Mark 9:14-29

Blind Faith

Mark was very deeply aware of the challenge facing the disciples. It was a call to clear and deep faith, in a world where the whole direction and ethos of the culture militated against such faith.  In earlier similar situations (1:23-28 & 5:1-20) Mark had defined the problem as the crisis of the power of evil, and had illustrated his analysis by the story of an exorcism.  He did the same again.  He recounted a disturbingly graphic and wonderfully enlightening story.

Questions of location had lost interest for Mark. He gave no indication where the event happened.  The presence of scribes would have seemed to indicate Jewish territory, but the site was irrelevant. This story had universal significance. 

Mark 9:14-29 – Jesus Heals a Possessed Boy 

The reaction of astonishment was unexplained. It would perhaps have been more fittingly connected with the preceding narrative (and may have been so at an earlier stage of the developing tradition) or at the conclusion of the incident.

The description of symptoms matched a severe case of epilepsy. Diagnosis was not the issue: Mark and the crowds interpreted it as a case of possession, and it was included here in Mark’s narrative on that assumption.

Jesus saw the crowd’s faithlessness as an expression of the power of evil embedded in the culture.  Confronted with it, Jesus reacted with deep emotion. The faithlessness in question was an issue not simply of lack of faith in the person of Jesus but more specifically in his message. The father’s bringing the boy to Jesus expressed some embryonic faith in the person and power of Jesus. 

The problem of faithlessness had been endemic in Israel from its beginnings. People would not entrust themselves with faith and hope to the vision of God’s Kingdom. Unchecked, its eventual outcome would be the destruction of the People.

The man’s own lack of strong faith was shown in his tentative request to Jesus.  He hoped, and yet at the same time he seemed to doubt Jesus’ capacity to confront and to overcome the evil. Jesus deflected the issue from his own ability to the lack of faith of the boy’s father. The problem confronting Israel was precisely its lack of faith, not some deficiency on Jesus’ part, or on God’s. The lack of faith that things could change, the stubborn maintenance of the “status quo”, prevented the hearing, and spreading, of Jesus’ message of the amazing fertility of inclusive and compassionate love.

Mark’s narrative had so far provided many indications where the faith of friends or family had led to healings and removal of sin (and integration once more into the life of the community)– faith not simply in the person of Jesus but faith that outcomes could be different. Particularly relevant had been the situation of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue and clear symbol of official Judaism (5:35-43).

In contrast to this, lack of faith by Jesus’ own family and townspeople in Nazareth had rendered Jesus impotent.  

The problem of faithlessness assumed centre stage.

For Mark at this stage of the narrative, the father’s struggle to believe became the symbol of the disciples’ inherent resistance. His prayer became a basis of hope, if only it could have become the disciples’ prayer.

(Mark’ reliance on his sources explained perhaps his inconsistency regarding the previous presence or absence of the crowd.)

Jesus’ explicit identification of the evil spirit as the spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing left no doubt about the nature of the evil oppressing the disciples (and Israel).

Extreme need was no problem to Jesus, provided there was faith. The apparent corpse became able to stand.

The word that Mark used to describe Jesus’ action with the boy - lifted him up/raised up - was the same word that would be used to describe the resurrection of Jesus, the crucified one, and perhaps renewed for his readers the question of Peter, James and John as they descended the mountain: “What could rising from the dead mean?”

Mark developed the reflection in an endeavour to probe even more deeply the impasse of the faithlessness precisely of the disciples.

The focus of the narrative had not been Jesus’ ability to cast out demons.  Indeed, Mark made no reference to any reaction of wonder or gratitude by the witnessing crowd. The focus was on the disciples’ impotence: Why could we not cast it out?

When Jesus had sent the disciples out on mission, he had given them authority to cast out devils – and they had successfully done so. To Mark’s mind the demon of faithlessness, the inability to hear, was significantly more entrenched than the demon of illness, and it was the disciples themselves who were its victims.

Jesus made clear that the only solution would be through the disciples’ own deeper conversion. It was the disciples’ own demons of despair, futility and distraction, that blocked their capacity to share Jesus’ vision of hope and to hear his message of real life through integrity.  

For Mark’s own community, this was the problem he wished to expose.  Their own lack of hope in the possibility of the Kingdom in real terms in their own lives and in the world they inhabited prevented their hearing and muted their prophetic voice.

Jesus’ answer to their impasse was prayer: time spent alone in openness to the Spirit of God – the same answer adopted by Jesus in moments of crisis and choice.  This was the first time in the narrative that Jesus had urged the disciples to prayer.  He would do so twice again (14:32 & 38), as they would move on to confront their need to learn to believe when faced with the stark reality of the suffering and struggling Jesus.

In Mark’s mind the profound need for prayer was not simply the crying need of the disciples.  It was the urgent non-negotiable need also of his own community.

Jesus’ ministry in Galilee had finished. Its failure had made a profound impact on him, leading him to see at greater depth the ultimate meaning of his mission.  He had done what he could; yet people by and large had not responded to his hopes, to God’s dream of Kingdom.  He had come to appreciate more clearly the cost of believing. Conversion would mean that people would have to be prepared to die to their own previous assumptions, to all that was familiar, to step beyond the support of their culture and its institutions, to change radically their own ways of relating to each other.  Yet the people would not listen any more.  

Jesus’ alternative was to focus on the one group that was still open to him in love, even if still unbelievably blind and hard-hearted.  He knew that his teaching would have to take shape firstly in his own actions; yet even their meaning would need to be spelt out clearly.  Since his own most instructive activity would be his own death, he had to clarify its meaning before it happened.  It would be too late afterwards.

Next >> Mark 9:30-32