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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Unbelievers often have trouble reconciling the world that we all experience with a compassionate and all-powerful God. For example, the news has been full of formerly Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut’s wreaking havoc on opposite sides of the earth, with dozens dead in their wakes, which some atheists would say a compassionate and all-powerful God would (or should) not allow. You and I do not have to be in the path of such a storm to disbelieve or more likely to waver between unbelief and belief, however; for, like the man in today’s Gospel Reading, we have more‑personal crises that leave us wondering both whether or not God is compassionate and whether or not He can really help us. As we this morning consider today’s Gospel Reading, we realize that “Jesus helps our unbelief and all other things”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus and three of His disciples returned from His Transfiguration to find the other nine of His disciples surrounded by a great crowd and arguing with some scribes, apparently about those disciples’ inability to help a man whose son had a spirit that made the son mute. The man asked Jesus, if He could do anything, to have compassion on them and help them. Jesus reacted to the man’s “if” and said that all things are possible for one who believes. Then the man cried out that he believed, and he asked Jesus to help his unbelief. So, Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and it came out, arguably answering the man’s requests both for help with his son and for help with his unbelief.
Parents who have had (or have) children with serious physical (or mental) health disorders might especially relate to the man in the Gospel Reading’s wavering between unbelief and belief, but no doubt that to some extent we all can relate to him. What personal crises have left you and me wondering both whether or not God is compassionate and whether or not He can really help us? Something at school or work? At church? At home? With our own personal physical (or mental) health? Too often, when what we expect to be the solution does not work, immediately or at all, we may think that God is not compassionate. Or, if we believe that God does really care, then maybe we think that God is not able to help. Not believing in God’s compassion and not believing in His power are both sins—sins like all the other sins we commit, any one of which sins, apart from saving faith in Jesus Christ, on its own warrants death in time and torment in hell for eternity.
In the Gospel Reading, the boy and the unclean spirit were engaged in a life and death struggle, as the unclean spirit often cast him into the fire and into water, in order to destroy him. Likewise you and I are in a life and death struggle, as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, against “the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 ESV). Yet, this is nothing new, for already shortly after the beginning God said that the enmity between the serpent and the woman, between his offspring and her Offspring, would result in the serpent’s defeat and the death of the woman’s Son (Genesis 3:15). That Son, Jesus Christ, died for all people, including you and me.
In the Gospel Reading, when Jesus calls those present a faithless generation, He echoes God’s statements to the people of Israel during their wilderness wanderings (Deuteronomy 32), rhetorically asking them how long He was to be with them, and how long He was to bear with them. For those who fail to repent of their sin, the answer to those questions is not always! God’s patience intended for us to repent has a limit (Romans 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), so, enabled by Him, we repent while there is still time. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2 ESV).
Something important about God’s frustration with His people’s faithlessness during their wilderness wanderings, in Jesus’s day, and even now, is that people’s failings do not prevent God’s enduring compassion (Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:17-19, p.659). In the Gospel Reading, the man asked Jesus, if He could do anything, to have compassion on them and help them. The man essentially saw Jesus as God and made a liturgical prayer to Him (Marcus, ad loc Mk 9:20-24, 660-661)! Jesus can and did, both have compassion on the man and his son and help them. And, as we see Jesus as God and make liturgical prayers to Him, Jesus can and does both have compassion on us and help us. “Jesus helps our unbelief and all other things.” Jesus’s casting out the unclean spirit from the boy shows that Jesus is God in human flesh and ended the boy’s years of suffering. Yet not Jesus’s Divine power but His humbly not using that Divine power in dying on the cross accomplishes our salvation—our salvation from sin, death, and the power of the devil. As we heard in the Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 50:4-10), the Lord God helps us, therefore we are not disgraced; behold, the Lord God helps us, who will declare us guilty? When we repent, then God forgives our sin, and neither Satan nor anyone else can accuse us any longer.
God forgives us by His Word. All three of today’s Readings, including the Epistle Reading (James 3:1-12), describe words’ having power (Hook, CPR 28:4, p.17). But, especially powerful for our forgiveness of sins are God’s Word read and preached, God’s Word attached to water in Holy Baptism, God’s Word attached to the rite of individual Holy Absolution, and God’s Word attached to bread and wine that are the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. Through God’s Word in all these ways that we can hear, feel, see, and taste, Jesus helps our unbelief and all other things, no less‑miraculously creating, sustaining, and increasing our faith, than Jesus’s casting out the unclean spirit from the boy in today’s Gospel Reading.
Now admittedly, Jesus’s statement about that particular type of unclean spirit’s not being able to be driven out by anything but prayer is difficult to understand. Perhaps the nine disciples had relied on their own ability when attempting to cast it out, instead of the ability they had by virtue of Jesus’s sending them out as His authoritative representatives. And, Jesus Himself cast it out without prayer, but then He is Jesus! Our faith, wavering as it might be, is exercised through prayer. Prayer is not in and of itself powerful, but through prayer we have access to our God, Who is all‑powerful. We recognize that, while all things are possible for one who believes, prayers for foolish or wrong things are not going to be granted. And, we recognize that Jesus will help our unbelief and all other things in His way and in His time.
As the nine disciples were arguing with the sneering scribes, so we may find ourselves being questioned by and disputing with atheists and other unbelievers. We confidently believe and so know that God is compassionate and all-powerful. We may not always be able to satisfactorily reconcile those truths with the world that we all experience, with its hurricanes, typhoons, mute and deaf spirits, or whatever our personal crises may be. But, as we this morning have realized by considering today’s Gospel Reading, “Jesus helps our unbelief and all other things”. Jesus confronts “the misery, disease, and hardheartedness of humanity” (Marcus, ad loc Mark 9:14-29, p.656), and He strengthens our desperate hopes into the sure and certain hope of at “least” our ultimate deliverance from our suffering, with the resurrection, if necessary, and the glorification of our bodies in the life of the world to come.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +