Sermon from October 14, 2001
Like all good storytellers, Mark uses certain techniques to communicate the story he has to tell. For example, he often presents events in sets of three. We have seen three boat rides across the Sea of Galilee in which the disciples of Jesus come to certain unpleasant realizations about themselves. Three times Jesus predicts His coming death and resurrection. Three times the disciples fail to understand or accept that prediction. Three times Jesus tries to help them understand what it means to be followers of a suffering Messiah.

In chapter eleven for the third time we come across an idea that Jesus tried to get into the minds and hearts of His disciples. Let's go back to the first occurrence and work our way forward. In Mark 9:14-29 a distraught father brought his demon-possessed son to Jesus' disciples and asked them to drive the demon out. Jesus and three other disciples were not there at the time. The nine disciples, who had had success at exorcisms before, could not do it. When Jesus got there, He expressed disappointment in them.

"O unbelieving generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me." They brought the boy to Jesus and, after a conversation with the boy's father, He healed the child. Before the healing the boy's father expressed a ragged hope that Jesus could help him. He said, "If you can do anything, help us."

Jesus' response to the boy's father takes us more deeply into the nature of the faith that makes things happen in the Kingdom of God. "'If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes." For the first time Jesus strikes the note of a God who does what human beings consider impossible.

The second time Jesus brings up the matter of unlimited possibilities with God is in chapter ten. The rich man has just refused to sell all he has, give it to the poor, and come, follow Jesus. Jesus assesses the situation in a memorable hyperbole. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were already suffering from nearly terminal amazement when they heard that. Verses 26-27 report an increase in their amazement. The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." Neither Jesus nor the disciples comment on that statement of faith. Mark just puts it out there for his readers to absorb. He lets the matter drop until it comes up again in chapter 11, our text for today.

Last Sunday, we read the story of the cleansing of the temple. We read how Mark preceded that story by the story of Jesus saying to a fig tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." The day after those events, as Jesus and His disciples set out again for Jerusalem, Peter saw the fig tree that was now withered away to its roots, and he called Jesus' attention to it. Here is Jesus' response.

"Have faith in God," Jesus answered. "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him." Then, in the next breath, Jesus draws this conclusion.

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." For a third time, Jesus takes His disciples into the country of seemingly unlimited possibilities. In fact, more than in either chapter nine or chapter ten Jesus seems to give to His disciples a signed, blank check, and suggests that they fill in the amount. Is that what Jesus intended them and us to believe? I would like to tackle that question with you today. I would like to offer several reflections that I hope will guide us as we come to terms with these amazing words. The first two are serious but not decisive for understanding the Lord's words.

Number one: There are times when God gives us exactly what we ask for, even if it is thoroughly selfish. He is free to answer our prayers, as He in His wisdom deems best. If that has happened to you, I am sure God wants to teach you to trust Him. I would only say to you, "Don't get used to it." It may not happen that way again for a long time. Enjoy the generosity of God and be prepared for Him to take you deeper into His life and will.

Number two: If we ask God for something, and do not get it, and afterwards it becomes impossible for us to get it, then we have doubts about the words of Jesus. Either Jesus misled us, or we misunderstood Him. The check bounced for some reason, and we are left to figure out why. The bad news in this is that when this happens, some people cease to pray, may even cease to believe in God. The good news is that those who continue to pray stop thinking of prayer as a blank check. Chastened by unanswered prayers, they try to understand Jesus' words differently, and that is what we are going to do today.

A third reflection has to do with a characteristic of every language to some degree and of ancient Hebrew thought, including Jesus', to a high degree. It is the characteristic of exaggerated speech. Do you remember Lawrence of Arabia? T.E. Lawrence lived among Arabs during the First World War, and he made the following observation about their habits of speech. "Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice," (quoted in Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, 110).

We see the same habit of speech over and over in the Bible. For example, in Luke 14:26 Jesus says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple." You and I would say instead, "If loyalty to your family conflicts with loyalty to Christ (and God forbid that it ever do!), then you must give preference to Christ."

The language of Jesus is extreme. Our language is softer, but the call for loyalty to Christ is just as strong as He intended for it to be. We can mulitply examples like this from the entire Bible. I believe something like this is going on here in Mark 11:23-24. He has stated the matter extremely, but He does not offer us a blank check. There are conditions built in to His promise. Let's look at two of the conditions in Mark and one from another part of the New Testament.

From Mark here is a fourth reflection that takes us back to chapter nine. Jesus said,"Everything is possible for him who believes." The modern doctrine of freedom interprets Jesus' words to mean, "Since I am free to have what I want in order to do what I want, I can't see why God doesn't cooperate." If we are not careful, it comes to express a profound selfishness that has little or nothing to do with the faith that Jesus had in mind.

After the attack on the World Trade Center, Bryant Gumbel interviewed Billy Graham's daughter, Ann Graham Lodz, and asked her, "Why didn't God stop this or do something about this?" This was her reply.

"For years we have told God we didn't want Him in our schools. We didn't want Him in our government and we didn't want Him in our finances and God was being a perfect gentleman in doing just what we asked Him to do. We need to make up our minds – do we want God or do we not want Him? We cannot just ask Him in when disaster strikes." Bryant Gumbel was silent.

