Ep. 54: Healing the demon-possessed boy
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MATTHEW 17:9-21, MARK 9:9-29, LUKE 9:37-43
The following morning Jesus and his three disciples moved camp. They had seen his Glory, they had had the most solemn possible witness and they had gained new knowledge of the Old Testament. Perhaps on that morning better than in the previous night, did they realise the vision and feel its calm happiness. It was to their souls like the morning air which they breathed on that mountain. It would be only natural that they may seem distracted to the companions and fellow disciples whom, on the previous evening, they had left in the valley beneath. How much they had to tell them and how glad they would be of the tidings they would hear!
We think here especially of those whom we may think of as the counterpart of the three chosen Apostles; Philip, who always sought firm standing ground for faith; Thomas, who wanted evidence for believing; and Judas, whose burning Jewish zeal for a Jewish Messiah had already begun to consume his own soul, as the wind had driven back upon himself the flame that had been kindled. Every question of a Philip, every doubt of a Thomas, every despairing wild outburst of a Judas, would be met by what they had now to tell. But it was not to be so. Evidently, it was not an event to be made generally known, either to the people or even to the great body of the disciples. They could not have understood its real meaning; they would have misunderstood its heavenly lessons. And so it was that the Master laid on the three of them the command to tell no man of this vision until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
One thing still troubled them, that they dared not even ask Jesus about, a new and seemingly greater mystery than they had yet heard, the meaning of the Son of Man rising from the dead. Did it refer to the general Resurrection? Was the Messiah to be the first to rise from the dead and to waken the other sleepers or was it only a figurative expression for his triumph and vindication? Evidently, they knew nothing yet of Jesus’ personal Resurrection as separate from that of others and on the third day after his death. And yet it was so near! So ignorant were they and so unprepared! And they dared not ask the Master of it. This much they had already learned; not to question the mysteries of the future, but simply to receive them.
There was another question to ask Jesus, one concerned not by the mysteries of the future, but the lessons of the past. Thinking of that vision, of the appearance of Elijah and of his speaking of the death of the Messiah, why did the Scribes say that Elijah should first come and, as was the universal teaching, for the purpose of restoring all things? If, as they had seen, Elijah had come, but only for a brief season, not to abide, along with Moses, as they had fondly wished when they proposed to build booths for them
They had failed to distinguish between the coming of Elijah and its alternative sequence. Truly Elijah had ‘come already’ in the person of John the Baptist. The Divinely intended object of Elijah’s coming was to restore all things. If the people had received his message, there would have been the promised restoration of all things. As the Lord had said on a previous occasion ‘If you are willing to receive him, this is Elijah, who is to come.’ Similarly, if Israel had received the Christ, he would have gathered them like a hen gathered her chickens for protection. He would not only have been but have visibly appeared as their King. But Israel did not know their Elijah and did to him whatsoever they wanted; and so would the Son of Man also suffer at their hands.
It was their unbelief that caused their failure to restore the demon-possessed boy. A group of excited people (including Scribes) who had tracked the Lord and come upon his weakest disciples in the hour of their greatest weakness, is gathered about a man who had in vain brought his son for healing. This was the hour of triumph for these Scribes. The Master had refused the challenge earlier and the disciples, accepting it, had signally failed. There they were discussing the power, authority and reality of the Master.
At that very moment, Jesus appeared with the three. There was immediate calm, preceding victory. Before they could explain themselves, the man came forward and addressed Jesus. At last. He had found the One whom he had come to seek and if there was a possibility of help there, oh! let it be granted. He told them how he had come in search of the Master, but only found the nine disciples and how they had attempted the cure … and failed.
Why had they failed? For the same reason that they had not been taken onto the Mount of Transfiguration, because they were ‘faithless,’ because of their ‘unbelief.’ They had that outward faith - they believed because of what they had seen; and they were drawn closer to Jesus, at least almost all of them, though in varying measure. But they did not possess that deeper, truer faith.
In such faith, as they had, they tried to imitate their Master. But they totally failed. And it was intended that they should fail, as a lesson to them and to us of the higher meaning of faith as contrasted with power, the inward as contrasted with the merely outward qualification. In that hour of crisis, in the presence of questioning Scribes and a wondering populace and in the absence of the Christ, only one power could prevail, that of spiritual faith; and ‘that kind’ could ‘not come out but by prayer.’
For one moment we have a glimpse into the Saviour’s soul; the poignant sorrow of his disappointment at the unbelief of the ‘faithless and perverse generation,’ with which he had so long borne. The next moment Jesus turns to the father. At his command, the boy is brought to him and is healed and, with a strong gentle hand, the Saviour lifted him and with a loving gesture delivered him to his father. All things had been possible for faith; not to that external belief of the disciples, which failed to reach ‘that kind’ and ever fails to reach such kind, but to true spiritual faith in him.
And so it is to each of us individually and to the Church. ‘That kind’ - whether it be of sin, of lust, of the World, or of Science falsely so-called, of temptation, or of materialism – does not come out by any of our ready-made formulae or dead dogmas. Not so are the flesh and the devil vanquished; not so is the World overcome. It comes out by nothing but by prayer; ‘Lord, I believe; help me with my unbelief.’ Then, although our faith is as the smallest - like a grain of mustard seed - and the result to be achieved as the greatest, most difficult, as in ‘removing mountains’, nothing shall be impossible for us.
This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £10 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)