Aren't We Blessed?

Here you'll find the video of this past Sunday's modern worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below it is the text of the message presented there.



Genesis 2:18-25

The word alone first appears in the English language some seven hundred years ago, around 1300 AD. It’s actually a contraction of two Old English words, all ana or all one. It means, totally one. To be alone is to be completely and totally by oneself.

Our first lesson for this morning, Genesis 2:18-25, begins with God saying, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) 

There are people who might dispute that. There are parents with young children who might think they’d like nothing better than being alone. The same might be true of anyone being daily accosted by customers, bosses, teachers, deadlines, competitors. Relationships bring demands, disagreements, jangling telephones, interrupting texts and emails, people in need, distractions. We all reach a point when we say, “I wish I could have just five minutes by myself!”

Even Jesus, God the Son, knew the pressure of relationships and the need for downtime. The Gospels record Jesus going off to quiet places. 

But when Jesus did that, He never sought to be completely on His own. He reached up to commune with God the Father. Jesus wanted the One to Whom He had the closest connection, the One Who understood Him the most. 

For everlasting eons, in the mystery of eternity, where there is no time and no space, the one God in three Persons--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--had never known what it was like to be alone. Within the one God, there has always existed oneness, companionship, love, empathy. 

When God the Son, Jesus, volunteered to enter His creation as a baby born at Bethlehem in order to die and rise to free you and me and the whole cosmos from sin, death, and darkness, it was the first time the Son had been separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus knew what it meant to be totally alone in a roomful of people. He went off to quiet places because He needed fellowship with those who shared His nature as God.

God declares that it’s not good for Adam to be alone because man is the only one of God’s creatures created “in the image of God.” Without someone who shares this unique and privileged position in the universe to accompany him through life, Adam is alone. God understands the joy of being in relationship with those of one’s own kind. So, out of love for Adam, God declares, “I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

There has been a lot of destructive mischief made of these words. In deciding to create a helper for Adam, God is not creating an assistant to Adam to whom the man can bark out orders. The word translated as help or helper from the Hebrew in which the Old Testament was written is ezer. In the Bible this word is usually not applied to subordinates. It’s a word most often used of God Himself. “We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield,” Psalm 33:20 says, for example. When Moses named one of his sons, he called the child Eliezer, meaning God helps. During His earthly ministry, Jesus used the equivalent of this word to talk about God the Holy Spirit: “...I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.” (John 14:16-17)

So, after no member of the animal kingdom was found who could assuage Adam’s aloneness, God performed the first surgery. He put Adam to sleep and opened up Adam’s side and took a portion of Adam’s body to make the woman. Adam declares: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23) 

Adam is doing a little wordplay here. One word for man in Hebrew is ish; Adam calls the woman ishshah. By the way he identifies the woman, Adam is saying, “This is the one to whom I am connected. I am not alone anymore.” In Genesis 2:24, Moses, the author of Genesis, comments“That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” 

In other words, God establishes marriages and families so that we will not be alone. 

But this passage is about much more than marriages and families. It encompasses God’s plan for the entire human race: men, women, married, unmarried, widowed. Everyone. 

That’s because the oneness, the connection, each of us needs cannot be fully encompassed in marriages or friendships alone. We are all meant for relationship...with God and with others.

The first casualty of the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, which happened shortly after the events recorded in our first lesson, was ruptured relationships. Adam blamed God and the woman for his sin. The woman blamed the serpent. 

When sin entered the human picture, every human stood alone in their own sin and their own death. Sin leaves us each profoundly alone, each of us striving to “be like God” and to prove ourselves to the world and, in some cases, to God. 

Many people picture hell as a place where the rowdy will party for eternity. But the Bible teaches that hell will be a place of intense loneliness in which those who spurn Christ’s call to repentance and faith grit their teeth in everlasting agony and regret. 

It is not good for any of us to be alone. 

That’s why the two tables of the Ten Commandments, God’s fundamental moral law, are summarized by Jesus in the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…[and] Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:36-40) 

But you may have noticed something. Even when we earnestly try to love God and love others, we, our sinful natures, our judgmental attitudes, our competitive streaks, and our constant teetering between feeling inferior at some moments and superior in others, get in our way. We find it so impossible to get over ourselves that we, just like Adam and Eve, in our own power, can’t love as we’re commanded to love. 

Eternal separation from God and from others would be our ultimate destiny were it not for God helping us.

When, about twenty or thirty years after Jesus’ resurrection, the apostle Paul talked about Adam and Eve and marriage, he saw their story as a foreshadowing of a set of relationships God wants all people to have. Adam once exulted that Eve was bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. In their oneness, Adam was saying, his body belonged to Eve, and Eve’s body belonged to him; they were one. And while this is meant to be expressed sexually in and only in marriage, Paul says it points to the oneness with God and others that’s ours through Christ and His Church. In Ephesians 5:30, after talking about the oneness intended for husbands and wives, Paul says that marriage is a like the lives of Christians with Christ and fellow disciples; “we are members of His body,” Paul says. The connection is to be so close and so intimate among those of us who confess Christ in the Church that, “[i]f one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” (1 Corinthians 12:26)

On the cross, Jesus bore the weight of our aloneness and alienation from God. “My God, My God,” He cried, “why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46) But when the Father raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:24), Jesus, because He is not only truly God, but also truly human, bridged the chasm between God and us. He paid the penalty for our sin and has become for us “the Way and the truth and the life.” (John 14:6) He has prepared a place in eternity with God for all who repent for their sin and trust Him as their Lord and God. Not only that, He promises all who turn to Him in faith, “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

And He does even more for us. 

You’ve heard me tell the story before of the little boy who was afraid of the dark and kept asking his father to come sleep with him. When the dad explained that even if he or the boy’s mom weren’t in his room, God was. “I know,” the little boy said, “but I want someone with skin on him.” 

Jesus is God with skin on Him and He understands what it is to be alone. To assure us that He will never leave us nor forsake us, He gives two incredible gifts. 

One is the Holy Spirit, Who will guide those who pay heed to God’s Word and partake of the Sacraments, that Jesus will never leave us. 

The other is His Church, the people with skin on them who are part of this congregation and every congregation in which a people being transformed and saved by God’s Word can confess that Jesus is Lord!

It isn’t good for us to be alone. 

For many, this will, in part, mean that God blesses us with the gift of marriage and family, what Martin Luther called “the little Church.” 

But for all in whom God’s Word and Spirit creates faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, it means that through life’s joys and sorrows and into eternity itself, we are part of a single family with God as our Father and fellow disciples as our sisters and brothers. 

Aren’t we blessed? Amen

When Jesus Spoke About Hell

Here's the video of today's second worship service at Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below the video, you'll find the script of the message.



Mark 9:38-50
We Lutherans don’t talk much about Hell.

It does come up in the Apostles’ Creed on most Sundays of the Church Year when we respond to God’s Word by confessing our faith in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confess that after Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried, “He descended into hell,” bearing the full consequence of separation from God that we all merit for our sin.

But we’re shy about talking about hell as a destination for those who spurn Christ and His Gospel.

Jesus had no such shyness.

He talked about hell quite a bit, but not to everyone. As one Bible scholar has written, “Jesus...spoke of hell to professed saints, and of heaven to acknowledged sinners…”

In other words, Jesus didn’t speak much of hell to people like the tax extortionists and prostitutes to whom He was always reaching out; He had no desire to scare them into following Him. Fear-driven faith never lasts!

But Jesus did speak of hell to those who claimed to be devout believers in God. He did this lest their spiritual pride lead them away from God.

When I was a boy, I remember reading Irving Stone’s book, They Also Ran. It profiled all the losing major party candidates for president up until the time Stone wrote the last edition of his book in 1966. Stone talked about William Jennings Bryan, who was nominated for president three times and lost each election. Bryan wanted to mix his Christian faith with his politics. Stone says that Bryan went through phases that began with a simple faith and culminated in megalomania. As Stone tells it, the phases went like this: “God is with me, God is for me, God is in me, God is me; I am God.” When our life with God leads us to self-congratulation bordering on self-worship, we are in deadly trouble!

That’s why in the middle of today’s Gospel lesson, Mark 9:38-50, Jesus talks with the disciples about hell. He sees self-righteousness threatening their faith.

Our lesson continues the narration of events that took place right after Jesus returned from the Mount of Transfiguration which we’ve been following over the past several Sundays.

On the mountain, Peter, James, and John, the three apostles Jesus had taken with Him, had been slow to understand that Jesus is God the Son.

When they came to the base of the mountain, Jesus entered a scene of conflict and confusion occasioned by the fact that when a man approached Jesus’ disciples for help with His demon-possessed son, the disciples were powerless.

Jesus, you’ll remember, is initially stern with the twelve for their failure to pray, then, after exorcising the demon from the boy, instructs the disciples more gently.

Jesus concluded last Sunday’s Gospel lesson by telling the disciples that whoever welcomes a child, children being the lowest of the low on the social scale of first-century Judea, were really welcoming Him. Jesus always identifies with the humble and lowly, not the arrogant and powerful.

Now John, one of the sons of Zebedee the fisherman, steps forward.

John is often called “the beloved disciple.”

He’s the guy who seems to “get it” much of the time.

He’s the disciple to whom Jesus, from the cross, entrusts His mother.

He’s one of the inner circle of three disciples into whom Jesus poured the most intense teaching and training.

But in our lesson, John acts like a Pharisee, certain of his own holiness, disdainful of others.

“Teacher,” says John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.” (Mark 9:38)

The irony is lost on John: This entire section of Mark’s gospel begins with nine of the apostles unable to use prayer in Jesus’ name to cast a demon from a young boy. Yet, here’s John saying that the apostles told someone not part of their in-crowd who trusted Jesus enough to cast out demons in Jesus’ name to stop. Jesus tells John that if someone believes in Him and His name enough to cast out demons in His name, that person won’t later speak against Jesus.

Then comes Jesus’ warnings against spiritual pride in verses 42-48. And here Jesus speaks clearly of hell.

There are three main words that we translate from the Greek in which the New Testament was written as hell. The word  that Jesus uses in today’s lesson is gehenna.

It takes its name from the Hebrew place in Jerusalem called the valley of hinnom. In Old Testament times, the valley of hinnom was a place where faithless kings had offered human sacrifices, including child sacrifices, to the false idol of Moloch. This practice was condemned by God, of course.

The valley in which it happened became so notorious that faithful people cursed it. It later became the city dump in Jerusalem, a place where the flames from burning refuse smoldered all the time, twenty-four hours a day.

That’s how it came to give its name to the place reserved for the dead who in their earthly lives spurn faith in the God now revealed to all the world in Jesus Christ.

Jesus uses a series of vivid “it would be better” statements to underscore how much every human being should desire paradise over hell, life with Him in eternity over sliding into gehenna through spiritual pride, indifference, and the failure to daily repent for our sins and trust in His grace.

Jesus says that it would be better for us to be fitted with millstones around our necks and thrown into the sea than to cause “little ones”--like children or those of immature faith--to sin or turn from God.

He says that if our hand, foot, or eye, cause us to sin, to turn from Him, it would be better to get rid of them and enter paradise maimed than to die and take up residence in gehenna, in hell, “where, [quoting Isaiah 66:4], ‘the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (Mark 9:48)

Of course, Jesus is using hyperbolic language to make a point here. Neither our hands, feet, or eyes cause us to sin. It’s our sinful natures that make sin so attractive to us. Jesus says elsewhere that it’s from our hearts that “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, [and] blasphemies” come. (Matthew 15:9)

What Jesus is telling us is that if there are habits of thought, life, or associations that readily entice us to sin, we need to get those things out of our lives. They will otherwise lead us to hell.

This is troubling talk, especially since we try to domesticate Jesus, turning “the Lion of Judah” into a pet who bends to our wills and whims.

But it isn’t as if Jesus wants anyone to go to an eternity of torment in hell.

First Timothy 2:3-4 tells us that Jesus, “God our Savior” “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

As Jesus tells Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:16-18)

Jesus came into this world to save us from sin and death and hell. That’s what His cross and resurrection are all about. But He will not force us to enter eternity with Him. God created us with the capacity to say no to Him.

As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity: “​​There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’"

The lesson that Jesus is trying to teach the disciples (and us) is that we  human beings shouldn’t be confident in our own righteousness.

John, as our lesson begins, seems to think that He’s righteous enough to merit a place in Jesus’ eternal kingdom. But eternity with Jesus only comes to those who recognize their need of Christ, His cross, His resurrection, His forgiveness, His righteousness. It is belief in Jesus, and belief in Jesus alone, that allows us to enter the place in eternity that Jesus has prepared for us.

And knowing that, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, we belong to God forever, will change the way we face our lives...and our deaths. Nobody wants to die. As has been said, “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Having been with many people just before they die or at the moments of their death, I can tell you there is a qualitative difference in the way people who trust in Christ face death and the way those who don’t trust in Christ face it.

You’ve heard me talk about my father’s death. He had received all the treatments for COVID-19 short of going on a ventilator. The medical folks explained that even if dad went on a vent, his condition wouldn’t improve in two weeks’ time. His lungs and the rest of his body were too ravaged. They could, though, make him comfortable as COVID did its worst. When Dad indicated that he didn’t want to go on the ventilator and chose the second option, the nurse asked again to clarify his intentions. Dad told her crisply, “I’m good to go. I know where I’m going.”

“I know where I’m going” could be the motto of every person saved by grace through faith in Christ. And knowing where we’re going will surely change how we live until we get there! Christians know we need Jesus.

Hell will be filled with people who thought they didn’t need Jesus.

Our model should be the thief on the cross. When He cried out to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43) 

At His death, Jesus Christ descended into the very fires of hell so that all who believe in Him will never have to.

Paradise with Jesus, eternal life, belongs to all who, imperfect though we are, keep turning to Jesus and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, trust only in Him. Amen

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 16

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 15

Saint Matthew the Apostle

The Best There Ever Was

[Here's the video of today's modern worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below the video, you can find the text of the morning message.]



Mark 9:30-37
The movie, The Natural, based on a novel by Bernard Malamud, is one of my favorites. In one scene, its main character, Roy Hobbes, a baseball player once thought destined for greatness whose ascendancy to the majors was delayed by sixteen years, says, “Things sure turned out different.” When asked what he meant, Hobbes says, “I could’ve broken every record.” “And then what?” he’s asked. “Then, people would have said, ‘There goes Roy Hobbes, the best there ever was…’” That was what the character Roy Hobbes lived for and because he knew he wasn’t going to break every record or hear people hail him as the best there ever was, he was deeply disappointed.

We human beings, with our sin-tinged and fragile egos, carom between thinking we’re the best there ever was, on the one hand, and wanting to be the best there ever was, all the while suspecting we may be the worst there ever was. At birth, we’re equipped with this desire to be better than others in order to prove our worthiness. It’s what caused Cain to kill Abel. This need to “be like God” or, at least, how we think that God ought to be, is at the bottom of all our heartache, discord, and despondency. We want our ways. We want to prevail. And when we don’t do those things, we can be deeply disappointed, even bitter.

