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Aug 2, 2015

Faith: Can it falter?

Mark 9:14-27

Psalm 19

I’ll bet by now in life you realize or you will realize that not everyone who’s considered “on top” – successful people by the world’s definition – that those folks today got there with success after success…the proverbial born with a golden spoon in their mouths.

Instead, more often than not, those who history best remembers were faced with numerous obstacles that forced them to reassess who they were, how they got there, and in that they worked even harder and showed more determination than others until success was achieved. They stuck with it….I’m thinking.

What happens when faith falters? We’ve been looking at this thing called faith and today let’s get real. There are times when our faith falters….or does that just happen to me now and then? Have you ever experienced a drop off in your commitment….in the successes you see when you give it your all and nothing happens? You said you’d read

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through your Bible every day this year – how are you doing with that? How am I doing with that? It’s beginning week 32. Confession….my reading completion is about 10 weeks behind.

But I’m not giving up….and I pray you aren’t either…or maybe beginning this afternoon by giving your life to the Lord in the waters of Baptism, by rededicating your life to him in commemorative baptism, you’ll say, “I can do better. With God all things are possible.”

Let’s first just look at a few people from the secular world to understand what I’m talking about. Let’s get a few people in mind so their struggles may remind us that sometimes failure itself is just the first step towards success.

Here’s a couple examples:

1. Henry Ford: While Ford is today known for his innovative assembly line and American-made cars, he wasn’t an instant success. In fact, his early businesses failed and left him broke five times before he founded the Ford Motor Company.

2. R. H. Macy: Most people are familiar with this large department store chain, but Macy didn’t always have it

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easy. Macy started seven failed business before finally hitting it big.

4. Soichiro Honda: The billion-dollar business that is today Honda began with a series of failures and unfortunate turns of luck. The man, Honda was turned down by Toyota Motor Corporation for an entry level engineering job, leaving him jobless for quite some time. He started making scooters of his own at home, and spurred on by his neighbors, finally started his own business.

5. Akio Morita: You may not have heard of Morita but you’ve undoubtedly heard of his company, Sony. Sony’s first product was a rice cooker that unfortunately didn’t cook rice so much as burn it, selling less than 100 units. This first setback didn’t stop Morita and his partners as they pushed forward to create a multi-billion dollar company. Sony.

6. Bill Gates: Gates didn’t seem like a shoe-in for success after dropping out of Harvard and starting a failed first business with Paul Allen called Traf-O-Data. While this early idea didn’t work, Gates’ later work did, creating the global empire that is Microsoft.

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7. Harland David Sanders: Perhaps better known as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, Sanders had a hard time selling his chicken at first. In fact, his famous secret chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it.

9. Albert Einstein: Most of us take Einstein’s name as synonymous with genius, but he didn’t always show such promise. Einstein didn’t even speak until he was four and didn’t read until he was seven, causing his teachers and parents to think he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. Eventually, he was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School. It might have taken him a bit longer, but most people would agree that he caught on pretty well in the end, winning the Nobel Prize and changing the face of modern physics.

12. Isaac Newton: Newton was undoubtedly a genius when it came to math, but he had some failings early on. He never did particularly well in school and when put in charge of running the family farm, he failed miserably, so poorly in fact that an uncle took charge and sent him off to a place called Cambridge – ok, Cambridge in England, where he finally blossomed into the scholar we know today.

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Finally, how about one of my favorite characters, Joe Gibbs…former Super Bowl Champion football head coach and now owner of the JGR Racing Team in Nascar. In his books like, “Racing To Win,” he openly talks about how time and again he attempted this or that and failed. But he learned from each of his struggles and is quoted as saying, “Failures are expected by losers, ignored by winners.” Expected by losers – ignored by winners.

When he took over the reigns of the Washington Redskins he acknowledged that “Part of playing the game of life is knowing you’re going to have some losses.” He became a Christian at a young age, “I made that decision when I was 9 but I spent a part of my life drifting, you know, I was on God’s team but I wasn’t playing for him.” On the bench….not in the game. But today he’s on top of the world in what he does, mainly he’d say because God and family have regained their proper priorities in his life. On top.

These I’ve noted briefly have had their faith tested….and sometimes they came up short. Can faith falter? Yes. Can you and God overcome those failures? Yes again. Can you do it alone? No way.

