It just ain’t happening ... (Part 6 - of 12) ... faithfulness, wisdom, & prayer...when the miracles don’t come. Mark ch9v14-29 (to open in a new window, hold control down as you click the link)
It gets even more interesting when we read Matthew's account
of the same pericope. Matthew records Jesus answering the same question (from
the disciples) “Why couldn't we drive it out?”, by saying “Because you have so
little faithfulness. Truly I tell you, if you have faithfulness as
[1]
a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it
will move. Nothing will be impossible for you”(
Matthew 17:14-21[2])
At first this sounds quite different, but they could very well be related if we
take into account the following:
In Mark's story Jesus still makes quite a deal about
pistos= faithfulness
[3]:
“everything is possible to the person who is faithful.” and he has already
berated this generation's
apistos=
un-faithfulness. So it is not inconsistent with Matthew's version of Jesus'
answer as to why it didn't “work”. It might be possible to hold our
understandings of these two entities “faith(fulness)”, & “prayer” more
broadly, & see if they might have an overlap in their meanings, or at least
their outcomes.
Prayer (& Faithfulness):
It is possible to think of praying as a way of doing
something that our culture may see as “wasting” time in God’s presence, letting
his culture or world-view gain strength in our lives & become the dominant
view; over against the one we imbibe with our mother’s milk & mother
tongue, our whole “natural” human culture/ way-of-thinking, that Jesus made
comment on to Peter as a satanic tool (Mark 8:33). In fact Jeremiah (in the
scriptures Jesus lived from) mentions God’s comments regarding the
“false-prophets” of his time: “But which of them has stood in the council of
the Lord
to see or to hear his word?
Who has listened and heard his
word?.. But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my
words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways
and from their evil deeds”(
Jeremiah 23:18; 21-22). This kind of “standing
in God’s council”, this hanging around to look, listen & learn, to pick up
any crumbs that come your way; not simply with a list of petitions, but in
order to better be able to see what God is doing, have his view on things,
catch his style, attend to his call of our name (as with
Abraham[4],
Jacob[5],
Moses[6],
Samuel[7],
&
David[8]),
to simply do what he tells you
as loyal (farming) people of God who entered the land God gave them[9],
even to be allowed to jump in as a collaborator, - to do an
Isaiah[10]
in response to God’s wondering out loud “Who will I send?”, with “Here I am,
send me on that mission”, or like
Caleb[11]
before him who volunteered to do what he could do to clearly work with God’s
purposes. This kind of prayer is as much looking, listening, discussing,
deciding, even sometimes rehearsing, complaining or strategizing, as
petitioning. It all rests on a “friendship with” or “trust in” or “faithful
response to” this faithful God. It might best be thought of as “living in God’s
presence” with times to re-tune the intimacies appropriate for such a
relationship. Because of the personal nature of ourselves & God (in whose
image we are made), it may mean mentioning to
this faithful God the others whom we have bonds with, or acting for them through the means we have available to
us.
Enoch[12]
walking with God, for three hundred years, &
Job[13]
praying/sacrificing for his children daily, come to mind as ancient models of
this broader kind of pious prayer, recorded in the bible of the First Century (CE) people
of God.
Mark’s story/plot seems sparser, more immediate & moving
than Matthew’s, or Luke’s. He seems to be baiting, and trying to raise
questions, rather than simply give answers. This may be as a result of Mark
being a written record of an oral telling of these stories. Stories told in such a way as to
catch people’s interest & attention & discipleship, by means of further
discussion & discovery, questions & answers. This story is told in such
a way as to rouse people to think and ask, as well as giving them stories that
will illustrate God’s rule & continue to divulge answers on interrogation.
What we can glean from Mark’s rendition about the
mountain-top experience pericope (immediately before our story about the
disciples’ powerlessness to expel a tricky unclean spirit), is that Peter’s
recognition of something wonderful happening, affected him, in the state he was
then in, not to increase a humble, active (or even passive) listening; but had
the effect of goading him to spruke, & to an instinctive activism: “Lord,
let us make structures..” His response is certainly to join in with, even to
celebrate, or to contain, prolong or manufacture, & to be involved with
God’s work: “..Let
us make..”
[14].
How broad the “us” is in Peter’s mind I’m not sure, but God the father is the
one who steps in over Peter’s blustering activism & says (to whom ? -
Peter), “Your job is to - listen”,
and
“its not that Jesus is “up there” with Moses & Elijah, its more like they
are lucky to be talking with him!” - “This is my son, whom I love. Listen to
him!” Maybe this kind of prayer is really more like “standing in God’s
council”, maybe it is more like listening than talking. Maybe Peter’s job was
to listen to God’s Messiah, back a week ago, when he heard that new model of a
Messiah who was a servant, who would “suffer much, be rejected, mocked, & killed,
& even then would only rise after 3 days”. Peter’s speaking & activism
was going to stop him really understanding, make him powerless, ineffective,
& get him going in exactly the wrong direction. It will leave him being
addressed as an enemy, “
Satan”. Like
the Hebrew farmers who were told what to do in God’s presence in the sanctuary
when they were blessed with abundance
[15],
in this instance God has clearly spelled out to the disciples of Jesus (through
Peter, the lead disciple) their task of worship in God’s presence. How does
listening to Jesus equal prayer? Maybe we need to change our ideas of what
prayer is (remember the story Luke later includes along these lines about Mary
& Martha
[16]).
Of course, though Mark doesn’t mention any sleeping on behalf of the disciples,
he does in this passage clearly show a lack of listening. From common human
experience, it is more common for people to watch, listen, look & learn
while you are awake, than when you are asleep, but Mark doesn’t even include
this secondary bit - the falling asleep instead of praying bit - he may be
including this lack of listening deeply to Jesus, as the prime way of
indicating a lack of prayer.
[1] literally “as” (though of
course a Mustard seed is a small seed,
the most important thing about it is not its smallness, but its ….-ness) see
these translations of Matt 17:20, which allow for the deeper
meaning to still break out of this analogy of faith being as a mustard seed. For more on this, see blog here.
[2] Note that the oldest
manuscripts don’t have vs 21. It appears to have been added to help make sense
of what appeared to be a discrepancy between Matthew & Mark. As we see,
there need not be a discrepancy at all.
[3] As footnoted above, the
Greek text uses pistos and its derivatives, which can be variously translated
as “faith” “belief”, or “faithfulness”, but when used within the Hebrew mindset
it seems to often have more of a feel akin to the English term “faithfulness”
in relationship, or “trusting a friend” or
“taking someone at their word”, rather than simply the Greek
propositional “belief” in an idea, or the existence of an ideal (cf James 2:19;
4:4-6; 5:13-18).
[14] ποιήσωμεν= Let us make
“.. humanity in our own image”- (LXX) Gen 1:26 ; “... 3
tabernacles..”
- Mk 9:5
