Sunday, September 15, 17th Sunday after Pentecost

“Everything?”

Psalm 116:1-9; Isaiah 50:4-10; James 3:1-12; Mark 9:14-29

Divine Service 3 with Holy Communion

Hymns: #791 “All People That On Earth Do Dwell”; #819 “Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good”; #811 “Oh, That I Had a Thousand Voices”

 

Dear Friends in Christ,

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

     Close your eyes. Take a moment to think about all the impossible things in your life. All the things you can’t change… all the things that are bigger than you can handle… all the things you can’t do anything about… all the things you’ve put in that mental file folder labeled “hopeless”… Now that we’ve done that… never do it again! When we allow ourselves to dwell on the negatives – on the impossibles, on the “can’t-be-dones,” on the “no-hope-for–its” -  we’re painting ourselves into a corner and putting ourselves in an unholy box. No way to escape, no room for hope, just stuck in the place we are. But if, as Jesus promises, “All things are possible for the one who believes” – doesn’t that mean the possibilities for us are endless, and the solutions God has for us are expansive and exponential and limitless? If we believe Jesus for His promise, we’ll always have a reason for hope and a reason to get up and keep going.

     When Jesus says, “Everything,” everything is what He means. All things. Everything. No exceptions, no fine print, no caveats, no ifs or buts or maybes. “If you believe,” Jesus says, “you will receive everything you ask for in My name.” All of which means that faith - believing and trusting in God, taking Jesus at His Word - is a powerful, powerful thing. I say this even though I know well enough what some of you are facing and what you’re going through. I have a pretty good idea what those impossible things were that were going through your minds when your closed your eyes a moment ago, because I face those things, too. I’m not being a Pollyanna, and God knows, it’s not my intent to lead you on or give you false hopes. But it’s not me saying, “All things are possible;” it's our Lord Jesus Himself. Let me take you through our Gospel reading this morning, and we’ll look at exactly what Jesus says.

     In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, along with Peter, James, and John, had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration – a few holy moments of blessed, wonderful, shining, heavenly glory - the face of Jesus blazing like the sun, Moses and Elijah come to talk with Jesus, God the Father speaking from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son.” But while all that was going on up on the mountain, the other nine disciples had been left behind down in the valley.

     And after coming down from that glorious, holy, mountaintop experience, our Gospel says the first thing Jesus and those three disciples ran into was an unholy argument. “When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them, and the teachers of the law (the lawyers and scribes of the Jews) arguing with them.” Jesus asked His disciples, “What have you been arguing with them about?” The argument, as it turns out, was that a certain man had brought his son to Jesus, to see if Jesus could heal him; but Jesus was away, up on the mountaintop; so the disciples attempted to heal him themselves.

     The man’s son, says Mark’s Gospel, was possessed by some kind of malevolent spirit that had made him unable to speak. Now sometimes, in the Scriptures, it’s hard to tell the difference between a physical ailment and a spiritual one. St. Mark isn’t really clear about it here, and maybe that’s because it isn’t always possible to be sure. The way the boy’s ailment is described here – unable to speak, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth, becoming rigid – sounds an awful lot like what we know as epileptic seizures. My cousin Mark, who I went to grade school with, had seizures like that. He had to wear a hockey helmet so he wouldn’t hurt himself whenever he’d fall. Nobody would have ever said he was possessed by a demon.

     Then again, sin is the root and cause of all our ailments and sicknesses – a result of the fall. Sin is why the world is broken. Sin is why we have diseases and sicknesses and accidents, and why we’re subject to old age and gray hair and arthritis, and why all of us have to die. If we have to ask whether a particular disease has a spiritual cause or a physical one, the answer in every case has to be both, to one degree or another. One of the points we can draw from this Gospel, though, is that Jesus has the power to heal all our diseases, hurts, and troubles, be they physical, mental, or spiritual ones, whatever their cause may be - and He wants and expects us to trust Him for all of it.

     The father in the story complains to Jesus, “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” They couldn’t do it. They tried and they failed, spectacularly, and embarrassed themselves in front of a crowd. Jesus had sent His disciples out and given them His power to heal and drive out evil spirits, and they’d done it before; but on this particular occasion they failed. Why? Keep in mind that they were still disciples, students, interns, trainees; they were new at this. Maybe they’d gotten a little big for themselves and tried to heal the boy by their own power, instead of by the power of Jesus. Maybe the scribes and Pharisees and the big crowd standing around had them nervous and intimidated. Maybe that up-and-down faith all of us have was on the downside for them that day. Maybe they forgot to pray first. But whatever it was they’d tried to do, it didn’t work. So the father of the boy was angry, and the crowd was grumbling and disappointed; and the scribes and law teachers had their chance to mock and laugh and say, “Ha! We told you so! We told you they were fakers!”

     “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus cried out, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” Who was He talking to? He was talking to His disciples, for sure. And He was talking to the scribes and lawyers who were standing there all smug and laughing. He was talking to the doubters in the crowd, who were ready to call the whole thing a fraud and turn and walk away. And He was talking to you and me, and to anyone who’s ever had a doubt about who He is, or that He has the power to do what He says He will do.

