Today’s Scripture reading from from Matthew 17:14-23, where the man with the epileptic boy brings him first to the disciples, who cannot heal him, and then to Christ, who heals the child after lamenting their lack of faith.
Now evidently, Jesus knew the man’s heart and knew some interior lack of faith the man had, which is part of why the child was not healed. We have seen many other instances where just the evidence of faith from the one asking will be enough for the Lord to work the miracle — the centurion’s servant, the daughter of the Canaanite woman, another centurion’s daughter, etc. But in this case, the son was not healed in this way, nor could the disciples. This comes right after the story of the Transfiguration in the text of Matthew, and it is presumably the disciples who did not accompany Jesus up the mount who had tried and failed to heal the boy.
So why couldn’t they? It does later say that this can only be done by “prayer and fasting”, but first Christ says, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” With just a small amount of faith, they should have been able to do anything, even move mountains.
As an aside, a remarkable story of faith moving mountains is told about St Mark of Trache and St Serapion if you are interested.
Trying to explain this passage, I still hear the explanation given by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who had been tortured by communists in Romania for years. He said that some were not given the ability to move mountains, not because they didn’t have faith even the size of a mustard seed, but rather because they had baskets and baskets of faith due to their enduring the tortures of god-haters and thus had no need of moving mountains around. This strikes me as a cute little way to make some sense of the passage, but doesn’t seem consistent with Christ’s lament, nor the general thrust of the Scriptures writ large.
It is evident that it was precisely because they (the father and the disciples) did not have enough faith that the child was not at first healed. How did they not have faith though? I think we say that faith is not just believing something, like a mental assent to hold a certain outcome as true or inevitable. Faith is ‘faith in God’, it is faithfulness, it is a living relationship with the One through Whom all blessing flow. It is not just saying or thinking, “I have this power and I will do this.,” which is perhaps what the disciples did, or something near to it. It is only in the next chapter that the disciples ask who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, subtly asking Christ their own hierarchy and pecking order. James and John in chapter 20 even go so far as to directly ask him to have their places in the places of the highest honor.
We can see that they still perceived very dimly what the Lord God was doing. His is not a kingdom of the Earth, ruled by power, might of arms, and the strength of men. It is rather a Kingdom where one must be like a child, where the servant is greater than the master, and the first shall be last.
Christ’s bemoaning of their lack of faith points to precisely what faith is — an ultimate acknowledgment that we men do NOT have the power, whether or not He-Man’s Power Sword is in our hand, and that the only power that may be worked through us is God’s. It is by prayer and fasting, that is asking Him to act, lowering ourself, and trusting in Him that miracles can happen.
It often strikes me how terribly wrong the idea is that Orthodoxy is Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian. One of the criticisms of the Ancient Faith is that it is “works-based” or “earning one’s way to heaven".” As if we believe that our services, fasting, alms-giving, prayers, etc were somehow collecting points that we later can score to see if we are high enough to enter. It is not so! One only has to spent a small amount of time in the services and patristic literature to see how often it is emphasized that Salvation is a gift of God that we are NEVER worthy of. In fact, the deeper one goes, the less Pelagian it gets in Orthodoxy.
The saints and wonder-workers of the Church work such miracles only through the power of God, only with the grace of God, and only because they had faith in God. Faith that He is faithful, not us, faith that He is powerful, not us, faith that He is a God of marvels, and we merely participate in His actions in the world.
The disciples could not cast out the demon in the boy because they thought the power resided within themselves. Rather, we should implore the Lord God, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof! Instead, just say the word and my servant will be healed.”
It is with this same spirit that King David sang, “Be thou manful, and let thy heart be strengthened, all ye that hope on the Lord. (Ps 30:24 LXX)”