“The solitude is not meant to make us solitary. It is meant to make us better able to meet and cope with the demands of everyday life.” William Barclay

2.  He finds the disciples arguing with the scribes ­ and probably losing. The scribes were professionals at arguing and debating. I suspect the disciples were on the ropes in front of the people by the time Jesus shows up. The scribes were not the elite like the Sadducees. They were not priests or Pharisees. They were lawyers who spent their lives studying and interpreting the Law for the people. In some ways, they were well respected by the people because without them the people would not have understood the Law. They were more accessible to the people and because of their knowledge had great influence with the people. What they did was important and necessary. We need clear thinking and orthodoxy ­ straight beliefs. There is always the danger of people running off after miracles and personalities. However, as a result of their greater knowledge they had become narrow, elitist and focused on academic squabbles. It’s the great danger of knowledge. It feeds pride and the sense of being special. Whether it was the Gnostics faced by Paul or our own versions of the pride of accumulating knowledge Google and Big Data ­ the unintended consequences of knowledge are separation, disdain and the desire to control people who don’t know what is best for them. The disciples were no match for them and the crowd was both entertained and disgusted.

My guess is they were not arguing with the disciples about their failure to heal the boy. I doubt they had an interest in the boy being healed or not. What was probably more important to them was settling the question posed to Jesus in John 9: “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” The health of the boy was secondary to the exploration of the question and debating to see who was right. If the boy had been healed by the disciples the scribes would lose. If the boy was not healed it didn’t matter because it was the argument that was most interesting to them. Like the disciples in John, their question did not arise from compassion but from curiosity about something. The case of the boy was almost a distraction. What was important was winning the debate with the disciples. Who is wrong? Who sinned? Who is to blame? The boy and the father were forgotten. It’s not unlike some of our debates today. We have professionals
trained to get into the ring with each other and put on a show for the audience ­while the real world is a distraction.

3.  When people see Jesus they are “overwhelmed with wonder” and they rush toward him. It was true then and now. The fights and arguments we perpetuate are often the biggest barriers to people looking for Jesus. Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and others have made careers out of proving the hypocrisies of the church and individual Christians. The press is infatuated with the failures of our leaders whenever it happens. As James says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want.” Paul warns the church to stay away from the “disputers” and those who like to start arguments. “He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and arguments that result in envy, quarreling, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind…” These people not only miss the point but they drive others away from Jesus.

4.  What is the father’s response? He, like the rest of the crowd, want to leave the disputes behind and get beyond the controversies and arguments to Jesus himself. Unlike the associates and the scribes, Jesus has authority. They have education and all the right doctrine but little love or compassion ­ and without love they are, literally, “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” I’ve told you before about the pastor who told me many of them sound so like a bell because they are hollow ­ and it’s that very hollowness that’ makes a bell sound so good. It’s the first time I had heard the word “cavitation” which is the process by which a stream gets up underneath a rock and over the years invisibly eats away the stone until only the surface is showing. In time, the stream washes it away. That is what the pastor was describing to me. It was the cavitation of the ministry that was invisible but fatal. The hollower he became the better he sounded.

5.  I think that is what Jesus is really asking when he says, “What are you arguing about?” Did you not notice this father and his boy? And when he says, “O, unbelieving and faithless generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” I think he is addressing not the father but the scribes and the disciples.

In the New Testament the word for “faith” can be used in a couple of ways. It can mean saving faith that only comes from God. It can mean belief and trust in God that comes from us. It can also describe a set of doctrines and beliefs. It is a description of what we call today “faith-­based” organizations or the Christian faith. It means we have identified with a group of people with a certain name or set of beliefs and traditions.

In some ways, we can have a well­-defined set of beliefs and doctrines that we call our faith tradition but have very little actual faith in God. We can have a group to which we belong but we are an unbelieving generation ourselves. What makes for an unbelieving generation? Several things probably.

The pride of knowledge makes us less interested in trust.

An ever increasing skepticism about everyone and everything.

Our own experiences in the world. Our own disappointments and misgivings.

Our doubts about there being anything trustworthy.

Our deep interest in security.

Our being tentative about everything because things may change. We don’t settle.

Our fear of being wrong and choosing the losing side.

Being constantly bombarded with people arguing their position. We are weary of persuasion.

All of these things together creates an unbelieving generation and it is as true today as it was then. There was no faith in God ­ only in their traditions and arguments.

6.  However, his response is not to focus on their faithlessness but to turn to the father and say “Bring the boy to me.”

I like the way William Barclay put it. “How did he meet the moment of despair? “Bring the boy to me,” he said. When we cannot deal with the ultimate situation, the thing to do is to deal with the situation which at the moment confronts us. It was as if Jesus said, “I do not know how I am ever to change these disciples of mine, but I can at this moment help this boy. Let me get on with the present task, and not despair of the future.”

Again and again that is the way to avoid despair. If we sit and think about the state of the world, we may well become very depressed; then let us get to action in our small corner of the world. We may sometimes despair of the church; then let us get to action in our own small part of the church. Jesus did not sit appalled and paralyzed at the slowness of men’s minds; he dealt with the immediate situation.

The surest way to avoid pessimism and despair is to take what immediate action we can­­ and there is always something to be done.”

