The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, The Love of God, and The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Mark 9:14 “When they came back to the disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15 Immediately, when the entire crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him. 16 And He asked them, “What are you discussing with them?” 17 And one of the crowd answered Him, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; 18 and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.” 19 And He *answered them and *said, ‘O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!’ 20 They brought the boy to Him. When he saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth. 21 And He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22 It has often thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!” 23 And Jesus said to him, “‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief.” 25 When Jesus saw that a crowd was rapidly gathering, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.’ 26 After crying out and throwing him into terrible convulsions, it came out; and the boy became so much like a corpse that most of them said, ‘He is dead!’ 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and raised him; and he got up. 28 When He came into the house, His disciples began questioning Him privately, ‘Why could we not drive it out?’ 29 And He said to them, ‘This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.’” (NASB)
Sometime next month, as we approach Halloween one of the television networks or streaming companies will probably offer up the Peanuts’ special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” This holiday special focuses on Linus’ faith in the Great Pumpkin.
Linus believes that every year on Halloween the Great Pumpkin rises out of a Pumpkin patch to brings gifts to boys and girls who are really, really sincere in their faith. To this end, every year Linus plants a pumpkin patch with the hope that the Great Pumpkin will choose to rise up out of the pumpkins he planted and cared for in his very own pumpkin patch.
But Linus not only tends to the pumpkins in his patch. He also tries to become more and more sincere in his beliefs so that his pumpkin patch will be worthy of hosting the Great Pumpkin. Then on Halloween night Linus tries to maintain an all night vigil so that he can witness the Great Pumpkin rise out of his patch. Spoiler alter. The only being that rises out of Linus’s pumpkin patch was Snoopy. The next morning Charlie Brown tries to comfort Linus in his disappointment, but Linus remains undaunted in his conviction that the Great Pumpkin will come next year.
At first glance the whole thing looks silly, but when Charles Schulz wrote it, he was on the cutting edge of a cultural shift in how people would come to think of religion and virtue. Linus embodies the virtue seeking God pleasing religion our day. For a great many people think that it is not what you believe that is crucial, but rather that you believe in something sincerely. When people talk about going with what feels right to determine what’s true and best for them, they seem to believe as well that the laws of nature, as well as human nature, and the entire universe will change to accommodate our own unique “reality.” Not only this is self made faith contrary to facts and to the Word of God, it is also seemingly unshakeable. Oh that Christians had such an unshakeable faith in Christ Jesus and the doctrines of Holy Scripture.
In the paragraph before the assigned Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up on a mountain to be transfigured before them. While the four of them were on the Mt. of Transfiguration, the other nine disciples waited at the bottom of the mount near a village. While they were waiting for Jesus and the others to return, a crowd had gathered and a desperate father brought his possessed son to be healed.
Earlier in Jesus’s ministry, Jesus had given His disciples the authority to preach and cast out demons. (Mark 3:15). While all Christians have the ability by virtue of the use of God’s word, the disciples had been given apostolic authority, that is the authority of both the Word of God and the office to stand in Christ’s stead.
The father had heard the reports of Jesus. He believed that Jesus could cure his son so when Jesus came near his village, he took his son to see Jesus. But when he arrived Jesus wasn’t there so he opted for the next best thing– Jesus’s disciples. Surely, he thought, they could help. He was wrong. They tried, but they failed.
In addition to the disciples, the father and son, and a great many others hoping to see, hear, and be cured by Jesus, there were also critics waiting for Jesus to come down from the mountain. By this time in His ministry, the Pharisees always sent a few of their people to spy on Jesus. So when the disciples failed to drive the demon out of the boy, a few of those critics began to argue with the disciples about the best way to drive out demons.
As Jesus Peter, James, and John were returning they saw a great crowd around them, and scribes arguing with them. (Mark 9:14) This is where our assigned reading picks up this morning.
Jesus asked the disciples what they were discussing and the father of the boy told Jesus, “Teacher, I brought You my son, possessed with a spirit which makes him mute; and whenever it seizes him, it slams him to the ground and he foams at the mouth, and grinds his teeth and stiffens out. I told Your disciples to cast it out, and they could not do it.” (Mark 9:17–18)
The father and son weren’t the only ones disappointed by the lack of results. Jesus wasn’t all too pleased either. He said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring him to Me!” (Mark 9:19)
Jesus had given the disciples authority over demons and they had previously exercised that authority, but the disciples/apostles are just like all the rest of us. We fall into doubt and disbelief at times. We all get confused over what to believe and how to speak, proving that we can’t even match the unshakeable faith of Linus.
