The Failure and Possibilities of Faith

Matthew 17:14-20

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 is an epileptic 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.” 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.” And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. 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. 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.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The secret, of course, is that the size of the faith isn’t important; what’s important is the God in whom you believe. . . . The smallest prayer to one true God will produce great things; the most elaborate devotions to a ‘god’ of our own making, or indeed someone else’s, will be useless, or worse (22).

A. Orendorff

Like Peter floundering in the waves, Jesus chastises his disciples for their lack of faith and understanding. They have run aground, as it were, against their own limitations. “I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him,” the man tells Jesus. “This one is too strong,” the disciples report, “Why could we not cast it out?”

“You?” I imagine Jesus saying, “They? Of course, they couldn’t cast it out. That’s the point. You can’t do anything. You never could. Faith is what you need. Faith, not in yourself and your abilities but in me.” So Jesus rebukes them precisely on those grounds: “O faithless and twisted generation . . . O you of little faith.”

And yet, for all his biting words, Jesus still welcomes his disciples and he still heals the epileptic boy. What’s more, he uses his disciples’ failure not only to teach them about what true faith makes possible (i.e., everything), but to encourage them and to raise their sights.