Confronting the Silencer, July 5, 10:30am

TODAY’S PASSAGE (Psalm 48 & Mark 9:14-29) comes right after the incredible mountaintop experience of the Transfiguration, where Jesus takes a few disciples with him to bear witness to the holy encounter of Jesus along with Elijah and Moses. Both the law (embodied in Moses’ presence) and the prophets (embodied by the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, Elijah) point to Jesus as the fulfillment of the Hebrew law and prophecy. It is after this, that the disciples and Jesus go back down the mountain and encounter a particularly insidious spirit of silence. The remaining disciples are unable to heal a boy who is unable to speak or hear and the text says that the spirit attempts to burn or drown the child as well by rolling him around into fires and water.

FOR US TODAY, I believe this powerful story is revealing of the struggle for faith. Jesus vanquishes the “demon of silencing” and transforms us from death, as the child appeared dead at the close of the encounter, into life as Jesus helped lift up the boy. Meanwhile, the disciples are focused on their inability to heal and ask Jesus about it. Jesus’ response of “only through prayer” suggests that the disciples are also the subject of the narrative... being unable to heal because they too are “deaf and mute” to the Way of the cross. In other words, they cannot cast out demons by which they, we ourselves, are possessed! What possesses us too, causing our silence to the Way of the cross?

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