All Things Can Be Done for One Who Believes

All Things Can be Done for the One Who Believes

Isaiah 49:1-7     Mark 9:12-29                       

 “All things can be done for the one who believes!” Jesus said to the father of a boy possessed by demons.   With faith and perseverance we can succeed to transform what is life draining to what is life giving.  With faith and love, we can do wonders.   

It is easy to feel discouraged by the seeming impossibility of the demons possessing us and our world: our worries over debt or illness, our struggles with despair or addiction.  Or we feel deflated when confronted by enormous demons of poverty, global warming, disease, or warfare… We can feel out of control, weary and without strength, or become cynical and rejecting.   Too many talk show hosts and columnists make a living by ranting about how foolish we are for thinking that change is possible or even needed.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose memory we honor this Sunday, said that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’    The movement of human change and history is long but it bends in the long run toward justice.   Change takes time, it can be a long process, but it moves eventually toward equality and mutual respect and community.  Demons can be thrown out.  “All things can be done for the one who believes!” Jesus taught.

Consider the situation of the father of this boy – possessed by a demon – or as we would realize in our age, suffering from severe epilepsy.  He must have felt hopeless, at the very end of his endurance, having lived in the hell of watching his little boy undergo multiple violent and painful seizures day after day.   There must have been times when he gave up hope, feeling that the demon won, and that nothing would ever change.   By the time he asked for help from Jesus, he had undoubtedly been to many physicians, priests and charlatans, and had heard plenty of false promises and bogus cures.  Even Jesus’ disciples were not able to do anything.  So it is no wonder that the father of the boy said, “If you are to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”   “If” is the operative word – ‘if’ can feel flighty, pie-in-the-sky, fluffy and devoid of promise.     

We can feel this way when we consider the terrible demons that surround us.  We still face racial tension and inequality in our nation, and wonder how we will ever change entrenched patterns of bigotry and prejudice.   It all seems ‘iffy.’ 

One example is a map I got last week from the Southern Poverty Law Center, showing the growth of hate-groups in our nation.   These are groups like the neo-Nazis, skinheads, white power or Christian Nation groups.  On this national map, I expected to see most of these groups in the South or out West.  But no – a huge clump of these groups, completely enveloping our state – is right here in NJ.    Scary!   It is also a reason for us not to take our kind of church for granted.  We are surrounded by folk who believe that our way of thinking – supporting equality, justice, and compassion – is to be destroyed.  

A lot is being said in the news lately about the enormous divide between the wealthy and the poor, the 99% and the 1%. It is easy to get discouraged and dismayed by the enormity of the problems around us.  Pope Francis said this in an interview recently about economic inequality:  "Today we are living in unjust international system in which 'King Money' is at the center…It's a throwaway culture that discards young people as well as its older people. In some European countries, without mentioning names, there is youth unemployment of 40 percent and higher," he added. "A whole generation of young people does not have the dignity that is brought by work."

The 76-year-old pontiff warns that unequal distribution of wealth inevitably leads to violence.   "As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems," he wrote. "I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor."  As we celebrate Martin Luther King Sunday, we can feel discouraged that the demons seem to be winning.   

Yet, change occurs, often without our even realizing it.   The arc turns, the winds shift, and change occurs.   MLK confronted the demon of racism and segregation in our nation, and like the epileptic boy, our nation was shaken by the exorcism of this demon.  The demon of legal segregation was cast out by our citizens, with violent convulsions.   Change can be painful and disruptive, but ultimately healing.

I saw an interview a few weeks ago on CNN with various commentators talking about the spread of marriage equality for same-sex couples throughout our nation, and especially the change that happened suddenly in Utah.   The group speculated about whether the Supreme Court will pass a ruling that could transform the whole nation overnight.  Andrew Sullivan, one of the commentators who is gay himself, gave the opinion that he thought it was better for the process to go state by state.  It is all right, he said, to slow the process down, so that people can get used to the idea.  People will see that traditional marriage will not be undermined – but rather that loving, committed marriages will strengthen society and foster healthy families.  Justice is good for all.  This is what we found here in our church during our three-year process to vote on becoming ‘Open & Affirming’.   By taking time to talk and to look each other in the eye, then hearts were changed and equality unfolded naturally.

When we feel that change is not possible, and the demons of injustice or inequality have won, we need to step back and look at the longer arc of history.   We see ways that hope is springing up around us.  Demons are fleeing, and the Kingdom of God is being built in our midst.  A wonderful article was written last fall by Nicholas Kristoff in the NYT about ways that global poverty is melting away at a remarkable pace.  It is a slow miracle of justice.

Here are his words:  “One of my most searing experiences as a reporter occurred in Cambodia, where I met a woman whose daughter had just died of malaria and who was left caring for seven children and grandchildren. The woman, Nhem Yen, showed me her one anti-malaria bed-net and told me how every evening she agonized over which children to squeeze under it — and which ones to leave out and expose to malarial mosquitoes.  That’s the kind of excruciating question that extreme poverty forces on families.

 “For thousands of generations, a vast majority of humans have lived brief, illiterate lives marked by disease, disability and the loss of children. As recently as 1980, a slight majority of people in the developing world lived in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than $1.25 in today’s money.  Yet in a time of depressing news worldwide, about dysfunction and crisis from Syria to our own Congress, here’s one area of spectacular progress.  The share of people in the developing world who live in extreme poverty has been reduced from 1 in 2 in 1980 to 1 in 5 today, according to the World Bank. Now the aim is to reduce that to almost zero by 2030.

“There will still be poverty, of course, just as there is far too much poverty lingering in America. But the extreme hanging-by-your-fingernails subsistence in a thatch-roof hut, your children uneducated and dying — that will go from typical to essentially nonexistent just in the course of my adult life….

New approaches are saving millions of children’s lives each year. In 1990, more than 12 million children died before the age of 5. Now that figure is down close to 6 million. Bill Gates, whose foundation with his wife, Melinda, pioneers the vaccines and medicines saving these lives, tells me that in his lifetime the number will drop below 1 million.   

“Timeout for a skeptical question that is both callous and common:  When additional kids survive in poor countries, does that really matter? Isn’t the result just a population explosion leading to famine or war, and more deaths?  That’s a frequent objection, but it’s wrong. When child mortality drops and families know that their children will survive, they are more likely to have fewer babies — and to invest more in them. There’s a well-known path from declining child deaths to declining births, which is why Bangladesh is now down to an average of 2.2 births per woman. 

“Ancient diseases are on the way out. Malaria has been brought under control in many countries, and a vaccine may reduce its toll even further.  AIDS is also receding. Last year in southern Africa, I interviewed coffin-makers who told me grumpily that their businesses are in recession because AIDS is no longer killing large numbers of people.”

Long-term change for the good is dawning; the arc of moral history is bending toward justice.  Our nation may be possessed by a variety of demons – demons of bigotry and racism, demons of poverty and inequality, demons of pessimism and selfishness.   But hope will triumph.  Demons will be thrown out.  It’s not ‘if’ but when.  With faith, with compassion, with science and technology and human ingenuity, enormous and hardly believable healing can unfold. As Jesus said: “All things can be done for the one who believes!” Amen.