     And what Jesus says next, folks, is His answer to us for whenever we’re faced with impossible things, or with a situation that’s bigger than we can handle, or when someone we love is in desperate need, and we’re at a loss, and we’ve hit the wall, and we don’t know what to do. He says to the father, “Bring him to Me.” Bring Me your loved ones and dear ones, bring all your impossibilities, bring your worries and your anxieties and your fears – that whole bag of worries you carry around – and bring it all to Jesus. “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you,” St. Peter says. Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear…

     So they brought the boy to Jesus. And our Gospel says that awful spirit that was tormenting the boy, whatever it was, took one look at Jesus and immediately threw the boy into one last fit. That seems to indicate there was a spiritual dimension to what was ailing the poor child; although it could have been physical as well, or the devil taking advantage of a physical ailment to squeeze his way into a desperate soul, as he will do. Again, the devil works both ways, and Jesus has divine power over either dimension, regardless. The father tells Jesus that his son has been afflicted this way since early childhood, and he believes the demon is trying to kill his son, by throwing him into the fire or into the water. (They had to keep a close eye on my cousin Mark, to keep him from falling down in places where he might get hurt.)

     The father begs Jesus, “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus, if You can do anything, if You’re able to help – unlike these disciples of Yours, or these scribes and law teachers – then Lord, take pity, have compassion, have mercy. It’s a prayer made in desperation, from a father who’s done everything he can do and has nowhere else to go. One of the world’s best and shortest prayers only has one word: “Help!” “If you can?” Jesus asks him. If you can? Really? If only we had faith enough to take all our “ifs” away.

     What Jesus says next is one of the most beautiful, amazing, comforting sentences that He ever spoke: “Everything is possible for him who believes.” l feel compelled to share just a little bit of the original Greek reading with you this morning, because this is one of those places where the English translation doesn’t quite do the thing justice. The Greek phrase for “everything is possible” is panta dunata. “Panta” is an all-encompassing word, a word that means all things, everything, with absolutely nothing left out or excluded or excepted, or forgotten or left aside. Again, when Jesus says, “everything,” everything is what He means. Every trouble. Every need. Every impossibility, all things covered, no matter what those things may be. “Panta” is a word that leaves nothing out.

     And “dunata” is a power word. It’s where we get the words dynamic, dynamo, and dynamite. With Jesus, everything is “dunata” – it’s reachable, it’s doable, it’s possible, it can be done. God continually does marvelous things. Our Lord wants and loves to work miracles for us. “All things work together for good for them who love God.” All things. Good things and bad things, happy things, and the sad things, too – hard as that can be to accept if life at the moment is giving you the bad or the sad.

     The catch, if we can call it that - the caveat, the qualifier - is in the second half of Jesus’ beautiful sentence: “All things are possible for the one who believes.” Faith is the necessary thing; believing is the key. There’s a story in the Gospels about how Jesus went to visit His hometown of Capernaum, and “He couldn’t do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” All our wants, needs, and prayers have to go through the cross. The fact of our sin separates we human beings from our Creator. Sin destroys any hope we have of hearing Him, or of being heard by Him. “Only in Christ,” the Scriptures tell us, does that divine communication begin to be restored. Our only hope of being heard by God, is that loves us so much that He gave us His only Son to die for us on a cross to take away our sin. Faith in Jesus, faith in His love, faith that our sins have been washed away and forgiven by His precious blood, is what has opened the way for our prayers to be heard. Through Jesus all of our prayers are panta dunata – everything is possible for the one who believes.

     Now it is true that we don’t always get what we pray for, even if what we’re praying for seems to us to be necessary and good. Sometimes we get the help or the healing we’re asking God for, and sometimes He says no. Part of “believing” is trusting that God still loves us, no matter if His answer is yes or no – and sometimes God in wisdom that is beyond us does say no. The reason Jesus does miracles for us is the same reason He sometimes chooses not to do them. Everything God does is for the sake of our faith, and for the sake of getting us to heaven when we leave this place. If Jesus can demonstrate His power by doing a mighty miracle, knowing that miracle will create faith and increase faith and draw people to Him, He’ll gladly do it. And if for someone miracles don’t come, and that person keeps trusting Him anyway, and the faith they show in the face of their suffering leads others to faith, He’ll allow that, too. His goal isn’t to give us a perfect, pain-free life here on earth; His goal is that we have the faith we need to be saved, whatever it takes to get that done.

     It's not easy to keep on believing God, especially in those times when He seems to have gone silent, or when He seems too slow. We’re human, after all, still sinners, still subject to doubts and fears. Our faith is sometimes small, and faith can be a fragile thing when the answers we hope for seem so slow to come. The boy’s father in our Gospel prays a prayer we should all be praying every day: “Lord, I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.”

     On this particular day in our Gospel reading – for the sake of the father and his son, for the sake of His disciples, and for the sake of the faith of everyone in the crowd who was there looking on, Jesus does the miracle, the work of power, that the father has asked Him for. He drives the evil spirit out of the boy with a shriek, never to be heard from or trouble him again. He takes the child by the hand, sets him up on his feet, and gives him back to his father whole and well and healed, to the amazement of everyone there.

     Later, the disciples ask Jesus, “Why couldn’t we drive the demon out?” The answer is that we human beings can’t do miracles for ourselves. There are things that happen to us that are bigger than we are, and beyond our poor mortal power to fix. “This kind can only come out by prayer,” Jesus says. But we do have the power of prayer. Jesus Himself has made us the promise: “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, & it will be yours… If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” So we can pray, and we should, and we will, knowing that God, because He loves us, will always hear us. We pray not knowing how God will answer or what God will do, but trusting that He’ll work all things out for our good. Jesus once told His disciples to “keep on praying and never give up.” May our Lord grant us the faith to do the same. In Jesus’ name; Amen.