Faithless
We have been talking about faith and what a little faith can do.
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. - Matthew 17:14-18
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus gets angry. At first glance it looks like he is angry with his disciples for their failure in healing, but I wonder if his anger is not limited to them.
Sometimes I wonder if God loses patience with all of us when we have so little faith in our own abilities to solve the problems and address the needs of this world.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul tells us that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, yet do we even try?
I think Paul may have had a better handle on his faith than we do at times. He saw that believers were in need of strengthening and he went to their aid.
If Jesus was trying to get us to see that we could help ourselves, no wonder he was upset when throngs of people came to him for healing. He had compassion for them, yes, but if they could have been healed without coming, wouldn't that have been better?
Of course we wouldn't know about it, and it wouldn't have been reported as a miracle, something to tell the world about.
Imagine if like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we find out in the end that we had the power to help ourselves all along, that all we needed was to believe.
Wouldn't that be a kick in the head?
So, that's why I think Jesus is angry. He told us to have faith, and we thought he meant to in him. He told us to follow and we thought that meant to come to him for everything we need.
What i think he meant was what he said. Love one another. If we do that, we might be able to fix the brokenness and heal ourselves.
More to come...