Jesus expressed His disappointment with the disciples in strong terms. He said, “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you?” (Mark 9:19) Jesus primary frustration was the disciples’ lack of faith. It is likely that the disciples’ “unbelieving” status caused them to forget their prior training and lead them to improvise a bit too much in their attempts to cast out the unclean spirit and heal the boy. Opting for conventional wisdom, or earthly human explanations and remedies for a spiritual problem instead of God’s words, is a manifestation of ignorance and unbelief. Their lack of trust/faith prompted them to mess up the whole endeavor.
The boy’s father seemed a little shaken too. Jesus’s disciples had failed. They were at odds over what to do. Imagine sitting in you doctors office with several doctors in the room arguing with each other over who best to treat you. That’s what was facing this father and son. All that confusion generated doubt. If the many failed, was it really unreasonable to conclude that Jesus Himself might fail as well?
That doubt manifested itself in the grammar the father used. The father said, “‘if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!’ 23 And Jesus said to him, ‘If You can?’ All things are possible to him who believes.” Jesus’s “if you can” is a bit sarcastic. Of course He can!
Many people take a verse like this out of context. They wrongly believe that Jesus was teaching us to trust in trust, that is to trust in our own faith, to believe in ourselves, and follow our dreams. It makes little difference what you believe, they believe, just be sincere. They point to other verses as well like Matthew 17:20; “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Jesus never teaches that we are to have faith in our faith. He teaches that our faith is to cling to Him, His person, His works, and His words in the prophetic and apostolic Scripture. The disciples failed because they tried to heal the boy by use of other means than the words and authority Christ Jesus.
Jesus said, “All things are possible to him who believes [namely in Christ Jesus].” 24 “Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, ‘I do believe; help my unbelief.’” In this simple statement, the boy’s father describes the plight of every single Christian. Belief and unbelief, trust and doubt, peace and conflict. And how could it be otherwise? Christians content with two natures. Faith in Christ and His words belongs to the Christian nature, the new nature in each and every Christian. Doubt and unbelief belong to the old sinful nature in each of us and is part of the terrible threesome. The devil, the world, and our own sinful nature.
Jesus doesn’t tell us to put our “faith” in our faith because He knows what is in the heart of sinful humanity. For the Christian “I do believe; help my unbelief” is itself a confession of sin and a confession of true Christian faith.
“When he [the boy] saw Him, immediately the spirit threw him into a convulsion, and falling to the ground, he began rolling around and foaming at the mouth.” (Mark 9:20) “The demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:19).
Ephesians 6 for the third week in a row; 12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
“Lord, I believe, but then I don’t!” As frail and weak as our faith and understanding may be in the moment, Jesus comes to the rescue anyway.
He speaks and takes control by His Word. He accomplishes His purposes for which He sent His Word. In this case He said to the unclean spirit– “You deaf and mute spirit, I command you, come out of him and do not enter him again.”
Jesus speaks, the spirit leaves, the boy lays there as dead, then Jesus takes him by the hand, raises him, and restores the boy to life again.
The disciples failed because they departed from the doctrine they had been taught. They ask; “‘Why could we not cast it out?’ 29 And He said to them, ‘This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.’” Jesus means the kind of prayer that makes use of the actual words of God spoken in prayer. He is not referring here to the kind of mussy minded, shallow, and distorted utterances that often come from the heart and mind of confused Christians. He is talking about words that come from His words. Think liturgy and liturgical prayer. The words flow from right doctrine and from the Bible itself.
The Word of God creates, sustains, and strengthens true Christian faith and understanding. That’s the Old Testament lesson for this morning (Isaiah 50:4-5). “The Lord God has given Me the tongue of disciples, So that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple. The Lord God has opened My ear…”
Last week’s Gospel recorded a miracle for the physical body. Our Lord healed a deaf and mute man so that the man’s “ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly” (Mark 7:35). In today’s Gospel, Jesus performs a spiritual miracle that followed the same line as last week’s miracle, casting out a demon that caused muteness and deafness. Thus it is written, “Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.”
Christ and His words healed the deaf mute in last week’s reading. Christ and His words drove out the deaf and mute spirit in this week’s reading. It was His word that created and sustain true Christian faith as Christians came to hear, be forgiven, and healed by their Savior.
So it continues to this day. Your sins are forgiven. You do believe, for the Lord helps you in your unbelief.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.