I Want to Believe

Matthew 9:14-29

We live in a very secular world. A world that seems detached from God and from the church. Yet I find that everywhere I go, people are dealing with spiritual issues.

Last week when I went to see my chiropractor, he greeted me with a question. He said, “Maybe you can answer this. Why is it that some people sort of slide through life without any problems, and then some other people seem to get dumped on all the time?”

He went on to tell me that, since his marriage broke up a few months ago, he has been enjoying the relationship that he has with his new girl friend. She’s in her early thirties, and she has just discovered she has breast cancer. And, one of his good friends had a daughter who was comatose for a long time because of a medical mistake. She recently died, and now the IRS is after a huge cut of the settlement they got from the hospital.

“Why do these things happen? I’m a decent individual, work hard, etc.”

I said, “I’m guessing you want a theological answer.” He nodded. I tried to be gentle when I said, “Life’s not fair.” And then we talked for a bit about the unfairness of life, and God’s involvement with us, and things like free will.

Then, when I was at the Rite Aid this week, on Ash Wednesday, a young female clerk was commenting about all the Catholics coming into the store with ashes on their foreheads. She said, “I’m a Presbyterian. I can’t take time off work for that. I need the money.”

Both of these encounters said to me that people are dealing with spiritual issues all the time. Whether they are church-goers or not, and whether they are Christians or not.

These conversations also reminded me that there’s really no such thing as an unbeliever. Everybody believes in something. I think my chiropractor believes that life should be fair. The clerk believed that there were more important things in life than going to church.

There’s really no such thing as an “unbeliever.” We all believe in something. For instance, here are some common things that people believe:

Everything happens for a reason.

Winning the lottery would solve my problems.

I’ll never amount to anything.

Drinking a glass of whiskey will make my problems go away.

The one with the most toys at the end wins.

If I can just get through this week everything will be fine.

I’m right. (You’re wrong.)

If I can keep everybody happy, life will turn out all right.

What do you believe?

Everybody believes something, and it’s helpful to discover what it is that you really believe, because belief translates into behavior. I am a believer when I am driving in New Jersey traffic. When I am waiting at a traffic light, and it finally turns green, I believe that at least two or more cars will go through the red light crossing in front of me, so I wait. There were a whole lot of believers in Shop Rite this afternoon (yesterday afternoon). They believe that a storm is coming, and that belief translated into a traffic snarl at the checkout lines like I’ve never seen before.

Ed’s famous line applies: Behind every action is an intention, and behind every intention is a belief. When Ed works with people in domestic violence situations, what he tries to do is help them change what they believe so that they can then act differently. Joan Chittister, who is a Benedictine nun, says that “whatever we believe at the deepest center of our being determines what we ourselves become, even when we say we believe in something else.” (13) So, it’s our belief that determines our behavior; that in turn creates our character, and sets the course toward our destiny. But it’s not what we say we believe. It’s what we really believe deep down, that makes the difference. It’s what we believe at the core of our existence.

Here’s where our Bible story for today comes in. This is a very disturbing story to me, because it is so contemporary. Jesus and his best buddies are off somewhere having a great time, while the rest of the disciples have been left to take care of the multitudes. People keep coming. Badgering, arguing, debating, demanding. And disciples are powerless, inept, impotent. So often, that is what we feel in the church. Powerless to heal the ills of the world, inept at our own ministry. Unable to do what God has called us to do.

Let’s look at it in terms of belief systems. What did the disciples believe? They believed that Jesus could heal, but it looks like they also believed that when Jesus was not physically present, they were on their own. So, when this man came with his epileptic, demon-possessed son, the disciples couldn’t do a thing. Yet, Jesus had given them power. He had already commissioned them to heal and to cast out demons. They had the authority. But they couldn’t use it, because their belief system got in the way. It was kind of like what happened to Peter when he had the brash idea to go out and walk on the water with Jesus. He did fine until he realized that, well, he was walking on water! And that couldn’t be, so he started to fall into the waves.