As our Gospel lesson for this morning begins, Jesus is leading the disciples through Galilee to Capernaum, to Peter’s house. Mark says that “​​Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were…” (Mark 9:30) The reason for that is simple. The lesson for today follows the incident recounted in last week’s Gospel lesson in which Jesus had publicly upbraided the disciples for not knowing they needed to pray over the demon-possessed son of a man who had come looking for their help when Jesus and three of the apostles had been on the Mount of Transfiguration. Now, Jesus wants to teach the disciples privately so as not to bring them any further public embarrassment. So, Jesus lovingly takes the disciples aside and then delivers the Gospel, the good news, to them. He says, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” (Mark 9:32)

For most of the disciples, this is the second time they’ve heard Jesus say that He was going to Jerusalem to die and rise for the human race. For Peter, James, and John, who also heard Jesus predict His crucifixion and resurrection as they descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, it’s the third time they’ve heard this from Jesus. Obviously, because He repeats this message so frequently, Jesus is signaling how important it is. These are words of promise, of good news, of Gospel: God the Son, Jesus, the disciples hear, is taking the condemnation for sin that we deserve into His own sinless body and after He has died, He will be raised again by God the Father so that all who repent and believe in Jesus will one day be also be raised to live with God eternally.

This should be good news for the disciples. And for you and me. For the whole world. But for people bent on being, like Roy Hobbes, “the best there ever was,” intent on conquering the world with our own goodness, virtue, power, intelligence, cunning, strength, or will power, this may not seem like very good news at all. The Gospel is only good news if you’re willing to admit that sin, death, and darkness--your sin, death, and darkness and mine--are issues we can not conquer. The Gospel is only good news if you believe that, because death is offensive to those born with an intrinsic sense of God’s eternal intentions for us, there must be an eternity beyond a world that lives by the ethic of “those with the most toys when they die win.” And the Gospel is only good news if you understand that you and I and every human being are by nature sinful and unclean, deserving of death and in desperate need of a perfect, sinless Savior to save us from ourselves.

This is not what the disciples signed up for. They had thought they were going to be the right hand men of a King who would set up an earthly kingdom and make God’s people prosperous, secure and safe. Here’s Jesus talking about things like crucifixion, resurrection, and eternity! That may explain their reaction to Jesus’ Gospel words as described by Mark: “...they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.” (Mark 9:32) Like the crowds on Palm Sunday, the disciples wanted to be their own saviors, using Jesus as a tool to get the earthly comforts they craved and, as God’s people, to which they felt entitled. They had no interest in dealing with their sin or thinking about eternity. Jesus was holding out a different vision for His Kingdom and the disciples didn’t want to hear the details.

But Jesus knows their secret hearts as surely as He knows yours and mine. When they all get to Capernaum, Jesus asks the disciples what they’d been arguing about among themselves on the way there. Again, Jesus’ words are met with silence. The disciples had been arguing among themselves about who was the greatest. This is, quite honestly, nuts considering that nine of them had just struck out when the man came for help with his demon-possessed son and three of them had just heard God the Father affirm that Jesus is God the Son. How could any of them argue that they were the greatest? How can anyone? Now, Jesus speaks the Law to show the disciples--and you and me--why we need the Gospel of His cross and empty tomb, why we need to receive the message that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him will never die but have eternal life. Jesus says, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35)

The Law, of course, is that Word of God that shows us both what we must do to be righteous and that we, as human beings are completely incapable of doing or being to be counted righteous, right with God, deserving of eternity with God. The Law tells us, “These are the standards to which you must measure up to be part of God’s Kingdom” and then, holding up a mirror to us, tells us, “And, in your own power, you never will measure up.” But the Gospel tells us, "Don’t despair!" There is One Who has kept this and every other holy Law from God perfectly for you. On His cross, He paid the penalty you owe God for your sin. With His blood, He has washed you clean. In the waters of Holy Baptism, this Savior has made you a participant in His death and His resurrection. Through the Word about Him, preached and taught by the Holy Spirit, He has given you saving faith in all that He has done for you. Through Holy Communion, He feeds you again and again on His body and blood and gives you the forgiveness and new life He gives as pure, free gift.

