Now in our last Mark post we return to the questions or disappointments with which we began. The life of faith doesn’t always work out as we hoped, nor are our prayers always answered. What does Mark say to this?
There are `Habakkuk-times’ when God doesn’t seem to act in power when we want – at least as far as we can see; situations when we are called to be the `just’ who (as the NT puts it) go on living by faith: that is, `believing’ (cf Mark 5:36). Mark tells us of various such times. In ch5, Jesus puts an unknown woman’s need first, and Jairus’ sick daughter, who he was coming to heal, dies in the meantime (vv23-24,35). Mark 6 has another example: Jesus sees the disciples `straining at the oars, because the wind was against them’, but it isn’t until 3 am that he comes to help them (6:48).
We recognize the truth of this. As Hebrews 11 says, there have been giants of faith who conquered kingdoms, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, and received their dead back to life again (vv33-35). Which is marvellous. But, the same chapter reminds us, there were other giants of faith who didn’t: who were tortured and didn’t get released in this life at all; who were stoned, sawn in two, put to death by the sword: the `way of the cross’ (vv35-38). Jesus’ summons to discipleship in Mark 8:35 evidently includes a calling to follow, in whatever way, if and as necessary. Faith, Paul says, may link to power for suffering (compare Col 1:11), as well as to power for glory. It happened in the first century, it happens in this one; and in some challenging way this, too, is the reign, the strength, of God.
I find this hard to think about. As we said last time, clearly there are two ways that the kingdom works. Yet this further point seems important to me: treating these two categories of events as if they were equal may bring us towards a paralysis of faith and prayer. The real danger is that we start to feel as if it’s a toss of a coin whether an uninterested God will hear our prayers. We catch ourselves saying, `Well, I guess we’ll just have to trust the Lord’, as if we were depending on an unreliable plumber. Worse, we can start to feel as if God’s inactivity, on this side of death, is the norm. (`Heaven remained rigidly on the other side of death’, says Graham Greene of the depressing world of his novel The Heart of the Matter, `and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness…’) So it’s striking to see, as we now reach Mark 11:22-24, the uninhibited, positive way that Jesus challenges us to `Have faith in God… 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. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’ Does that sound `unbalanced’? Possibly, but it isn’t the only time Christ does it. Consider his further remarks in John 14:14, 15:16: `You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it… The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name!’
Yes, Scripture shows us that there are exceptions to these promises (unless we think none of Hebrews’ tortured heroes ever prayed for release). Mark itself makes that clear. Soon afterwards it shows Jesus praying a desperate, unanswered prayer for deliverance; we read in 14:36 of the agony where he himself lived out the obedience of faith: `Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.’ That prayer was not granted (and therefore we are saved; Thankyou, Lord…). Exceptions surely do happen; and the Father knows why; and trusting his choices becomes the issue. (I’m reminded of the end of The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: `He’s there, and then he’s not there. He’s not a tame lion.’) But what Jesus chooses to emphasise there in Mark 11 (and John 14 and 15) is that prayers get answered. And it’s striking – particularly given what was about to happen to his own prayers – that he doesn’t feel it necessary to add that good prayers from good people can get answered with `No`, or `Not yet’.
In other words: such times do occur, but they are not the norm. The norm, Jesus implies, is that we get serious about prayer and our prayers bear fruit. The norm is that things happen; that the caring power of the kingdom is released, `on earth’, by prayer; that `mountains’ are swept away and God’s will is actualized on earth as it is in heaven, in response to a praying Church opening the floodgates God gave her. True, God is sovereign and reserves the right to do things differently, when longterm that is the most loving thing he can do. But doesn’t it seem that these times are the exceptions, since Christ did not feel it necessary to refer to them as he taught us?
The Bible shows us, too, how grasping the `norm’ will help us through the `exceptions’. God has plans to develop our faith for eternity’s sake through the `exceptions’, through those times when we have to `walk by faith, not by sight’. (See 2 Cor 1:9 for an example; and John 20:29.) Our faith, our trust, matters enormously to him; and the times when we don’t `see’ what he’s doing are times when that trust can be expressed.
So the gospels show us how to grow in this also. I remember sitting in a Bible study in St Petersburg, where my colleague Jenny Brown reminded us that Mark’s triumphant kingdom-narrative starts with a situation where the kingdom apparently didn’t work at all: `After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God’ (1:14). It’s striking to see how Christ handles this `exception’. For John in prison, the kingdom’s apparent failure was so depressing that he began to doubt Jesus altogether; having actually seen heaven opened and the Spirit descending on Christ, he now questions whether Jesus is the Messiah at all (Matt 11:3). Christ’s response is instructive. He doesn’t spirit John out of prison (as he would Peter in Acts 12); the kingdom, for John, was to be manifested in God’s strength for his faithfulness to the end. Rather, Jesus carefully focuses John’s attention on what have been called the `paradigm events’, the ones that display reality most clearly: `Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk… the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor’ (Matthew 11:4-5).
