WHEN THEY CAME to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. 15As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.
16“What are you arguing with them about?” he asked.
17A man in the crowd answered, “Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. 18Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not.”
19“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.”
20So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.
21Jesus asked the boy’s father, “How long has he been like this?”
“From childhood,” he answered. 22“It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.”
23“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”
24Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”
25When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” he said, “I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”
26The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, “He’s dead.” 27But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.
28After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
Original Meaning
THIS FOURTH AND last of Jesus’ exorcisms presents the downhill side of the Transfiguration. It comprises four scenes. The first scene (9:14–19) begins with crowds gathered around the helpless disciples, engaged in a debate, and climaxes in Jesus’ lament over this faithless generation. The second scene (9:20–24) brings Jesus face to face with a desperate father and culminates in the man’s moving confession of uncertain faith. The third scene (9:25–27) shows faith at work as Jesus drives out a spirit that has tormented the boy and struck him down as dead. The final scene (9:28–29) returns to the disciples’ failure to accomplish the exorcism themselves and connects that failure to insufficient prayer.
When Jesus leaves the mountaintop’s sublime glory he must reenter the everyday world of human and demonic discord. He finds his disciples embroiled in controversy with the teachers of the law and a large crowd ringing the combatants. The disciples’ abortive attempt to exorcise a demon from a lad ignited the squabble. Jesus had deputized them to cast out demons (3:15; 6:7), and they had success (6:13–14), but not with this difficult case. Mark describes the boy’s horrific afflictions in graphic detail. He is mute and racked by seizures that dash him to the ground, cause him to foam at the mouth and grind his teeth, and make him as stiff as a board. Attempts to give his affliction a modern medical name do not alleviate the evil behind his suffering. The boy’s father complains painfully, “I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not [were not strong enough to do so]” (9:18; cf. 5:4; 14:37). Jesus’ disciples are found wanting, and the resulting hubbub exposes their inadequacy and brings them public shame. The theological teachers quarreling with them are no less impotent when confronted by the evil spirits.
When Jesus appears from the mountain, the crowds respond with fearful amazement and run to greet him. Is it his sudden arrival, his air of authority, or something about his countenance—some residual effects from the Transfiguration (see Ex. 34:29–30)—that stirs their astonishment? Mark does not tell us. He focuses instead on the spectacle of the disciples’ glaring failure.
The noisy dispute causes Jesus to declare: “O unbelieving generation … how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (9:19). This lament expresses his exasperation at an unbelieving, quarrelsome crowd (see Deut. 32:5; 20; Isa. 65:2; Jer. 5:21–23; Phil. 2:15). Jesus could do no mighty works in Nazareth because of their unbelief (Mark 6:6), and now the crowd’s and his disciples’ lack of faith contribute to failure. Jesus expresses in a complaint “the loneliness and the anguish of the one authentic believer in a world which expresses only unbelief.”1 His lament also expresses urgency. “How long?” does not convey a wish to be rid of inept disciples but refers to how little time he has left to soften their hardheartedness and to acquaint them more fully with the power that can expel evil. Time is short. Will they ever catch on? Faced with his disciples’ failure and the crowd’s unbelief, Jesus does not throw up his hands in disgust but immediately takes action to rectify the situation.
In the second scene (9:20–24), the people bring the beleaguered boy to Jesus, and the boy’s father takes center stage with Jesus. Jesus does not dialogue with the spirit that possesses the boy but instead directs questions to the distraught father. For the first time, Jesus demands faith as a condition for an exorcism, although we have seen it displayed by the equally desperate Syrophoenician mother. At the heart of this exorcism is the struggle for faith, not the struggle with a demon (cf. 5:1–13). Jesus’ probing questions reveal the problem’s severity and prompt the father’s cry for compassion (9:22). For too long the boy has been in the thrall of an evil spirit that would destroy him by throwing him into fire or water. He is also mute and cut off from all human communication. When he comes into Jesus’ presence, the evil spirit exerts its power by throwing the lad into frightening spasms so that he falls to the ground and foams at the mouth.
Seeing his son’s renewed torment on top of the disciples’ miserable failure can only pierce the father’s heart even more and drain away his faith that Jesus can do any better than his disciples. He has not lost all hope, however, and woefully entreats him, “If you can do anything.” His plea reveals that he does not doubt that Jesus would like to do something if he could, but he is uncertain whether Jesus can prevail in such a pernicious case. His guarded hope contrasts dramatically with the leper who boldly asserted: “If you are willing, you can make me clean” (1:40). The implied skepticism of his plea, “If you can,” meets with a sharp comeback from Jesus.2 His capability is not at issue: “Everything is possible for him who believes” (9:23). This affirmation does not mean that faith can accomplish anything but that those who have faith “will set no limits to the power of God.”3
Whom does Jesus have in mind when he singles out “him who believes”? Does he refer to the miracle worker’s faith or the faith of those who seek miracles? The answer is both. Unlike the disciples, Jesus as a miracle worker possesses unlimited power because of his potent faith. He therefore chides the father for putting limits on what he can do to help him. But petitioners also need to possess faith in him, and aggressive faith has been a characteristic of all those who beseech him for healing in the Gospel (1:40–45; 2:1–10; 5:21–43; 7:24–30; 10:46–52).
The faith of both the miracle worker and the petitioner leads to success. The father belongs to the unbelieving generation, but we see him straining to have this faith. Unlike the people at Nazareth, who refuse to believe, the father’s unbelief is repentant. He is unable to believe but is desperate enough to ask for a miracle and for a faith that expects the impossible. He has not been privy to any vision on the mountain, and his poignant cry, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief,” has resonated with those fighting the same battle across the centuries. He pleads for help just as he is, a doubter.
The third scene (9:25–27) presents Jesus doing battle with the spirit as he commands it to leave the boy and never to enter him again. Jesus’ presence throws demons into fawning submission or into a fury, and this one defiantly flails his young victim about in one last gasp of malice.4 After thrashing about with convulsions, the boy becomes as dead, so that many think he has died. For a moment, things look as if they have gone from bad to worse and that the old chestnut, “the operation was a success, but the patient died,” applies.5 The boy is “withered” (9:18), but Jesus has handled “withering” before (3:1, 3, 5). The evil spirit cries out, but Jesus has handled that before (1:23–24; 3:11; 5:7–8). The convulsions leave the boy looking as if he is dead, but Jesus has handled death before. Jesus seizes his hand as he did Jairus’s dead daughter (5:41; see 1:31) and raises him up. One should not miss that Mark uses resurrection language: “he raised him” (egeiren; “he lifted him to his feet”), and “he was raised” (aneste; “he stood up”). Jesus drives the evil spirit out and gives the boy new life.
In the final scene (9:28–29), the disciples want to review their failure in the privacy of the house. Mark tells us nothing of the father’s or the crowd’s reaction to the boy’s deliverance. Everything focuses on the lesson for Jesus’ followers.6 While the exchange with the father highlights the importance of faith, the conversation with the disciples emphasizes the necessity of prayer (9:29). Jesus’ response, “This kind can come out only by prayer,” implies that they failed because they had not prayed. The disciples were too busy arguing among themselves and with the opponents to pray.
Since Jesus did not offer up a prayer to exorcise the unclean spirit, the prayer that he has in mind is not some magical invocation but a close and enduring relationship with God. Mark hints that Jesus regularly engaged in intense prayer. He went out alone to pray (1:35; 6:45–46), but the disciples interrupted him because they were preoccupied with their own agenda. The one time he specifically asks them to pray with him they sleep instead (14:37–40). The readers therefore can learn from the disciples’ negative example what happens to those who neglect prayer and try to operate on their own steam.7 Jesus’ positive example reveals that only a life governed by faith and prayer can repel the threat from the evil spirits.
A textual variant adds “and fasting” to the requirement of prayer in 9:29.8 This reading does not fit the context for two reasons. (1) Jesus has already dismissed fasting as inappropriate until the bridegroom is taken away (2:18–20). How can he now fault the disciples, as his opponents had done earlier, for not fasting? (2) This reading turns fasting into a work that succeeds in acquiring power from God. The incident stresses the necessity of faith and prayer, which involve complete dependence on God. The power grows out of one’s relationship to God in prayer and comes as a gift of grace, not as a prize for self-mortification.9
Bridging Contexts
THE PANDEMONIUM THAT greets Jesus and the three disciples after they descend the mountain might give Peter new incentive to return to the place of glory to build those shelters, far removed from the confusion, din, and discord below. But disciples cannot sequester themselves from life’s failures or from a faithless generation.
