Gospel for today: Mark 9:15-29
14When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” 17Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak;18and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.” 19He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” 20And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. 22It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” 23Jesus said to him, “If you are able! —All things can be done for the one who believes.” 24Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” 25When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” 26After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” 27But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. 28When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” 29He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father and our savior Jesus Christ.
You all probably know that John and I love movies. We sort of have different taste in movies, kind of
a Mars/Venus thing, but there are many that we both enjoy, and we purchase DVDs
of those to enjoy at home for a second or third or subsequent viewing as the
mood strikes us. At any rate, one of the movies we both enjoyed a lot from the
last ten years or so was the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Me, because like most
people my age, I’d read the books years before and just thought they were
wonderful, and John because he likes action movies. So, in anticipation of The
Hobbit coming out at the end of this year, we’ve watched the Lord of the Rings
movies again lately.
As we were watching The
Return of the King, the last one of the trilogy, I being an English major watched
it in the light of the classic Hero’s Journey plot. And I wondered, what might
a movie of Jesus’ life and ministry look like? We’ve all seen the old classics—the
1960s King of Kings comes to mind. It seems to me that the Hollywood versions
of biblical stories have usually depicted Jesus as sort of a wimpy,
otherworldly sort of guy. Really, that’s understandable, considering that he
was God and all—you would expect him to be kind of otherworldly. But I do
wonder what someone like Peter Jackson, the masterful director of the Lord of
the Rings and the Hobbit, would do with a great, epic story like the life of
Jesus of Nazareth.
Today’s gospel story is one
that would be a perfect movie scene. It’s pure drama . . . Jesus walking into the
scene of a bunch of people arguing. A man begging for healing for his son, who
is possessed of a demon who throws him into the fire and into the water.
Conventional wisdom says this boy was probably epileptic, but in our movie
version, we’d go with the demon. The father begs “help my unbelief” and Jesus
calls the demon out, the demon shrieks, the boy falls down as if dead . . . can
you imagine it, as filmed by Peter Jackson? The dirt and the grime, the demon
looks like an Orc . . . What a great movie.
Imagining that leads us to
the very logical question, why not? Why wouldn’t someone like Peter Jackson get
hold of the story of Jesus and film it? This is great stuff! It’s exciting! I
don’t know the answer to that question, but I’m betting that film is never
going to be made, at least not by Peter Jackson. But it’s an exciting thought.
Which leads me to the next
question: Why aren’t we Christians more excited about this stuff? If we actually
read the story of Jesus of Nazareth in a way other than in bits and pieces on
Sunday mornings, I’ll bet that we’d find it’s a great story. A child whose
birth was foretold, sought by magi, wise beyond his years, growing up in a
backwater, then a young man with an itinerant ministry full of healings and
resuscitations, walking on water, and finally the drama of the crucifixion and
resurrection. And to top it all off, the very best part, it’s a true story. We
should be excited about this. Instead, what do we do? We read the scriptures
and say the prayers in this draggy monotone, we put tradition and religiosity
in place of a true, living faith, and we don’t ever stop to think about the
reason we’re here.
The life and ministry of
Jesus was the most radical event in history. Not just religious history, not
just Christian history, or church history. I’m talking history, from the Big
Bang to this second. Jesus was Immanuel, God with us, the incarnation, and his
life, his ministry, his death, and most importantly, his resurrection, was for
us. For you, for me, for humankind. He came because there was no other way for
us humans to enter the kingdom of heaven, the presence of God, to be cleansed
of our sinful human nature. And the continuing miracle, the one we take for
granted, don’t even think about, is that through the means of grace, through
the water of baptism and the eucharist, and through the word, he continues to
come to us, over and over again.
Are we excited about that?
Doesn’t seem like it, does it? We should be. We should be so excited about it
that fulfilling the great commission is as simple as waking up in the morning.
Go ye therefore and tell everyone. I am as guilty or even more guilty of not
doing that than anyone. I could say that my spiritual background
hinders me, and that’s probably true to an extent, and I am the first to admit
that evangelism, if that’s what you want to call it, is NOT my gift. But the
real problem is, I as much as anyone, lose the fire, the passion, the
excitement, about Jesus all too easily. And when that excitement is gone, the
proverbial light goes under the bushel, and the reason we do any of this stuff
that we do in the name of Christ becomes duty and drudgery rather than joy. We
come to church out of duty and a vague sense of guilt. We visit the sick
because we feel like we “should”. We volunteer for various worthy causes
because that’s what Christians do. And even though we may not be telling people
about Jesus, like the song says, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Okay, so the point of all this
is not to induce guilt. It’s to challenge everyone here, including myself, to
recapture that excitement about Jesus, or maybe find it for the first time. It
may not be the easiest thing to do, but Jesus always recommends prayer to bring
a thing about, as he mentioned in the gospel today. Delve into the Bible, drag
out whatever devotional books you might have, and pray for the excitement about
Jesus, and for the boldness to share that with others.
Make no mistake, we are at a
crossroads in history. We Christians have been far too complacent for far too
long. It's easy for us to blame the decline of Christianity on the rise of secularism, the liberal media, the government which outlawed prayer in schools, but to find those really responsible, we should look in the mirror. I will repeat: We Christians have been far too complacent for far too long. If we continue in this vein, we are in real danger of the most important
event in human history, the most important person to ever walk this earth,
being completely forgotten by those he came to save.
Amen.
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