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Sunday of St. John of the Ladder, April 11, 2021
\nHebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31<\/i><\/p>\n
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen I was asked if I would preach this Sunday, I thought to myself, \u201cAh, good\u2014an opportunity to show that I don\u2019t preach about just demons all the time now.\u201d But then I looked at the Gospel, and it\u2019s an exorcism story. So, here we are. But there are a lot of exorcism stories in the Gospels.<\/p>\n In this account from Mark 9, a man brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus for him to be healed. The demon threw the boy into seizures, which often injured him and even threatened his life. Now, some might say, \u201cHe just has epilepsy.\u201d But Jesus did not say that. Instead, He said, \u201cYou dumb and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again.\u201d So that rules out a mere medical problem. We\u2019re definitely dealing with a demon here. Jesus recognized that and acted on it.<\/p>\n There is a lot in this passage that we can connect with, even if we are not subject to demon possession. But we need to back up a little and talk about that<\/i> first.<\/p>\n It is true that most of us are not possessed<\/i> by demons. Most of us have not had a demon actually take control of our bodies and force us to do things as this boy did. And lest we get too scared that it could happen to anyone, we should remember that this doesn\u2019t happen randomly. How did this boy get possessed? We don\u2019t know, but we do know that possession happens because of some kind of intense participation with demonic powers, such as great sin or engaging in the occult. We can\u2019t imagine a mere boy opening himself up to this, but is his father to blame somehow? It\u2019s possible, but more on that in a moment.<\/p>\n Anyway, even if we are not possessed<\/i> by demons, we are certainly involved<\/i> with them. What do I mean? We know as Christians that if we do the works of God, by being faithful to Him, loyal to Him, obedient to Him, imitating Him, then we become more like Him. This process is called theosis<\/i>. But there is an opposite process, too. If we do the works of demons\u2014if we sin\u2014then we become like them instead. There is no neutral ground.<\/p>\n So this means that we all have an interest in and the need for exorcism. The Christian life starts with exorcism at baptism. And then it continues with exorcistic actions every day\u2014because whenever we participate in God\u2019s works, we turn away from demonic works and drive the demons out. So this Gospel account is directly relevant to us, like all the exorcism passages.<\/p>\n So there is something at play in this one that I think is really critical for us to understand clearly, but it gets hidden beneath the way that English translation treats it. After Jesus\u2019 disciples admit that they can\u2019t cast out this demon, Jesus talks about living among a \u201cfaithless\u201d generation. And then when the boy\u2019s father tells Jesus about the demon and what it does, Jesus says to him, \u201cIf you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.\u201d And the man replies, \u201cLord, I believe; help my unbelief!\u201d<\/p>\n So if you just read that translation, when the disciples ask Jesus later, \u201cWhy could we not cast it out?\u201d you would expect that Jesus\u2019 response would be, \u201cIt\u2019s because you didn\u2019t believe.\u201d Right? But that is not what He says.<\/p>\n Instead, He says, \u201cThis kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.\u201d<\/p>\n Wait a minute! I thought this whole thing was about not believing! It\u2019s a faithless generation that doesn\u2019t believe. But everything is possible for someone who believes, right? But don\u2019t they believe enough? Apparently not. But then… \u201cprayer and fasting\u201d? What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where translation is a problem. Because if you look at the Greek that lies beneath those various words, you discover that faith<\/i> and belief<\/i> and faithless<\/i> and believe<\/i> are actually all the same word in Greek. If it\u2019s the noun, it\u2019s pistis<\/i>, and if it\u2019s the verb, it\u2019s pistevo<\/i>. Whatever that word means, Jesus keeps using it. And the man who replies to Him uses it, too.<\/p>\n And whatever it means, Jesus says that the lack of pistis<\/i> requires prayer and fasting.