This episode differs from other exorcisms in Mark, and one learns where the central concerns are by looking at the differences. It does not focus so much on Jesus’ power over the demonic but turns our attention to the disciples’ failure (at the beginning and end of the pericope) and to the father’s need for faith (in the middle). The key moments are Jesus’ pronouncements: “Everything is possible for him who believes” (9:23), and, “This kind can come out only by prayer” (9:29). Our interpretation should therefore focus on the parallels between us and the blundering disciples and the man’s cry for help and faith—both of which are easy to carry over into our contemporary world.
This vivid account shows that disciples are just like the rest of us: beset by failure, too ready to engage in arguments, undisciplined in prayer life, and more eager to learn techniques than to take time to walk closely with God. The incident also reveals how feeble the disciples are when they are on their own. We can draw lessons from each of these failures.
To their credit, the disciples do want to learn from their mistakes. Their question to Jesus, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?” reveals a basic misconception deriving from assumptions about exorcism in their first-century world. The question places an emphasis on “we” and betrays the longing to rely on their own professional skill and power. They may have wondered if there was something wrong with their technique that made things go awry. In the ancient world, magicians, sorcerers, and exorcists sought to hit the right combination of words and actions that would invoke the appropriate divine power to achieve the desired effects. They would weave esoteric spells employing potent divine names, perform mysterious actions, and use special instruments. It was all a matter of technique. Any relationship to the deity, such as love or devotion, was not required for success, just as the one who possessed Aladdin’s lamp need only rub it to get the three wishes.
Josephus represents this view of exorcism when he exalted Solomon’s prowess in demonic exorcism:
And God granted him knowledge of the art used against demons for the benefit of healing and healing of men. He also composed incantations by which illnesses are relieved, and left behind forms of exorcisms with which those possessed by demons drive them out never to return.10
He then describes an exorcism done by one Eleazar before the Roman general Vespasian.
He put to the nose of the possessed man a ring which had under its seal one of the roots prescribed by Solomon, and then as he smelled it, drew out the demon through his nostrils, and, when the man at once fell down, adjured the demon never to come back into him, speaking Solomon’s name and reciting the incantations which he had composed. Then, wishing to convince the bystanders and prove to them that he had this power, Eleazar placed a cup or footbasin full of water a little way off and commanded the demon, as it went out of the man, to overturn it and make known to the spectators that he had left the man. 11
Jesus’ answer to his disciples makes clear that his exorcisms have nothing to do with secret lore, techniques, or incantations. The disciples cannot take courses to learn the ins and outs of exorcism or hone their skills in some kind of exorcism lab. Lane comments, “The disciples had been tempted to believe that the gift that they had received from Jesus (6:7) was in their control and could be exercised at their disposal.” This attitude springs from a subtle form of unbelief. When one has success, it encourages trust in oneself and one’s techniques rather than in God.12 Marshall points out that the disciples are therefore guilty of an “anxious self-concern” and a “misplaced self-confidence.” He comments:
Presumably they had come to regard their power to heal and exorcise as their own autonomous possession rather than being a commission from Jesus to realize his delegated authority afresh each time through dependent prayer. Mark is suggesting then that self-confident optimism may “feel” like faith, but it is in fact unbelief, because it disregards the prerequisite of human powerlessness and prayerful dependence on God.13
Only when the disciples are caught up short do they learn that they do not possess anything. Those who belong to the faithless generation do not cast out evil; God does. The power belongs entirely to him and must be received anew each time from him through a life of prayer. The prayerful attitude of “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief” is therefore necessary for the healer as well as the sufferer.
The second thrust of this passage turns on Jesus’ dialogue with the man who brought his child to the disciples. The forlorn father’s struggle for faith helps to clarify the nature of faith as well as to reveal much about our human predicament.
Contemporary Significance
IN DRAWING OUT the contemporary significance of this passage we will look at the parallels between the disciples’ failure in a ministry situation and ours so that we might spot the causes of those failures. We will also look at the father’s desperate need and cry for help and what the exchange between him and Jesus says about faith.
The Disciples’ Failure and the Need for Prayer
WE MAY PREFER the disciples’ experience of Jesus’ inspiring transfiguration to the disciples’ disheartening failure, where they are unable to heal a demon-possessed boy. But Jesus calls us to go down where the cries of help are the loudest, because this is where we put faith into practice. Attending a Bible study conference, charged with inspirational talks and singing and girded about by like-minded, devout Christians, has more attraction to us than slogging through the trenches of life where a sense of failure can become an everyday companion.
