Today's Sermon

 

"Spiritually Tough – The “We Are” Series"

 

Mark 9: 17b-29
17 “Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18 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.”

19 He 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.” 20 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. 21 Jesus asked the father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. 22 It 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.”

23 Jesus said to him, “If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.”

24 Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

25 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!” 26 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.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand.

28 When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”

29 He said to them, “This kind can come out only through prayer.”

Spiritually Tough – The “We Are” Series

            “Teacher, I brought you my son.”  One time, when my son was still small enough for me to hold, he had a particularly bad asthma episode.  It was to the point where we were told to bring him to the Emergency Room. I’m usually a follow the rules, don’t make waves, definitely wait your turn kind of person, but when you can see the skin of your child being pulled in between his ribs because of labored breathing, something takes hold of you.  I walked in, held him up and said, “He’s having trouble breathing.”  Wow, did they respond fast.  Even those of us may not radiate it, have a toughness inside us when we’re holding something we love. 

            Today, we begin a series on “Who We Are.”  We’re doing this because we are the kind of Christians who are very good at saying who we are not.  Listen to yourself if you reveal your faith to someone you meet:  “But I’m not like…”  “I don’t think…”  “No I don’t either…”  We are quick to eschew dogma and strict doctrine and say what we don’t believe.  There’s great liberation in that, particularly for Christians who were really oppressed by the faith of their childhood. However, it’s one thing to be set free; it’s another to have a sense of then where to go or what to be about once you’re out.

            To be fair, it’s tougher to have a tight elevator speech about your faith when your faith is not black and white, when it allows nuance, question, and mystery.  Catch phrases can’t quite capture it.  We can say we’re about love, but what does that even mean?  Everyone says that.  We have to give our sense of identity a richer set of terms, build a more robust vocabulary of who we are and who we strive to be as followers of Jesus.  We pull these terms not out of thin air, but out of the tradition itself, from our foundational stories, drawing from aspects overlooked or underemphasized.  We also pull from our experience in the world as a spiritual people today striving to follow the leadings of a present God, because we are not only a religion of dusty pages, but of new chapters. 

            Today, we proclaim that we are a people who are spiritually tough.  When I say toughness—here comes the nuance already—I’m not talking about some outdated macho, disconnected from feelings, bravado.  Think of resilience.  Why not just use that word?  Here, I take the lead of a colleague named Drew Stockstill, Lutheran pastor and Navy chaplain, a gentle soul who wrote helpfully about this biblical text.  In describing the parent who brings their child for Jesus’ healing, he thought “toughness” better captured the kind of active strength it takes to do what they did.  Think of what they had been through, living with, working with and for, worrying about this child who had convulsions, seizures his whole life.  There is real strength in that, hanging in day after day and then when hanging in there wasn’t enough, rising up and going out to make something else happen. 

            Do we recognize this as faith?  Faith isn’t just believing Jesus is the son of God.  (It may not even be believing Jesus is the son of God.)

            A beautiful and beautifully revealing thing happens in the exchange between the parent and Jesus, one that might be encouraging to you, whether you are a parent in the literal sense or not.  This story is a pregnant image of one who carries a love, a priority, a passion, a care and concern, into the world.  They have responsibility and a desire for the wellbeing of “this.”  We all have these things we care about deeply, we are here to deliver, to offer the world.  To be spiritual is to be in touch with what these things are. 

            The parent pleads with Jesus to help.  Jesus says, “All things can be done for the one who believes” (Mk. 9:23), which can also be translated all things, the whole, can be done for the one who trusts, but let’s stick with belief, especially since we have been taught who we are is all about believing.  Once in the presumed safety of the presence of Jesus, this spiritually tough parent cries out, and I imaging crying is just the right word here, crying after all these years, crying after all this frustration, crying at what they admit next, “I believe, help my unbelief” or “I trust, help that I don’t always trust” (v. 24).  Is there a more human statement?  (Is there a more faithful statement, because honesty is the bedrock of spirituality, facing what is?  When you’re in the thick of it, when you’re scared out of your mind, out of options, you don’t sugar coat or workshop your answers; you are raw with your truth.)  I believe.  Help my unbelief.  It takes strength to tell the truth.  This one needs healing, needs to survive, needs to grow.  This parent may waffle in their belief, but they are strong in their faith measured by their strength in doing what needs to be done.

