Double-Minded

Mark 9. 30-37
James 3.13-4.4, 7-8a

The disciples were lagging behind Jesus who was walking at his usual moderate clip. Usually they kept up, but today they were a crest-fallen. They had been out among the people engaged in the ministry that Jesus had called them to do, and as they were teaching and healing a crowd gathered around them. There was a man in the crowd who had brought his son to be healed. The man explained that his son would suddenly be seized by a spirit and fall to the ground and become rigid and grind his teeth and foam at the mouth. The man feared the spirit would be the end of the boy because he often fell into the fire or into water. The man had heard the disciples preaching and seen them perform other healings; so the man asked the disciples to cast the spirit out of his son.

Peter stepped forward, always first to act and first to speak. He spoke to the spirit and demanded that it leave the body of the boy. He admonished the spirit to allow the boy to be at peace. As he spoke his demands to the spirit, Peter raised his hand above the child’s head as if he were raising a hand against the spirit. The crowd grew quiet with hope and anticipation. There was a brief silence in which Peter’s intense intent hung in the air beside the father’s high hope. There was the sound of the spirit struggling within the boy, and the boy fell to the ground and writhed as though in pain. Peter’s hand drifted slowly to his side as he realized his words had no affect. The spirit continued to torment the boy.

Bartholomew stepped up next. He thought he had seen where Peter went wrong. He thought he knew the thing Peter had not done or said. Bartholomew raised his hand and his voice against the spirit in the boy. For him, too, the momentary hope was crushed when the spirit wrestled within the boy and maintained its hold. Bartholomew had failed. With similar results Andrew and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus tried to cast the spirit out of the boy. Each of the twelve took his turn trying to drive the spirit from the boy and not one was successful. With each successive attempt, the crowd grew more restless and more upset. Some of the twelve were going back with a sense of desperation for a second try. Others were arguing with the crowd saying that it was impossible to cast this spirit out of this boy.

The crowd was arguing with the disciples when Jesus approached. “When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him” (Mk 9.15). Jesus had seen the crowd and the disciples and the arguing, before the crowd had noticed him. He asked them what all of the arguing was about. The man from the crowd answered and told Jesus about his son and that the disciples were unable to cast out the demon. They had tried and nothing had become of it. Despite all of their attempts his son was no better.

Jesus shook his head at what the disciples lacked… and then prayed to God and asked for God’s healing for the boy. After he prayed, Jesus spoke to the spirit and demanded that it leave the boy and then spirit cast the boy to the ground and fled. The boy lay still so that many thought he was dead. When Jesus raised his hand it was to lift the boy from the ground. With Jesus’ help, the boy was able to stand.

The disciples were incredulous. They had tried every trick in the book, and nothing had worked. “Why could we not cast it out?” they asked? (28b). They had, in fact, tried all of the wiles that they had to offer, but none worked. All of the power they had was not enough to cast the spirit out of the child. Jesus said to them, “This kind [of spirit] can come out only through prayer” (29.) With the strength of all of their power, not one of the disciples considered submitting or acknowledging a greater power than their own, the power of God. In a clear and personal demonstration they found that all the strength of humanity is weakness compared to the power of God.


So it was, with their egos stinging from Jesus’ reprimand, that the disciples walked along behind Jesus from Galilee to Capernaum. They knew Jesus was right, that they had relied on their own frail fortitude rather than relying on God’s solid strength.

For a long while as they walked they were silent and slowly they began to speak. Their conversation picked up and gained force until it was at a full force gale of an argument. One-upmanship was high sport and, feeling that low, they’d take any measure of greatness to feel better about themselves. “I came closest to healing the boy,” one proclaimed. Another raised his voice higher and proclaimed that he was the one who had come nearest healing the boy. The arguments of who had done the best job of almost healing the boy gave way into shouted proclamations of their own greatness above their peers.

The disciples recognized that they were not great, just then, but they figured greater than would do. They were double-minded. They sought on the one hand to heal in the name of the Lord and on the other to do it from the resources of their own power. They tried to trust in themselves and rely on their own abilities, which led to strife and disunity. Their self-reliant grasping for worldly power divided the community of disciples.

Like the disciples, the members of James’ community were forging citizenship in the world at the same time as they were trying to maintain citizenship in God. In their lives they had two sets of drives, two sets of impulses. There were the ones they used when they were in and among the members of their Christian community and the ones that they used when they were in their normal-everyday lives. Each life they lived had its own language and literature. The two worlds were not reconcilable, but, for the most part, James’ community kept them separate. But on occasion one infringed on another.

It was not so bad when their friendship with God crept into their normal lives; that was easy enough to hide. The world moved at such a pace that few took notice of what another said. Words of faith spoken in the hum of the world were barely heard and quickly forgotten. But when friendship with the world crept into their community the effects could not be over-looked. Strife blossomed and disunity flourished.

