Help My Belief

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

May 17, 2015

Confirmation Sunday

Help My Belief

Mark 9:14-24

When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them,

and some scribes arguing with them.

When the whole crowd saw [Jesus],

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.”

[Jesus] 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.”

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 [the father] 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,

have pity on us and help 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.”

A seed,

so tiny,

planted deep, out of sight,

waiting,

patiently,

waiting to sprout.

What could it be?

What could it become?

A  beautiful, fragrant flower?

A bright red tomato?

A towering maple tree?

A simple blade of grass?

Whatever it might be,

it needs help,

help to sprout,

help to become what it was created to be.

It needs good soil;

it needs water;

it needs nourishment;

it needs light;

and it needs time.

It is remarkable, when you think about it:

dig a hole in the ground,

bury a seed in it,

cover it up,

and deep in darkness,

it will awaken;

it will send its shoots out,

its tendrils up,

as if it knows just where the light is,

pushing up, up, through the soil

up to the light,

up to where new life awaits.

We have a seed planted within us, you and I,

the seed of faith,

the seed God plants in each of us,

waiting to take root,

waiting to sprout,

waiting to be watered and fed,

waiting to grow.

God plants, but then we help;

we help one another water the seeds within us,

nurture, nourish and feed the seeds,

encourage them.

Usually the older tend the younger,

but certainly that’s not always the case;

the young can tend the old as well,

as we learned last week when our youngest singers

taught us so joyfully.

But we older disciples do have a responsibility

to our younger disciples

to help their seeds of faith sprout,

nurturing them by teaching,

encouraging,

guiding,

helping,

listening,

reassuring,

accepting,

praising.

We let them know it is okay for them

to acknowledge their “unbelief,”

as the father did in our lesson.

We all have our struggles with unbelief –

not just when we are young.

To come to church,

to participate actively in church,

is to acknowledge that we each need nurturing,

tending,

help,

from those older

and from those younger.

Our calling is to respond to the plea

we all have throughout our lives,

every one of us,

which is not so much, “help my unbelief”

as much as it is, “help my belief!”

“Help my belief”

Or, to put another way:

“Help me to grow in faith;

Help me to learn about God;

help me to learn about Christ,

to learn more about Christ,

to learn the real Christ,

rather than the storybook Christ,

the Hollywood Christ;

Help me to learn about

the Christ of the Gospels.”

“Help me to learn about love and grace;

Help me to learn about the Spirit within me.

Help me so I can grow fully into

the person God created me to be,

the person God hopes for me to be.

Help me to learn,

Help my belief.”

We Christians have a mixed record

tending the field of faith.

We are to feed with the word,

the written word we call Scripture,

and even more so, the living Word,

our Lord Jesus Christ.

But our history shows how easy we’ve found it

to take the written and living words

and grind them into a bitter sausage,

something with little nourishment,

something far different from what God intended.

Dogma, creeds, affirmations,

adamant statements of faith we’re told we must accept,

interpretations of Scripture grounded neither in

grace nor love,

all larded with self-righteousness,

arrogance,

and a little too much certainty.

The result has too often been,

as the Anglican bishop Charles Raven once put it,

a church that’s “a poor advertisement for its Lord,”

a church with disciples who wield the word

more as a weapon of judgment

superiority,

divisiveness,

separateness.

If the seeds of faith are tended

with the love of God given us in Christ,

the grace of God given us in Christ,

then we’ll yield good fruit.

We’ll yield what the apostle Paul called

the fruits of the Spirit:

“love and joy,

peace and patience,

kindness and generosity,

faithfulness and gentleness,

and self-control.”

(Galatians 5:23)

The great American preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick

whose beliefs were tended as a young man

growing up in my hometown of Buffalo,

lamented that  “Among the most tragic factors in history

is the propensity of religion to make things matter

that intrinsically do not matter in the least…

Religion can make triviality terrific…,

religion can sanctify meanness,

make little things holy…”

resulting in “prejudices, partisanships,

and parochialisms…

[which can] ruin us.”

The seeds that should have grown strong and healthy

become stunted, warped.

Starved of proper nourishment,

they yield a bitter fruit.

Fosdick, whose words seem prophetic,

written as they were almost a century ago,

tells us that the music playing in the background

as we tend the seeds,

tend the plants,

nurture one another,

“should [be] a symphony played on the theme

of the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians”

Most of us know those words well,

words about love.

But not love limited to a couple

about to be married,

which is often the context

in which we hear that passage.

When Paul wrote those words,

he was not thinking about marriage;

he was thinking about love in its broadest, widest,

most comprehensive sense,

the love of God given in Jesus Christ.

The music that should play then has as its lyrics,

“ Love is patient;

love is kind;

love is not envious or boastful

or arrogant

or rude.

[Love] does not insist on its own way;

it is not irritable or resentful;

it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, …

[Love] bears all things,

believes all things,

hopes all things,

endures all things

[for] Love never ends.”

(1 Corinthians 13)

This is what we are called to teach,

for these words,

and our actions reflecting them,

our lives demonstrating them, living them,

will nurture belief,

nurture faith,

not just in our young people,

like our confirmands,

but in all of us,

ourselves included.

Even the tallest, oldest, biggest tree in the forest

is still growing,

the work that got started in the tiny seed it once was

is never done.

Our roots always need strengthening,

our arms can always reach higher into the sky,

higher toward the light.

“Help my belief,”

is what our young people say to us.

“Help my belief,”

is what we say to one another.

“Help my belief,”

so that we can understand what Jesus means

when he says,

“All things can be done for the one who believes.”

“Help my belief”

so we can give our lives more fully,
more completely to our Lord.

I believe.

Help my belief.

AMEN