These, Jesus suggests, are God’s norm; fill your mind with them. And we too must fill our minds, from the Word, with what these writers `heard and saw’; they will give us strength to trust, to live by faith, as the `exceptions’ come.
(This is also the practical value of exposing ourselves to contemporary situations, or accounts of them, where God’s kingdom power is revealed especially clearly. For myself as a younger believer, Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler and David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade were very important in this respect. (So, I should add, were accounts of the kingdom’s other aspect, God’s power strengthening believers to stand through unrelieved persecution; like Wurmbrand’s In God’s Underground.) When I got to university in Wales, it was obvious how vital the memories of God’s power in the various Welsh revivals were as `paradigm events’ for the strength of many people’s spirituality. Missions involvement, and exposure to the glorious realities of some of what God is doing in the two-thirds world, can be deeply strengthening for the same reason.)
Indeed, Mark implies, this `strength` to trust, to live by faith, will be an issue even in the `normal’ times. Why does his gospel have such an emphasis on the need – even for Jesus – for recurrent withdrawal to recuperate (6:30-32 and 46; cf 1:35 at the close of the opening section expounding the kingdom)? Is it because, no matter how much of God’s goodness and power we’re seeing, tiredness can drain away the sheer energy to exercise faith? Isn’t it exhaustion that sometimes makes it hardest to trust God’s care? It’s tempting to speculate on the reasons for the disciples’ failure to trust in 6:52, despite all the miracles they had seen and even performed. It’s odd that people who had just driven out `many demons’ (6:13) suddenly panicked at a ghost. Were they `burnt out’ through being unable to take the break Jesus had arranged in 6:30-34? Is there a relation between exhaustion and faith-weakness? Seriousness about sabbath rest links to the strength to believe, the strength to pray. (And absorbing the gospels in bulk at such times of rest is often a key to recovery.)
And so Christ’s kingdom-challenge comes to us, as it did when he came to earth: choose to believe the good news – and pray in partnership with it! Believe that God reigns and he really will see that things happen; that his Church is built, his gospel preached and his kingdom forwarded. Pray in hope, in adventurous expectation; pray to get as much of heaven on earth as possible, as a church-planting friend of mine puts it. It’s clear that God works in different ways for different situations; but how he wants to work at this actual moment in our situation we shall only know if we press forward and pray.
And more: believe that he cares about us as individuals and our intimate needs, cares enormously. Believe that he is our `Abba’, our `papa’; and that if an earthly father wouldn’t answer his child’s plea for bread with a stone, then – unless he truly sees a deeper benefit – so much more will our heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. (Thankyou, Abba, that you are worthy of my trust…) Believe (on the authority of God’s Word) that what Christ feels towards us as individuals is a love as vast as the infinite, oceanic love that the Father has for his perfect Son (see the bizarre verse John 15:9), and that that love is backed up for us by infinite wisdom and power. Believe, therefore, Christ challenges us, that, longterm, things will go right; that the colossal, creative power of loving grace that originally called heaven and earth out of nothingness is affectionately active for us in our situation. Believe that he will be at work, here, now, as we – seriously – pray. Cultivate the mental reflex that thankfully expects God to act for good around us; rather than the reflex that expects him to have some good reason for not doing so. Draw strength from the way God works in Scripture, and from reflecting gratefully on his kindness in good things we can identify in our own past. If indeed the just are those who `live by faith’, as the NT says, then this faith is vital for us to grow in. Father, I do not understand all these things at all, but please help me to walk with you…
So, have faith: that is one of Jesus’ key challenges in this Gospel of Mark – knowing, as he does, that it may not always be easy, not at all. But reach out for his grace for that choice, for making the mental effort for faith. Use it to fuel your prayers. `Lift up your heads’ – and this is surely a good Christmas message! The God of goodness who was born into our total mess that first Christmas, and agonized later in Gethsemane, has most certainly not left us. He is still, actually, here…!
PS: Of course, Mark reminds us, all this has implications for our actions. Jesus says, `Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours’ (11:24), and then adds immediately, `And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him’ (11:25). (Lord, please help me see where that applies for me…) This matches the concern John expresses for us to know a radical `confidence’ in prayer: `We have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands‘ (1 John 3:21-22, cf 5:14). Trusting and obeying go together; to see the power of the kingdom, I must live by the principles of the kingdom. `Your kingdom come, your will be done’ – `getting as much of heaven on earth as possible’ – starts in my own heart; Christ’s loving reign must be real in me if his lordship, his kingdom, is to flow out through me into the world…
