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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Noted for his brief and to the point remarks, Otto von Bismarck—then Prime Minister of Prussia and later the first Chancellor of Germany—in an 18-67 interview famously said, “Politics is the art of the possible”. That Bismarck quotation has been used as a title for countless works, including a song in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical “Evita”, and is variously interpreted, positively or negatively, perhaps depending on whether the emphasis is on “the art” or “the possible” (Boukalas). For example, emphasizing “the possible” seems to lower expectations (Boukalas), abandon impossible goals for the best-possible outcome given the circumstances at hand (Neu), and sacrifice idealism and principles to expediency (Beach). This morning I am using “Art of the Possible” as the title for this sermon on today’s Gospel Reading, which primarily centers on the healing of a boy possessed by a “speechless spirit” (AAT), and in this sermon we will make use of both the title’s positive and negative interpretations.
Today’s Gospel Reading gives us another example of Jesus’s miraculous power. In last week’s Gospel Reading we heard how Jesus healed a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and how the people understood Jesus to be fulfilling prophecies of the promised Messiah, or Savior (Mark 7:31-37). For today’s Gospel Reading we have moved forward in St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired account to right after Jesus’s Transfiguration. Saints Matthew and Luke also give accounts of this event that also illustrates Jesus’s disciples’ unbelief (Matthew 17:14‑21; Luke 9:37-43a), but St. Mark uniquely records some vivid details, and his account is the only one we hear in our three-year cycle of Gospel Readings. As we heard, a father brought to Jesus his son, a boy whose condition is described in medical terminology and “resembled an epileptic seizure” but in fact clearly “was caused by demon possession” (TLSB, 1676). While Jesus was away, being transfigured before three disciples—all of whom previously had been sent to and successfully cast out other demons—the other nine disciples failed (NEB) to help the boy and so also the father, perhaps because they relied more on themselves than on accessing Jesus’s power through prayer. When the father, with lowered expectations, eventually asked Jesus to do anything for the boy if Jesus could, Jesus said significantly, “All things are possible for one who believes.” All things are possible for the one who believes because the one who believes has access to and taps into the power of God, for Whom nothing is impossible (Luke 1:37), but rather all things are possible, even by grace through faith saving people, such as a rich man, the difficulty of which saving Jesus elsewhere likens to a camel going through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:23-26; Mark 10:23-27; Luke 18:23-27).
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus refers to a “faithless generation”, which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther apparently somewhat uniquely applies to everyone in the Reading: His own disciples, the Jewish scribes, and the father of the boy (AE 67:316 n.25). In that same tradition of interpretation, the “faithless generation” also applies to all people, including ourselves. Jesus is aiming not just at individuals but the whole of people: we all have “solidarity in sin” (Büchsel, TDNT, 1:663). For example, in today’s Epistle Reading, St. James highlights the sins of the tongue, calling it “a world of unrighteousness”, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:1-12). By nature, our tongues cannot confess nor can we believe in Jesus Christ our Lord, or come to Him (Small Catechism II:6). Apart from God, we essentially have an unclean spirit and deserve to be dead, as the people in the Gospel Reading thought the boy was after the unclean spirit came out. For our sins, we should spend eternity in the fiery furnace of hell, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:42, 50).
But, the Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel to repent, and the time for that repentance is now. Jesus will not always be present or bear with sinners. God calls and so enables us to turn in sorrow from our faithlessness and all our sin. God calls and so enables us to trust Him to forgive us, and God calls and so enables us to want to do better than to keep sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin, whatever it might be, for Jesus’s sake.
