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A couple weeks ago we examined Jesus’ blueprint for his Church when he revealed that Heaven is so close and proximate to our lives on earth that binding or loosing in one, did likewise in the other. As we continue in our story in Matthew 17, Jesus says something so big, that it has caused divisions of belief for centuries. If what he said is true, either the church has never really believed him, or never understood him, or worse.

To catch everyone up in this story, Jesus, along with Peter, James and John were journeying back down Mt. Horeb where Jesus was just transfigured, they see a crowd forming around the disciples and this is what the text says:

“And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and, kneeling before him, said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has seizures and he suffers terribly. For often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” (Matthew 17:14-16)

Clearly, the disciples had taken Jesus words to heart. They were trying to bind and loose as they were told they could. But it didn’t work. Jesus then says some really big things, but I will deal with the inability to heal the boy first. Why do you suppose they couldn’t heal the boy? What have you been taught to believe?

“Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. (v.19-20)

There is a parallel verse in Mark 9:29 which reads:

“Why could we not cast it out?”  And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. (some manuscripts add “and fasting“)

(Fun fact) This last verse, is left out of the earlier manuscripts in Matthew and that is why many translations do not have verse 21 in Matthew 17.

The point here, is that Jesus explains as clearly as possible why the disciples could not heal the boy. The cause was “holigopistian” or what is translated “little faith” or “few faith.” An oligarchy is a society ruled by a “few” or “little bit” and “oligo” is the prefix in this compound word.

Jesus disciples did not have enough faith. These men are nearing the end of Jesus’ three year ministry and had seen it all. As observers from two thousand years later, it’s likely we over appraised what we assume of his disciples. Somehow we imagined that if we were there, our belief would be unshakeable. How is it that their faith is insufficient? How is our faith still insufficient?

What is this saying about the community Jesus was building if immediately after teaching them, they failed in their mission? What does this say about the church two thousand years later? Does this feel hopeless to you? Can you see why this verse is cause for so much disbelief? Why are we not up for the task? Is it a matter of needing more prayer and fasting? Is it a matter of growing our faith? How close or how far are we from realizing the power of this promise? Did Jesus mean something else? Was he exaggerating? How do you resolve this tension? Have we become apathetic and just don’t bother with this.

Jesus felt the same way. Consider his words of rebuke:

“And Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” (v.17)

The crowd Jesus is addressing is not limited to the religious and irreligious of the area, but it also included his own disciples. This makes his rebuke sound rather prickly. Are we to deduce that Jesus had assumed his disciples would just run with the ball and now he’s frustrated they couldn’t do it? “Until when will I be with you? Until when will I be patient with you?” If miracle working is the standard to which we have fallen far short, isn’t this one of the biggest indictments on the modern Church? Does this lend credibility to the cessationists who believe this kind of miracle working faith was only given to the Apostles after Jesus death? Doesn’t that perspective leave us with even less hope? How have you solved this?

My conclusion is that Jesus is saying something from within a framework that we haven’t fully understood. I believe every word as he said it, but I believe we need a wider understanding into which to place his words.

Here is the enormous promise that Jesus told his disciples privately after Jesus healed the boy in frustration:

“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” (v.20)

Most of us solve the problem by shifting the responsibility upon the believer. Jesus puts the responsibility on the disciples, not the father of the boy. Jesus isn’t lying or exaggerating, so we conclude the problem must be with us. I think this is true as far as it goes, but not by concluding our faith is too small. I say this because the Bible narrative doesn’t generally do this. Biblically, just a modicum of belief brings about the healing and movement of God. (Matthew 9:22-Woman touching Jesus garments, Mark 10:51-Blind beggar, Luke 7:49-Sinful woman, Matthew 8:10- Centurion) We have to be careful here. The farce of modern faith healers and so-called miracle workers use this responsibility to blame the sick who remain unhealed after their services. Shall we do the same by blaming those who should have enough faith? Can we blame a church for steering clear of this and adopting a “possible but not probable” stance? Is it fair to say the church should know better?

