It’s interesting that the common lectionary pretty much skips over the text on which I will be preaching this Sunday. A version of the story appears in all three synoptic Gospels, but the lectionary only sneaks in the version from Luke in Year C as an optional addendum to the Transfiguration account in Luke 9. But I’d like to look at the way Mark 9:14-29 tells it, because so much is said there about faith.
It’s possible, though I’m not at all sure about it, that the lectionary leaves out this story because all three versions display a very uncomplimentary picture of the disciples. Jesus upbraids them for their inability to cast a demon out of boy who is experiencing something like we might call epileptic seizures. When a crowd gathers around the boy complaining to Jesus about the failure of the disciples, He says in verse 19, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you.”
Matthew makes the disciples even less attractive in the story. There, when they come later to ask privately why they could not cast out the demon, Jesus says, “Because of your little faith.” Yet contrary to the lectionary leaving it out, it’s a surprising testimony to the authenticity of the whole account that three Gospels include despite how it portrays people who would have been important figures in the early church.
I’m focusing on Mark’s telling because it is unique for its inclusion of a conversation about faith between Jesus and the boy’s father. It begins with Jesus asking how long the boy had been suffering. In response, the father recounts the boy’s “medical history,” if you will, of falling into water and fire and imperiling his life, ending with the please, “but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”
Just now typing that father’s request, I realized how much it sounds like some of our own prayers, some of mine. “If you are able,” is the sort of thing we really ought never to say to God, but I think we often do. In any case, Jesus is a bit indignant and throws the man’s words back at him, “If you are able!” followed by something He said more than once, “All things can be done for the one who believes,” an assurance of the outcome of matters truly committed to the Lord.
The father’s response, cry, prayer, whatever you want to call it, is worth the price of admission here, “I believe; help my unbelief!” That tiny seed of faith mixed up with doubt has resonated with Christian experience through the ages. An awful lot of us can see ourselves in the trusting but wavering words of that poor father. Fortunately, it was and is enough. Jesus rebuked the evil spirit, leaving the boy lying still as a stone. But then He reached out His hand and “lifted him up.” That’s the Easter hope, the Easter faith, that just as Christ was raised, He can and will reach out His hand to raise us up.
The good news I find here is that it does not really take too much faith, because as other Scripture tells us, faith is a gift. If we only turn in the direction of Jesus and ask for help, even help to believe, He will reach out and lift us up into life, into true faith. We can belive it.