absorption, misjudging the goodness of God. Refusing to trust. And, instead, insist on our own way. But divine love waits for us to let go of our hesitancies and our resistances, so that we can freely receive what is truly offered.”
One of my spiritual directors used to say, “We don't always get what we want, but God always provides everything that we need.” I've been sidetracked this weekend…well, obsessed actually, with the British Open especially because Tiger Woods was making a return. And the British Open is being played at Saint Andrews, the home of golf (which also is one of the ugliest golf courses I have ever seen). All the grass is burned out and the course is brown. There are about 130 bunkers, most of which have nicknames. It's a rough, rough course and the golf world has been champing at the bit to see if Tiger could not only stay the course of the four day tournament, but win.
One of the commentators, who's a former PGA pro himself, Paul Azinger, says it's really interesting that every golf professional he's talked to, every champion says that they don't remember the wins as much as they remember the losses. Just like us. So you may or may not know that Tiger Woods did not make the cut. And as he came up the 18th fairway on Friday and walked over this very, very special bridge which every golfer usually pauses on, he kept walking. Everyone in the stands jumped to their feet, shouting his name and cheering him on. As Tiger is making this historical walk up the 18th fairway, Rory McIlroy, who's the number two golfer right now, was passing him going out the 1st fairway. Rory paused, turned to Tiger and tipped his cap. With that, Tiger became absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. You could see him pulling the tears from his eyes. And in the moments and hours afterwards, he was able to share with interviewers that that was one of the most powerful experiences he had ever had. What he wanted was to get another claret jug, but what he needed is to know that he recovered from almost losing his leg and that people still love him, even if he's not a champion this Sunday.
It's his maturity and his struggles and his suffering, not his trophy case, is what really matters. Instead of one more trophy, he now has an experience that he can hold on to as a touchstone when he has other difficult and disappointing days.
Mystics and devout spiritual leaders throughout time, Christians as well as Jewish, Muslim, Buddhists and Hindus all share and agree on this one understanding: “that in order to have true happiness, we need to let go”. We need to let go of our attachments. We need to let go of specific outcomes. We need to let go of our achievements. We need to let go of even our expectations as well as disappointments. It's only when we do that, that we can be truly free. This is not easy and we can see from this story that even the disciples were struggling to understand this. But I can tell you for sure that praying for others without praying for yourself is not a form of selfishness, as so many people believe. It's actually avoidance. We fear that if we start to let God truly look inside our hearts, we're afraid of what God's going to find. Guess what? God already knows what's in our hearts--the good, the bad, the ugly, the immature, the petulant. God knows that below those demons of discouragement, though, is the light of God that God put into each of us. And it starts with, “God, I do believe. Now please help me with my unbelief.”
May it be so. Amen.