[AI translation] This story I have just read from the Bible has a sad, disappointing truth, and an uplifting, encouraging, promising truth. It is from this dual perspective that I would like to now explain this Word. So let us see.The discouraging, disappointing truth of the Word is that it exposes the helplessness of Jesus' disciples. We are talking about a disappointed father whose last hope has been dashed. He had tried everything with his poor, sick son, but quacks, sorcerers and doctors could not help him. Finally, he turned to the disciples of Jesus, because he had perhaps heard that many miracles were performed in this community, and now he was bitterly disappointed to find that they were also in vain: these people could not help him either. There are helpless disciples, helpless in the face of a serious case. Perhaps they are ashamed of their failure in front of the crowd: all their good efforts have been in vain, they have failed to help the poor boy. The gloating Pharisees stand there, perhaps mockingly winking: well, that's the end of all the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, now everyone can see that the case is bankrupt... So Jesus' bitter exclamation is understandable: "O unbelieving and degenerate generation, how long shall I be with you?
These grave words are addressed to the disciples. It was their helplessness that pained Jesus so much, for they brought shame on His cause and gave the enemy a good opportunity to mock Him. There is also in these harsh words that surely His disciples should not be so helpless in the face of human misery. He seems to be saying: For you are mine. You live with me. How then can healing power and help not continue to flow from me through you into the world of human misery and sickness?
Brethren, I can only tell you this sad scene with shame, because I feel so much that here - it is about us. If even the small, narrow circle of the first disciples were an unbelieving and degenerate generation: where then has our present-day Christianity become unbelieving and degenerate? And yet we know more than the disciples knew at that time - we know about the saving grace of the death on Calvary, about the death-defeating power of the Easter resurrection, about the living, active Jesus working among us and in us with his Holy Spirit, and yet we are so powerless, so helpless in the face of the many human problems, miseries, sufferings, diseases, sins in the world. Not so long ago, half a millennium ago, there may have been an expectation in the world of Christ's churches, an expectation of help, of guidance, of active participation in the solution of crisis. But then it turned out that Christianity could not help, and the whole world was plunged into a terrible crisis. Mankind was tormented by a demonic obsession with lies, revenge, hatred and destruction, like the epileptic boy in the story, seized by a spasm - and Christianity looked on as helplessly as the disciples had looked on that unfortunate patient and his father. And now? No wonder the world has drawn the conclusion: it sees the whole of Christianity as having failed. It no longer expects anything from it. It is no longer seen as a significant factor in solving the messy problems.
It is not here in the East, but in the West, that the world today is living in a post-Christian, post-Christian era, an era in which Christianity has outlived its usefulness - there is a judgment on Christianity in that the ideas which the world ultimately learned from Jesus: peace, social equality, the uplift of fallen peoples, the abolition of injustice, are not the ideas which the world today wants to solve on a Christian basis. And we must take note of this. Today, the human misery represented by the epileptic boy is no longer even brought before Jesus' disciples to be helped, and Jesus' disciples would do well to remain humble and not to believe that only they can help. They would do well not to look down on non-Christian peoples, social movements, organisations and movements, not to say what they can do, but to learn in a modest way to join forces with non-Christians, to learn to be of service to all good causes that will help to increase people's well-being and not to fear the destruction of their lives and homes. We should not face the world in which we are actually involved with hostility, but with solidarity ready to help. But to do this, we, the disciples of Jesus, must humble ourselves deeply and accept what Jesus' judgment says of us: an unbelieving and degenerate generation - yes, it is we who, by our helpless weakness, have given occasion and cause to belittle and ignore the strengths of Christianity. That is the sobering truth of this Word.
