NOTES for Mar 9:14-32

Having seen the glory of the transfigured Jesus, the disciples “come down from heaven to earth,” both literally and figuratively. They see the helplessness of their brothers, who are unable to help the unfortunate young man; they see how lack of faith overcomes them and the boy's father more powerfully than any demon. Faith truly is a gift: it cannot be accumulated, it can be lost in an instant, and it may fail us at the most important moment of our lives. Christ's voice sounds almost despairing: “If you can believe even a little...” But even when not even “a little” faith remains, Christ does not disappear. He is an objective reality, far more real than all our moments of darkness. And so we can always cry out to Him: help me; I cannot believe, I do not know how—but You are near, You love me, and You can help.

Today's passage brings us back again to the theme of healings, and this time it again concerns the healing of a demon-possessed man. But now the healing of the demon-possessed man by Jesus Himself is preceded by an unsuccessful attempt made by the apostles (v. 18). In addition, the text contains a brief but meaningful dialogue about faith and unbelief (vv. 23-24). At first glance, the connection is not completely clear: after all, even Gentiles sometimes received healing, as happened with the Syrophoenician woman mentioned in this same Gospel (Mark 7:25-30). But much here becomes clearer if we consider the meaning of the word "faith." In modern religious language, faith often means conviction that certain opinions or ideas about God, the human person, spiritual life, and other religiously important matters are correct. Meanwhile, both the Hebrew word usually translated into Russian as "faith" and the corresponding Greek word used by the evangelist mean not so much faith as conviction, but faithfulness and trust toward the one to whom such faithfulness has been promised. Faithfulness and trust were the foundation of the relationship between Jesus and all those whom He met during His earthly ministry. If trust did not arise from the beginning between Him and those with whom He interacted, further interaction became impossible, just as it did in cases when a person who had once trusted Jesus then betrayed Him for some reason. But if a relationship was not established or was broken, then the Kingdom of God was closed to that person, for it is inseparable from the person of Jesus Himself; in that case, there could be no question of healing either. Such a person could still keep his religious convictions, but convictions and views by themselves cannot open the Kingdom to anyone. Conversely, trust in Jesus opens it even to a Gentile who, like the Syrophoenician woman who came to Him, may have had no carefully developed religious worldview at all. What matters to Jesus, it appears, is personal relationship with a particular person, or its absence, more than that person's worldview.

In the story of the healing of the epileptic boy, the word "unbelief" is heard twice, so that it becomes a troubling refrain, simply the dominant note of the story. Jesus seems to address these words to everyone, not specifically to the boy's father, but still he is the main person on whom the whole weight of these words falls. And the father humbly acknowledges unbelief in himself, though just think how hard that must have been for him. For us, words about unbelief sound like something ordinary. We have already lived through the postmodern era with Hermann Hesse's words that faith and doubt condition one another like inhaling and exhaling, but then "unbelief" sounded frightening.

The risen Christ "rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart" (Mark 16:14). The Lord Himself equates unbelief with hardness of heart. And it is even worse than hardness of heart, because the apostle Paul asks: "What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?" (2 Cor 6:15), that is, the faithful and the unfaithful differ as much as Christ and the devil. We must understand this and feel it in order to understand what the boy's father experienced, and what the disciples experienced, since these words were addressed to them too. For we have become used to an educated tolerance of belief, and in recent years in our country people have even begun to respect atheists in a special way, as those who have not joined the majority, the crowd, the mass.

But "if we are faithless, He remains faithful" (2 Tim 2:13). Therefore the healing takes place. These words draw attention to themselves: "And He said to them: this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer." It is unclear what else they could have tried to use to drive it out. After all, Christ did not teach them medicine or magic, and everyone who heard these words understood that they had tried to drive it out by prayer. But He very simply, and in a way that allowed no objection, made them understand that not every prayer can be called prayer.

The ancient Christians, when compiling the order of church readings, most likely assigned today's passage from the Gospel of Mark to this Sunday of Great Lent because of Christ's words: "This kind is driven out only by prayer and fasting". From these words of the Savior the conclusion suggests itself that prayer and fasting are not merely important, but at times irreplaceable means of a person's spiritual life. At the same time, of course, it must be kept in mind that the word "fasting" (as in the analogous phrase in the Gospel of Matthew) is a comparatively late Byzantine insertion here, and in the original the evangelist Mark most probably wrote, "this kind cannot come out by anything except prayer."

Nevertheless, the question of why one cannot make do in spiritual life with something more convenient seems quite natural at first glance. Yet Christ's words set every accent precisely, for without prayer you can engage in moral self-improvement or charity, but that will hardly be spiritual life.

But in the evangelist Mark's account there are words that may be no less important for us in our relationship with God. These are the words of the father of the possessed boy: "I believe, Lord; help my unbelief." None of us would dare say that he believes "wholly and completely." The constant movement from trust toward confidence and hope by accumulating the experience of faith is a natural and, I dare say, necessary part of spiritual life. And in this it is very important for us to know that we can choose not to hide unbelief, shamefully pretending to be some hypothetical confident person. This man's example says that we can bring our weakness in faith to Christ and find help and strengthening in Him Himself.