<\/p>\n Now I will show you how a better translation makes sense of this whole passage by translating all these words consistently, and consistent with the admonition for prayer and fasting:<\/p>\n Jesus says, \u201cO unfaithful<\/i> generation! How long am I to be with you?\u201d<\/p>\n And He says, \u201cIf you can be faithful<\/i>, all things are possible to him who is faithful<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n And the man replies, \u201cLord, I am faithful<\/i>! Help my unfaithfulness<\/i>!\u201d<\/p>\n So in some way this man was unfaithful, which may be how his son became possessed. We don\u2019t know. Anyway, when the disciples ask Jesus why they failed in their attempts at exorcism, He tells them they had to pray and fast\u2014that is, they had to be faithful<\/i> to the disciplined spiritual life that He had given them. If the problem was that no one was \u201cbelieving\u201d hard enough, how would prayer and fasting help? Would they believe more? No, it\u2019s not about agreeing with something harder. It\u2019s about being faithful<\/i> to God. It\u2019s action, not thought or feeling.<\/p>\n See how much more sense this now makes? In fact, while pistevo<\/i> does sometimes mean \u201cbelieve\u201d in some places in the New Testament (such as in James 2:19, which talks about the “belief” of demons), it almost always actually refers to being faithful. Faithfulness is the means by which we receive the benefits of God\u2019s grace, not simply agreeing with it.<\/p>\n So now it should be clear how this applies to all of us. If we are afflicted by demonic attack, if we are bound up in sinfulness, if we are plagued by anger, hatred, holding grudges, addiction, etc.\u2014then the response is not \u201cbelieve harder.\u201d The response is to be faithful. That is why prayer and fasting is what Jesus prescribed here, because it\u2019s part of what it means to be faithful.<\/p>\n By this point in Great Lent, we may be a bit weary either of fasting or the increased prayer. Or we may be starting to feel guilty about how we have neglected the fasting and prayer. And it is tempting to just go ahead and say \u201cyes\u201d to temptation.<\/p>\n And I don\u2019t mean a temptation to eat meat. Eating meat is not in itself a sin. I mean the temptation to fall away from our faithfulness to Christ. It is the temptation to pursue our own desires rather than the desires of God. It is the temptation to slouch back into our weariness in doing good. It is the temptation to despondency, to selfishness, to gluttony, to anger. These tend to be the temptations we experience most in Great Lent, because they are precisely the temptations that turn us away from the virtues that Great Lent especially cultivates. It\u2019s very targeted.<\/p>\n One of the great questions of our time, and one I have heard many times in confession, is the problem of having faith. People often have the sense that they just don\u2019t believe hard enough. And they point to feelings of doubt, of unforgivingness, and so on. And they conclude that they are bad Christians, or that maybe God doesn\u2019t care or doesn\u2019t even exist. And what defines this crisis is the need to be emotionally or intellectually certain.<\/p>\n But certainty is not what it means to be Christian. It is not what faith is about. So if you have these feelings or these thoughts, they are actually irrelevant to Christianity. Christ does not call us to have particular thoughts or feelings of agreement. He calls us to faithfulness.<\/p>\n So we hear this exorcism story today and its conclusion: \u201cThis kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.\u201d The targeted demonic attacks we experience especially in this holy season are real, and we can spot them because of how they are so specifically designed to pull us away from participating in it. But these things do indeed come out by prayer and fasting. So, don\u2019t give up. Be encouraged. Because Christ has come to heal us.<\/p>\n To Jesus Christ Who holds all authority over spirits, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, be all glory, honor and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The targeted demonic attacks we experience especially in this holy season are real, and we can spot them because of how they are so specifically designed to pull us away from participating in it. But these things do indeed come out by prayer and fasting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[582,583],"tags":[806,1012,864,865],"class_list":["post-6515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripture","category-sermons","tag-demons","tag-exorcism","tag-scripture","tag-sermons"],"yoast_head":"Faith, Belief, or Faithfulness?<\/h3>\n
Be Faithful<\/h3>\n