Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let's pray.
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the scriptures are read and your word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy of what you say to us today. Amen.
And now a reading from mark 914 29 on page 821 of your pew bible.
When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and some scribes arguing with them. When the crowd saw jesus, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. He asked them, what are you arguing about with them? Someone from the crowd answered him, teacher, I brought you my son. He has a spirit that makes him unable to speak, and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rich.
And I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they did not do so. 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. And they brought the boy to him. And 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. Jesus asked the father, how long has this been happening to him? And he said, from childhood. 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. Jesus said to him, if you are able, all things can be done for the one who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out, I believe, help my unbelief.
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.
After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse. So that most of them said that he is dead. But jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, why could we not cast it out? He said to them, this kind can come out only through prayer. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Dear family of Knox Presbyterian Church, what a joy to be here with you all. Thank you for the opportunity to come and preach.
It's just good to be home friends and to sit with this text together.
For those of you who parents like me, I have a now one year old and a five year old.
I wonder if you have had this experience.
You live in a tension of caregiving, pouring yourself out to care for your child or for another person, and you have very little time to care for yourself.
In life's paradoxes, two things remain true. Someone needs you most, if not all of the time, and you need time for yourself.
I remember those ever revolving, merry ago rounds of caring for a newborn, the feeding, changing, soothing. And then the cycle starts all over again.
Perhaps you've navigated the delicate balance of giving space to young adult children as they leave home and forge their own paths, or caring for your parents or a dear friend in their final years of life.
Parenting has taught me to recognize when I grapple with a paradox.
It's the realization that two seemingly contradictory things are true at the same time.
And today's story from the gospel of Mark captures this tension, the tension between belief, unbelief.
I believe belief and unbelief. They share a symbiotic relationship. Unbelief is not the enemy. It's not the opposite of belief.
I think certainty is the opposite of belief because unbelief, it serves as the seed for belief. It motivates us. It drives us forward. In faith, we recognize we need help to believe. We need to find courage and to be witnesses to this belief that we know we hope is there in our future, but isn't there for us yet?
Unbelief, certainty, rather than unbelief, is the opposite, the enemy of belief.
Unbelief catches us and keeps us open and hopeful for the return of belief.
But certainty robs us of hope.
We become convinced of our position.
We stop paying attention. We stop being curious about other positions.
And then when we find an obstacle, when we're challenged and we cannot overcome it, we don't return to a state of unbelief. We fall into despair.
We might reject our belief.
When I was in college, I went to a school called Samford University. It's in Birmingham, Alabama, and it's a baptist school by history. I grew up southern Baptist, and I grew up in a community of faith that taught me that the Bible was true explicitly in the way that it was written. And in some communities, that way was the King James Version of the Bible.
When I got to Stanford University, I encountered teachers who suddenly made the Bible much more complicated. Not as complicated as Marianne and John would later at seminary, but still complicated. And I remember sitting in my dorm room with my Bible open, saying, God, help my unbelief. Because I have no idea which direction to turn now either. This has to be exactly true, the way that I grew up or I need another way.
And I'm so grateful that by the work of the spirit in my life, I was able to stay open to unbelief rather than doubling down uncertainty.
The disciples in this passage in Mark are in an interesting situation.
They have been given the task, while Jesus and some of the others are up on the mountain, of continuing the work of proclaiming the good news of healing in Jesus absence. And they come across a case that they cannot address.
Now, you notice in this passage the way that Jesus enters it, and he's describing them as a faithless generation, that there's some tension going on in the crowd.
I think it's important for us to know a little bit more of this story, to go back a few verses to the beginning to see where it is that Jesus has been and why this story about a father's unbelief and belief is so crucial to the wider story of the good news of the gospel in the Gospel of Mark and for us today.
So starting in verse two of Mark, chapter nine, it reads, six days later, Jesus took Peter, James and John and brought them to the top of a very high mountain, and they were alone.
Jesus was transformed. In front of them, his clothes were amazingly brighten, brighter than if they had been bleached white.
Elijah and Moses appeared and were talking with Jesus.
Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, rabbi, it's good that we're here. Let's make three shrines, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
He said this because he didn't know how to respond, for the three of them were terrified.
Then a cloud overshadowed them and a voice spoke from the cloud. This is my son whom I dearly love. Listen to him.
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus.
As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them, don't tell anyone what you've seen until after the human one has been raised from the dead.
So they kept it to themselves, wondering, what's this rising from the dead?
Then they asked Jesus, why did the legal expert say that Elijah must come first?
He answered, Elijah does come first to restore all things.
Why was it written that the human one would suffer many things and be rejected?
In fact, I tell you that Elijah has come. But they did to him whatever they wanted, just as it was written about him.
We move in this story from a mountain high experience back down into the valley with the disciples and Mark, who are sort of our guides to seeing Jesus. We see Jesus transfigured, changed into dazzling white clothes, this glimpse that Jesus is not just a prophet, but is the human one, the messiah, the one who has been proclaimed and is coming again.
It's what the whole gospel has been building up to, this moment of divine revelation. Finally, we're going to get it right.
Well, every mountaintop experience, unfortunately, you have to come down at some point, and the disciples come down into this conflict that Elise read for us this morning, this moment where we see a parent in deep pain and turmoil because their child has been afflicted since they were little with this sickness.
In the scripture, it's described as a demon possession.
And for those of you in the medical field, you might read the symptoms and say, that sounds a lot like epilepsy.