But it also has an uplifting, encouraging, promising truth for us. And that is that Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever. I shall never forget the testimony of the believing doctor who was once asked by his superiors how, for a man of materialistic science, he could be a believer and yet never be disappointed in Christianity? He replied, "Christians? Oh, many times. But never in Jesus! Christianity may have failed, but Jesus has not. Not then, not today. What happened then was that the sick boy was brought to Him and Jesus - with a single word - healed him. And let's not argue here about how this healing could have happened, we don't understand how it happened. This miracle does not fit into any worldview. Because a miracle happened here. It is simply that the divine power of help that came into the world with Jesus proved to be more powerful than the terrifying power of sickness. Well, but that is just it: there is such a power, there is an energy of God that is more than all the natural and supernatural powers we know. We shall experience it ourselves, at the latest at the hour of our death. The fact that we will pass through death does not fit into any worldview, it is beyond our ability to know. That the dead will rise to eternal life is nothing less than a miracle of God's power. But let us not marvel at the miracle of how it is possible. Every miracle Jesus performs is a sign! Reference. Like an outstretched finger, the miracle points to Jesus: behold, this is the One, Jesus, who can help. The one who can help where human help is no longer available. Do you know what it means to understand the miracle? It means to take our gaze, following the finger pointing, and to look at Jesus as the One in whom the power of God is at work. There are those who say that the miracles of Jesus are no longer believable, that modern man has nothing to do with them. Those who speak in this way are always looking at the miracle, instead of looking further, to where the miracle points: to Jesus Himself! It's not the signpost that is important, it's not the signpost that is important to contemplate, but to start in the direction it points to, the direction it leads... The signpost does not want to amaze you, it wants to point you in the right direction. Go in the direction it points and you will understand the sign. So look to Jesus. That's what the miracle is saying. Don't worry about what worldview the miracle fits into, the old or the new, but simply look up to Jesus. Expect everything from Him and expect everything from Him!
This was missing then, there, in the disciples of Jesus and that is why they could not help. Later they asked Jesus why they could not heal that boy? And Jesus answered them. And then he says to them these mysterious words. What does this mean? It means that we still don't really know what it means to have faith, what it means to believe. In the original Greek text, there is no word that should be translated 'unbelief', but 'oligopistia', meaning 'little faith'. And this small faith is not an expression of the quantity of faith, but faith that is directed towards something small, rather than something great. This is where we find out what the disciples believed: they somehow imagined that their faith was not the power that was about to flow out of them and be able to work miracles, to heal - the power of faith. They believed in their own faith as an inner power given to them. Spiritual power. And this is what Jesus calls unbelief, little faith.
We often fall into this mistake. We too often imagine that we have to get to grips with it internally and create faith as a kind of spiritual power within ourselves, and then we can overcome problems, troubles, sins, temptations, problems of fate, even illnesses, if we manage to strengthen faith within ourselves to a sufficient degree. Someone said the other day: no one would have to be sick if they had enough faith to get well. Illness, not being cured, is a sign that one has little faith. Well, anyone who thinks like that wants the very kind of faith that Jesus says is unbelief, little faith. True faith is something quite different from faith in one's own spiritual strength or in the spiritual strength of someone else, a great believer. To believe, to really believe, is always to look away from oneself and from all other people to the One who alone can help. Faith, true faith, is where one is poor, old, perplexed, and so deep that one longs and strives for the power of God alone, revealed in Jesus. It is not we who pray or remove sickness or any trouble or misery with our faith, but Jesus. He alone. And that is something else entirely.
Believe in Jesus! Not in yourself or in the faith of other great believers. In Jesus! And if you have even a little of this kind of faith, even if it is as small as a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seeds, it is enough to get you into the divine energy flow. Be still poor, very poor, utterly weak, powerless in yourself, and do not trust in your own ability to believe, but trust in the very great something that Jesus can and will act, even if in a different way than you yourself have imagined. It is not a question of forcing something out of ourselves, but of being totally connected to Him for whom nothing is impossible. I could almost say: we need to rediscover Jesus, who is written to give strength to the weary and increase the strength of the powerless. And: those who trust in the Lord will have their strength renewed. And we must learn to pray again, fasting as the Lord says, that is, giving ourselves totally to prayer, to communion with the Lord, to joining ourselves to Jesus, to cry out to Him from the depths, the Lord of all help.
Because who is Jesus? He is the one in whom God himself came to us. God, the eternal power who holds all things in his hands, the starry worlds and the peoples, you and me, the atomic power and our beautiful homeland, all the powers of the world: this God wants to be our God. He can and will help us, for He has all power. And He exercises this power in Jesus. And he came to us, became our brother, took upon himself our life, our destiny. And nothing is impossible for Him. And in living in union with Him, we will experience that even in our problems, in our difficulties, we will be strong, even in our sorrows, we will be comforted. Doors will open that we never thought would open. Opportunities will open up that we had no idea existed, and out in the world we will be able to give something more to this sick world, in addition to our humble service of good. That from all our work, from all our deeds, we can radiate ennobling effects, healing powers into this sick world. We will experience that our faith in Christ sanctifies, makes fruitful, heals our turn in the world, all our good works, and we can help to bind up wounds, to deliver from sins, because through our faith in Christ, Jesus himself continues to do his work through us in the world. And then truly the impossible becomes possible!
Amen.
Date: 1 April 1962.
Lesson
Ézs 40,26-31