I Believe; Help My Unbelief (Sermon on Mark 9: 14--29)

It is horrifying for any parent to consider. Your child is sick. Worse than that: Your child is actually possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. It controls his behavior. It tries to kill him. The parent who approached Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson was living every parent’s worst nightmare. Something’s terribly wrong with my child and I’m powerless to do anything about it.
The father of the possessed boy speaks up and reaches out to Jesus. He’s heard the miracle stories; he fumbles for words as he formulates his request: “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus replies: “If you can? All things are possible for one who believes.” And in that moment the boy’s father, desperately battling his own doubts and fears, says just about the most honest thing a human being ever says in the Bible; he says: “I believe; help my unbelief.” There was something Jesus responded to in that wrestling, awkward, transparent request—and he honors it. He does what his disciples could not—he extracts the demon from the boy; he gives the boy and his family a new life to live. Through Jesus, God is putting His broken creation together again one person and one family at a time.
“I believe; help my unbelief.” What a simple way to describe the war that goes on in our hearts and minds. It is a classic Christian paradox. We believe and we disbelieve. We trust and we trust no one. We build on the Rock and we build on sand. That’s us. And it’s not necessarily bad news. Well, unbelief is bad, but a spiritual struggle—an inner tension—is proof that faith is fighting for life. Faith that is gasping for breath is still faith; the thing we ought to really fear is no struggle—the fool’s gold of disbelief and the ethic of service to myself as the highest good.
In other words, to have faith in Jesus is to experience spiritual turbulence, because faith that trusts in God goes to war with the sinful self, and the sinful self doesn’t appreciate being fought against. It hates being exorcised. Only Jesus can cast out our sinful nature and fill us with something far better. And as I said, spiritual turbulence is better than no spiritual turbulence. Spiritual turbulence means that faith, which the Holy Spirit gave me through the gospel of Jesus and baptism, is alive and is beating down my sinful impulses. A complete lack of spiritual turbulence means I’m spiritually dead. It means I’m foolishly confident in myself, or I just don’t care about the things of God at all. Both those ways lead to destruction and finally separation from God.
“So Pastor, what you’re saying is that we either live with spiritual turbulence, or die eternally? Sounds pretty hopeless.” And I agree with you. That would be a bleak outlook on life. Let me suggest there is an upside to experiencing spiritual turbulence; the times when your struggling faith is nurtured, fed, and strengthened by a word from God. When we admit to our double-mindedness—“I believe; help my unbelief,” we are confessing sin, and when we confess sin, well, you know what God promises: “If we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Jesus is quick to apply his mercy to our doubts. He is quick to forgive us our lack of trust; the prayer “help my unbelief” is one that it pleases Him to answer. But how? How can the Lord help our unbelief? The answer is elegantly simple. He wants to talk to you. Listen to these words from Isaiah, and imagine that it is Jesus speaking these words. It really is; he is the servant speaking in chapter 50. He says: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” Here’s a slightly different translation: “The Lord God gives me the speech of the learned, so that I know how to talk to encourage the weary.” The encouragement and the knowledge that we need are found in the words of Jesus. The Word of God is the thing that is going to sustain our faith and keep it vital. Holy Scripture gives us the prequel to Jesus’ arrival; the main event of Jesus’ rescue mission to earth; and the sequels, where his followers take His good news into the surrounding world. The Holy Spirit breathes life into us through this story of Jesus! The Word of God is the antidote to fear, doubt, and worry. The Word of God replaces those things with peace, trust, and faith. The Word presents Jesus to us, inviting us to trust in Him not only for eternal life in the future, but also for the forgiveness of sins and help in our battles today.Kind of appropriate, then, that we find ourselves at another Rally Day, with the idea being that we rally around the Word of God and make it a priority. Here’s another place where it would be right to pray: “I believe; help my unbelief.” We might very well pray, “Lord, I believe that it is important to study your Word; help my unbelief that finds all kinds of way to prevent that from happening.” There are plenty of excuses for not being in the Word—I’m not going to go through them all, because we know what they are, and we know they are excuses, not reasons. Will we really rally around the Word of God on this Rally Day? Will we as individuals—as families—as disciples of Jesus—make learning the Word our top priority in the months to come? Will we as a congregation allow Jesus to speak to us in His own words? There’s an awful lot at stake, as our gospel lesson makes abundantly clear. Evil is real. The devil wants you to be his possession. He wants our children, too. And the stark reality is that you’re either Satan’s slave or God’s dearly loved child. There’s no neutral space. We’re either filling ourselves and our children with poison or purity; garbage or grace. We can fill ourselves and our children with junk that kills faith, or holy things that cause faith to grow deeper roots and stronger shoots. May the Holy Spirit inspire each of us to listen to the encouraging Words of our Lord Jesus. If you’re not doing that at all, make a fresh start. If you’re doing a little, push past that and do more. And let’s see what happens when we really listen to and act on the words of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Hymn Stanza of the Week: Preserve Thy Word, O Savior

Preserve Thy Word, O Savior
Andreas Gryphius, stanza 4

Preserve, O Lord, Thy children,
Thine own blest heritage;
Resist, disperse and scatter
Those who against Thee rage.
Let Thy commandments guide us,
Grant us Thy heavenly food;
Clothe us with Thy rich garments,
Bought with Thy precious blood.