Today we read some of Christ's most difficult words, words that trouble the reader: "O faithless generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?" A faithless generation is not about traitors, but about unbelieving and unsure people. About minds and hearts that, as soon as they take up a task, are already convinced that it cannot be done. About those who hide their weakness, coldness, and laziness behind constant accusation, criticism, and reproach. About those who cannot acknowledge their weakness and blindness and entrust themselves to people and to God. About those who have lost their connection with God and are always in depression and a bad mood.

In such a state, few people can even recognize this condition in themselves. But one of those struck by such despondency cried out: "I believe, Lord! Help my unbelief." He saw in Christ the One who has power, the only One who can help. And his "I believe!" is the words of a person who, in his suffering, seeks and finds support in Christ's eyes, words, and actions. And he knows that he asks Him to help because he knows no other way. He sees in his soul the absence of faith and trust. And he does not want to be an intermediary; he cannot stand on his own. But he asks not for himself, but for another.

And Christ heals the demon-possessed man at his request. And then He says that this kind is cast out by fasting and prayer. Here He is speaking about how to acquire faith, not about why the disciples were unable to heal.

The closer the Crucifixion comes, the more time Jesus spends with His disciples. He speaks to them about the sufferings awaiting Him. But His disciples do not understand Him; they are thinking not about suffering and death, but about glory and privileges. This is where the argument comes from: "Who is greater? Who will receive more authority in the Kingdom of the Messiah?" John, in addition, seeks to protect the twelve disciples from competition on the part of "outsiders." At the same time, the boundary of "our own circle" is drawn by a very simple sign: "ours" are those who walk with us.

Christ rejects both attempts to build a pyramid of power and honors and the desire to turn the community of disciples into a closed club. He says directly to John: "Do not forbid him." Then He unexpectedly begins a conversation about the danger of stumbling blocks, ending it with the words: "Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." Here one can see an echo of John's question and of the disciples' arguments about who is greater. The desire to separate "our own" from "outsiders," and to arrange "our own" by rank, destroys peace and makes people suspicious and hostile. Without peace among themselves, Christ's disciples cannot fulfill their mission in the world: to be "the salt of the earth" (Matt. 5:13). (Let us recall that every sacrifice was salted with salt before being offered to God on the altar (Lev. 2:13). Salt, as it were, made the sacrifice fit for God).

What does the word "stumbling block" mean? Other translations of this Greek word ("skandalon") are trap, snare, noose. It is everything that by deception, on the sly, pushes the simplehearted toward a fall or simply gets in the way and obstructs. Let us think about the extent to which the struggle for power, quarrels, and divisions among Christians serve as a stumbling block for "these little ones" and hinder those seeking the Truth from coming to saving faith.

Today's passage is devoted to one of the main themes of the entire New Testament: the theme of the Kingdom of God. What is especially important here is that Jesus Himself gives the explanations concerning the Kingdom. At the center of His story is the image of a child, who symbolizes those who occupy the first places in the Kingdom of God (vv. 36-37). A person who causes a child to stumble is worse than a murderer, for even a murderer deserves trial, while Jesus compares such a tempter with a person who is thrown into the sea to be drowned without any trial (v. 42). This image, of course, does not appear by accident. In a traditional, patriarchal society, in large families, children as a rule did not occupy the honorable first places they often occupy in modern families. Children were regarded as natural servants and helpers, as the younger members of a large family or patriarchal clan. They truly were younger, and therefore the position of such a "natural servant" did not wound them at all and was not perceived by them as humiliation or as a lack of attention or love. Almost any adult in such a position feels a certain second-class status and dependence, which is understandable, given how important social position and the status connected with it are in an adult's eyes. Children do not think about this, and therefore for them there is no problem here. Apparently this is exactly what Jesus has in mind when He gives a child as an example, as the model of a resident of the Kingdom of God: for those who want to be its residents, it is important to renounce traditional ideas about the importance of social position and social status. Of course, in this case there always remains the danger that nearby there may be people who want to take advantage of such a state of affairs, just as in every age there have been people ready to take advantage of a child's familiar naivete and abuse it. It is precisely this sin that Jesus says is worse than murder and unworthy even of trial, for the person who acts this way not only rejects the fullness of the life of the Kingdom of God himself, but also prevents others from receiving it. Meanwhile, in a person's life there is always something that prevents him from becoming a child in the sense in which Jesus speaks of it: it may be a "hand," or a "foot," or an "eye," in short, anything a person uses in order not to be the child who can enter the Kingdom. Jesus advises getting rid of whatever interferes without regret (vv. 43-48). Sometimes it may seem that in doing so one loses something vitally important, something without which life will become damaged; but on closer inspection it turns out that the imagined "fullness" leads somewhere very different from the place where the fullness of life can be found, while apparent impairment at the end of the road turns into the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

Once again we read that the Son of Man must suffer and be humiliated, and rise on the third day. The cycle of church readings is scarcely offering us precisely these passages now "by chance." The Lord Himself speaks of His Passion: "For this hour I came." The meaning and purpose of the Savior's birth in Bethlehem is not to make our life a little easier and more pleasant. He comes in order to share with us and destroy our death.

That is why the celebration of the Nativity has, since ancient times, had a number of features in the Eastern Church that bring it close to Pascha. In a certain sense, the whole life of Christ from the very beginning was the way of the Cross and Resurrection. And as we are moved and rejoice in Christ the Infant, we must not forget this.