The Hypocritical Christian

read Mark 9:14-29

A lot has transpired since Jesus spoke truth about the heart of man. He has performed an another miraculous feeding, this time 4000 people, received the profession of faith of Peter that he was the messiah, and revealed himself upon a mountaintop to be the chosen one of God. More about that in a future post.

If you have been reading this blog all along you know that Jesus is repeatedly demonstrating proof of his role as Messiah. This is Mark’s goal for his hearers.  “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” is another way to read the opening statement in Mark 1.  Mark wants non-Jewish people to see that Jesus is the true Son of God, rather than Caesar.  Mark wants Jewish listeners to see that Jesus fits the definition of the Messiah (Christ in Greek) based on the actions he takes.  In Isaiah, the arrival of God amidst the people is linked to the blind, deaf, mute, and lame being restored.  Jesus has been doing these very things all along in this gospel not too mention walking on water, raising the dead, and feeding thousands with minimal resources.

Back to the current passage.  Jesus, Peter, James and John come down from the mountain where Jesus was revealed transfigured. They encounter a controversy broiling between the Jewish religious leaders and the other disciples.  It seems that the disciples have attempted to heal a young person who is tormented by an evil spirit to no avail.

A father brought his son to the disciples for exorcism (the disciples have been doing this since the Lord’s commission for some time c.f. Mark 6:13) but their efforts failed. Admittedly, the condition described by the father sounds to our modern ears a lot more like epilepsy than demonic possession. Regardless of the source of the torment, the young man has suffered since childhood with this affliction.

Jesus enters the conversation and asks some questions about the nature of the affliction. The father has reached a point of deep frustration. He feels desperate. He feels helpless.  He isn’t even sure that Jesus is willing or capable either saying: “If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”

It is useful to read Jesus response to the father with the right inflection.  Note that earlier he expressed frustration that the disciples had failed in their efforts.  He is irritated that they are demonstrating a lack of faithfulness again and demands that the boy be brought to him.  So when Jesus replies to the father’s jeer “If you can do anything” it behooves us to hear the correct tone.

“IF you can?!? all things are possible to him who believes.”

In effect, Jesus is saying that the fault lies not in the capabilities of God to achieve the outcome but rather the fault lies with the faith of the disciples or the father or both. The boy’s father clearly picks up on Jesus meaning because he replies, “I believe, help me in my unbelief.”

The boy is healed.

It can seem dangerous or crazy to us to hear that the limiting factor for healing the boy was the faith.  It seems to some unreasonable or frightening to think that anything is possible through prayer to the one who believes. The seminary I attended worked hard at not letting any of its students get too far down such non scientific thinking.  Who knows they may have thought that we would all end up handling snakes and doing televised faith healings if they didn’t pump the brakes on our belief in the power of prayer. And yet, it is in the New Testament time and time again clear as daylight.  Jesus taught that just a little seed of faith can result in commanding mountains to move. The letter of James says “the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous accomplishes much.

There are 4 separate types of prayer on display in this little episode in the life of Jesus. I think that they can help us to understand why prayer sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.  The first kind of prayer demonstrated I am going to call challenge prayer.  This is the sort of exasperated prayer that the boy’s father was offering up.  “If you can then prove it” is the nature of the challenge prayer. It is spoken by many a person on evenings feeling awful from drinking. “If you just get me through this then…”  It is also spoken by people seeking to bargain something from God “If you love me then let me win the lottery.” etc.

There are 2 problems with challenge prayers.  The first problem is that the person praying the challenge prayer is holding back on total belief.  At the core of all challenge prayers is either the desire for God to prove something (existence, power, love) or to reward the petitioner regardless of the depth of faith. The second problem is that they sometimes work!  God reserves the right to honor any prayer including the ones that are centered in negotiation.  If the petition requested lines up with God’s will then God may answer it.  Lottery ticket winnings are seldom gonna be on the divine agenda I suspect.  Sorry if that disappoints you.  If it helps, it is disappointing to me, too.

Lining up with God’s will is not enough though.  This is the second kind of prayer in our tale, the kind that the disciples must have been demonstrating in their own efforts to expel the demon from the boy.  This I am gonna call the champion prayers. A champion prayer is one where the assumption is that God will do whatever is asked because the request “must be” in God’s will.  This kind of prayer is often seen in religious leaders who feel so confident that God is on their side that whatever is asked God will champion.

There is a conversation that Jesus has with his disciples in a home after the boy is healed.  They ask why they failed to be able to expel the demon even though they had enjoyed previous success with exorcisms. Jesus tells them “that this kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.”

It is hard for me to fathom that they were not praying when they were setting about healing the sick, etc. ; but something was limiting them.  The disciples had been give the power to heal the sick and cast out demons and they began I suspect to forget that the power was not a static thing that they possessed and controlled but rather that they were capable of being a conduit through which God could act. I bet they began to become confident in their own capabilities they quit trusting in God to accomplish the work that surely He would endorse and champion. So when they encountered a truly pesky demon they failed. The fault was not the effort of the prayer but the wrong starting place in the heart.  We can see this more clearly by contrasting champion and challenge prayer with the 3rd kind of prayer.

The third kind is centered prayer.  The disciples no doubt had asked in God’s name for the demon to exit the boy.  When Jesus does the say the fight is engaged and naturally the demon loses.  What made Jesus better able to pray?  Of course you might say well he is God so its not really a fair comparison. Sure.  Keep in mind that one of the aims of Jesus is to model behavior for the future believer.  He teaches us how to pray, encourages times of rest and reflection, gets baptized as an example, etc.  So what made Jesus different in his effort than the disciples.  He was perfectly centered on God.

My good friend, Rev. Dr. Paul Burns has a program called soul-metrics.  People who wish to grow in their spiritual health can take an assessment and really see where they are at in their relationship with God, with self, and with others.  It is a wonderful tool and if Jesus were to answer the questions there can be no doubt that he would get excellent marks! When Paul is teaching about the processes and research behind the GPS survey he designed he invites his students to use the following image for what one aspect of spiritual health is: a spigot!

Don’t laugh.  You may recall that Jesus said that he is living water and that any one who drinks from him will never thirst. Dr. Burns uses the spigot image to suggest that the spiritually mature person has connected their hose to the spigot of God’s living water. It is connected and the flow is open to water the landscape of their lives and the lives of others.  Because as Jesus said it isn’t just that we are supposed to go to the well of the living water we are to become fountains of living water ourselves.  In other words we are meant to share the blessing.

Because Jesus is centered on God he is in alignment with God’s will. As such his prayer is effective.  Whereas the disciples represent those that think that the power of God is something to control for the causes that they championed, Jesus understood that the power of God is something that flows through a believer and accomplishes great things.  That is what he modeled.  Just to belabor the point, the disciples treated it more like bottled water rather than a connected hose.

The fourth and final prayer is the one uttered by the boy’s father.  This prayer is a model prayer.  In fact, I will go so far as to say that after the Lord’s Prayer it may be the best example of prayer that we have in all of the scriptures. Why?  Because the wording of this prayer communicates in a true and faithful way to God where the heart of the every person, believer or not, always lies — trapped in the tension between what is known and what is yet to be revealed.

“I believe! Help my unbelief!”

Amen