Already at the beginning of the Gospel Reading, the crowd was greatly amazed when they saw Jesus, in some sense recognizing the Lord coming and revealing Himself to His people to save them. More than any other “teacher”, the God-man Jesus offered divine compassion and hurried to help the father and his possessed son, rebuking the unclean spirit, telling the mute and deaf spirit to come out and never enter him again. That deliverance “prefigures the ultimate defeat of the evil one” accomplished by Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection from the grave (Plass, 19), done in order to save you and me from our sins. Because of Jesus’s loving death on the cross for us, we can say, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 50:4-10), “Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty?” The devil, our accuser, no longer has power over us when we, as that Reading continues, “trust in the Name of the Lord and rely on [our] God”. God “awakens our ear to hear as those who are taught” and gives us “the tongue of those who are taught”. We who believe receive God’s forgiveness through His Word in all Its forms.
We who believe receive God’s forgiveness through His Word connected with water in Holy Baptism. At the Baptismal Font water is not a threat, as it was to the possessed boy, but now a means of God’s saving grace to us. We are baptized not only in water but also with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Matthew 3:11 and Luke 3:16). God drives out unclean spirits and replaces them with the Holy Spirit. We who believe receive God’s forgiveness through His Word spoken by a pastor in individual Holy Absolution. We do not doubt but firmly believe that by the pastor’s forgiveness “our sins are forgiven before God in heaven” (Small Catechism V:16). In private Confession and individual Absolution, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says determining one’s faith in the pastor’s absolution is even more important than determining one’s sorrow over sin (AE 31:196; confer Plass #13, p.8). We who believe receive God’s forgiveness through His Word connected with bread and wine in Holy Communion. On this Altar Christ’s body and blood are present in bread and wine, they are distributed by me, and they are received by those who believe for the forgiveness of their sins, life, and salvation. We worthily receive these gifts when we believe, regardless of whether our faith is weak or strong (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:71; confer Stephenson, CLD XII:138, n.34). As Jesus said in today’s Gospel Reading, “All things are possible for one who believes.”
That promise of our Lord—that “All things are possible for one who believes”—no doubt has played a role in this congregation’s stepping forward in faith to complete the remodel of our old Parish Hall and to construct a new Parish Hall, for which later this morning we will break ground in the Name of the Lord. In the remodel and construction perhaps also is “The Art of the Possible” but in a more positive sense, emphasizing “the art” (Boukalas) and recognizing that getting something is better than getting nothing at all (Engel). Not everyone has been, is now, or will be pleased with every aspect of the project, but we thank God for it and trust Him to bring it to completion in a way that He knows to be best for us. Some things may be lost, but many others are gained (Joelline). All things are possible for one who believes, for with God all things are possible, but God delivers only those things that are in keeping with His good and gracious will, and so faith asks only for such things (Lenski, ad loc Mk 9:23, 381). One with faith the size of a mustard seed could say to a mountain, “Move from here to there” and have it move (Matthew 17:20), but one with such faith does not say so. One with such faith knows what is important. Though, as they raged against the possessed boy in the Gospel Reading, the devil, the world, and our sinful nature rage against us, especially on account of the Gospel (see Luther, AE 13:409; 41:150), as we prayed in the Collect, we trust God, our support and defense in every need, to continue to preserve His Church in safety, govern Her by His goodness, and bless Her with His peace. As God preserves His Church and us in Her, even though it may take a long time, He also ultimately relieves our suffering, like He did for the possessed boy in the Gospel Reading, taking us by the hand and lifting us up so that we arise and live with Him eternally on the Last Day.
In referencing Otto von Bismarck’s quotation “Politics is the art of the possible” earlier this summer, Kathleen Miles took a pragmatic view and wrote, “If you don’t have to deal with a political opponent, you can dream up the perfect policy. But when you have an opponent, you have to set aside the dream and consider the political possibilities.” As we have reflected on today’s Gospel Reading with the theme “Art of the Possible”, we have realized that, despite our opponents—the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature—all things are possible with God. As with the father and son in the Gospel Reading, so with us: despite the horror and near-despair of our situations, we are delivered. We praise and thank God for His deliverance by grace through faith, which, as the Rev. Dr. Luther put it, makes human beings into children of God and workers of wonders, for whom all important things are possible (see AE 67:232; 52:157 and 76:47).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +