I BELIEVE I THINK Mark 9:14-29 In spite of our doubts, Christ can heal us through faith and prayer. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves First United Methodist Church Fort Smith, Arkansas October 16, 2016
Some people are rather uncomfortable with the concept of spiritual healing. It is still a little foreign to us, isn t it? We tend to associate it more with Pentecostal denominations or TV evangelists who make a dramatic event out of healing. But actually healing is one of the primary things Jesus did, and the Christian Church has historically had a healing ministry. United Methodists have just reclaimed the traditional ministry of healing prayer and anointing in recent years, but it is a very ancient practice and not weird or outlandish at all at least not in the traditional way we do it. It is, however, a very powerful way that the Holy Spirit goes to work in the church to help broken and hurting people. Our Scripture passage today is a very interesting story in the healing ministry of Jesus. The Lord had just been on the Mount of Transfiguration, where he glowed with the light of the glory of God. Then he came down the mountain right into a confrontation going on between the disciples and the scribes, who were religious leaders of the day. The problem was a man who had brought his son for healing; the son was possessed by a spirit that gave him symptoms that sound to the modern ear like epilepsy. The disciples had not been able to do anything to help. The father with the spirit-possessed son asked Jesus to please do something if he was able. The man s remark just set him off. If you are able! he said, All things can be done for the one who believes. 1 The man cried out, I believe, Lord; help my unbelief! 2 So Jesus called the evil spirit out of the boy. It gave him a mighty seizure and left him in a heap. Jesus picked him up and sent him on his way. Later the disciples asked Jesus, Why could we not cast it out? And Jesus replied, This kind can only come out through prayer. 3 This is one of those passages in scripture that raises more questions than it answers. Don t you hate it when that happens? Like, why is Jesus in such a bad mood? He seems really cranky, like he was having a bad day: You faithless generation, how much longer must I
be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? 4 And when the father said, If you are able to do anything, Jesus responded, IF you are able! like Do you know who you re talking to here? Remember, Jesus was just coming down off the mountain of Transfiguration, where the glory of God had made him literally glow with light. It s kind of hard to get back into the real world. I had a friend who was elected bishop several years ago, and he was telling me about what an ego trip it was to go around and interview in all the regions where he might one day serve as bishop. At the time, he was still a pastor. When he returned to his church the next Sunday, a lady came up to him and wanted to speak with him. He imagined she was going to tell him how proud she was that he was running for bishop. But she said, Preacher, the toilet in the women s bathroom is overflowing! Back to the real world! No wonder Jesus was a little cranky. Then there s the problem of the healing itself. How come the disciples couldn t do it? Did they not have enough faith? The father didn t have much faith, but Jesus healed the boy anyway. Then he said it could only be done through prayer. But who s praying here? This incident makes us wonder. Why does God heal some and not others? Does it depend on the strength of your faith or the power of your prayer? If you re not healed, does that mean your faith is weak? Recently there was a little girl in our community who was afflicted by a terrible disease. Hundreds if not thousands of people were praying for her. But she died anyway. Was God not listening? Did he not care? See? There are more questions than answers sometimes. We want to say, I believe, Lord. I think. Maybe. Help my unbelief. So what can we make out of this Scripture for our lives and faith today? How is this helpful? First, we know this father in the story. We are this father. This is how we approach the healing power of God so often. We are hurting,
broken, in need of healing. So we cry out for help, not knowing exactly what to do, on the edge of despair, yet not really sure if Jesus is the way out of this mess or not. We know this father; he is our hero of faith today, not because he is perfect or powerful, but because he is us. There was undoubtedly a physical problem here. The boy was afflicted. In that day and time, they attributed many physical illnesses to the possession of spirits or demons. Nowadays we have made great advances in understanding our bodies and treating diseases. But the fact remains that many of our physical ailments still come from emotional, psychological, or spiritual sources. The deeper problem, as far as Jesus was concerned, was spiritual. The father asked Jesus to help the boy if he could. There was doubt in his mind. The doubt led to anxiety in his heart. The anxiety produced fear, which had cut the father off from the healing power of God. Can anybody relate to that today? We have brokenness on so many levels. There are physical diseases in our bodies. There is mental and emotional anguish in our hearts. There are problems in our marriages and in our families. There is conflict with our friends. There is violence in our streets and chaos in our politics. We begin to doubt if God is really in charge any more. Does God care about all of this? That doubt produces anxiety, and before long we are just scared to death that the God who has always delivered his people, the God who has been with us through every trial we have ever experienced, the God who loved the world so much he sent his Son to save us all, maybe that God won t save us this time. Let me tell you, our God is not a God of fear. Our God has not changed and has not stopped caring and will never fail to deliver his people! We can be sure of that. So we can put aside our fears. We can let our anxiety subside. We can put our doubts to rest. When we do, we will find our healing, our wholeness, our security. Our healing comes from two sources. One is faith. Many times Jesus tells people he has healed, Your faith has made you well.
