Pentecost +17 – I Believe, Help My Unbelief

Sermons – St. Brendan's Anglican Church

Rev. Dr. Les Martin

Pentecost +17 2024
Rev. Dr. Les Martin
Mark 9:14-29

“I believe, help my unbelief!”
+ In the name of the Living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Introduction

Jesus, Peter, James and John have just been on the mountain. There, Jesus had been transfigured in glory, and conferred with Moses and Elijah, who are the fullness of the witness of both the Law and the Prophets about his fulfillment of both which would occur very soon on a hill outside of Jerusalem. Here, he had been audibly confirmed by God the Father as his one dear Son.” So, onwards to Jerusalem, But, remember, there are the nine disciples who did not go up the mountain. They are below in a gentile town, teaching and ministering while the others are away and Jesus, and the others have come to join them. It’s not surprising to find them in a gentile town: Mark has been deliberate in laying out throughout his Gospel the two, parallel missions of Jesus: to the Jews, and to the gentiles. We’ve had feedings and healings in Marc, both directed first to the Jew and second to unbelievers. In Mark 5:46 Jesus raised Jarius’ daughter from the dead, today we see him raise a gentile boy from sickness into health. The transformative love and healing power of Christ is comprehensive: Jewish girl and gentile boy. And it all takes place under the looming shadow of the cross. This context provides us one, or possibly two, clear messages from our reading today. But, there’s another message. I want us to examine in this time. Because I think this story isn’t primarily given to us as yet another story of healing rather I think it’s a story about being deaf and mute.

Deafness, Muteness

Let’s look closely at who’s deaf and mute in this story:

The obvious answer is “the boy.” And that’s correct: we learned that, from childhood, he has had a disordered spirit that renders him both deaf and mute, unable hear and to talk and throws him into seizures.

However, he is not the only “mute” person in the gospel today: the father is also mute in his own way. His ability to be what a father is– loving protector and nurture of his boy– has been muted by the inability to read his son of this disease. Today, we actually see him at the level of desperation, reaching out to these nine disciples of a Jewish rabbi, taking a chance on unproven, experimental, foreign medicine. When Jesus finally arrives, we also see that his faith, though present, is also somewhat muted. Back in chapter 5, Jarius, the leader of the synagogue, had enough desperate faith to risk offending Jewish sensibilities by kneeling before Jesus in an active worship, knowing that he was the one who could restore his little girl to life. The boys father has enough faith to give the disciples a try, to give Jesus a try, but there is a sense of hesitation about it. Instead of worship, a conditional statement is offered: “if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us“. It’s obviously Faith, but hesitant, conditional, faith – faith that goes only so far. It’s been muted. Further, he is deaf- although his ears work perfectly fine, he cannot hear the promise of God in the presence and words of Jesus.

A deaf and mute boy, a mute and deaf Father, deaf and mute disciples. In this story, the only person with any meaningful words is The Word. The only one really saying anything is Jesus.

Then, there are the disciples. Remember the nine at the beginning, the ones in the crowd at the start of the story? They were not on the Mount of Transfiguration, so they too have a kind of deafness. They didn’t hear Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah, haven’t heard him explain his mission, or his proclamation as the beloved Son by the Father. Instead, while waiting in this Gentile town, the father brought the boy to them, and they were unsuccessful in healing him. When Jesus arrives, there’s now a crowd around them, and an argument has ensued with the scribes. Their ability to become effective apostles of Jesus Christ – which one day they will be – is muted. They have no words: words of healing that will properly restore this boy to health, and apparently no words to silence the Scribes either, something Jesus was always expert in. It’s as if they are silenced by what they did not hear up on that mountain.

Now we know that Jesus heals the boy, but if this is less a story about healing miracles, and more story about being deaf and mute in the things of God, about uncertain faith and witness, about silenced hopes and really loud fears, then the most important thing to look at today is not really the healing. Rather, it’s about the relationship of faith to deafness and muteness.

And this isn’t some abstract, theological flight of fancy, because the reality is we are so often deaf and mute too. Deaf to the promise of a new creation, as the world about us seemingly crumbles. Deaf to the still, small, voice as it is drowned out by the noises of social media. Deaf to the Christian way of life, as it is lost in the morass of so many “lifestyle choices.” We have been rendered mute when the doctor says “there is no cure,“ we have been silenced by broken relationships – especially those that seem irretrievably broken. We are mute so often in the face of the suffering and brokenness we see in those dear to us, and in our very real inability to help. Despite our years in the church, we can find ourselves mute when the world turns to us for a word of faith, a connection to God, or just some help in making sense of our broken and aimless culture.

Deafness, and Jesus, the Word

Our reading from Isaiah today comes from one of the “Songs of the Suffering Servant,” which the church has always confessed to be a prophetic statement about the nature and ministry of Jesus. In chapter 50 verse four, we read “the Sovereign Lord has given me the capacity to be his spokesman, so that I know how to help the weary“.