Today we say that we believe Jesus still has power to heal, power to change lives. Yet, when we are “on our own” we often feel powerless, and inept. And because we believe we are inept, we are. Like the father came with his demon-possessed son, people come to the church seeking help. Seeking Jesus. I wonder how many people fail to receive what they need from the church, because of our ineffective belief system.

The disciples believed they were out on a limb by themselves. What did the crowd believe? Obviously they believed that Jesus and the disciples had something good to offer. They must have believed that the disciples themselves should be able to do a healing work. And they became disillusioned and argumentative when the disciples failed.

When Jesus himself came close to the situation, a couple of interesting things happened. First, the crowd was in awe.

If you saw the original Jurassic Park movie, you know what this was like. There is a great moment in that movie, when the world-class paleontologist Allen Grant (who has studied dinosaurs all his life), suddenly meets a real live dinosaur. Do you remember what he does? He falls to the ground. Putting together old bones is one thing, but meeting life face to face is quite another.

That’s a fairy tale, but it’s a good description of what happens when people meet Jesus. So much church talk is like studying old bones. And that’s apparently what it was like trying to get the disciples to produce a miracle that day. It’s one thing to talk about facts and figures and suppositions about God. It’s quite another thing, to meet God face to face. (see story file, 16.1.4)

The crowd was awed by the presence of Jesus. The other thing that happened was that the closer Jesus got to the situation, the more the evil presence that was troubling the boy, erupted. We might think that evil would immediately scatter or calm down when Jesus came on the scene, but the opposite is often true. Evil resists Jesus, can’t stand him, but fights him. So, when you bring Jesus into a situation in your own life, don’t be surprised if things get worse instead of better for a while.

Well, ok, so the disciples believed their hands were tied; and the crowd believed something should have been done. What did Jesus believe about the situation? He was certainly frustrated by their lack of faith, wasn’t he? But he didn’t believe it was hopeless. He believed he could solve the problem, and he did. He also obviously believed that there was still hope for the poor inept disciples, because he hung in there with them, and used the experience to teach them about the necessity of prayer.

How does this story help us with our own belief system? I think it challenges us to challenge our assumptions. Challenge what we say we believe, and observe what our actions show. It challenges us to stay connected to Jesus, whether we can see him or not.

Belief is central to our lives as human beings. Even more so, it is central to our life as Christians. In fact, the word “believer” is a synonym for “Christian.” As we look at the various themes in the Apostles’ Creed over the next several weeks, I hope to challenge you to challenge your beliefs, so that you can grow spiritually and become more effective in your ministry. It may feel a little like what happens to seminary students when they study for the ministry. You might expect that when a person decides to go to seminary to study for the ministry, the seminary would work hard to encourage the student’s faith. But in fact, what many seminaries do, quite intentionally, is to break down the student’s faith. Then they help the student rebuild it again. The point is that many people come to adulthood with a borrowed faith. They say they believe what their parents and their churches have taught them to believe, but that belief hasn’t always been tested and tried. It hasn’t necessarily sunk deep into the seminarians’ bones. You wouldn’t want a surgeon practicing medicine under someone else’s license, would you? And you wouldn’t want a pastor who was living on borrowed faith. If we are going to minister to others, we need to have faith coursing through our veins. Not just pastors, either. All of us who call ourselves Christians need to make the faith our own. I hope to help you on that journey.

A distinguished professor at the University of Chicago had a three year old granddaughter who liked to visit him late in the afternoon, so she could walk home with him. One day the little girl asked to ride on her grandfather’s shoulders across the campus. They met another professor, who winked at the girl and said, “My goodness, how you’ve grown! You are about three times as tall as you were last week. The little girl replied: “Not all of this is me.” (story file, 16.1.1)

I hope that sometime, if not today, when you find yourself growing spiritually, and effective in you ministry, you’ll think about that little girl, and say, gratefully, “Not all of this is me.”