7.  The demon has been with him since childhood and it was intent on taking his life. While what is described here would be diagnosed as epilepsy today there are still some demons that start off in our lives as tendencies when we are young, become habits and when they work their way into our nature they become spirits that control us. A sharp tongue becomes a spirit of sarcasm. Worry and doubt become a spirit of worry. Fears turn into a spirit of fear. The intention of such spirits is always the same ­ to steal life and to kill the best in us. Such a spirit so completely works its way into our lives that it becomes life threatening and takes us over completely. And some healings do almost kill us. So much of our life as been taken over by something that taking it away makes us start over completely or realize how much of our life has been wasted by being built around something that controls us so completely.

8.  Jesus takes the boy and his father off to the side and asks questions. He focuses on them alone apart from the crowd. He asks questions. He is totally focused on the father and the boy. Jesus had the ability to give himself completely to whoever he was with. Henri Nouwen called it the “ministry of presence.” Tim Madigan wrote a book about his relationship with Fred Rogers,­ Mr. Rogers. He writes that Fred Rogers had the same gift. Everything was set aside to focus on whoever he was with. He asked questions not out of curiosity but interest. He actually wanted to know the person he was with. Tim said it was unsettling at first because, as a reporter, his questions were ways to get the story or to buy time. Personal attention from a celebrity or powerful person is always a surprise…but imagine the creator of the universe saying, “Let’s step over here to the side and just talk. I’d like to know more about you.” His questions are not diagnostic trying to decide what kind of miracle to administer but one of genuine interest. “How long have you been living with this?” It was not “what’s the problem?” but “tell me about yourself.”

But, like his encounter with Jairus whose son is desperately ill or with Lazarus who dies because Jesus waits to come, there is a delay with all the questions. The boy is on the ground, the father is desperate and Jesus is asking questions. I think Jesus waits because he is as interested in the father as the son. He is not controlled by the urgent even when it looks like he is pushing people to their breaking point ­which he sometimes does. He pushes them beyond themselves. He waits.

In some ways, this explains his comment that “this kind can come out only by prayer” because it is a discipline of prayer that gives you the ability and the faith to wait. Only prayer gave Jesus the wisdom and the will to delay. The ability to focus on one person when surrounded by a crowd demanding attention and a problem that must be fixed. We want to rush in and fix things for everyone. We don’t know how to wait. We don’t have the confidence to wait. I think God was after more than healing the boy. I think he was after the father as well…and that required waiting. It takes prayer to know how to wait and see the whole. It’s not healing that takes prayer but discernment. The disciples could heal (look at Mark 6) but they could not wait. They could only focus on the boy, not the father as well. It is the result of prayer that allowed Jesus to know how to delay in the midst of the crisis and to know how to push a person to their limit without breaking them. Just as much of this story is about the father as it is the son.

9.  At the end, after the boy has been healed, the disciples are still thinking about why they had failed. I think part of the answer is found immediately following the story. What were their deepest concerns? What were they continuing to argue about? Was it the boy and his father? No, it was who among them was the greatest. I believe it is the same pride and scrambling for recognition that keeps us from understanding what Jesus is after in our lives. Again, William Barclay says it well.

“There is a deep lesson here. God may have given us a gift, but unless we maintain close contact with him it may wither and die. That is true of any gift. God may give a man great natural gifts as a preacher, but unless he maintains contact with God, he may in the end become only a man of words and not a man of power. God may give a man a gift of music or of song, but unless he maintains contact with God, he may become a mere professional, who uses the gift only for gain, which is a dreary thing. That is not to say a man should not use a gift for gain. He has a right to capitalize any talent. But it does mean that, even when he is so using it, he should be finding joy in it because he is also using it for God. It is told of Jenny Lind, the famous Swedish soprano, that before every performance she would stand alone in her dressing-­room and pray, “God, help me to sing true to­night.”

Unless we maintain this contact with God we lose two things however great our gift may be.

(i) We lose vitality. We lose that living power, that something plus which makes for greatness. The thing becomes a performance instead of an offering to God. What should be a vital, living body becomes a beautiful corpse.

(ii) We lose humility. What should be used for God’s glory we begin to use for our own, and the virtue goes out of it. What should have been used to set God before men is used to set ourselves before them, and the breath of loveliness is gone.

Here is a warning thought. The disciples had been equipped with power direct from Jesus, but they had not nurtured power with prayer, and power had vanished. Whatever gifts God has given us, we lose them when we use them for ourselves. We keep them when we enrich them by continual contact with the God who gave them.”

I spent some time this week with a couple whose son took his own life and I know how many times they have read this account thinking it was their faith that was lacking. I now know many more parents who have lost children and believe they have died or remained sick due to some sin of the parent and they agonize over it. If only they had prayed more. If only they had believed more. That is why I don’t think this story is about finding a formula for great faith. I think that would be cruelty. I think it is like the story of the rich young ruler. It was about God’s encounter with a particular person ­not a universal application. So, I don’t want anyone in a similar situation leaving this morning thinking they just need to have more faith and God will heal their child or their spouse or loved one. It’s not a one size fits all story.

If there is anything universal about the story it is about how those of us with knowledge overlook people and become engaged in meaningless disputes. It is about our losing our relationship with Christ in our desire for greatness and position and esteem. It is about our slipping into faithlessness and disbelief. I cannot explain why some are healed and some are not but I can only trust ­not in formulas and lists of magic practices ­but say with Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.”