When Jesus, Peter, James, and John approached the other disciples, they saw a large crowd surrounding them and legal experts arguing with them. 15 Suddenly the whole crowd caught sight of Jesus. They ran to greet him, overcome with excitement. 16 Jesus asked them, “What are you arguing about?”
17 Someone from the crowd responded, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, since he has a spirit that doesn’t allow him to speak. 18 Wherever it overpowers him, it throws him into a fit. He foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and stiffens up. So I spoke to your disciples to see if they could throw it out, but they couldn’t.”
19 Jesus answered them, “You faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I put up with you? Bring him to me.”
20 They brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a fit. He fell on the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth. 21 Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been going on?”
He said, “Since he was a child. 22 It has often thrown him into a fire or into water trying to kill him. If you can do anything, help us! Show us compassion!”
23 Jesus said to him, “‘If you can do anything’? All things are possible for the one who has faith.”
24 At that the boy’s father cried out, “I have faith; help my lack of faith!”
25 Noticing that the crowd had surged together, Jesus spoke harshly to the unclean spirit, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you to come out of him and never enter him again.” 26 After screaming and shaking the boy horribly, the spirit came out. The boy seemed to be dead; in fact, several people said that he had died. 27 But Jesus took his hand, lifted him up, and he arose.
28 After Jesus went into a house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we throw this spirit out?”
29 Jesus answered, “Throwing this kind of spirit out requires prayer.” (Common English Bible)
“Sanctuary at Sixty: Five Acts of Worship to Make a Space a Sanctuary,” Week Four
Whenever I drive by the Whataburger down 280 from here, I think of Patrick Mahomes.
Not because I particularly like Whataburger—give me Shake Shack or Milo’s any old time—but because my hometown’s star quarterback does. So much so, in fact, it was reported that when he signed his blockbuster re-up contract to remain in Kansas City, it was stipulated that Kansas City would finally get its own Whataburger.
Mahomes has brought much more than Whataburger to Kansas City—and I don’t just mean a Super Bowl trophy either. And I know I am talking about my football team here, and not Alabama or Auburn, but bear with me a moment longer. Mahomes was in the news last month for cutting the ribbon on the newly renovated Martin Luther King Jr. Park, which is specifically designed to be accessible for children of all sorts of physical and mental abilities.
The park itself looked amazing, and children living with disabilities have long been left out of the design of such outdoor spaces. The bill to make the park fully accessible was a cool $1 million, which Mahomes’ foundation footed.
And that is where the principle of participation—or for our purposes, stewardship comes in. One park, meant for all children, regardless of ability, is a million dollars. A child’s wellbeing is well worth that price, but doing the right thing can be expensive—materially, emotionally, socially. Doing what is convenient, on the other hand, is often much cheaper.
So, how do we cultivate the resources to do what is right? Can we, or should we, rely on larger-than-life philanthropists? What role does the state have to play in all this? And can the church see projects like this as true kingdom-building missions meant to afford dignity to all of God’s children, like the boy here in Mark 9 whose father brings him to Jesus after the disciples fail to make him well?
This is a new sermon series for a special moment in Valley’s history, the 60th anniversary of our Gothic revival sanctuary, which was completed in October 1961. We celebrated the 70th anniversary of Valley’s planting back in the spring, and this sermon series mirrors that as a five-week celebration, but we will be focusing on the acts of worship that set this space apart as a sanctuary. Our order of worship can be broken down into five such acts, right in order: praise, prayer, proclamation, participation, and finally, partaking.
Each of these acts is interwoven into multiple parts of our worship service, but each of them come to the forefront at a different moment in our order of worship. We began this series two weeks ago by talking about the act of praise, which is at the forefront with our call to worship and, appropriately enough, our hymn of praise (you can’t accuse us of false advertising!). Two weeks ago, we moved into an act of worship that, again, is integrated into the totality of our worship service but is specifically named in our opening prayer or invocation and the pastoral prayer: the act of prayer.
Last week, we moved into the act of worship that entails the children’s message and the sermon: proclamation, specifically of God’s Word. And today, we arrive at what comes after proclamation: the active participation in the Body of Christ and the building of God’s kingdom here with the voluntary and sacrificial giving of our tithes and offerings. We also call that stewardship.