To be a spokesman, someone has to have a word. One cannot be mute. The word that our Lord has for the weary, the suffering, the people in our gospel reading today, and for us is first of all himself. We confess that he is the word of God present with God from the beginning and slain from the foundation of the world. He is “Emmanuel Jesus.“ God with us. The God who saves. Further, this word of God, the suffering servant also has words for us:

Matthew 11:28 “come to me all you are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest”

John 16:33 “ in the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage – I have conquered the world.”

Matthew 9:6 “ The son of Man has authority… To forgive sins”

John 14:3 “ I go and make ready a place for you, and I will come again and take you to be with me, so that where I am, you may be too.”

Remember how I said that our Gospel reading today is immediately proceeded by the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain? Do you remember what God the Father said? From the cloud he spoke these words: “This is my one, dear son, listen to him!”

The cure to our deafness is listening to Jesus.

God the Father tells us on the holy mount: listen to my Beloved Son – who he is, my words spoken to you, and the words he says. This is the message that will sustain you in weariness. Do you remember the words we sang in the opening of this service?

He speaks; and listening to His voice,
New life, the dead receive,
The mournful, broken hearts, rejoice,
the humble poor believe.

When the circumstances of our life are just too much, we can become deaf to the goodness of God and the promises of Christ. The antidote is to listen. To listen to the word of God, and the words of God. That’s where we begin, as Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word of Christ.”

Muteness, Jesus, and Prayer

Now, if we are listening to Jesus in our gospel passage today, we also need to think a little deeper about prayer. Because, at first, “the words of the Word of God” do not sound, particularly comforting to anxious, weary disciples, but rather judgmental. In verse 18, the father of the boy exposes their weakness: “I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they were not able to do so.” They were mute. Jesus responds by lamenting about the “faithless or unbelieving generation he finds himself in.”- one that is both deaf AND mute. The disciples go onto ask him privately about this failure in their ability as exorcists, in Jesus, states that this kind of demon “can only come out by prayer.”

It’s really important to keep these words of Jesus in the context of all that we know about what it means to live of faith. Regrettably, we often think of faith as some kind of “substance”- I either have faith, or I don’t. It’s a thing – or a work – in our possession. We can make a similar assumption about prayer. Thought of this way, prayer is a tool, a weapon used to force changes in our life, according to our will. Sometimes, even a tool in which we attempt to change the very mind of God, to force him to act. If only the disciples had just prayed harder, or longer, or with the correct technique, they could’ve healed that boy. That’s too often our unconscious assumption. This is an assumption born of our deafness, I think. And it is why we are so often muted, despite praying so very much.

Instead of a tool, a weapon, or something “we do” Christian author Horace Williams, Jr. reminds us that

“ prayer is about having purposeful and intimate conversations with God.”

And CS Lewis writes

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.

It’s our end of the relationship. When we listen to the words of our loving God, our deafness is healed, and our faith in Jesus grows as a byproduct. We learn the nature and character of our God, and are able to put our trust, allegiance, and hope in him. When in prayer we loose our muted tongues, directing their focus, not so much to the world or trying to get fixes to our problems, but to the very heart of our loving Savior, we engage in our part of the relationship. Now, it must be said that we often do get fixes to our problems, or maybe to our desires and vision, but that is secondary, not primary. It is never the main thing. The main thing is the relationship with Jesus. Unbelief and muteness are driven away by prayer: when we are heard, our trust, allegiance, and hope in Him is strengthened more and more. It’s how all friendships grow, isn’t it- all relationships. The Christian life ultimately is a conversation with God, a relationship with him. He does most of the talking, we do most of the listening, but it is a true both–ways conversation. And it’s living in that conversation- neither deaf nor mute- that is the essence of faith. As Saint Augustine says: “we pray that we might believe and believe that we might pray.”

Conclusion

In truth, when faced with the deafness and muteness of the boy, his father, and the disciples in our gospel lesson today, Jesus doesn’t offer them merely a fix to the pickle that they’re in. He’s not just offering the boy healing, although he does. He is offering him relationship. He is not just offering the Father an end to sleepless nights, worry, and impotence – his own form of mutness. He is offering him relationship. He is not offering his disciples secret teaching that will lead them to possess greater power when they encounter the demonic. That would merely be offering them greater faith in their own power, rather than his. He is offering them relationship. As we wander about unhearing and silent in this deconstructing world, beset by our own illnesses, doubts, fears, and uncertainties, Jesus isn’t offering us a “quick–fix,” either. Rather, he points us again to the relationship we have with him: washed and baptism, fed at his table, listening to his word, and today anointed for healing, he reminds us that to be the answer to our problems is too small a thing. His longing has always been to be our Lord, our savior, our friend