Here he tells the father, All things can be done for the one who believes. 5 Believing that God has the power to make you whole is the first step toward health. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, went through a doubtful time in his early thirties. His missionary work in Georgia was fairly unsuccessful. He was depressed and unsure of his faith. On the way to Georgia, he had witnessed during a storm at sea the faith of a group of people called the Moravians. In the face of death, they praised God and sang hymns. Wesley wanted that kind of faith. Back in England, he confessed to Peter Boehler, a friend and a Moravian preacher, that he thought he should quit preaching because his faith was obviously false. All he could find in his heart was doubt and unbelief. Wisely, Peter Boehler told Wesley by no means to quit; he said to preach faith until you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith. Wesley took his advice, and soon the Holy Spirit brought healing to his doubting heart. We all go through periods when we doubt the reality and the effectiveness of our faith. There are situations in life that we don t understand. There are questions that simply don t have answers. That s OK. The real question is, are we going to let our doubts keep us from knowing God and his power? Or can we take the little faith we have and come to God, doubts and all, and put ourselves in his care? I believe that s what the father in our Scripture text did. When all else fails, go to Jesus. There is where you will find real power and healing and faith. C. S. Lewis calls this mixture of doubt and faith a kind of holy pretending. It s not like the bad kind of pretending, where you put on false airs and try to be something you're not and don't intend to be. Instead, this holy pretending is like the children's story in which a horribly disfigured prince put on a mask to hide his ugliness, and over the years of wearing a mask that was handsome, his face slowly changed into the face of a handsome prince.
It s like children playing dress-up. They don t dress up in grown-up clothes in order to misrepresent themselves as adults. They dress up because they want to be like mommy or daddy. They want to grow into that image. 6 It s the same way with our faith. Sometimes we know in our hearts we are not worthy of the name Christian. We sin; we doubt; we don t represent Christ very well. But we know what we are supposed to be, and if we can just make a conscious decision to act that way in spite of our shortcomings or misgivings, then we open up a doorway for Christ to actually transform us and change us into what we want to be. If we will just cry out, I believe, Lord; help my unbelief! Jesus makes the promise, All things can be done for the one who believes. 7 You can believe that! The second source of healing is prayer. The disciples couldn t figure out why their efforts were so ineffective. Jesus explained, This kind can come out only through prayer. 8 There is no specific prayer in this text, but the healing power of Jesus had been forged in hours, days, weeks of prayer. In the toughest times, at the lowest places, in the dungeons of our despair, in the valley of the shadow of death, the only recourse, the last resort, and the best option is to take our burden to God in prayer. He will hear us, and he will heal us in the way we need to be healed. I have a friend that I watched grow from a broken, doubting, immoral young woman into a wonderful disciple of Jesus and a pastor in the church. But Heather had a rough road getting there and had tons of obstacles to overcome. One of them was chronic back pain. She was only about 30 years old, but nothing she did seemed to alleviate her pain. She visited doctors, specialists, chiropractors, and had innumerable tests and therapies, and nobody could find the reason or the cure for her back pain. As Heather grew deeper in her faith, she signed up for a women s prayer retreat, and she was looking forward to it in the spiritual sense, though she knew it was going to be hard on her back. One of the first
things they did on the retreat was to pray about anything that might be creating a barrier between their souls and God. Suddenly it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was carrying a spirit of hatred, hostility and resentment toward her sister. She knew she had a problem with her sister, but it was much more than just sibling rivalry. She had endured years of pain and frustration in that relationship. But for the first time Heather saw that her lack of love for her sister was blocking her from God s healing power. At the retreat, they gave each person a piece of bread to symbolize whatever it was that was keeping them from God, and they were supposed to hold the bread and have a conversation with Jesus about their problem. Heather began to weep as she thought about the years she had harbored this resentment toward her sister. And she began to feel the sadness of Jesus, who also died for her sister. Jesus was sad that Heather didn t love her sister in the same way he did. As a way of laying their spiritual struggle before God, the women were then supposed to place their piece of bread in a basket on the altar at the foot of the cross. My friend knelt in front of the basket, sobbing so hard she was shaking, but she could not make her hand let go of the bread! Other women gathered around her and prayed and encouraged her, and finally she dropped it in the basket. Then hear what happened in her own words: With God s help, I released that piece of bread, stood up from my knees, and immediately the weight of my spiritual struggle was relieved. The pain was completely gone! Since that very night, I have never once felt that chronic back pain that I had lived with for so many years! I believe that when I BELIEVED, God touched me with his healing hand. God cast out that spirit of unlove that had taken up residence in my soul and made me sick. That is a testimony to God s power to heal, my friends! God is the divine healer, and I am living proof of God s ability to heal us emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually. Glory to God! Amen! 9
(Like I said, now she s a preacher.) So where are you today? Has your faith been seized by doubt, anxiety, or fear? Are you feeling the pain of disease or despair? Are you carrying the burden of grief in your heart? Good News: Christ has power over the demons, the diseases, the sickness and the sadness that can destroy your life. He wants to make you whole. Do you have just enough faith to say, I believe, Lord; help my unbelief? Do you have just enough faith to open the door to the healing power of Christ? Then come. Receive the healing grace of God. Renew your spiritual strength. And rejoice in the goodness of God! 1 Mark 9:23. 2 Mark 9:24. 3 Mark 9:28-29. 4 Mark 9:19. 5 Mark 9:23. 6 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1979), p. 160ff. 7 Mark 9:23. 8 Mark 9:29. 9 Heather Spencer Clawitter, testimony October 12, 2008, First UMC Hot Springs, AR.