My husband and I have been having an ongoing dialogue about faith. He says most Christians live in a state of reduced power and glory, a state in which we’ve resigned ourselves to less than the Bible promises. If the Holy Spirit lives within us, he reasons, we should be able to do the same kinds of things Jesus did — as he promised.
I say, “I don’t see that happening.” I say that you can’t systematize the power of God, and expect to be granted miraculous powers on demand. I say that appropriating the power of the Holy Spirit is not the same thing as the power of positive thinking, that says, “Think in this way, and X will happen.”
And yet, I don’t disagree with my husband. All my sound and fury isn’t a dismissal of Jesus’ words. If anything, my list of warnings is simply the protective shell all “pessimists” create to protect the extremely tender heart within, the heart that can imagine and long for the truly glorious — yet is afraid it can’t possibly happen. So it makes a floodwall against disappointment, a floodwall of qualifications and excuses-in-advance. In the end, though, it walls out faith, and walls in skepticism.
This morning I read Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration, followed immediately by the account of Jesus’ healing of a boy with a demon, and his words, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” There it is again: audacious words, words that expose the bloodlessness of the polite, rationalized Christianity that inhabits most modern churches in contrast to the vigorous, plainly miraculous variety promised by Jesus.
Raphael saw the two stories — the account of the Transfiguration and the healing of the demoniac boy — as connected. This is why he put the one in the background, and the other in the foreground, of his painting. Both the boy and the disciples fall weakly before the greater power of Christ in ways that suggest his death; the boy is healed in a way that suggests his resurrection.
I don’t know about that. But I do agree that the same power displayed so magnificently in the Transfiguration is at work in every almost matter-of-fact account of Jesus healing someone in the gospels, and every time he takes up residence in a human heart to this day.
Reading about the Transfiguration today has ignited my imagination. The commentary I consulted describes the symbolic significance of Moses and Elijah as law-giver and prophet. It implies that the whole scene was largely for the benefit of the disciples. That makes sense. But could it also be that the veil of the temporal was dropping away? Could it also be that we are witnessing in this emblematic moment Moses and Elijah in the real time of their earthly lives, seeing God? What comes to mind is the scene in Lewis’ The Last Battle where Tirian, tied to a tree and longing for the release of Narnia from enslavement, appears to the Pevensies at a banquet they’re having with Digory and Polly. The two parties see each other, each inhabiting their own time and place, through the veil that separates the two worlds.
I like the idea of seeing the Transfiguration in a similar way. It unstraps the shackles of mere literary reasoning — “X symbolizes this, Y symbolizes that” — and restores the scene to the kind of wild, unearthly power it surely had. It reminds me that this Jesus — the great I AM yesterday, today, and forever — is the One I worship, the One I look to today amidst the mundane details of my life, the One who promises that even the tiniest grain of true faith in him can move mountains.
Here’s the thing… I think we often misinterpret Jesus’ words in that first passage, and think that we should be doing amazing supernatural miracles like Jesus did.
Thing is, WE DO, we just for get it because we forget what is most miraculous of all. I think what Jesus is referring to there is that while on earth, he did miracles and healings and amazing things, but when he left, he left it up to us to preach that Jesus offers salvation and that forgiveness of sins for all of humanity. We can come to someone with the good news and begin with someone dead in their sins and walk away from someone alive in Christ! From darkness to light. From hopelessness to joy.
That is the greater miracle by far, and it is all the more amazing that Christ left it to US to have the joy of bringing about this miracle (though of course it is done through HIS death, but we get to bring people to Him!).
So … that is what I think He means when He says, “He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
Not that we don’t do physical miracles, sometimes I think those still happens, but I think that the most miraculous thing of all is to bring a soul to life, and I think THAT is what Jesus left the Church to do in power.
I think you’re right about the first passage. It could be interpreted that way — maybe. But Jesus puts no qualifiers on his promise to do what we ask in faith.
Without discounting the truth in what you’re saying, and without devaluing the absolute wonder of that moment when a soul walks from death to life through faith in Jesus, I still have to ask: what on earth does he mean in the second passage — the mustard seed passage? That link between faith of a certain intensity and kind, and a quite literal miracle, runs all through the gospels. The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15, Peter walking on water in Mt. 14, the sick woman in Mt. 9, the centurion in Mt. 8… Conversely, Jesus doesn’t perform many miracles in his hometown in Mt. 13 because of their lack of faith.
I’m not trying to demand miraculous powers.
But I do think we in the church have a very strong tendency to put qualifiers around Jesus’ more radical statements and promises. I’m wondering if our qualifications become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Having been raised on “mustard seed faith” and the belief that God can and will answer prayers when prayed in faith, . . . I dunno what I think.
I do believe God still works miracles, and He often allows us to “get in on them” by using His people as His agents–through prayer, fasting, etc. Of course, He still does all the “work.”
Why don’t we see more of this in modern day America? Perhaps we aren’t desperate enough? I don’t know.
I believe God can and does answer prayers too. And “blab it and grab it” has never really seemed sensible to me — at least, not the implication that people can treat God as a vending machine, or that whatever a fallible human being asks for will be granted by an all-wise, all-knowing God.
Yet these statements of Jesus are so bold! I’ve only ever read one discussion of them, and it was in C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer — a book I can’t find to reread.
I’m thinking maybe our faith isn’t even as big as a mustard seed when we’re talking about God giving signs and wonders through us. We are all agreed he can and sometimes does miraculous things but our faith falters at speaking “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” Would he really send that kind of power through me? So we play it safe and try to protect the reputation of God from ridicule- just in case we’re wrong about what he wants to do at this time.
That is so well said, Polly. I know it rings true for me, at least as I am now — play it safe to try and protect the reputation of God.
So here’s my question: have you ever not “played it safe?” What was the result?
I’m just thinking about how such a cautious attitude is formed. CS Lewis prayed as a child for his mother to be healed, and it didn’t happen, and a crisis of faith followed that lasted for years. Then he explained it by saying there was nothing spiritual about his prayer.
That’s what I tend to do too — assume the problem is mine in some way. Looking at these stories in Matthew, though, I don’t see divine power being reserved for only those who say the right formula. They simply look to Jesus for help, believing that he can give it.
Or is there something more to their faith than strong belief?
As you can see, you’ve got me thinking. Thanks for the comment!