Personally, I don’t like this option because it opens up the success stories to be accredited to those “spiritual enough” or “good enough” or with “faith enough” and that sets the course for abusive, toxic, fundamentalism, which discounts the profound grace of God who is the sole source of any bit of faith that any of us possess. Theologically is it possible to be “spiritual enough” to harness the power of this promise? If so, what do we imagine this would actually look like? How would one “hold on” to such power given the human propensity for sin, pride, and confusion? Biblically speaking, God heals sinners and God uses sinners to heal. This isn’t a matter of moral purity, or spiritual superiority... but that has essentially been our excuse. “I’m certainly not that spiritual…”

The Gospel (Isaiah 61:1-2, Luke 4:18) isn’t good news to the poor, or a binding of the brokenhearted, or liberty to the captive because bestows upon believers a “superpower” which didn’t previously exist. The Gospel isn’t about our abilities as much as our disabilities. The Gospel has power when we are powerless. The Gospel gives us faith when we are as Jesus put it “faithless and misled or twisted” (v.16). The Gospel is the power of Christ which saves us. It is this power that sustains our belief. We can’t lose our salvation because we could never keep it in the first place. Thus we cannot lose our spiritual gifts, we are spiritual gifts. If we miss this, we will fall prey to a million rituals which we believe will make us better than others. That’s where I think the modern church is stuck.

The framework into which I believe Jesus’ big promise becomes realized is the moment we become free from the trap of the binary. The Gospel is the “third way” power which frees our binary minds from seeing things as either/or. We are not only so much more sinful than we have ever realized, we are also at the same time more deeply loved than we can believe (little faith). Healing, salvation, and the power to move mountains doesn’t arrive once we are worthy enough, it is fully present in and as our inability to be worthy enough.

The Gospel is too good to be true…that’s why we can’t believe it. That’s why we have little faith. We have plenty of faith in God, just little faith in what God can do with us.

The reason the modern church lacks spiritual giftedness is because it has concluded it’s faith is too small and therefore must be too sinful or unworthy to receive such gifts, and so it spends its time in sin remediation projects, and earth evacuation strategies. If the true Church exists within any congregation, it exists because as Paul said: “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) If Christians had superpowers, we wouldn’t attribute miracles to God, but to those who had figured something out about life.

See the confusion?

My conclusion is that healing is displaced from the church because we idolize our sin by enlarging it, because we think doing so enlarges our framework for Christ and his work of overcoming it. Like the disciples who couldn’t heal the demon possessed boy, our demons need only to point out our inadequacy and impotence and we agree with them, forsaking Christ and his power. Healing power emerges when our faith is not distinct from our sin, but despite it. We can own the depravity of our own darkness, but to do so without owning our potential in God is why demons don’t leave. Our disease remains, because we can’t sit still and simply be with God and his dynamic power. The church and its infatuation with the sin dilemma has created an impotent idol, and we push our humanity so far into the mud because we imagine that this somehow elevates Christ into the heavens. This is not the proximity where binding and losing can take place.

Our sin consciousness has displaced the promise that “all things are possible.“

The first mountain we must move, is to get as good with our sin as Christ is with it. The gospel reveals to us that sin is a mountain moved despite itself rather than eradicated just yet. Theologically speaking, if we have heard the good news, all of our sin has been atoned…all of them from the past, present and the future, but our sin is not removed. Sin remains, by design, to keep us in faith, and to show us the dynamic range where “all things are actually possible” and that is when we finally see it…the other end of the spectrum of our humanity, where Christ himself is pleased to dwell in and as our sin, thus allowing us to trust him with it.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

It is there, despite our sin, that Christ is pleased to heal. The church’s impotence is its confusion about Christ’s locus of control. It isn’t external and upward. It’s internal and downward.

The author of Hebrews put it this way as he was trying to help the early church to grow up and get over itself:

“Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.” (Hebrews 6:1-2)

If what I’m offering is true, then the church being built by Christ is a community where all things are possible, and that is the very definition of faith.