“Faith and the Well-Being of Children”

October 19, 2008

Lamentations 3:22-25

Mark 9:14-29

In some small ways this morning we are participating in the National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths—a weekend-long interfaith event sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund. Some of the children in our church school have been learning about Jesus and the children on recent Sundays. We wanted to give them an opportunity to share some of what they were discovering. And the day developed from there.

It’s always good to have children and youth worshipping with us. They bring a special blessing—and I don’t use that word lightly—when they help in the leadership of our worship. They increase our well-being.

We worry about our children—and with good reason:

12.8 million children in the United States—1 in 6, are poor. And as you know, the burden of poverty falls disproportionately on minority children.

9.4 million children are uninsured—an increase of more than one million children over the last two years.

8 of every 10 African American and Hispanic fourth graders and almost 6out of 10 White fourth graders in public schools cannot read at grade level.

Almost 900,000 children are abused or neglected each year in the United States.

We worry about our children. But, really, in this election year, as we continue to fight two wars and with the sudden financial turmoil, some of the issues that affect children directly are not often debated or even discussed.

Concern about children is nothing new, of course. Over and over the gospels tell the same story: a parent runs up to Jesus and asks for help.

We hear the story of a Canannite woman—a Gentile outsider—who sought healing for her daughter from this Jewish healer;

We hear the story of Jarius, the leader of the synagogue, who approached Jesus when his daughter was at the point of death;

And there is the father that we heard about this morning, whose son’s seizures were so violent, so frightening. Entering into this story we learn about faith and about the well-being of children.

The father is beside himself, not knowing what to do. Our hearts break as we hear his story and sense his deep fear. Anyone who has had a seriously ill child knows how he feels. Anyone who looks with compassion at children of this city and this world knows his feeling. We are concerned about our own children and the children around us.

This father is desperate. In his desperation he first brings his son to the disciples of this healer, this Jesus.

And in spite of the power that they had received they are unable to do anything.

I always take a strange comfort in the ineptitude of the disciples as they are presented in the Gospel of Mark. They don’t seem to understand Jesus. They don’t seem to be able to use the power that he has given them.

So there’s some connection between them and us, isn’t there?

Even today the followers of Jesus and their congregations can disappoint. We’re not all that people want us to be. We’re not all that people need us to be. Often we don’t even live up to our own standards. To take an example from this morning’s theme: The pain of the children of the world weighs heavily upon us—and often it seems that as individuals and even as a group we aren’t able to bring about the changes that are so desperately needed.

William Barclay suggests that at such times, one “must press beyond…the servants of Christ to Christ. The church may at times disappoint us, and God’s servants on earth may at times disappoint us. But when we press our way face to face with Jesus Christ,” he concludes, “we are never disappointed”[1]

Of course the church disappoints.

But watch what happens as one person presses forward through disappointment to the living Christ.

The father, worried sick about his son, tells Jesus: “I asked your disciples to heal my son but they could not do so.”

And Jesus, not generally one to suffer fools gladly, not always patient with his feeble followers, cries out: “How much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?”

We discover this Jesus again and again as we read the Gospels:

As fed up with us as we sometimes are with ourselves.

Wanting the world to know that healing he offers, and frustrated by his followers who can’t seem to bring that wholeness to others.

Yet, through the frustration, Jesus hints at healing as he tells the father: “All things can be done for the one who believes.”

If only it were that easy.

Listen in the story and listen in your own heart as faith and doubt collide: “I believe,” the father responds. “Help my unbelief.”

Now, I hear those words in two ways.

We all need some help with our unbelief. O that our unbelief could be made stronger.

We’re all too ready to believe anything. We live in a time of great credulity.

A little more unbelief and we might not have rushed into a war over non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

A little more unbelief and we might have thought twice before mortgaging our nation’s economic future.

Lord, help my unbelief.

At Harvard Divinity School we used to call it a holy skepticism, a sacred doubt. It’s the ability to look at things, not so much with a jaundiced eye, but, well, squinting in order to discern both the real and the phony.

We live in an age when people are ready to believe just about anything. I saw a flier from a church announcing a class that will provide proven tactics for parents. Maybe. But I’ve got my doubts.

O, help our unbelief.

Help our unbelief. Teach us, O God, to have a healthy doubt in the face of all that promises a quick and easy solution to the difficult and enduring problems that beset us.

Help us to be slow to believe all the religious and political and scientific hucksters whose voices are so loud.

There is, of course, another meaning to that prayer: “Help my unbelief.”

This father comes to Jesus and his “if you can do anything” gives voice to his doubt. He comes to Jesus not because he trusts him but because he is willing to try anything.[2]

Gaylord Noyce used to teach at Yale Divinity School. He writes about “people who want to believe but can’t. They drop their children at Sunday school and think for a moment about staying for church themselves, before going home for morning chores or the Sunday supplement. Or they do stay, sitting in the back pews. But they have trouble believing.”[3] Maybe he’s talking about that friend of yours. Maybe he’s talking about you.

So “Help my unbelief,” we cry. Meaning, really, help me to believe. Help me to have

some measure of faith, some trust in the beneficent purpose of the universe, some conviction that God is love and that God loves me. Help me to make some sense out of all that perplexes.

Because, somehow, we recognize that our faith has an impact on the well-being of our children, on the well-being of the children in our community and our world. And so we seek to strengthen our faith, our belief that God does care about what happens in this world.

Here’s what often happens. Men and women who for years had little to do with the church wake up one day and find a child or several children living in their house. Life has changed.

And what are they going to do? Well, some go to church. We come to a congregation such as this hoping—what?—that somehow this will protect us and our children. Or maybe the church will help us to raise them properly, help us to raise them so there will be no problems.

O, help our unbelief. There is no quick solution for the problems children face. Not even in a church. Not even in this church.

Yet, still, help our unbelief. If you are concerned about the well-being of children, first of all take your own faith—and your own doubts—seriously. It’s kind of like the warning that we get about those oxygen masks on airplanes. Put your own on first before you try to take care of those around you.

All of us involved with children and youth—inside or outside our families—have a difficult and sacred task. Those who are raising children, those who teach, those who care for homeless children in Iowa City, who help feed hungry children, who seek the peace of children in places torn by war are engaged in deeply spiritual work. It is rewarding, but you know that it is also demanding.

We will only be effective in what we do as we tend our spirits and nurture the faith that supports our action.

So it is that when the father leaves with his restored son, Jesus speaks to his followers about prayer.

And we all know how difficult that is. Or at least I do. Prayer invites us, however tentatively, to believe.

“All things can be done for those who believe,” Jesus says. And his words here cause us a great deal of confusion. We know very well those things that were not done when we prayed.

In effect, Jesus is inviting the disciples—inviting us—to live closer to God. Prayer will keep and maintain the power that they had received.

William Barclay tells us there is a deep lesson for us here. God may have given us some gift, but unless we maintain close contact with God that gift may wither and die. Unless we maintain this contact with God, we loose two things however great our gift may be.

We loose vitality—that living power that makes for greatness. And we loose humility.[4]

We enrich the gifts that we have received by ongoing contact with the God who gave them. We are not up to the tasks on our own.

We worry about our children. We are never completely secure. And, to our constant fear at any age, neither are our children. We reach out in faith. We pull back in doubt.

All of us involved with children and youth—inside or outside our families—have a difficult and sacred task. Keep at it.

And may God help our unbelief that we might know God’s mercies never come to an end.