Let’s look at just one scripture today about how the very ones we’d think would be the strongest in their

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faith….the very guys Jesus hand picked to be his compatriots in building the Kingdom when Jesus walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem, climbed the mountains and was cut to the knees at a Garden called Gethsamane, how did Jesus’ disciples do?

Turn with me to Mark 9: 14 – 29 on page 1056.

There are stages of great success and there are stages of great defeat in life. Believe me – been there, done that, got the T-Shirt and the bruises.

In our passage today Jesus’ hand picked closest followers found themselves in the greatest defeat in life they might have experienced except for not catching a thing fishing all night in the waters of the Sea of Galilee.

Did you catch that in the word? “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.” Talk about a failure.

Setting the stage….here the disciples and Jesus have just come down from a mountaintop experience. Peter and James and John had gone up the mountain with Jesus and there Jesus was transfigured….what was that like? I don’t know really but commentators says first that the

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garments of Jesus became radiant. And there was a cloud…the presence of God is frequently known in a cloud. It was in a cloud that Moses met God. It was in a cloud that filled the Temple when Solomon finished its work and the glory of the Lord took over…God’s presence in a cloud.

So on this mountain Moses and Elijah can be seen in glory with Jesus – in a cloud. And in that moment, Jesus was assured that he was on the right path for all of history….even the pathway that would take him to the cross. That mountaintop experience was witnessed by those disciples and you can just imagine that in coming down from that mountain they were ready to take on the world. We just saw Jesus….with Moses!....with Elijah! Bring it on world….we can handle it.

A kid has convulsions? No biggie. Stand aside folks….we’ve got this one.

They’d come down from a mountain top high and didn’t realize it but they’d entered into a delicate situation. Reality check. The father had brought his boy to the disciples, and the boy was an epileptic. But the disciples were powerless. They, who had first-hand witnessed the power and glory of God just before this, find themselves

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powerless. And you know folks are watching to see what’s gonna happen.

This delicate situation is the same maybe you have faced - - maybe even this week. Folks have been looking at you – judging our conduct, our words, our ability or our inability to cope with the demands of life….we’re measured by the yardstick of the faithless…watching us…..ah, you go to that Faith Church don’t you? And they’re not only judging us….but more importantly….in judging us, do you realize they are judging the very one we represent to them….Jesus the Christ?

The disciples blow it. They flat out blow it.

And then Jesus slips into the crowd. Jesus, who had been transfigured on that mountaintop, and in that mountaintop moment had set his face toward Jerusalem and the inevitability of the cross with the presence of the Father and the affirming support of Moses and Elijah….Jesus slips into the crowd of folks who are murmuring about these weak-faithed disciples.

Jesus, who is said to have conversed with the prophets of old about what he faced….certain death….(the only way the world of faithless sinners like you and me could be

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saved)….here’s Jesus, who could have been all shook up in that moment. I would have been. How about you?

But Jesus, faithfully facing the cross before him, is also just as calmly facing this failure of the faith of others with confidence.

You see, I think that’s because he didn’t just keep the Father in his pocket like a lucky rabbit’s foot to be pulled out when push came to shove…..No, Jesus walked the daily paths of life with the Father and the Spirit.

Jesus had come into the world to save the world, and yet Barclay, the commentator, puts it….he could give himself in his entirety to the helping of one single person.

Did you ever have occasion to offer a speech to lots of folks…maybe even have the opportunity to claim your faith before lots of folks….believe me….it’s actually easier sometimes to stand up here and share the love of God, preach the gospel of love for all the world, than it is to truly love one, not-very-loveable sinner who God places before you in a single moment.

Yea, it’s easy to be filled with sentimental affection for the whole human race, (easy to post platitudes on facebook) easier than sometimes going across the street, face to face inviting one neighbor to church on Sunday.

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That’s where faith can falter. One on one. That’s where we need to concentrate our prayers friends.

Remember in this passage….Jesus chided his disciples…..”O faithless generation. How long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear you? Bring him (the child) to me” and what happens? Immediately the boy goes into a convulsion….then the Savior speaks to the boy’s father.

And the father says, “If you can, let your heart be moved with pity and help me.”

Say what? IF YOU CAN? IF YOU CAN? You’re speaking to the triune partner in all of creation. IF YOU CAN!