Jesus is God Who left the comforts of heaven and became the last of all, the servant of all, on the cross, so that in His rising, not only would the Father give Him the name above all names, but also give those who trust in Him and His Gospel, life with God now and forever. The gospel sets us free from trying to measure up. Whether we come in first or come in last is unimportant to the follower of Jesus, so long as we each run our races with Jesus as our King and Savior. Jesus, “the best there ever was” more than measures up for us. When we trust in Him, our race is already won and we can confidently follow wherever He leads. “But I am baptized!” Martin Luther would shout when accosted by doubts about his salvation. “I belong to Jesus Christ.” Luther knew Jesus was all he needed. Jesus is all we need, too. Amen

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 14

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 13

Grateful!

Earlier today on Twitter, Lutheran layperson Steve Martin (not the comedian) quoted Paul's words in Romans 5:6: "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly."

Then, Steve writes, "If you happen to be ungodly then He died for you."

I had to respond, "That would be me: ungodly by nature, saved by grace through Spirit-given faith in Christ."

When, as an atheist, I observed the way the God we meet in Jesus was not just real, but also living and active in the lives of ordinary people in what was then my wife's home church, I was moved.

When I realized that He died and rose and was still calling and reaching out in love to someone like me who was so ungodly as to reject His very existence, I was overwhelmed.

I thank God that Christ died for the ungodly. That's the only reason I have hope in the midst of this world and hope for the world to come.

Rescued!

Below you'll find two things. First, video of yesterday's modern worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Then, below that, the text of yesterday's message. Have a good week. God bless you!

Mark 9:14-29
From time to time, news outlets report the stories of pastors or church members who die from snake bites incurred during their congregations’  worship services. Typical is an incident reported seven-and-a-half years ago from Middlesboro, Kentucky and the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus’ Name. Pastor Jamie Coots handled a rattlesnake during worship when he was bitten by the snake. He refused treatment at the church and went home. By the time he and his wife got to their house, he was unconscious. But when an EMS arrived, the pastor’s wife signed a form refusing medical treatment for her husband. Within an hour, Pastor Coots was dead.

Why would anyone go out of their way to handle a rattlesnake? People like Pastor Coots would point to Mark 16:17-18, where Jesus says of His followers: “In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” (Mark 16:17-18) Of course, the takeaway from these promises by Jesus is not that we're to go our of our way to prove we have faith and or that we must do them in order to have faith, but that God will provide signs of His power over sin, death, and darkness in those with faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus doesn’t say that your need to handle snakes, drink poison, stand in the middle of traffic, leave your seat belt unfastened and text while you drive, climb onto a motorcycle without a helmet, or adhere the religious laws that the Pharisees were always chastising Jesus for ignoring to prove you have faith. People may fool themselves or fool others into thinking that such behaviors prove that they have faith; but God is never fooled! 

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the devil took Him to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem, about 150 feet above the ground below. Remember how the devil tried to use Old Testament Scripture to try to convince Jesus to prove His faith in God the Father? “‘If you are the Son of God, [the devil] said, ‘throw yourself down. For it is written [and it is, in Psalm 91:11-12]: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands,  so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:6) The devil’s message to Jesus was that if Jesus really believed in the Father and if Jesus really was God the Son, He would throw Himself to the ground, sure that the Father would suspend the law of gravity and spare Him death on impact. Jesus’ response reminds us that no matter how large or small our faith in God, stupid is still stupid and faith is not deliberately enlisting in games of chicken with reality. Jesus replied, ““It is also written [and it is, in Deuteronomy 6:16]: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7)

As our Gospel lesson for today, Mark 9:14-29, begins, Jesus is returning with Peter, James, and John, from the mountain on which Jesus was transfigured while Moses and Elijah appeared to talk with Jesus and God the Father told the three disciples, “This is My beloved Son; listen to Him.” (Mark 9:7) At the base of the mountain, the disciples are squabbling with teachers of the Law. The squabbling is presumably over the fact that when a man brings his demon-possessed son to Jesus and meets only Jesus’ other nine apostles, the apostles say they can’t help the boy. Undoubtedly, the teachers of the Law, always looking for a way to make Jesus out to be a false teacher, jump on this and an argument ensues.