This parent has no doubt taken their childhood. Every single person they can think of, they deeply love and are committed to helping their child through this illness that robs them of life.
And so, in the space of just a few verses, we go from this moment where Moses and Elijah are flanking Jesus, clad in white. The kingdom of God is near and present to the grim reality of life.
I think the author of the Gospel of Mark has these two locations, the mountaintop and the valley experience, put together for a reason, to show us, as the readers, as those who heard this story, that the work of being a disciple of Christ, whether in the disciples lives that we read about or in our own, is full of these moments of divine revelation and these moments of unbelief and desperation.
And how we navigate those two requires us to have faith.
The disciples have reached their limit, and Jesus comes into this discussion, this argument between the legal scribes, the disciples that weren't with them on the mountaintop, and this father caring for his child.
The crowd is gathered, watching in alarm.
They have their own sense of anxiety.
The anxiety, the alarm. It actually, in this story, seems to be pushing us to this paradox of belief and unbelief, because I think what we start to see is that embracing the discomfort engaging in the story is what pulls us in to the life of faith that's being described.
I was reading a book with my daughter. It's called Piper Chen sings. It's a story written by Philippa sue, who was one of the leads in Hamilton.
And she describes Piper as a child who loves to sing at the top of her voice in her home and outside on the playground. And then one day, her teacher asked her, would you like to sing a solo in the school play?
Piper immediately agrees and then suddenly realizes what she said yes to and is filled with anxiety and nervousness.
She goes home and she talks to her grandmother about this feeling. And her grandmother tells her that feeling, those butterflies that fill your stomach, you have a choice. If you welcome them in, they can help you, they can motivate you, they can bring out the song.
And so Piper still feels the nervousness and the anxiety when she stands in front of a crowd to sing her solo.
But she remembers what her grandmother says, and she imagines butterflies filling her body and coming out in song. And her song is beautiful and filling the room.
I love that story because it tells us something that we see is true in scripture and that we know from psychology is true as well. That how we tell a story, how we understand anxiety and nervousness, helps us use that feeling to motivate us. We can be stuck in the anxiety spiral that is so masterfully depicted and inside out, where anxiety, the character is running around the console in this tornado, not stopping. And that kind of anxiety becomes debilitating.
But the recognition that that feeling, that uncomfort, the nervousness, that inviting it in and filling you up like a butterfly can motivate and inspire faith, can inspire you to do the thing that is difficult.
And I thought about that book, and I thought about that image from that movie when I read this story and imagined myself in the position of the Father when Jesus is responding.
And, yeah, if I were faced in that situation, certainly I would have faith. I've been brought up to believe in God. God has provided in miraculous ways for me in the past.
And yet there are moments where my faith feels insignificant, where I would characterize myself as having more unbelief than. Than belief.
And if I lean into that discomfort, if I lean into that space of unbelief, that is where I find that God meets me.
And so this father's cry, I believe, help my unbelief is so profound because it highlights that experience.
For those of us who have been in faith communities and for those of us who haven't, we all know that feeling. We want to. We sense that we believe that we have faith, and yet the reservoir seems empty, and we're not quite sure where our belief and our faith is going to come from.
Friends, that, I think, is the good news of the gospel for us today.
That Jesus Christ came and that inaugurated the kingdom of God. This kind of kingdom that is unlike what earthly structures create.
It's not about power over. It's not about gathering resources and riches. It's not about owning the most land. Instead, it's a kind of divine economy that sees our neighbors as people who are beloved and made in the image of God that sees those in community with us as vital parts of the community, such that when you are doing well, I am doing well, and when I am struggling, you are struggling. That kind of interdependence, those are the characteristics of the kingdom of God.
And that kind of kingdom, it is hard to see.
It is difficult to live our lives like that is the kind of kingdom that we are a part of. It is a lot easier to see ourselves living in an earthly kingdom with things that we can see and experiences that we can touch and feel.
The good news of the gospel is that when you feel unbelief, Jesus is there to meet you and with faith to hold you up and bring you to a place of belief.
Jesus has brought the kingdom of God near. We have seen his work in our lives.
Those of you who gathered here, I hope that you could tell me stories of the way that you have sensed God in your life this week. I hope that you could tell me stories of things that you've seen, of love that you've experienced, of people who have reminded you that God is present and loves you and holds you close.
And at the same time, I'm sure that you've had a moment, maybe the whole week, maybe the whole last month or the whole last year, where you would say, allie, my unbelief is stronger than my belief.
Friends, the good news is that God meets us in those moments.
God is there to support us in our unbelief, and that it's not faith that's the work of our own doing, as if we can pull ourselves up and muster the courage and the fortitude to have faith. It's a gift from God.
And so I hope, I pray that you will be open to the work of God in your life, to receive that gift of faith and trust that God will meet you in your belief and in your unbelief.
A poem that I often come back to time and time again, it seems, is a poem that was introduced to me by Tommy Givens. In our small group, we read different things by Wendell Berry. And I am so grateful for the ways that poetry inspires faith in a way that prose sometimes doesn't.
This poem is called the peace of wild things.
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound, in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rest in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water, and I feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light.
And for a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
Friends, may that experience of faith that comes to you as a gift when you rest in the creation, in the beauty of creation, in the peace of wild things, in wherever it is that you sense God most strongly, may the faith that comes in those moments be received by you as a gift.
And may you and I, like this father, cry out to God repeatedly, Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Amen.