            We who choose to follow this example are likewise faithful.  If asked who we are, we should say we are people who are spiritually strong, we who are often defined by our uncertainty around belief.  That’s a hallmark of Christians of our ilk, which is fine so long as it’s not our solely defining (or “souly” defining) characteristic.  I remember hearing someone once say, “I love this church because here you don’t have to believe anything.”  I appreciate what they meant, but if that’s the best you can say about us, we have to do better.  What can we affirm?  We can affirm being like the parent who brings the child to Jesus for healing, taking in our arms that in our world which is vulnerable, struggling for air, to give it the life it deserves, whether it’s a literal child, a people, a cause, or a righteous idea.  Here, we say, this thing needs divine blessing, and I’m here to make that happen. 

            We are spiritually tough.  We are people willing to commit to what matters.  We are willing to extend ourselves for the sake of another.  We are willing to work for changes that make the world a place where more and more can thrive.  We are strong, even if we are at times uncertain.  Just last week, someone said to me they struggled with the idea of the resurrection, as least as it is often understood, but when they took the resurrection to mean the living out the gospel in daily life, that they could get their head around, that they could get into their heart, and that they could put their might behind. That’s spiritual toughness.  We might have a wide range of beliefs in any one gathering at any one moment, but when we come together to be sure people have enough to eat, a place to call home, safe schools, real opportunities, human rights, dignity, we share the same faith.  We may have different ideas about how to accomplish those goals.  Part of what spiritually tough people do is committing to figuring out together what right doing looks like. 

            When think of faith in terms of spiritual toughness, you might realize you have quite a bit of it, and you certainly have access to it.  Wouldn’t that be nice if some of you went home today, thinking all these years that you just weren’t faithful, only to realize you have a lot of faith, evidenced by the commitment you’ve had to that which your soul knows is important in this world?  That might be lifechanging because we know—the research backs it up—that faith is good for us physically, emotionally, and, of course, spiritually. It increases happiness or joy, our life-expectancy.  We’ve been handed such a narrow definition of faith that too many think they have failed that test.  You have not failed the test.  You were given the wrong set of questions. 

            Here are better ones:

1. Have you tried to love someone hard to love, not accepted their abuse, but tried to love them?
2. Have you sought to look out for the needs of your neighbor? Have you tried to understand your neighbor, sometimes harder? 
3. Have you given of yourself, broadly understood, in order that others might be made well?

            You have faith.  And, as Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.”   Your tenacity has made you well and the “you” is…plural. It’s what makes us well.

            This kind of faith allows us to face what’s hard, and let’s be honest, so much of life is hard.  I was listening to a podcast recently called “Turning to the Mystics.”  It featured a conversation between interviewer Kirsten Oates and James Finley, who is a therapist, spiritual director, and faculty member at the Center for Action and Contemplation, which many of you know will recognize as the center founded by Richard Rohr.  As part of this series, Oates and Finley were exploring the anonymous 19^thmystical text The Way of a Pilgrim, which I commend to you.  In one moment, Oates shared about her struggle to become pregnant, and what it was like to wrestle with that reality in prayer, what it was like not to have that deepest of prayers answered in the way that she would like.  

            Finley, who is this gentle man—it just oozes through his voice—said to her that yes, what she discovered was that God was inviting her to into a deeper definition of motherhood.  She was to birth something else into the world.  Admittedly, my first reaction was to be taken aback.  I know enough to be careful about telling people so directly what God is trying to tell them, particularly when it comes to something so delicate and so foreign to me as yearning to bear a child. But it was clear by the tenor of conversation that that the two of them had the kind of relationship, the kind of spiritual trust, that Finley could offer such a perspective freely and that Oates would receive it openly.  It was obvious that Finley was in touch with Oates’ journey, for she expressed immediate resonance with his comment.  Yes, there was another kind of mothering to which she was called.  We are all called to a form of mothering in this world just as we are to a kind of fathering, brining something in, caring for, protecting, nurturing something into being.  That’s what God does.

            This is faith, to accept, radically, openly what life presents to us, not tacitly accepting injustice, but acknowledging fully what is, tragedy and all, and then doing something generative with it.  That’s spiritual toughness.  We are spiritually tough when rather than praying harder and harder for what we want, we pray for the ability to do something beautiful with what is.  We are spiritually tough when we do the tender work of exploring what it is our souls really desire.  We are spiritually tough when we pick up what we are carrying, what we love, and bring it to the altar of healing. 

            What do you love?  What are you here to carry into the world?    What pulls out of you a toughness, a strength, a resilience, that you may not have known you had?  What makes you burst through the doors, hold it up and say, “This needs air!” 

            Answer those questions and you will find your toughness.

            Amen.