The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (17:14-23)

This week we celebrated the Feast of Transfiguration, the appearance of Christ in and as radiant light, to His chief disciples. The gospel that we heard today is in fact the very next passage after the transfiguration of our Lord. There is nothing so painful for a father or a mother than to see their child sick, to see their child unwell, to see their child suffering and in pain. Any sane parent would gladly switch roles and places with their child if it would mean alleviating their child’s suffering. In today’s gospel we encounter such a man who brings his son to the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ. The father tells the Lord that his son suffers from epilepsy, that he frequently has seizures and that these seizures, far from being harmless actually are very dangerous and life threatening. How do we know this? Because the man tells Our Lord that when the boy has seizures, he is often thrown into the fire and into the water. To this very day, in our modern world there is very little that is more dangerous than fire and water, than burning or drowning.

It seems to me that there is also a deeper symbolism in this because we learn that the epilepsy that is associated with this boy is not merely a physiological condition or physical ailment, it is demonic, spiritual in nature. So the fact that the demons that possess the boy are attempting to throw him into water and into fire is a sign of the true character of the demonic forces. They have only one desire, to destroy life. Life is a gift from God, and they have rejected life in God. They reject God Himself and they aim to do their best to undo His creation especially mankind who is the pinnacle of God’s creation, created in His image and likeness.

In our lives we struggle with various spiritual ailments and we become lukewarm and we convince ourselves that our sins are insignificant and don’t really matter much but we would do well to remember that we are tempted because the demons seek our destruction. They want to ruin your life and destroy your soul so that you never can repent and turn back to God. They don’t really care whether this takes a short amount of time or a very long time in a gradual slide towards spiritual death. Either way, they are pleased with the outcome if we are spiritually dead and far from the Lord.

Now this man comes to the Lord and tells him the situation regarding his own son and he adds another important detail: And I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not heal him.” To this Our Lord responds in an unexpected way saying, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” Through this we see that the Lord considers the man to be lacking faith and in addition it seems that He is saying that the disciples themselves also lacked faith. The noted scholar Origen believes that the words of the Lord are meant for the whole human race. So often we come to God in prayer or we come to the priest in the church and we ask for healing and prayer, but do we actually believe, do we have living faith that Christ can work healing and miracles? If we don’t have faith, why not? What stops us from believing? Why is our faith so small? Why is our image of God so lacking? Have we not read and studied and observed what God has done and continues to do everywhere and at all times?

Now St. John Chrysostom had an interesting take on these events especially regarding the disciples and their inability to heal in this case. St. John says that this is in fact a demonstration that oftentimes the disciples of Christ were able to heal even when the one who asked for healing didn’t have faith. Since it seems clear that many people received healing from the disciples and everyone was surprised that the disciples could not help in this particular case. Chrysostom goes on to say that “just as the faith of the one bringing in the sick was often sufficient for receiving a cure even from lesser ministers (those who lack some measure of faith), so the virtue of the minister was also sufficient to achieve a miracle even without the faith of those bringing them in.” -The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 57.3

But either way, the words of the Lord hold true. Everyone in this situation lacked the faith necessary for this healing. The disciples, the father, the people there present.

Yet the Lord did not leave His people empty handed and begging by the side of the road. He did not leave them lost in the wilderness. He taught them and He showed them the truth. That faith is not static. That faith is not simply given as a gift from the Lord, as the disciples might have imagined. Faith is a living entity within us. It is a flame. Faith can increase or decrease. Faith can be cultivated.

The chief methods for growing faith are shared privately with the disciples, when they ask why they could not heal the boy. The Lord told them that they lacked faith and then He gave the methods for growing that faith: Prayer and fasting. It is as if the Lord is speaking directly to the Orthodox Christians! The Church gives us roughly 200 days out of the year to fast. The Church also gives us a daily cycle of prayers, to grow our faith, to bring us closer to Christ. How many days do we squander? How many of these days do we complain?

Or on the other side of the equation, how often do thank God for the gifts of fasting and prayer? How often do we run to the Lord to receive these gifts for our sanctification and the healing of our souls and bodies? How often do we take the Lord at His word and pray with great faith and believe that with God all things are indeed possible? The Lord says that for the one who has great faith “nothing will be impossible.” This is a promise given to the children of God through Our Lord and Master. This promise brings us full circle back to the feast of Transfiguration which we just celebrated and which came right before this passage. Through prayer and fasting, God’s grace is given an opportunity to work in us. Faith changes from theory to life and truth and power in Christ. St. Nikolai of Zicha writes, “In the man who only theorizes about faith, there is a great deal of room for the demon. But in the man who gives himself to sincere prayer and fasting, there is only the narrowest space for the demon, and he must flee from such a man.”

This, my brothers and sisters is the faith that Our Lord Jesus Christ wants to impart to us. This is the faith that is our inheritance with all of the saints. Through their prayers may this faith grow within each of us…to the Glory of God, AMEN.

Source: Sermons