After a full year at Valley, I have quickly learned that stewardship is one of this congregation’s strongest gifts. In a year that has wreaked havoc with our health, sociability, and livelihoods, we are *ahead* of our year-to-date projections for both pledges and loose offerings, and not by a little, either—by a few thousand dollars. Meanwhile, giving to outreach and mission is also above our year-to-date projections, while our spending on overhead is below. Honestly, as your minister I feel like I just need to wind y’all up and let y’all do your thing here as we begin our stewardship season.
But lets talk about stewardship for a minute or two from a place of not just material abundance, which our culture does a good enough job of glorifying without our help, and talk about the spiritual abundance that is necessary to do right by whatever material abundance we may be fortunate enough to experience.
Because we do still live in a deeply stratified world of haves and have-nots, and that is not a world which pleases God. To receive God’s praise, faith in our hearts or in our heads is not enough. The faith must also be in our hands with which we bless the world and build the kingdom.
Which brings us to Mark 9, and the wrenching story of a father desperate for his son to be healed, or exorcised, depending on your theological perspective. Crucially, by the time this father comes to Jesus, he reports that Jesus’s disciples had already attempted to cure his son and failed miserably. And therein lies our first stewardship lesson from this text: the disciples could stand to benefit much more than they do from the spiritual richness that comes from their proximity to Jesus.
Perhaps this should come as no real surprise to us. Mark’s Gospel is as much a narrative of failed discipleship as anything else. The disciples receive at least marginally better press in the other three Gospels, but Mark’s verdict is unequivocal: the disciples consistently, time and again, fail to do right by their own spiritual riches from being Jesus’s most intensive students.
Which brings us to Jesus’s response to the boy’s father, which is just wild when you consider its implications for the disciples: “All things are possible for one who believes.” Jesus is implying that His disciples’ own belief is insufficient, because they did not make the healing possible! He is calling out His disciples without gratuitously dragging them by name.
And for me, at least, it makes the father’s plaintive cry in response all the more heart-rending. “I believe, help me in my unbelief!” Like the disciples, the father wants so very much to believe. Unlike the disciples, he is humble enough to know that he needs help in order to step into belief more fully. He is able and willing to ask for help in his moment of desperation, and Jesus, naturally, provides it.
A parent pleading for their child is a parent willing to forego their own dignity for the sake of their child, and as a father that weighs on me tremendously. But of all the characters in this saga, can we see that the best steward in this story—aside from Christ Himself—is in fact this father? Because the net result of such a deep expenditure of the father’s dignity and emotions is…a healed child. This father gave sacrificially of his own energy to seek his child’s healing. He is the only one sacrificing something in this story, and that sacrifice results in a better world for at least one little child.
I’ve no doubt this came at great cost to the father in the form of stress, emotional turmoil, probably economically as well because he’s not working during the time he is traveling to Jesus, so he’s not earning any wages for himself and his family. We can, and should, see this father as an example of sacrificial stewardship, one which results in a healthier human being. But it was probably expensive.
I’ve similarly no doubt that, say, a playground purposefully designed for all children of varying abilities will result in healthier children as well. But it came at a cost, a million-dollar price tag. All our schools, hospitals, and more that have been so overwhelmed these past eighteen-plus months by the covid-19 pandemic, they come at a cost too. And the teaching and care the teachers and doctors and nurses all provide have come at increasing costs to them personally. Much like the father of this boy in Mark 9, they carry with them profound amounts of stress, anxiety, worry, even losses of dignity in the face of hostility from others.
And when it comes at the hands of another person’s cruelty or unkindness, sacrifice stops being kingdom-building and simply becomes painful. That isn’t stewardship. That isn’t pleasing to God. All things become possible when we are willing to sacrifice for one another out of goodness, out of love, out of a sense of obligation like a parent has for their child. All things become possible when we can humble ourselves before God with our unbelief and cry out, “I believe, help me!”
When we are helped in our unbelief, a second miracle happens. The first is the miracle of the healthy child, a miracle I look forward to anew with the news of a safe and effective vaccine for children over five. Too many of us have chosen unbelief in such a miracle as a vaccine, and we still need help in our unbelief in order to be good stewards of one another’s lives. That is the second miracle.
So like the boy’s demon, may our unbelief be spoken to, addressed, and finally exorcised for good so that we might stand firm on the belief that the God who made all of us also desires so deeply what is best for all of us.
We, helped in our unbelief, can turn and help others in our own stewardship that comes from our belief in a God who is good, who is everlasting to everlasting, and who loves us so much we can scarcely begin to fathom it.
I believe, help me in my unbelief so that all things may indeed be possible.
By the grace of God, may it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
September 26, 2021