The Power
of “If” and Overcoming Unbelief
Pastor Mathew Magera – 9/16/18 – Sermon 304
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Contradictions can be fun. Two
or more things that clash with one another yet are found together. Have you
ever really taken the time to think about some of the more common oxymorons
that are used in our everyday lives? Take this example I’ve always wondered
about. "Crash landing." Well, which is it? There's plenty more.
Deafening silence, freezer burn, good grief, original copy, pretty ugly, short
sermon. Two things that appear together but don’t necessarily go together. Contradictions
can be fun, they can bring out the best in lateral thinking. But, some contradictions
can also be quite serious, they can bring out the worst in despair.
Contradictions can tear us apart.
The people in Jesus' day
were living in a time of great contradiction. Nobody knew what to do with
Jesus. Imagine living during this time. You've heard about this Jesus fellow.
You've heard about his teachings, you've heard or maybe even seen one of his miracles.
You know people who have received the healing touch of his hands. On the other
side of the coin, however, everybody that has any religious or political power
in the area, the chief priests, the scribes, and others reject everything that
Jesus has been doing. They downplay his miracles, they renounce his teachings
and they do their best to lead the general population away from him. They try
to correct what he says, give different accounts as to what he is said to have
done. They look for ways to trap him in his words or actions in order to prove
they are right.
This world I've described is
not unlike our own. We continue to live in this world of contradiction. We can
still feel the pressures from the world that Jesus' teachings, his miracles and
his role in salvation are unimportant and irrelevant. Our society is set on
concrete answers and instant gratification. Faith itself becomes the
contradiction to what is otherwise seen as normal life. Who needs Jesus anymore
when we've got television, smartphones, Internet, Google? Who needs Jesus when
I can get everything I need without even leaving home? Even if you think you
don't subscribe to this instant gratification world, the temptations are still
there. What happens to us is that we often find ourselves caught in the middle.
We, like the people of
Jesus' time are confused, caught in the contradiction itself. We struggle and
we lose confidence. We want to stand up and confidently say, Jesus, I believe
in you, in your power, in your love, in your saving grace. Yet, before we are
even done speaking that lump comes to our throat to remind us that in the same
breath maybe we really don't believe, or at least not as much as we could. We
just want to say we do and maybe, just maybe, it will make us feel better about
ourselves. This is exactly what we walk into in Mark chapter 9 this morning.
Jesus is coming back down the
mountain with Peter, James and John after the transfiguration and they walk
right into a commotion. An argument. People perhaps expressing their belief in
Jesus and the teachers of the law likely correcting them. Then, out from the
crowd comes a voice of someone like us who is stuck in the middle of it all. A
man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son… I asked your
disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not."
Hey, Jesus, everything I
heard about you said you could do this so I went to these guys that you hang
out with and they were helpless for me. Not only is this father troubled by the
spirit that is possessing his son but now he's even more troubled by the fact
that Jesus' own disciples couldn't drive it out. He has been let down. Who do
you put your trust in? Do you put your trust in Jesus who is said can take care
of things like this or do you put your trust in those religious leaders who say
he can't?
We live with this question
every day. We believe Jesus can do one thing but our senses and sometimes our
experience say he cannot. Where do you feel those pressures to lean one way or
another? Maybe it's in the hospital. Maybe it's when you are doing bills. Maybe
it's when you are with friends. Where do you feel these pressures the most that
pull you away from faith? When do you find yourself asking why is Jesus even
beneficial to me? That's where this man is right now. He's asking that
question, why is Jesus even beneficial to me?
Jesus does two things at
this point. He gets frustrated and the peoples' lack of faith. But, even though
he gets frustrated he calls the father to bring the boy to him. Stuck in the
middle of a contradiction, Jesus draws the boy and his father closer to him.
When he is teetering on faith, God is still faithful. Bring the boy to me. Not,
go away, you don't believe, I can't help you. But, rather, bring the boy to me.
Jesus is going to take care of it.
Why is Jesus even beneficial
to me? You can tell that's what this father is thinking when he says to Jesus,
"If you can do anything, take pity on us and help us." If you can do
anything. He has faith enough to bring him to Jesus but you can just feel his
unbelief in Jesus' ability to do anything about it. If... you can do anything.
No one else could. Why would you be any different? The power of “if.” If you
can do this. That one word opened it all up. Unbelief. As soon as we start
saying if, that unbelief just flows right out after it, no matter what we try
to say to cover it up.