Failure may seem a bad thing, something to be feared; but, depending on how we react, it can become a positive learning opportunity. It can become a teaching moment, when we become more deeply aware how utterly we must depend on God. It also can help us cope better with the shipwrecks, breakdowns, and disasters that inevitably come in our lives. Young ministers who hear only praise for brilliant sermons and applause for stunning statistical growth can be fooled into thinking that they succeed by their own power and that they are the star attraction. Failure can teach humility, although the disciples’ later attempt to restrain other successful exorcists (9:38) suggests that they were slow learners on this point.
But failure can also have negative results. It can lead to arguments. We may try to fix blame on others rather than try to fix the problem. We may engage in feuds with enemies who gloat over our failures. The disciples fell into this trap. They wrangled with their opponents while a father stood by, agonizing over the suffering of his child. Cynics would contend that this reflects the church’s normal state of affairs: They spend more time arguing than helping anybody or praying. People come to Christ’s followers for help, and they get trivial arguments instead.
Most people in desperate straits do not care about learned disputations over fine points of interpretation or theological controversies over suspected heresies; they want help. Far too many people have turned away from God and the church because they were turned off by the petty bickering of those more interested in winning arguments within the church or with the secular world than in winning the world to faith. While we debate who is right, who is wrong, and who is at fault, the world stands by helplessly in the grips of evil. One side may win a skirmish with others but lose the battle with Satan. We can probably think of immediate examples of this flaw in our own church body and can apply this story to the situation. In our secular age, the church is no longer seen by many as the place to come for help. Why? Is it because the church seems too preoccupied with heavenly concerns or earthly controversies to offer any real aid in emergencies except a few unctuous bromides?
We should also never forget that people come to get help from Jesus, not from us. The father says to Jesus, “I brought you my son” (9:17); he did not bring him to the disciples. Jesus responds by saying, “Bring the boy to me.” (9:19). The gospel draws people who are in pain, and they place their hope in Jesus, not us. They come with a deep sense of desperation. Lewis B. Smedes confesses that he belatedly came to this insight.
They came to my church on Sunday, ordinary people did, but I did not recognize them in the early days. I know now why I did not recognize them; I did not want them to be ordinary people.… I wanted them to be spiritual athletes, shoulders strong to bear the burdens of global justice that my prophetic words laid on them. But while I was offering them the precious promises and walloping them with the heroic mandates of the Word of God, many of them were secretly praying, “O God, I don’t think I can get through this week—HELP ME!” … What they have in common is a sense that everything is all wrong where it matters to them most. What they desperately need is a miracle of faith to know that life at the center is all right.14
The cause of the disciples’ power failure becomes clear in the final scene: They had deficient faith and insufficient prayer. Their prayers were mute. Nouwen argues that this has become a significant problem in the church.
We have fallen into the temptation of separating ministry from spirituality, service from prayer. Our demons say: “We are too busy to pray, we have too many needs to attend to, too many people to respond to, too many wounds to heal.” Prayer is a luxury, something to do during a free hour, a day away from work or on a retreat.15
The prayer that Jesus has in mind is “not merely a pious exercise”; rather, it is “the sense of complete dependence on God from which sincere prayer springs.”16 A life of prayer goes hand in hand with effective ministry. It makes one receptive to the action of God. One cannot get ready for the moment by quickly uttering a special prayer; one has to be ready through a prayerful life when the moment comes. One cannot separate professional ministry to others from one’s own spiritual condition. “Ministry is not an eight-to-five job but primarily a way of life.”17 That way of life must be permeated with prayerfulness.
Even when one has prayed, there will be times when we feel utterly helpless as members of our church fellowship face debilitating or terminal illness. All too often we spin our wheels, asking why and trying to come up with answers. Our time will be better spent in prayer and putting prayer into action by assuring these fellow believers that we will help take care of the medical bills, the meals, and the children. Maybe God can speak to us more clearly and use us better in times when we keenly sense our inadequacy for the moment. Nouwen asserts that prayer “is a way of being empty and useless in the presence of God and so of proclaiming our basic belief that all is grace and nothing is simply the result of hard work.”18
The disciples must have felt quite empty and useless when they failed to make any headway with the demon controlling the young lad. They came to Jesus wanting to learn how to fill themselves so that they would not bungle things in the future and look so absurd. What Jesus teaches them applies to us: They need to learn from their emptiness and their failures that all healing comes from God, and they must depend entirely upon God.