Scripture Meditation for 9/11

Luke 13:1-5 (English Standard Version)

1There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish."

Today's Prayer: For Pardon and Peace

Grant, we ask You, merciful Lord, to Your faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins and serve You with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit; one God, now and forever. Amen.

Hope For Pastors

Being Christlike in one's ministry always remains a distant and elusive goal, whether a man has served as a pastor for two years or forty years, but through Confession and Absolution he is daily empowered, not to give up, but to work in that direction. Ironically, the more a pastor works in his own life to conform his ministry to the ministry of Christ, the more attention will be drawn away from his own life.

Dr. James Bollhagen

Prayer for Labor Day

Lord God, our Father and Creator, we deserve to labor among thorns and thistles; to eat by the sweat of our brow; to work without reward; for we confess we have spoiled your creation by sin; we have marred our work by our neglect; we have hurt your work by our rebellion. We pray you, bless our labor by Him who came to be our servant, by Him who saved us to serve. For His sake keep us and all who labor from false dealing and unfair practice. Help us to labor with love anf faithfulness. Teach us that the best labor we give you is to believe in the One you have sent, and to love and serve our fellow man. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.

Loose Our Tongues to Tell Your Kindness

Did you notice the link between the Old Testament and the Gospel lesson today? We have prophecy and fulfillment going on here. Isaiah proclaims that when God comes to settle the score and save His people, blind people will have their sight restored; the ears of the deaf will be unstopped; the lame man will leap like the deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. Some six hundred years after Isaiah’s poetic proclamation, Mark reports in his gospel that a man who was deaf and who had a speech impediment was taken aside by Jesus and healed, in the words of the text, “his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” God was doing what he said he would do, in Jesus, His Son. God had come to save. God had come with vengeance and with recompense. In other words, it’s payback time. Satan’s defeat is imminent. And God is already beginning to put his broken creation back together again, one person at a time, like the deaf man in the gospel of Mark.
When God comes around and acts in people’s lives, look at the response: “then the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” When God’s gifts hit home, there is a response of joy—an impulse to express our thanks to God, and, in the words of our liturgy, to “tell everyone what he has done.” The crowds who knew the deaf man in Mark’s gospel could not help themselves. The more Jesus charged them to keep this miracle on the down low, the more zealously they proclaimed it. Jesus had generated major buzz in the region of Decapolis. 1900 years before Arabella Katherine Hankey wrote her famous hymn, the people of that region were “Loving To Tell The Story,” saying “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” That’s just what happens when Jesus touches a human life. Or is it?
Is it true that people who have received the blessings of Jesus can’t stop talking about Him? Or have we learned to live in a different way? Are you quick to share with others the things that Jesus has done for you, or are you more likely to keep such things to yourself, obeying our culture’s dictates to keep “religion and politics” out of polite conversation? Now it is true that when we share our faith, we want to be tactful, winsome, and as gracious as possible. But it is also true that there have been times that the Lord put the ball on the tee for me; all I had to do was swing, and I didn’t. I didn’t speak even a simple word about what the Lord is up to, and I am haunted by that failure. Some of you may be able to relate with my predicament and the guilt that goes along with this type of inaction.
Our self-defensive nature shoots back: “But I don’t have some big conversion testimony to tell. I was never miraculously healed of a disease. I was never amazingly spared some accident. What do I have to share with people?”
Well, first of all, are you sure you’re not forgetting anything? Certain that the Lord did not come through for you in a major way at some point in your life? And, follow me on this, how exactly do you know that God never saved you from a disaster if it didn’t happen? More importantly though, can any Christian really say that God hasn’t done anything “dramatic” in his or her life? What about Jesus leaving the security of heaven, being born of a woman in an animal shelter, having to be hidden from paranoid rulers who wanted him dead? What about his baptism in the Jordan River, with the voice of the Father booming out and the Holy Spirit visibly appearing? What about his fulfillment of prophecy after prophecy, such as the one here in Isaiah 35? What about his clashes with the religious establishment? What about his unjust trial, the cruel beatings, the scathing words, the catastrophic effect of the Roman whip, the agony of his hours before the cross? What about his death on that Good Friday? What about coming back to life after three days in the grave? What about the fact that it was all for you? All so that your sins could be erased and forgotten? All so that you could live knowing that God has made peace with you? All so that you can die in confident expectation of heavenly joy and a future resurrection of the body? What about those things? What about your baptism, by which a life-giving connection was forged between you and Jesus? What about the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus serves you his own body and blood for the assurance that your sins are completely forgiven? You may or may not have a riveting “personal testimony,” but one thing is sure: you have this—Jesus lived, died, rose, and still rules so that your ears could be opened to hear his Word of truth; your eyes could be opened to see things His way; and your mouth could be opened to declare His praises. Since He has done all this for us, let’s be open about our faith and open to share His story—which is of course, our story now too.