08 Aug 26 | The Healing of the Epileptic Boy
They had done this before. That was the whole problem.
The Gospel: Matthew 17:14-20
¹⁴ When they came to the crowd a man approached, knelt down before him, ¹⁵ and said, "Lord, have pity on my son, for he is a lunatic and suffers severely; often he falls into fire, and often into water. ¹⁶ I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him." ¹⁷ Jesus said in reply, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him here to me." ¹⁸ Jesus rebuked him and the demon came out of him, and from that hour the boy was cured. ¹⁹ Then the disciples approached Jesus in private and said, "Why could we not drive it out?" ²⁰ He said to them, "Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to 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. Nothing will be impossible for you."
Today’s Focus
Jesus came down from the mountain into a failure. A father had brought his suffering son to the disciples, and they could not help him. These were the same men who had already been given authority over unclean spirits and had used it. Jesus named the reason plainly, and then told them how little faith it actually takes.
In the Margins
The Transfiguration ends and this begins immediately. Glory on the mountain, failure at the bottom of it. Matthew puts them side by side without comment.
A man comes and kneels, and his description of his son is one of the most painful in the Gospels. He falls into fire and into water. Whatever else this father has been living with, he has spent years pulling his child out of things. The word Matthew uses is seleniazomai, literally moonstruck, an ancient term for symptoms that were thought to follow lunar cycles. The physical description resembles what we would recognize as seizures, and the Gospel presents the cause as demonic rather than merely physical. Matthew elsewhere distinguishes carefully between the sick and the possessed, so this categorization is deliberate.
Then the sentence that must have been hard for the father to say and harder for the disciples to hear. I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.
This is not a case of men attempting something beyond their commission. In chapter ten, Jesus summoned these same disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and illness. They had done this. They had come back from that mission with reports. This is a failure at something that had previously worked.
Jesus responds with words that sound harsh until you locate them. O faithless and perverse generation, how long will I be with you. That phrasing comes almost directly from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, where Moses describes the wilderness generation, the people who had seen God act repeatedly and still could not trust Him. Jesus is not inventing an insult. He is placing His own disciples in a story they knew by heart.
The healing itself takes one verse. He rebuked the demon, it came out, and the boy was cured from that hour. Matthew spends no time on it, because the point of this account is what happens afterward.
The disciples come privately and ask the honest question. Why could we not drive it out? And Jesus tells them. Because of your little faith. The word is oligopistia, Matthew's characteristic term for the disciples, meaning small faith rather than absent faith.
Then He gives the measurement, and it is the opposite of what they were expecting. 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. The mustard seed was the proverbial smallest quantity in that culture, the way we might say a speck. And moving mountains was a rabbinic expression for accomplishing the impossible. A great teacher was sometimes called an uprooter of mountains.
So the answer is not that they needed more faith. It is that they needed faith at all, in the moment, rather than a remembered competence. They had done this before, which meant they arrived at that boy already knowing how it works. The dependence had quietly been replaced by a technique.
That drift happens to anyone who has been at something long enough. The prayers we have prayed a thousand times can be said without being prayed. The practices that once required real trust can settle into routine we could perform in our sleep. Nothing looks different from the outside. What has gone missing is the actual reaching toward God that made it work in the first place.
Reflection Question
Where have you begun operating out of remembered competence rather than present dependence, and what would it take to actually reach for God again in that place?