2014 Lenten Devotional

March 10, 2014

By Rev. Katie Russell

Mark 9:14-29

In this story from the Gospel of Mark, the disciples seek Jesus’ help in healing a boy.  The boy’s father tells Jesus that the son has had a violent “spirit” since his birth.  The man brought the boy to Jesus’ disciples, who could not heal him.  “If you are able to do anything,” the man asks, “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!’”

And so Jesus rebuked the spirit and it left the boy.

Often this story emphasizes the faith of the disciples, who are criticized by Jesus for failing to heal the boy on their own.  It is also interpreted as a story about prayer, for the narrative concludes with Jesus telling the disciples that they could not cast out the spirit because it is the “kind that can come out only through prayer.”

But I have most often been intrigued by the father, who speaks one of the truest lines I have ever read in the holy scriptures:

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

It’s the cry of a desperate parent, a declaration of faith and yet a confession of doubt.  It’s a paradoxical statement and such an honest one.  It notes that our faith is full of paradoxes:
      That Jesus was “born of Mary” and yet he existed from the beginning of time
      That we doubt and question and yet in these times our faith often grows stronger
      That Christ was crucified and yet He lives
      That we may be confident “in things not seen” and yet not have all the answers
      That we may “believe” and yet still have “unbelief”
I’m not sure that there is a more honest statement of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

The season of Lent is a great time to face our paradoxes.  We can use these 40 days to recommit ourselves to belief:  to follow Jesus, to learn from him, to gather at the Table with him, to heal and minister alongside him.  But it is also a time to confess when we—like the earliest disciples--have denied him, betrayed him, run away from him, or disappeared silently into the crowd.

The Lenten season is a time to cry out in prayer:  “I believe; help my unbelief!”