Never stop looking at it - August 11
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 88; PM Psalm 91, 92; 2 Samuel 12:1-14; Acts 19:21-41; Mark 9:14-29
Today’s Reflection
But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
—Mark 9: 27-29
Recently, a parishioner sent me an article from The Atlantic Daily, the daily digest of articles in The Atlantic magazine. In the essay, “Why So Many Americans Have Stopped Going to Church,” Isabel Fattal cites studies about why fewer and fewer Americans attend church. The various experts cited believe that the reasons go beyond disaffection and mistrust in the wake of a proliferation of scandals involving abuse and corruption. What is equally responsible for the exodus of Americans from organized religion, these scholars say, is that “Contemporary America simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success.”
In an earlier article published in The Atlantic, Jake Thompson elaborated his theory of workism, or the worship of the role that work life plays in the lives of many professional people: “The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production… They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community.”
As Jake Meador observes in his recent Atlantic article, “The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church,” in the workism-oriented world in which people are so consumed by their work life and other responsibilities, “The underlying challenge for many is that their lives are stretched like a rubber band about to snap—and church attendance ends up feeling like an item on a checklist that’s already too long… The problem in front of us is not that we have a healthy, sustainable society that doesn’t have room for church. The problem is that many Americans have adopted a way of life that has left us lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people.”
In today’s Gospel passage from Mark 9, Jesus, Peter, James, and John are just coming back down from the mountaintop experience of the Transfiguration, returning to the frenzy of scribes arguing with the other disciples and people bringing their loved ones to Jesus for healing. One father has brought his son to the disciples in search of someone who could release his son from convulsions (similar to what today would be diagnosed as epilepsy). The father tells Jesus that he had asked the disciples to cast the convulsion-causing demon out of his son, but they could not do so. To this Jesus responds: “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”
At that moment, the boy begins to have more convulsions and Jesus asks the father how long this had been happening to his son. The father describes a lifelong affliction and asks Jesus, “if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.” Jesus seems a bit taken aback by the “if you are able,” saying “‘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!’” Jesus then makes the spirit that has caused the boy’s convulsions to come out of him, following which the boy is so still people think he has died. But Jesus raises him up and all are astounded at this miraculous healing.
One of the moments that stands out to me when I read this is the part where the father says that the disciples could not help his son. I wonder if it was a matter of could not or would not. In this passage, I see a scene in which the disciples got very caught up in the workism of being disciples. They were too caught up in arguing with the scribes and other aspects of their disciple profession that they got distracted from what was most important. Later, in private, the disciples asked Jesus, “Why could we not cast it out?” Jesus’ response is simple: “This kind can only come out through prayer.” The disciples were so distracted by the frenzy and the chaos of the crowd and the scribes that they forgot that what was most needed in that moment was simply to pray for the ones in need of healing—to commit those seeking God to God’s own care.
This story of the disciples getting too caught up in the chaos to devote time to what is most important—prayer and healing—and many of us getting so caught up in the seeming urgency of our own daily work lives and responsibilities to make time for prayer and worship reminds me of something Sam Wells said in his sermon on the Beatitudes, preached at Saint Stephen’s last October:
Then we come to ‘Blessed are the pure in heart.’ The thirsting for righteousness is about God, being merciful is about others, and being pure in heart is about ourselves. One great theologian said, ‘Purity of heart is to will one thing.’ I’m sure you’ve all been told many times that to hold down a responsible job you need to distinguish between the urgent and the important, and to judge which things are urgent but not important, which things are important but not urgent, and which things are neither urgent nor important. Well, purity of heart is about knowing, as a matter of habit and uncomplicated clarity, which things are important. Not fashionable, not popular, not effective, not lucrative, not eye-catching, not relaxing, not clever, not witty, not dramatic, not necessarily urgent: but important. And then, in a crisis, when everyone else has lost their sense of perspective, you’ll be able to see the one thing that no one else is able to see. Because you never stopped looking at it.
May we remember what it is that we should be centering our lives on—the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and ascended life of Christ—and never stop looking at it.
Becky+
Moment for Reflection
Read The Atlantic Daily article by Isabel Fattal, and the other articles she cites, here.
Read or listen to Sam Wells’ sermon, “Dwelling in the Comma,” here.