I have sung solo, in front of an audience, once.
It was tenth grade.
Our choir teacher was on maternity leave and her replacement, Mr. Beck,
scheduled us to do a recital in place of a concert that year. Lots of solos, no big group numbers. I had never sung a solo before. I had never sung in front of—people—before
without someone else standing next to me, someone else’s voice in my ear. I had never sung with accompaniment.
Actually, I had sung once—with a piano—for an
audition and I managed to just run all over that poor pianist. We were literally and not even remotely on
the same page.
I can’t remember how I chose the song Stay Awake from Mary Poppins, though maybe it was just me secretly
hoping not to put anyone to sleep with my singing, but that was the song I went
with. I borrowed a skirt from my mom and
given that she was quite a bit taller than me at the time, it was comically too
long. What I couldn’t borrow, from
anyone it seemed, was a bit of confidence.
You see I have always loved public speaking. Put me on a stage, put me in front of a group
of strangers, shine a bright light in my face and force me to give a speech,
and I will talk forever. I live for
public speaking. I’m weird like that, I
know.
But singing?
Yeah … that confidence never transferred to singing.
And yet, Mr. Beck did two things for me that year to help
me. First of all, he labeled all the altos, mezzo-sopranos. You should know
that all young altos suffer from a certain inferiority complex. The sopranos get all those glorious high
notes and soaring melodies, but altos … we are always out there trying to prove
that we’re just as good.
So, by labeling us mezzo-sopranos, Mr. Beck made us somehow,
for that day, more special. We were
kids. Labels meant something. And mezzo-soprano sounded exotic and
important and different. I embraced it.
The other thing Mr. Beck did was accompany me on piano.
I’m telling you, I cannot sing with musical
accompaniment. I just can’t. But when I sang that day, Mr. Beck did
something for me that no one else had done, he threw away the timing on the
sheet music and he let me dictate how fast and how slow I wanted to go. He followed my lead. And honestly, he made me sound far more
talented than I was.
I managed to get through the song without cracking a note
and without cracking up. I wouldn’t have
won any talent contests, but I was happy with how I did, happy to see my mom’s
smiling face sitting several rows back.
Mr. Beck did not give me confidence. No one can make you confident.
Instead he did something far more important.
He showed faith in me.
And that faith strengthened me enough that I began to have
faith in myself.
And suddenly what had seemed impossible, singing solo, was
possible.
In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, we see a desperate
father begging Jesus to heal his possessed son, a task, which up until that
point, has been impossible for everyone who has tried.
“…. If you are able to do anything,” the man says in Mark
9:22, “have pity on us and help us.”
Jesus responds in the next verse with these words, “If you
are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.”
If you are able.
He repeats the man’s words back to him. The man put the healing on Jesus. If you can do this, Jesus, please heal my
son. But Jesus turns that around and
makes the man the responsible one for his son’s healing.
If you are able, all things can be done for the one who
believes.
How many times does Jesus say to someone in the Gospels
something along these lines, “Your faith has healed you,” or “Your faith has
made you well,” or “Your faith has saved you?”
He actually says this on three different occasions.
To a blind man.
To the bleeding woman who touched his cloak.
And to a leper.
There are other similar instances that don’t use quite that
phrase but carry the same message like in the healing of the centurion’s
servant where Jesus tells the centurion that his faith has ensured that his
servant will be healed.
What all of these cases have in common is this: in each
case, Jesus makes the person a partner in the healing process.
Why is this important?
Look, God can heal from afar. If He wanted, He could be some sort of
divine, cosmic Santa sitting up in Heaven and deciding who is naughty and who
is nice, who deserves to be healed and who is just going to have sit and
suffer.
But from the very beginning, God has desired to have a
relationship with us. From the moment of
creation, God decided to walk with Adam and Eve in the garden. And even when Adam and Eve decided to betray
that friendship, God didn’t turn His back on us, but came to us again, this
time as Jesus.
Think of what a beautiful thing that was for God to do.
Adam and Eve ate of the fruit because they thought God was
holding out on them. They didn’t have
faith in His love and they thought the fruit would elevate them to His level.
But by coming to earth as a human, God showed the depth of
His love. He wants so much to be a part
of our lives, He’s willing to meet us as we are. He came to us and showed us just how special
humanity is.
The most beautiful thing Jesus does when he heals the blind,
the bleeding woman, the leper, the possessed boy is not the healing itself,
rather it is the power he gives us in our own healing, the agency he gives us
to act, because he knows that just passively healing someone of their physical
ailments will not touch what needs to be healed spiritually.
He brings us into relationship with him. He makes us a partner. He says, in effect, this healing is not for
this moment but for all moments in the future.
We are connected now and will be forever. You will never be the same.
Faith and hope brought the centurion to Jesus to heal his
servant.
Faith and hope brought the bleeding woman to Jesus and gave
her the courage to touch his cloak.
Faith and hope brought the father to Jesus to heal his
possessed son.
Had they no faith, even the smallest bit of it, they would
never have had the strength and courage to seek Jesus out in the first place.
Philippians 4:13 tells us, “I can do all things through
Christ who gives me strength.”
Remember that today.
Seek out God. Be in relationship
with Him. Have faith and He will take
you to places you cannot begin to imagine.
Amen.
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