It just ain’t happening ... (Part 7 - of 12) ...

It just ain’t happening ... (Part 7 - of 12) ... 

Mark ch9v14-29 (to open in a new window, hold control down as you click the link)

Prayer (& Faithfulness): (continued)

Then there is the broader aspect of simply listening to all that you know of God, and allowing God to reveal more of himself and his Way to you in that time of “prayer”. Well, we just looked at an instance of God speaking from Heaven, to reveal his Way, and to give very specific guidance on what to do now: “Listen to my Son, learn from him”. Jesus himself allows God (The Father) to strengthen his understanding of the ultimate reality, the way things are, he discusses how best to serve God etc with those people God sends into his life at that time. The 3 disciples don’t get to do this (much,) yet interesting things happen on the way down the mountainside and Jesus continues to teach them to listen/learn before they speak, and to teach them what to listen for, & who/what to listen to. The disciples are concerned about what “the Teachers of the Law say” & who comes first^[1]. Jesus takes them back to truly listen to what he has already told them & to the scriptures. But when they arrive back down with the other 9 disciples, & we’re back into our story again… the same issues are still relevant. Who/what do they listen to? Will they truly listen to what Jesus has already told them, & what they have seen clear evidence of, and to learn & live from it?

If God’s rule is strong in them they will see the way forward, they will not be tricked by the devil. If it is not, they will be confused by the devil's tricks, and then become powerless. Jesus has been listening, discussing, awake in God’s presence to God’s helps & is strengthened in his understanding of God’s rule & his determination to see God’s rule extended. So he actively listens to what is happening in God’s world. He asks “What’s the trouble?-What are you wanting to know?”. He listens to the response that comes (the dad says his boy has an unclean spirit that stops him speaking etc). He gives a full (and emotional) response! - which starts to make a diagnosis. He still trusts his father, though voicing his frustration at some parts of his plan (like having to stay with these un-faithful people). He takes charge as God’s ruling representative. He looks at the effects/results around him in God’s world. He asks more matter-of-fact questions and listens to the responses, and thinks about them. He listens for indications of faithfulness, or not, in the people around him and helps grow faithfulness. He baits people to grow faithfulness. He acts decisively. He ignores put-downs of him or his work to help grow an evidence based faith in good process. He baits his trainees in allowing them to ask questions  privately & responds with enigmatic answers or puzzles that will help them want to keep learning.

He puts one together with two & gets three. The disciples put one & one together & got an answer of ZERO; because they listened to the unfaithfulness of the boy’s dad, the unfaithful teachers of the Law, and their own faithless fears. They thought that when they sent the unclean spirit out in Jesus’ name, and when it was there again (minutes ?) later, that it mustn’t have gone out, that it was able to STAY there & not do what it was told, that it was STILL there & therefore that it wasn’t worth persisting against & resisting the devil’s apparitions with the knowledge that all of creation must (eventually) do what God’s anointed ruler (Christ) commanded*. They may have been “tricked” by the unclean spirit’s (silent) claim to be unable to understand language (since the boy could not speak) and to be unable to hear (since the boy may not have been able to hear, since that is the way we mostly learn to speak). Jesus has a clear understanding of God’s ultimate rule & thus addresses the unclean spirit (not the boy) with a tag that identifies its “cover” & shows that he is not fooled by it, and then cuts off its tricky retreat, it’s literalistic/legalistic “smart-alec” undermining plan: “Deaf and dumb spirit,” he said, “I order you to come out of the boy and never go into him again!”^[2]

Peter, James or John may well have been able to do this if they had been “praying” with Jesus up the mountain. Jesus might have been able to listen to the boy’s dad & then hand it over to either of those three to handle for the other nine; but they hadn’t been praying really. In the wake of this couple of pericopae: the mountain-top, and then this incident combining the disciples’ impotence, with Jesus’ power, can you imagine their feelings on hearing Jesus’ answer to the question: “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” ? Especially since they couldn’t tell their nine buddies (all of?) what had happened up there, till after all those prophecies had come true & the Son of Adam had finally in fact been raised. And how would this time-bomb have then affected the other nine when they did hear the story? Jesus was willing to let things sit, until God’s timing was right, but he maintained that faithful trust in his Father that e.g. though Peter would even deny him, yet in this case he (Peter) would in fact return^[3], & as Luke records, strengthen his brothers, because, Jesus said “I have prayed for you”^[4].

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^[1] Actually “Why do the Teachers of the law say that Elijah comes first, & restores all things?” to which Mark records Jesus’ enigmatic reply about Elijah having already come (so Peter might have to change his idea of what it means to have everything restored?). Mark again uses a trail of scattered hints throughout his story to draw his readers/listeners further in & higher up: “Clearly, he has John the Baptizer in mind, whom Mark has described as coming in the garb of Elijah (1:6). Matthew 17:13 makes the connection explicit, but Mark leaves it ambiguous, allowing readers to reason things out for themselves.” http://www.gracepointdevotions.org/2010/04/26/mark-9-commentary

* Genesis 1:1-3:1 (esp 1:26,27, & 3:1); Psalm 8 

^[2] The emboldened italicised parts have been deduced by Jesus. He has extrapolated from what the father has told him, and what we (Mark’s listeners/readers) have learned from the story, and identified the unclean …  spirit as not only causing dumbness, but also deafness; and has cut off its “tricky” plan to obey the words (& go out of the boy), and then jump back in again. The spirit had only tricked the father, the teachers of the law, and even his disciples into thinking that it didn’t have to obey the authority of the name of Jesus... cf Matthew 12:43-45 & Luke 11:24-26, for some of Jesus’ specific teaching on what happens when an unclean spirit is driven out of a person it has been demonizing.

^[3] Mark 9:9-10;16:7 and the fact that Peter is telling this story, or Mark (as Peter’s “son in the faith”) is telling Peter’s story, as when a friend told me about the time when his parachute didn’t open (very scarey.. but I knew that the story was about him, and he was there in front of me, so it must have turned out ok).

^[4] Luke 22:31-34