If?! If?! Jesus says. If you
can?! Everything is possible for one who believes. The man says, “I do believe.”
Then immediately, contradicts his own statement when he says, “help me overcome
my unbelief!" And there it is. I believe! No I don't. Help me. The
contradiction is out in the open. It's not possible. Belief and unbelief
together? How can he say this? It should be one or the other, shouldn't it?
Yet, if there is anything that this man says that can be considered at all faithful,
this is it. This is a faith statement. I believe. Help my unbelief.
How can it be? How can
uncertainty, how can unbelief be a statement even closely related to faith?
Where this man is probably despairing the most having had to utter these very
words in front of Jesus himself, words that call attention to his lack of faith,
words that single him out as one who is lacking in belief, words that expose is
vulnerability, how can this be anything near a faith statement?
I can almost picture Jesus start
smiling at him. This statement, while a low point for him, and for us to make,
opens the door to grace. This is what Jesus was waiting for. Jesus is not
beneficial to a world grounded on instant gratification. What he is beneficial
for is when that instant gratification world fails you and you can’t make it
better. When you don't get first place. When you don't get that raise. When you
don't get that job. When you don't get that friend back. When that unsinkable
relationship goes down. That's when Jesus is beneficial to this world.
And that's why it's so
challenging to bring Jesus into the world, because nobody is looking for him.
Everybody has what they need, or at least they think they do. Until it falls
apart. Until this world fails them. Until a father, desperate to find restoration
for his son can't find it anywhere. I believe! No I don't. Help my unbelief.
What is happening here is
this man, this father, has been changed. He has put his belief in Jesus' hands.
He has taken the contradiction and given it to Jesus. And that's what Jesus
wants him to do. In this confession we see that faith has holes and that we
cannot do anything to believe more. He could've said, "I believe, and I
will work hard every day to believe more if you just heal my son," He
could've said, "I know I can believe more, just give me some time to catch
up." Instead, he confesses the contradiction within him and turns to the
one who can change that, Jesus himself. We do not have the resources in ourselves
to overcome our unbelief. If we try, we will only become worse. We will be
fighting against the powers of evil and we will lose. We need to admit our
unbelief and speak those words, help my unbelief. You, Jesus. You. Help my
unbelief. When you see me start to trust in the powers of this world, help my
unbelief. When I start to fear that you are not with me when I'm struggling,
help my unbelief. These are words that Jesus loves to hear and will do
something about. This is what he does.
"When Jesus saw that a
crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the impure spirit. 'You deaf and
mute spirit,' he said, 'I command you, come out of him and never enter him
again.' The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out."
When we come to Jesus with
our contradictions, caught between belief and unbelief, sincerely asking him to
help our unbelief, Jesus is going to do something. Jesus is going to take care
of it because that's what Jesus does. Jesus comes to meet us in the midst of
contradiction, when the world lets us down and when we have nowhere else to
turn, when we want to believe but when we realize that we have unbelief too. Our
journey to freedom begins with that claim, that horrible truth that we don't believe
and the plea for Jesus to help us. But, just as we utter confession you better
believe Jesus is going to be right there with grace upon grace for us. We can
be confident that when we ask him to help our unbelief we know that he will and
that he does. Jesus takes what we see as unbelief, turns it around and gives us
faith.
When we start to say “if”
when we talk about God's power, that word can open up the floodgates of
unbelief. Everything we thought we knew and could be will start flowing out and
we will realize how many holes in our faith there really are, even for the most
faithful of us here. But maybe what we should also see at this point is that
even though Jesus identified the people as an unfaithful generation, instead of
sending them away at the discovery of their lack of faith, he invites them
closer. When this father, who was at his very end, needed help, Jesus drew him
in to himself. When Jesus sees our lack of faith, he doesn't send us away.
Jesus draws us to himself too. He draws us to his word. He draws us to the
table where he offers us himself. He draws us to the very source of life and
hope and declares to us that he is the only source from which life and hope
truly come.
In a world of
contradictions, delightful ones that challenge our minds, and scary ones where
we are drawn from one side to the other on a multitude of topics and realities,
there is a word that does deliver what it says it will, that acknowledges the
contradiction. There is a word that creates faith when we experience belief and
unbelief at the exact same time. Do not be afraid to confess your unbelief to
Jesus, seek his help, but be ready for him to draw you in, deliver on his word,
to lift you up and give you faith, the faith you need for all that you need it
for. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.