From the Daily Lectionary for Monday in the Third Week after Pentecost
Matthew 17:14-21
When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.” Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured 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 tell you, if you have faith the size of 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.”
I shall say it again. Salvation according to scripture has nothing to do with life after death. Certainly, the prospect of there being a new life, a wider consciousness, a union with God, after our earthly lives is a Christian hope; but scripture is mostly mute on the polemics of such a doctrine. Salvation in the mind of the Gospel writers is about the well-being and dignity of those among us without well-being and dignity. Salvation is about the health of the community where if there are any who suffer unjustly then we all suffer. If one part of the body is lacking, then we are all incomplete. In a culture such as ours that is intensely individualistic, the concept of salvation as communal well-being is lost on us, or at least counter-cultural.
The text from Matthew today is a story about salvation. We are told that a man comes to Jesus whose son has epilepsy, which of course meant that he was possessed by an evil spirit. The man and his son would have been ostracized from the community, considered “unclean.” People would keep their distance. The man and his son and their entire household would have been shamed. Jesus’ purpose here is to restore the son, and hence his household, to well-being and dignity, which would mean that they could take their rightful place within their community. They could “get their lives back,” as it were. And the community in which they live would experience healing as well. Salvation is the process by which humanity becomes whole.
That is our vocation: to work towards giving people their lives back; lives that have dignity and worth and promise. Context is important here. This story takes place just after Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, where three disciples have the ecstatic experience of seeing Jesus in his glory; seeing him in the line of the patriarchs and prophets, specifically Moses and Elijah, whose roles were to tend to the well-being and dignity of a people. But this mountaintop experience must be translated amid the crowds, in the world, not aloof from it; a lesson for the church, to be sure. Jesus and his disciples must descend the mountain into the world beset by disease and tyranny. Salvation doesn’t belong in the heavens; it belongs here on earth. And salvation isn’t about comfort; it is about advocacy.
Apropos of the overwhelming need in our world; the countless number of our brothers and sisters in need of salvation, Jesus tells his disciples that all they need is a ‘mustard seed’ of faith. In truth, that’s all any of us has. We serve the broken of our world trusting only in possibility. Faith can’t be measured, only practiced. Seeds, the metaphor, ramify beyond our knowing, beyond our expectations. We just have to plant the seeds of possibility, and let Love do her transforming work.
Trust, good people, the faith that you have. It is enough, and perhaps in God’s hands, enough to move mountains.
A Prayer for Pentecost (from Prayers for an Inclusive Church)
Spirit of Truth: guide us into all the truth; consume the lies that shroud the world in hate; pray in us with sighs too deep for words; and let the victim’s voice ring out with hope for a new world; through Jesus Christ, who goes to the right hand of God. Amen.
