I Believe - Help My Unbelief

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 15, 2024

Mark 9:14-29

 “I Believe – Help My Unbelief”

As our congregation moves forward with plans to seek funding for renovating and expanding our church facilities, I found a photo from the early days of our congregation, taken in 1963 in what is now our Fellowship Hall. It looks like a young family is present for a Baptism. The Fellowship Hall was St. John’s first worship space with the altar and Chancel located on the stage. The photo shows rows of folding chairs that were used for seating. We still have a few of these chairs around, and they are heavy! No padded seating here, and these had to be set up and taken down each Sunday. I can well imagine that in those early days, seated on those unpadded folding chairs, people looked to a future of padded pews, holding onto Jesus’ words: “All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23b). There are two important but brief sentences in today’s Gospel that invite our attention. The first is Jesus’ response to the desperate father who was seeking help for his son. Jesus reminded that man, and he reminds us as well: “All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23b). The second important but brief sentence is spoken by the man in response to Jesus. He cried out: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24b). I appreciate that man’s honesty, and can identify with what he said. Yes, I believe, but because there’s lots of need for faith growth in my own life, O Lord, help my unbelief. This becomes the theme for preaching today. May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

Jesus’ healing of the boy follows what is the highpoint midway through Mark’s Gospel: Jesus’ transfiguration (Mark 9:2-13). Flanked by Moses and Elijah, the Father’s voice is heard as it was at Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1:9-11): “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). Coming down from the mountain after this, Jesus is greeted by a chaotic scene of the man seeking help for his son, the disciples unable to help, and getting into an argument with the scribes. Sounds like a hot mess. From our perspective, it sounds like the boy had epilepsy, but there is an underlying condition that goes beyond the physical into the spiritual. Forces of evil were bent on the boy’s destruction, and the father is desperate to find help. We don’t know where else this man had gone looking for help, but he was now in front of Jesus. Sometimes in our desperation we go looking for help from all kinds of people and all sorts of places. Only as a last resort do we finally turn to Jesus. The man’s faith was weak and small, but he was where he needed to be: with Jesus. Divine ability to help isn’t the problem here. Human unbelief is the problem. Jesus confronts this head-on, telling the man: “All things are possible for one who believes.” And then the man confessed what we also must confess – what every believer must confess: “I believe; help my unbelief!” In his overwhelming need, in his powerlessness, the man was saying: “I know my faith is small and inadequate, but I trust you, Jesus. I have nowhere else to turn. Help me!” That is our cry to Jesus also: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!

Rev. William F. Bruening – probably not a name that you’re familiar with. Though he never served in ministry at St. John’s, he was instrumental in the start-up and establishment of our own congregation. Until his death at only age 61 in August 1966, Pastor Bruening served for many years at Christ Lutheran Church in Washington, D.C. St. John’s first pastor, Rev. Paul Meyer, served as vicar at Christ congregation under Pastor Bruening in the early 1950s. It was, in part, this connection that led Pastor Meyer to accept the call to St. John’s in 1957. There was a close connection between the two pastors as mentor and protégé, as well as between the two congregations as mother and daughter. It was Pastor Bruening’s leadership that enabled St. John’s to embark upon building this Sanctuary. He presented the financial needs of St. John’s building program to the Voters Assembly at Christ Lutheran Church, and as a result Christ congregation took out a new mortgage for $180,000 and earmarked $100,000 of this as a loan for the construction of this Sanctuary. Sadly, Pastor Bruening died on August 20, 1966, less than six months before this Sanctuary would be dedicated on January 8, 1967. At the back of our Sanctuary is a dedicatory plaque that was placed in memory of Pastor Bruening during St. John’s fiftieth anniversary year in 2006. So, why am I telling you this? As we consider funding needed to expand and renovate the house of the Lord today, we must acknowledge that we stand upon the shoulders of previous generations who sacrificed much and freely gave of themselves to build the house of the Lord. They understood that this was not just bricks and mortar, but that the greater purpose behind this was to do what our chosen Scripture verse for our own capital campaign tells us: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Pastor Bruening’s bold request was not even for his own congregation, but for ours. That $100,00 in the mid-1960s would be nearly $1 million in today’s economy,. That is sacrificial giving from one congregation to another. We have helped financially to support the start-up of new congregations in our own circuit, but we have never, to my knowledge, taken out a mortgage and then turned this over to another congregation for their building program. Would we do that for another congregation? I don’t know what that Voters Assembly looked like or sounded like when Pastor Bruening made this appeal. There may well have been people who thought or said, “That’s too much. We can’t afford this.” Whatever was said, the decision was made to proceed in faith. The words of the man in today’s Gospel lesson seem very fitting: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24b). Let us take that man’s response to heart as we consider what our own response will be to the need before our congregation, always keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, who assures us: “All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23b). To put this another way, quoting Christian writer and public speaker, Corrie ten Boom: “If all things are possible with God, then all things are possible to him who believes in Him” (Corrie Ten Boom quote: If all things are possible with God, then all things... (azquotes.com).

With Jesus, there is deliverance; there is grace to help in time of need. After Jesus had cast out the evil spirit, everyone thought the poor boy was dead. But in lifting him up, Jesus pointed ahead to his own death and resurrection. The original text for verse 27 can be read: “Jesus raised him, and he was resurrected” (άνέστη). The word here for “he arose” is the same root word Scripture uses for resurrection (ανίστημι). The boy was set free and given new life in Jesus, and we have, too. We have been set free and given new life in Jesus. We may not know the utter powerlessness that the boy and his father knew, but the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection is power for us today. Jesus willingly gave up his heavenly power and glory; he laid all of that aside to enter into our broken world. Jesus became powerless to offer his life as the atoning sacrifice for our sins; to break the power of evil; to buy us back for God through the cleansing blood of Jesus.

Because we have been raised to new life in Christ, even as we cry out in faith: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”, we also trust that “all things are possible for one who believes.” Amen.