The Father’s Desperation and the Need for Faith
THE FATHER’S PAIN has immediacy for our situation. He is like so many parents today who helplessly watch their child suffering from some malignant disease, caught in the grip of some addiction, or living at the mercy of gangs and societal violence. They experience anger, frustration, and anguish in not knowing where to turn for help. They fear in their deepest soul that something has taken control of their children’s lives that will kill them unless they can be delivered.
We also witness more and more children in our society who are convulsed by values that roll them around in the dirt. Hopelessness throws them into the fire of drugs and alcohol and drowns them with despair. Teenagers get caught in the grips of anorexia, and parents stand helplessly by, seeking answers and worrying themselves sick. Their best efforts are to no avail. What is worse, there are some parents who show no concern for their children or who feel that they can do nothing to help. The answer begins when we prayerfully bring these children into the presence of Christ.
The most severe challenge to faith comes when loved ones suffer or die, particularly when they are very young. When hopes are raised only to be dashed, one finds it hard to dare hope again for God’s benevolent intervention. The father in Mark 9 has almost reached the point where he has given up all hope when Jesus encourages him to have faith. Faith unleashes a new power in one’s life, but several cautions need to be raised.
(1) People too glibly say to others, “Just have faith,” and mouth platitudes about the great power of faith. Living out one’s faith is never easy, and it grows harder when tragedies buffet one’s life. The father’s psychological turmoil reflects how easily the despair of doubt mixes with and thins the fiber of faith to watery gruel. We may get the impression from Mark 4:40 and 6:6 that doubt and faith are mutually exclusive: Either one has faith, or one is stuck in the morass of unbelief. This father’s plea, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief,” and Jesus’ commands to have faith (5:36) reveal a paradox about faith that most believers experience. As Marshall states it, “There is within every believer a tension between faith and unfaith, and that faith can only continue to exist by dint of divine aid.”19 Chesterton wrote:
There is something in man which is always apparently on the eve of disappearing, but never disappears, an assurance which is always apparently saying farewell and yet illimitably lingers, a string which is always stretched to snapping yet never snaps.20
Faith is always at a disadvantage and seems so fragile but nevertheless can outlive all its would-be conquerors. This father tethers what little faith he has to Christ and asks for help just as he is. Jesus does not expect him to summon up a mighty faith before anything can be done but only to trust that God can act decisively through him.
(2) Dwight L. Moody said there were three kinds of faith. There is struggling faith, like a man in deep water desperately swimming; clinging faith, like a man hanging to the side of a boat; and resting faith, like a man safely within the boat and able to reach out and help others get in. Many, like this father, have a struggling faith. Faith becomes a struggle because one must believe in the fantastic against all odds. Many experience all three kinds of faith and can move back and forth between them. One may have resting faith until life’s storms threaten to swamp the boat and one feels about to drown. The Gospel of Mark intends to lead the reader to a resting faith, but it reveals that it can only come by divine aid.
(3) Faith requires humble trust. The father comes to Jesus hesitantly, not with a bold swagger, and humbly stammers his plea. He does not try to varnish his spiritual poverty or to fake his trust. He does not ask for some sign from heaven to help jump-start his faith but turns his empty hands toward God and asks God to fill them. Like a man desperately treading water in a deep ocean, he pleads for Jesus to throw him a life preserver. The father shows faith in that he “expects everything from God and nothing from [his] own piety or power.”21 Jesus is not put off by the humble honesty of one who says, “I believe, but I am not certain of it.” He grants what is asked.
(4) Faith comes as a gift and is sustained by the power of Jesus, the same power that can cast out the evil that held the boy captive. Thus one cannot regard faith as “a secure possession attained once and for all.” As the father did not trust his own capacity to believe but asked for Jesus’ help, so disciples of every age must rely on Jesus’ help to give them faith.22 God offers help for faith as well as healing.
(5) Faith and prayer make a powerful combination. Faith is not just an inner comfort; it changes human reality. But one must be cautious not to interpret Jesus’ statement as a “general principle that limitless divine power is released through human faith.”23 In our culture, the phrase “just have faith” can apply to faith in almost anything and assumes that faith in whatever is a principle that supplies anyone with supreme power. In 10:27 and 14:36, Jesus ascribes this power to God alone. Marshall offers a helpful analysis:
For Mark, all things are possible to the believer because, actively or passively, the believer sets no limits on God’s power to break into his or her concrete situation, for the very existence of faith within the believer is the ground which allows God to act in his or her context. Since faith is God going into action, it is legitimate to ascribe to faith what is in fact a matter for God.24