Nothing will be impossible for you

A homily on the following Scriptures from the daily office lectionary In the Book of Common Prayer:

Matthew 17:14-20  (NRSV)

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.” But this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting.

Jesus seems to really bring down the hammer on his disciples in this one, doesn’t he? He seems deeply disappointed in them and their lack of faith. Which sort of makes sense: they’ve been with Jesus for years, listening to his teaching, watching him heal and cast out demons, they’ve seen him feed thousands of people with one boy’s lunch, they’ve confessed him to be the Christ and heard him confirm it—some of them even saw him transfigured into a supernatural body. They kind of get who Jesus is, but they’re still figuring out their role in all of this.

See it didn’t go unnoticed for most people that Jesus was special. Crowds nearly smothered him everywhere he went, and he moved through them with compassion, offering hope and healing. What they didn’t see was that everything Jesus did or said was an invitation. Jesus’s intention was not for people to need to come through him to access the spiritual realities he taught. He is always inviting his followers and those who learn from him to come alongside him—inviting them to more—to reach out and grab the eternal life he’s holding, and to make it their own.

But over and over again, they miss it. We miss it. The disciples are amazed at Jesus, and they seem to have complete faith that Jesus is who he says he is. They have faith that he is capable of miracles and that his power is from his oneness with God. But they’re stopping just short of the point of all of it. Jesus isn’t hoping to have the whole world come to him for all of their interaction with God—he’s making a way for everyone to have their own sacred interactions. He isn’t adding a new level of right-belief or right-action that earns us contact with God, he’s busting the whole thing down, opening access to this divine power for everyone.

The disciples have an understanding of Jesus’s significance, but their faith still seems to fail to take them far enough, and they still believe they need to come to Jesus to borrow his faith. And in return, Jesus offers his friends yet another invitation to access God themselves.

We can believe for our whole lives that Jesus is who he says he is, but do we actually receive his invitation? We may confess creeds every week and call ourselves Christ-followers, but do we actually participate in this divine life? In god’s kingdom?

Jesus is trying to invite us out. He’s calling his disciples, the crowds, everyone with ears to hear—he’s come to his sheep in their field, and he’s opened up the gate to a greener pasture and said, “Run! Explore! Find out what’s beyond this place where you’ve always been! Trust me that there’s something better than this small world you’ve been living in!” He says the only step to getting there is showing up. It’s walking through the open gate into more than you could ever ask or imagine. It’s prayer. It’s stillness. It’s removing yourself from the messages around you. It’s letting go of the way things work.

It’s wanting Love and Life enough to leave behind the stories about who you are or what you can do. It’s stepping out of a container from your childhood that’s become too-small, and being willing to never return to those confining old fences.

And Jesus says when you come to him expecting to witness and observe his relationship with God, thinking you’ll find just a peek of the divine there, you will discover that Jesus invites you to jump in—into a life immersed in God yourself. Jesus Christ becomes our passage into a greater reality, and he invites us freely to the mystery beyond. We find ourselves drawn to Jesus, for one reason or another—for love, for healing, for teaching, for comfort. And if we dare to meet him, if we dare to imagine that what he says is true—if we believe that we, each of us, are meant for oneness with God and access to eternal life and Love—if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you will enter into the realm of possibility, and indeed, nothing will be impossible for you.