London or Berlin, date unknown
This undated sermon may have been given in London or Berlin at an evening service. Bonhoeffer mentions having seen a play about St. Francis; such a play, in its third edition, by Otto Bruder is known to have been published at that time by Christian Kaiser Verlag in Germany.
Mark 9:23–24: If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes. . . . I believe; help my unbelief!
To a person who is in what appears, to human eyes, to be a hopeless situation, Jesus says this: if you could believe. Then everything in your life would be different. Then you wouldn’t be standing here so timidly, so desperately, because then you would know that nothing is impossible for you. These words are spoken to a father whose child, in human terms, is incurably ill, who would do anything to help his son and yet must look on helplessly while the child is destroyed. The father has tried everything he can think of and finally has come to Jesus’ disciples; and now only one way is left, one that he treads in fear and trembling, the way that causes everyone to tremble, the first time we walk it—the way to Jesus.
Why would we rather take any other way than the way to Christ himself when something goes wrong in our lives? Why do we avoid really choosing this way? Why do we shudder and turn away? Because we know that we will have to answer a mighty question, and this question is: Can you believe? Can you believe in such a way that your whole life becomes, or will become, one great act of trust in God, of daring to believe in God? Can you so believe that you never look to left or right but do what you have to do for God’s sake? Can you so believe that you obey God? Can you believe? If you could believe, then yes, help would be at hand. Then nothing would be impossible for you any longer.
How often we are terrified by our own lack of faith. Oh, if only I could believe! At the bedsides of those who are sick and dying, at the edge of despair over myself and others, this is the cry that rises up in me: oh, if only I could believe! Yet when we have the chance to observe the life of someone who lived and died in faith, as I did a few weeks ago when I saw a moving play about the life of St. Francis, then we are totally convinced that this is the only way that is worthwhile—just to live the way Christ wants us to, without worrying about what is going to happen to us personally. Then it takes hold of us irresistibly: if only I could believe, yes, then my whole life really would be different. Then I would be free, perhaps even somehow happy, because nothing would be impossible for me anymore. “I can do all things through him who strengthens me, Jesus Christ” [Phil. 4:13].
We do believe in all sorts of things, far too many things in fact. We believe in power, we believe in ourselves and in other people, we believe in humankind. We believe in our own nation and in our religious community, we believe in new ideas—but in the midst of all those things, we do not believe in the One—in God. And believing in God would take away our faith in all the other powers, make it impossible to believe in them. If you believe in God, you don’t believe in anything else in this world, because you know it will all break down and pass away. But you don’t need to believe in anything “else,” because then you have the One who is the source of all things, in whose hands everything comes to rest.
We know the victories that can be won by a person who truly believes in himself or herself, or who believes in any power or idea in this world to the point of total self-surrender to it and living it out. Such a person can accomplish superhuman things, impossible things. How much greater will be the victory of the person whose faith is not in some subjective illusion but in the living God! The miracles of Jesus, the effect that he had on people, were nothing other than his faith! We should be the ones to live by such faith. How ashamed we must be when we look at our lives, even compared to the accomplishments of people who had faith in the things of this world. Oh, if only we could believe!
Why can we not believe? What are the obstacles to our faith? There are as many answers to that as there are unbelieving people. One would cite intellectual difficulties, another would plead not having a “gift for religion,” for another it would be a hard experience of life, a generally pessimistic outlook, and so on. There is no lack of reasons that we can put forward to excuse ourselves. No human being ever lacks these, even when everything else is lacking. But the one honest answer to this question is that we basically do not want to believe. I know we feel offended if someone says that. We say we must have tried a hundred times over in our lives to believe, and even now we still want to, but it is just that way for us in particular—we really, even with the best will in the world, just simply cannot believe. This is not true; it is all a sham, even though we may not be consciously aware of it. What is true is that in all these despairing and strained efforts to believe, what we really wanted was not to believe. That is, we didn’t want that which is the first requirement of faith, namely, to surrender ourselves totally, not to think of ourselves anymore, to extinguish completely our need for recognition and recognize God alone, to put our trust and dare to believe in God alone. We would surrender what was uncomfortable to us, but not that which we cared about! To have faith means to trust and to dare unconditionally, and that we didn’t want; we wanted to set conditions, and thereby we missed the whole point, and our whole effort was not genuine. We did not want to believe.
If someone comes with pious arguments proving that the Bible says there are people whom God has predestined not to be able to have faith but rather to be objects of wrath that are made for destruction [see Rom. 9:19–26], our answer is, That may be true, but how do you know that you are one of them? Who told you that? How do you know that it is not actually your fault that you refuse to believe, when God has never stopped calling you? You want to have faith—all right, isn’t that enough to show that God is calling you, that you are supposed to have faith and that you can believe if you will only trust in him? We do not want to believe.
But Jesus says: if you could believe. There is longing and infinite compassion in these words. If only you would decide to take this step that you have wanted all your life to take and never did, to believe. If only you would give yourself up, quite simply and in everything that is most personal and specific to you, and let Jesus be your Lord.
All things are possible for the one who believes. Here we are talking about an incurable illness, which is really supposed to be broken through faith in the power of God and in fact is broken. We stand amazed; we look for excuses, ways it could have happened: suggestive influences or unconscious psychotherapy. Christ says no, none of that; it was faith, it was God.
All things. People who study the human mind know that the thing that seems least possible is to break through a mental pattern or mental compulsion that has a person in its grip, to turn the person in a different direction. Jesus says, All things. People who live lives of religious devotion know that we have no hope of combating our sins, our selfishness, our weaknesses, as long as we rely on ourselves alone, that nothing is more desperate than a human being’s struggle against sin. Jesus says, all things are possible for those who believe. The most hardened and stubborn sinner becomes a new being, free from all fear, all compulsiveness, all evil habits, if he or she will only believe—that is, will dare to put his or her trust in God. The most melancholy person becomes joyful, the most timid soul becomes outgoing, the most diffident and lukewarm character is suddenly glowing with new life—“if only you could believe.”
All things are possible—We can think of so many times when we turned to God wanting to believe, when we prayed and called to God to help us, “if it be thy will”—and we did not receive the help, at least not in the way we asked for it. All things—is it really true?
Doesn’t that almost mean that faith can compel God? Yes, that is indeed what it means! But that is just what is so incredible, that God wants to be compelled by our faith—not by our complaining and lamenting and worrying and sighing, but by our faith. That almost sounds blasphemous—but could it be true? Isn’t God’s will, after all, the place where every true faith must meet its limit? What does it mean, to believe in God, if not to make room for God’s will, what God wills for us, for the world? Can there then be anything at all that is not possible, if it is God’s will? And don’t we know very well what God’s will is for our lives? Don’t we know very well what God’s will is for our nation and for our church? Shall we not dare at last, in faith, to let God’s will for us be done?
You answer: Lord, I believe; help my unbelief! The promise that Jesus has given to the one who believes draws this father out beyond his own limitations, compels him to believe. Jesus himself compels the man to have faith, so that he says, Lord, I believe—I believe what you say, I believe that your word and your promise are true. I believe, when I am looking at you, when I hear the words, when I see. But when I am looking at myself, then, dear Lord, help my unbelief. When I am besieged, when everything in me resists such a promise—reason, history, the world, my experience—help my unbelief.
We are being asked whether we believe. We are being called upon—oh, if only you could believe! To us the promise is given: all things are possible. Looking at these words, is there any answer we can make, other than: Lord, I believe—and looking at our own nature, is there any prayer we can make, other than: Lord, help my unbelief. No one can escape this paradox. Do you believe? I believe—help my unbelief, which is there anew every day. Who is ready to say, I believe, in the face of the temptations we experience every hour? Lord, we want to dare it, at your word—but our faith cannot make it happen; only you can. Not we ourselves, not even our faith, but you alone—for you, nothing is impossible. Lord, help my unbelief! Amen.