When Jesus says, "Everything is possible for him who believes," He does not mean the person will get whatever he requests. Instead, he means that the person who believes truly opens himself up to God's possibilities in any given situation, whatever they might be. Such faith trusts God's power, wisdom and timing. It says, "I believe God can intervene in terrible human circumstances, and I will wait to see how He does it." He might even make use of our power, might, and wisdom, our riches, strength and armies; or He might not.

We do not presume. We trust, and it is right here that prayer comes in. Prayer is the human act in which we humble ourselves before God's power and wisdom and ask Him to act in our present circumstances, when He is pleased to do so and as He is pleased to do so. The heart of all such prayer says, "Show yourself, O Lord, in these circumstances." This kind of faith, say all the great Christian men and women of faith, is what makes things happen in the kingdom of God.

A fifth reflection comes to us right out of Mark 11:25. Jesus says, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." It is a bit of a shock to think that it might hinder our prayers, but if I come before almighty God with the unforgiven sin of an unforgiving heart, why should God hear my prayers?

In one breath, "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." In the next breath, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him." What could be more transcendent than pursuing impossibilities? What could be more homely than holding a grudge? Sometimes, the greatest impossibility seems to be the unresolved hostility that drives people apart. Jesus leaves the strong impression that it will hinder our prayers.

Do you know who learned this lesson well? The Apostle Peter. Years later, he would write to a congregation in Asia, Husbands ... be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect ... and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers, (1 Peter 3:7).

We never really get beyond the truisms we try to forget, do we? Don't go to bed angry. Don't hold grudges. Do be tenderhearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you, (Ephesians 4:32). By juxtaposing these two remarkable statements in Mark 11, I believe Jesus means for us to understand that pursuit of the possibilities of God takes root in a forgiving spirit with one another. This two further qualifies the extreme way in which the language of verse 24 has exposed itself.

That brings me to a further condition on prayer that the Gospel of Mark does not make, but which we find in a passage like 1 John 5:14. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 1 John actually uses these words, but we can find the same idea expressed in a variety of ways in the Bible.

Well, of course! It is the only way to think about prayer that is consistent, when finite and sinful creatures approach the holiness and majesty of God. He does not come at our beck and call to do our bidding. We are challenged to learn His purposes and conform our prayers to those purposes. To read Mark 11:23-24 and forget this fundamental condition is to misinterpret Jesus and invite folly and disappointment.

I said that Mark does not explicity make the will of God a condition of the promise in Mark 11. But really it does in one of the most memorable moments in the life of Jesus. What does Jesus pray in the Garden of Gethsemane? "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." He knew it was the Father's will that He go to the cross, yet He asked for something contrary. In the next breath He yielded His will to the Father's will. Who are we to presume to be governed in our praying by anything other than the will of God?

That brings me to a seventh and last reflection on Jesus' words, and this reflection brings us to another moment when the story of our lives needs to converge with the story of Jesus, which is the story for all humanity. We read Mark 11:23-24 and all other such promises about prayer from a highly personal, individualistic point of view. We seldom hear them or seek to experience them communally. I would like now to challenge us to something other and better. It is a prayer for BVBC. Let me set the context of this prayer.

Last summer, Sam Stein told me of a statement he had read in Delaware Today. The magazine identified a church here in Wilmington that was the place to be. I do not know the name of the church. I do not believe that Delaware Today had in mind the spiritual well-being of its readers. "The place to be" means "the place to be seen." In that sense I do not want BVBC ever to become the place to be. So, what do I want this church to become?

Can I define what I want this church to become in terms of size? I find it tempting and easy to want that, although the temptation does not have the urgency it once did. Against the pressures within and without to measure BVBC by numbers, I seek before God to make my focus always the magnificent human beings who come here week after week. We come with our stressed-out lives, our blatant flaws, our unutterable aspirations for God. There are no dull people here. There are only Pinocchios, haunted by the possibility of becoming real, live sons and daughters of God. Whatever BVBC can become, its human face must be central to our vision.

I want BVBC to become something that churches seldom become. The odds against becoming such a church are too great to be sure it can be achieved. We catch glimpses here and there of it in our life together, but what if every apple on the tree ripened, and we became such a church in fullness? That would mean that whatever the reality would look like, it would come to pass because the life of God found free expression here. So, what mountain shall we together ask God to move?

Can we become a community in which people come as they are and seek God as He is? People think they have to get all dressed up to go to church; not just in what they wear but in their behavior. They have to look nice enough to come and be good enough to come. Not so. Christ came for people who most emphatically do not have it altogether.

Seeking God as He is takes place responsibly as we experience together worship, love and detachment. We offer acts of adoration to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We offer deeds of costly service to other people whom God brings across our path. We seek to engage the world without becoming corrupted by the world.

In this way we seek God as He is, as he knows Himself to be, not as we would like for Him to be. We will never assume we've got it all right. He will always evade our grasp, but we will always find Him within reach. Could we make that aspiration the substance of our communal prayer to God? I don't know if we could become a church like that, but if we did, its impact would be incalculable.