Like the Disciples, the community to whom James was speaking professed faith, but their attitudes and actions were not yet fully in friendship with God. There was still work to be done. Their conversion, though genuine, was not complete. The hearts and minds of James’ community still drifted from God’s purpose to human purpose.

The darkness from before their conversion was not completely dispelled by the light of conversion. As much as they did not want to, their hearts and minds still tended toward human things. Though the work of Jesus on the cross was complete, the conversion of James’ community to the cross, like our own, was not complete. Rather, it was an on-going process of which they needed to be reminded.


The disciples had Jesus among them and yet, their conversion was no more complete than that of the community of James. When the disciples went to the house in Capernaum where they were staying Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” (33). Sulking, the twelve remained sheepishly silent because, on the way, after their failure to cast the spirit out of the boy, they had argued about who was the greatest. The irony was lost neither on the twelve nor on Jesus. Not a one of them was looking or feeling too great just then. Inept, sure, but great, not really.

In Jesus’ eyes the disciples’ ‘greater than’ meant nothing. It was full only of the power of human endeavor. Human greatness was weak and frail, in need of support and strength. Had the disciples only prayed to God, had they paused a moment to change their focus from themselves to God they would have recognized their own weakness and God’s strength. Jesus told them that this spirit could not be cast out through feats of their own strength. It could be cast out only in a feat of humility before God.


We, along with the disciples and James’ community, develop friendships with the world. They are hard to avoid. Our lives are saturated with the experience of the world and the media of the world telling us to rely on ourselves, to seek strength from within, to seek and achieve greatness. Our strength, however, comes from drawing near to God, who, in turn, draws near to us (James 4.8a). Our strength comes from shedding the double-minded disunity of our thoughts and actions and taking up unity with Christ.

Unified with Christ we have the strength to transform ourselves from our friendship with the world and with darkness to friendship with God and light. Unified with Christ we have the strength to transform our community, to shed the spirit of strife and disagreement and take up Christ’s spirit of harmony and peace. Unified with Christ we have the strength to transform the world, to see the lowliest others of the world and tear down barriers and welcome them in.

We continue, throughout our lives of faith, to turn from friendship with the world and toward friendship with God. It is a process in which we are active through prayer and praise, education and fellowship, worship and work. Consistency in our lives of faith is won slowly and arduously through many conversions. Our conversion is never complete. But with God’s help we can continue to slough our double-minded desires for a single-minded faith in God.

...But Words Will Ever Hurt Me

James 3.1-12
Mark 8.27-38

When I was in seminary I served on Student Government. I participated as an organization representative my first year and then as a member of the cabinet my second year. That second year I was the Student/Faculty Liaison, which meant that it was my job to condense Student Government meetings into salient issues to present at faculty meetings and, in turn, to condense Faculty meetings into salient issues to present at Student Government meetings.

The latter was easy. Faculty meetings were not generally very riveting. Condensing all of the interesting parts took just a few seconds. Figuring out what to say to the faculty was a different matter. I was the voice of the student body. There were times when the student body was relatively content and I would have to drum-up something to tell the faculty. Other times the student body was fired-up about something and I had to figure out how to convey our outrage or indignation or discontent forcefully yet politely. In so doing, I was notorious for verbal gaffs. I was constantly saying things, letting words pass across my vocal chords, roll over my tongue and out of my lips that once out elicited great guffaws of laughter from the faculty.

At one Student Government meeting we decided our outrage de jour was the disparity among preceptors or discussion section leaders. Especially in first year courses, a good or bad preceptor could greatly impact the grade in a class. We decided that I should ask the faculty to set up guidelines for preceptors to follow or to train them in some way that impressed upon them the importance of their role in our education.

When it came time for the faculty meeting that month, the president called me forward and I present various points of interest before I tentatively started in on our major lobby. I told them our concerns about preceptors and about the obvious differences among them and then I made my plea. “We would just like some consistency,” I said, “some standards. [PAUSE], I mean, you all might have some standards that we’re just not aware of.” All fifty of them threw back their heads and howled with laughter. It took several minutes for them to settle down so that I could continue the presentation and take questions.

I had made the statement in earnest. The student body didn’t know what training the professors gave to preceptors or what guidelines. It was not until I heard the ripple of laughter spread across the room that I even realized I had said anything wrong. The words I had chosen meant something more than I had intended, more than realize.


Peter’s words, in the lection from Mark, meant so much more than he realized. Jesus was trying to get a feel for the popular opinion. He’d been going throughout the countryside teaching and healing. He had spoken to many people, but he did not have a good read on what people thought. So he asked those who were near to him, the disciples. “Who do people say that I am?” he asked. Some of the disciples told him that people thought he was John the Baptist. Other people thought that he was Elijah descended back to earth. Still others thought that he was another one of the prophets, Isaiah or Ezekiel, maybe, come back to life.

These were fascinating conspiracy theories, for sure. It is curious how people rationalize and theorize to develop explanations for things they cannot otherwise explain. It made Jesus wonder what explanations his disciples had developed after so much time hearing him teach and watching him heal.

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked the twelve. Peter, bravest or most impetuous or both, broke the silence, “You are the Messiah.”

The words meant something more than he had realized. It wasn’t a ripple of laughter that made Peter aware of the words he had spoken; it was Jesus. Jesus “began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mk 8.31). Peter hadn’t really meant all of that. He had said Messiah because it seemed like the logical next step after the previous predictions.

Peter probably even hoped that Jesus was the Messiah come to heal the world, but he did not realize the implications of the word. He did not foresee the rejection that the word carried with it or didn’t see it as part of Jesus’ future; so, Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him. The more he spoke the worse it got. First he’d called Jesus the Messiah, a little ill-advisedly, he recognized after the fact. Then he had tried to take it back, or get Jesus to take it back, but the word was already out of his lips. It could not be retrieved from the air between them and neither could his rebuking. Then Jesus hurled at Peter words that were so powerful, such a searing insult that, hearing them, we recoil on Peter’s behalf. “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mk 8.33).


As personal experience and the demise of many a political career will attest, words are powerful, having an impact on the hearer as well as the sayer. It was because of the power of words that James warned the Palestinian community that the tongue of a person can guide the whole being. Like a bit in the mouth of a horse or the rudder below a ship, our words guide us. Like a spark that sets a forest ablaze, the tongue, though small, can spark a great fire.

The words we speak do have power and often power that we do not know until they are out of our mouths. We all have moments of pain we remember clearly in life because someone spoke words at us that will ever hurt or because we spoke words that will ever hurt someone else.
As we speak them, our words play across the faces of their hearers. They incite playful laughter or thoughtful reflection or searing pain. And our words have power over us. They tell not only others, but also ourselves what we think and feel. We run scripts in our heads that accurately or not tell us how the world perceives us. The words that we proclaim are an insight into our very being. Our actions speak loudly, but our words more so.

Peter protested when Jesus told the disciples that he would die and rise again. From whence he proclaimed Jesus the Christ, Peter uttered words of doubt. That was James’ chief concern, that the word we utter of gossip and condemnation and anger and hatred are uttered with the same tongue as those that proclaim faith in Christ crucified and risen. With our tongues divided, which way will our selves follow?


In my bible study this week we spent a great deal of time discussing whether we could learn to not speak rashly but instead to use measured speech at all time. We discussed whether or not we could train our selves out of verbal gaffs and uttering, unintentionally and intentionally, hurtful words. Someone told the story of teenager they had known who was sent to a correctional camp out west, in the Rockies. It was a camp that accepted teenagers who exhibited more than the usual angst. These were kids who were angry and belligerent. These were kids who had been physically violent toward their parents or others. These were kids for whom the camp was their last hope.

The teenagers could be at the camp for as little or as much time as they needed to learn and work through the camp’s process. Part of the process included meeting with a clinical psychologist for individual and group session, and part of the process was purely self development. Each person had to learn to start a fire using two sticks. If an individual could exhibit mastery of that skill, he or she was given matches and a new goal to achieve. With each accomplishment they were given a new privilege.

One of the things this teenaged boy about whom I learned needed to work on was his language. He had grown up in a house that was verbally abusive. He had learned the power of words at an early age and so had learned to use them to his advantage, and often his detriment. At the camp, however, as they hiked for days out into the wilderness, every time he uttered a curse word and every time a hateful phrase crossed his lips, he had to pick up a stone and put it in his pack to carry with him. His pack quickly became ponderous with the weight of his words and he began to choose his words more carefully, more thoughtfully. Through continual practice, through ongoing habituation, this foul-mouthed teenager retrained his mouth and himself. He abstained from cursing and, instead, developed a new vocabulary. Over the course of his three months at the camp, this boy was made to feel what few pause to consider. He was made aware of the weight of his words upon others and upon himself, and he was given the opportunity to rehab the rudder of his life which had fallen into disrepair.


Our tongues guide our selves. If faith in Christ crucified is proclaimed in the heart, and yet faith in ourselves and culture are proclaimed by the tongue, it is difficult for the body and the self not to follow the louder voice.

What we proclaim is the rudder of our lives. Do we proclaim faith in ourselves, faith in culture? Do we live by secular mottos of ‘might makes right’ and ‘God helps those who help themselves’ or do we live in the faith of Christ proclaimed?

Though our tongues may be trained to proclaim gossip and back-biting and hatred we can put those things behind us. Faith is an ongoing practice of habituation. Throughout life we are given the opportunity to pick up the stones of faith and put them in our packs, to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Through a life lived in Christ, we can learn to proclaim Christ risen; so that the fire set ablaze in us and the fire set ablaze by us is the fire of Christ crucified and risen.