The fact that this situation has arisen at all is a bit surprising. Just a few chapters earlier in Mark’s gospel, we read that the Twelve were sent by Jesus two-by-two on mission journeys in which they “drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” (Mark 6:13) Yet, in our gospel lesson today, the nine apostles who had been on the flatlands while Jesus and the other three were in the heights, told the desperate father of a demon-possessed boy, “Sorry. There’s nothing we can do for you.”

What gives? Just this, I think. The disciples had been sent on their earlier mission by Jesus, empowered by Jesus to bring the good news and signs of His dominion over sin and death. But they’d derived the wrong message from their experiences. They developed not faith in Jesus, but faith in themselves. They’d come to assume that if they were good people or knew about Jesus or said the right words and went through the right motions--in other words, if they complied with certain religious rules--they could handle anything life brought their way. In other words, their faith was in their faith and not in Jesus. No wonder Jesus says, “You unbelieving generation,...how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19)

Jesus then calms the chaos and turns His attention to the boy and his father. “If you can do anything,” the father says to Jesus, “take pity on us and help us.” (Mark 9:22) Jesus sees his tentative faith. “‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.” These words of Jesus are often misconstrued. Jesus isn’t telling us we need to have a positive attitude. Or that we must have a monster, never-a-doubt faith. Nor does Jesus mean that we will necessarily get everything we want when we pray. Jesus Himself would later pray in the Garden of Gethsemane that somehow His work of saving us could be accomplished without His having to go to the cross and die. But He also tells the Father, “Not my will, but Your will be done.” Listen, friends: God hears our prayers offered in Jesus’ name when our faith is weak and when it’s strong. When we’re helpless enough to own our need of God, casting aside all thoughts of of placing faith in our faith or our virtues or our goodness, turning in desperation to Christ alone, our prayers have power. Self-confidence in faith or prayer is an oxymoron. Only prayer and faith that put their trust in Jesus, however weak our trust may be, is worthy of even being called “faith” or “prayer.” That’s why what the father says to Jesus next in our lesson is so powerful: “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24) Now, that translation isn’t the best. More literally, he prays to Jesus: “I believe; rescue me despite my unbelief.” “I believe; rescue me despite my unbelief.”

Folks, let me tell you something you may have heard before: We are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone! Don’t let anyone tell you what you have to do to gain salvation or make sure God hears your prayers. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, has already done everything necessary for you to be saved from sin and death and to be a child whose prayers are offered to heaven in Jesus’ name. Baptized believers know that’s true! Faith is not a human decision, but a gift from God given to us through the Word and the Sacraments. We are not rescued from sin and death, nor are our prayers heard by God, because of our religious works or by our playing chicken with death like the snake-handler churches or doing some other religious ritual. Our prayers are not heard by God because we have a self-confident faith in our faith. We are daily called to be like the desperate man in today’s Gospel lesson, turning to Jesus in trust, whatever the deficiencies of our faith, and knowing that, since we cannot save ourselves, we need Jesus to save us: from sin, death, darkness, and ourselves. In these days, I can’t think of a more apt or necessary or truthful prayer that we could offer than the one one offered by the father today, the prayer Jesus heard and answered, “I believe; rescue me despite my unbelief.” You can be sure that the Savior Jesus Who has already died and risen for you, will hear such prayers and answer them. Amen