Mark 9:14-29
When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them and some scribes arguing with them. When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak, and 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.” He answered them, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.” And 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. Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, help us! Have compassion on us!” Jesus said to him, “If you are able! All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” When 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!” After 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.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.” Mark 9:14-29 (NRSVUE)
What kind of story is this? A miracle story? Certainly. A parable? Perhaps. An admonition and a warning? Maybe. Did it really happen, or is Mark sending a message to his intended audience? If so, what might it have meant to them? What might we make of it? Curiouser and curiouser.
Context, as always, matters here. The first verses in the passage set the stage. Jesus, Peter, James and John have just come down, literally and emotionally, from the mountain and the Transfiguration to the chaotic scene of the disciples and some scribes surrounded and arguing before a great crowd. Jesus’s arrival immediately draws their attention as he asks what they’re arguing about.
The response comes not from the disciples, but from someone in the crowd whose son suffers from a demon. The father of the boy pleads with Jesus, “...if you are able to do anything, help us! Have compassion on us!” Jesus takes umbrage, “If you are able! All things can be done for the one who believes.” The man responds with words that echo down the millennia, “I believe; help my unbelief!”
Jesus orders the demon out, but the convulsions accompanying the demon’s departure leave the boy apparently dead. Then Jesus, foreshadowing his own triumph over death, lifts the boy up and the son is able to stand.
The miracle story ends here, but Mark adds an intriguing coda in which the disciples ask Jesus privately, why they couldn’t cast out the demon, and Jesus responds, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”
How might we understand this? Paul, writing a dozen and more years before Mark, had to deal with a growing skepticism about Jesus in the absence of the Lord’s return, so we would not be surprised if Mark, writing in the 70’s, had to deal with the same problem. One way to read this passage then is to see Jesus returning from his glorification (the Transfiguration or the Second Coming?) and exasperated to find his followers squabbling with other religious figures while ignoring (and thus lacking the power) to meet the needs of the people Jesus came to save. “You faithless generation,” he says in frustration, “how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you?”
This may or may not be Jesus’s frustration, but it certainly reflects Mark’s. The story is not about a miracle, nor a raising from the dead. No, it’s about a post-Transfiguration Jesus, a post-Resurrection Jesus, admonishing his followers to remain faithful to his teaching--focused on loving our neighbors and maintaining our relationship with God through our actions and our prayers, recognizing and honoring that whatever power we have comes from God.
Questions for Reflection:
- Writing their own gospels a decade and more after Mark, both Matthew and Luke borrow, with modifications, from Mark’s miracle story/parable of the boy with epilepsy. What does their willingness to borrow and alter what had been “handed down” to them suggest about their attitudes toward Mark’s gospel? Was it "sacred scripture" and were they being cavalier with it, or was something else going on?
- How much do all our doubts leave us room to trust God? (Consider here the father’s cry, “I believe; help my unbelief!,” where he paradoxically recognizes the inadequacy of his professed trust while at the same time trusting Jesus to make up for this implicitly acknowledged insufficiency.) If we take our gospels writers with a touch of skeptical realism, need we worry about our relationship with God?
Prayer:
Lord,
We pray for mercy, mercy not just for ourselves, nor just for our neighbors, but for our enemies as well. Give us the power of love that we might share it with all your children. Keep us from our selfish distractions and dogmatic insistence on our own claims while portraying people with other viewpoints as misguided and wrong. Help our unbelief that we might remain close to you. That your will be done on earth as in heaven we pray for peace.
Amen.
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