Sermon, September 14, 2003
14 Pentecost, Proper 19, Year B
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

"Life is difficult." Scott Peck's book The Road Less Traveled got a lot of attention when he made that simple observation the first sentence in his interesting book about spiritual maturity. Life is difficult. Even when things are going relatively well, normal life is not easy, at least not for long. If we are the least bit mature, we all live with some expectation that difficulties will happen. So, we cope. We hope. We do the best we can and move on.

But occasionally things happen that need a word far more powerful than "difficult." There are horrors, tragedies, incomprehensible sufferings and losses. Sometimes they take us by surprise and overwhelm us. We are swamped and overcome, out of the depths of our manageability. Sometimes it is more than we can cope with. Sometimes there seems no cause for hope. And when it involves a child, our pain can be beyond measure.

The father in today's Gospel brings to the disciples his son. The child has a disorder that leaves him speechless, struck by seizures that threaten his life. This has been the child's fate since birth. Imagine the father's helplessness and pain. There is nothing he can do. And when he brings the child to the disciples, their best efforts fail as well. I've known families who have been similarly stricken. Maybe you have as well.

One of the emotions that I often feel in the face of such innocent suffering is anger. It is just wrong for such things to happen, especially to children. When this father and son are brought to Jesus' attention, he cries out in anger and frustration too.

The desperate father says to Jesus, "If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us." Jesus' response has long bothered me. "If you are able! -- All things can be done for the one who believes." That bothers me. I've seen people believe with all their being, and their suffering continues nonetheless. And I've seen well-meaning people add an inappropriate, painful layer of guilt to another's suffering by implying that if they only believed enough, they would be healed. I don't like that.

But listen to what this desperate father says in response to Jesus' challenge. "I believe; help my unbelief!" Now that's honesty. Heartrending honesty. I can empathize completely with him. "I believe; help my unbelief!" Out of that energy comes miracles.

Friday a week ago a young man came into my office. He had made some bad choices; he had also been unlucky. He had been victimized by a faith healer who had taken his money. Nothing was working out, and he had not eaten in three days. He had no real resources, and I could look into his eyes and see, he was beaten. Worn out, worn down, desperate. He wanted prayer. So I prayed with him. I gave him a little money, though he almost refused to take it. He left, and I felt overwhelmed by the depth and complexity of his problems.

This Friday, he turned back up. My heart skipped for a second, assuming the worst. But there was a smile on his face and a gleam in his eye. He came by to say "thanks." Everything was much better. The prayer helped. He's in school, hopeful and grateful.

One of the privileges I have in my job is to witness the incredible courage and fortitude of so many people. And to see miracles. I see two kinds of miracles. Regularly. I see people recover from illness, tragedy and misfortune. And I see people experience such a transformation in the presence of illness, tragedy and misfortune, that their lives are profoundly graced.

I've known a young mother with terminal brain cancer become healthy again, free of any sign of illness. I've known someone comatose with multiple organic systems failing, awaken and return to home and work. I've known someone who was headed for surgery after tests revealed the presence of a massive tumor, when they took one more picture before beginning the procedure the tumor was gone. I don't understand such mysteries, but I behold them with grateful awe. I believe; help me my unbelief.

But it is the other kind of miracle that really inspires me. Maybe you met Kay Bernard's friend Paula D'Arcy when she was here last year. In her 20's she was in an accident that took the life of her husband and daughter and left her injured and pregnant. Coming to know God within the darkness of her life has been so transforming that she wouldn't turn the clock back and change history even if she could. That astounds and humbles me. I know someone who thanks God for his cancer because it taught him everything about life and changed every pattern and priority he was living by. He is truly alive, balanced and happy for the first time ever. I know someone who thanks God for his criminal prosecution because it was in prison that he encountered a living truth that brought him peace. I know a woman who has endured with grace so many heartaches -- the deaths of those closest to her, repeated occurrences of cancer -- and now, spiritual strength seems to flow from her. In yesterday's paper was the story of a 24 year old seminary student with metastasized melanoma given two years to live. Today, 22 years later despite ten surgeries and the loss of his colon and spleen, one kidney and part of his pancreas, he is a full time pastor, husband and father. His wife said living with her husband's illness has "stretched me to the end of myself and beyond." [The 23rd Psalm] has been my lifeblood -- I just hang onto it." Maybe you know some of those people and stories too. "This kind can come out only through prayer."

The Episcopal priest who translated the Bible into Mandarin Chinese, founded a University and was serving as Bishop of Shanghai when he developed Parkinson's disease, became largely paralyzed and spent the rest of his life completing his translation of the Bible into another Chinese dialect typing with the one finger he could still move. Four years before his death he said, "I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted."

These are people who have faced horrors, tragedies and losses that seem incomprehensible to me. They are people who lived into the darkness and yet discovered within it the mysterious presence of God that brings enlightenment and even joy. They have met God where God is most awesome, in the experience of the cross. Dorothy Sayers once said, "God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion. He rose from the dead." I have seen evil transformed, and I have seen resurrections of many kinds. It is what God does best.

I do not understand the dark mystery of suffering. I do not want it for myself or for anyone I know. But the powerful witness of the Gospel tells me that there is no evil so dark, no terror or injustice so tragic, no loss so final that it is outside God's resurrection power that transforms.

The reality of life is revealed in all its complex ambiguity within the prayer our Savior taught us. The more recent translation of the Lord's Prayer better conveys the sense of the original. In that prayer we beg God to "save us from the time of trial." There is something ominous about those words. May we be spared these horrors that on occasion are the fate of human beings. "And deliver us from evil," we pray. The central prayer of our tradition acknowledges the awful reality of such threats. But it closes with the triumphant affirmation which is lived out in countless lives of the faithful and triumphant. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever."

Life is difficult. Sometimes life is tragic. But we worship a God who transforms evil and who brings new life out of all forms of death. I believe; help my unbelief!

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