And Jesus calmly says, “All things are possible to him who believes.” All things are possible to him who believes. And I can just see Jesus catching a glimpse at his disciples cowering in the corner, can’t you?

Jesus looks at his faith-faltering disciples…and maybe thinks, “Well, I don’t know how I’m ever going to change these disciples of mine….but I do know that in this moment I can help this boy.” And he did.

I was thinking. When we think about our world….all the stuff…all the junk of this world…..we could throw our

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hands up in disgust. Have you ever done that? “What can I do about world hunger. What can I do about rampant disease. What can I do about the helpless, the homeless, the hopeless?”

Remember Jesus – he took the situation one person at a time. He took the immediate action to help the one before him in that moment.

Is it a hopeless situation to cure all that ails our world? Maybe so. But really a hopeless situation is to approach anything in the spirit of hopelessness – that makes it hopeless. But approaching anything in the spirit of faith - - that makes it a possibility.

Face to face with Jesus, this father’s faith was ablaze again. “I believe,” he says. “And if there’s still some discouragement in me, still some doubts, take them away and fill me with an unquestioning faith.”

Can our faith falter? Sure it can. Just one run through of a few examples maybe to boost us in closing.

We like to think that the patriarchs of faith were just that – the best of the best…always getting it right. Right? Well…...

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David – great guy – messed up and had an affair with someone else’s wife and ended up getting the guy killed. But he was given the throne and a descendant of Jesus.

Moses – God said speak to a rock – he took his own way and struck the rock to get water for the people. He lost the chance to enter the promised land, but he was still the one who was transfigured with Elijah and Jesus, encouraging Jesus to the task that was before him.

Peter, saying he’d do anything for Jesus, denied him three times. He then preached the gospel to his people and changed the world.

The great Apostle Paul, a man who spent his life getting followers of the Way, Jesus Way, imprisoned and even killed, said, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:19).

Others?- Noah got drunk only days after being used by God to save mankind.

- Jeremiah was depressed & suicidal.

- Hosea’s wife was a prostitute.- Jacob was a liar.

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and the list goes on.

And maybe nearly most important there’s Abraham.

What happened to Abraham, called the father of faith…what happened to Abraham back in the first book of this Bible? A man who frankly was too old, Abraham came from a family of idol worshipers, and was undoubtedly an idol worshiper himself. (Incidentally remember he was married to Sarah who he laughed with when it was promised that she’d have children). Abraham, called the father of faith, found himself faltering along the way.

Abraham went half way. God wanted him to go to Canaan, and he eventually did...But he and his family first went to Haran. Abraham, originally from Ur of the Caldees, started out toward Canaan but then in fear of a famine reported there, he went instead to Egypt. His faith faltered….he only went half way with God at first.

Yes, there are many half way Christians - even in our Churches today. Half way Christians who are weak and faltering in their faith because they refuse to fully obey God. There are those who are,]

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1) [Halfway in their Church Attendance – Many will go to work with a miserable cold but won’t come to church with a sniffle….or when it’s too cold, or it’s too hot, or it’s rainy…you name it.]

2) [Halfway in their Giving – They will buy filet mignon, Ice Creams and a Latte but struggle to give anything close to a full tithe.]

3) [Halfway in their God and His Time – They watch all kinds of sorted programs and sporting events for hours but have rarely read their Bible all the way through.]

4) [Halfway in their service – They have time for camping, golfing, and motorcycle rides but rarely have time to sacrificially serve God.]

Friends, are we perfect? Absolutely not. Can we do better? – absolutely. Can we do it alone? No Way. Do we want to try? That’s the question of the day…..are we willing to go all in? Jesus went all in for you and for me, remember?

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Just a few verses beyond where I stopped reading before….Jesus mapped out the future. It says after they left the area where the boy was cured, Jesus kept teaching his faithless disciples and the biggest message he gave them, and probably the hardest message for them to accept was this in verse 31.

“The Son of Man, he, Jesus, is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.”

Friends – Jesus wasn’t in half way. Jesus faith never faltered – I’m sure he struggled with the mission he as a human needed to accomplish – but his faith in the Father’s love and his commitment to you and to me in love never faltered.

Because he went to the cross, and to strengthen us for whatever tests we have in life, he gave us this sacrament.

(Sharing of Holy Communion follows)