grab a shovel
This week’s sermon came from a scene where everyone around Jesus was flummoxed by their circumstances and struggling to figure out what to do, so Jesus started talking about moving mountains.
Over the last several chapters in Matthew, we have witnessed a number of times when Jesus called the disciples’ lack of trust into focus: the two times they were unsure how to feed the masses with just a few fish and a couple of loaves of bread, and when Peter began to sink when he tried to walk on the water are the most recent. We can go all the way back to the Sermon on the Mount and hear Jesus calling us to be like the flowers of the field who don’t worry about what they are going to wear.
He wasn’t speaking in platitudes. He knew trust was hard. By definition to trust is to act not knowing for sure what is going to happen but expecting the ones you are trusting to keep their promises. And the promise we have heard over and over, going back to Jesus’ birth, is God is with us and we are with each other. How, then, do we do that?
Just before the events in our reading, Jesus and some of the disciples had been up on the mountaintop and had a transcendent experience, one we have come to call the Transfiguration, which was an unexplainable moment where the disciples saw Jesus standing and talking with Moses and Elijah. We can see the power of the story beyond its telling in that we often talk about having a “mountaintop experience” when we are a part of something so intense that it feels beyond spiritual description.
But, whether in the gospels or in the present tense, we can’t live on those mountaintops. Sooner or later, we come back down into the valley where daily life goes on. God is still with us, but we can’t feel the presence in the same way, thus we are called to trust that the same Spirit that empowers the unexplainable lives in and with us daily.
One of the ways we as humans create conundrums for ourselves is we feel compelled to come up with some sort of explanation for things we don’t understand. Rather than living with our unknowing, we find something that lets us feel like we know more than we do. Illness is one of those places, and our story gives a good example of what I am talking about.
A man came to Jesus out of concern for his son who was moonstruck. Our translation renders it that way because we don’t know how to explain what was wrong with him. Both the Greek and Latin words however were their explanation for some sort of mental illness and they both literally mean moonstruck, as if to say, when all else fails blame it on the moon. It is the way ended up with our word lunatic. Some English translations will say he had epilepsy, but no one in Jesus’ day knew what that disease even was. What we know for sure is the boy was suffering terribly, as was his family. That part translates clearly.
Also notice a little later in the passage that the disciples ask why they couldn’t cast the demon out of the boy, as though whatever was wrong with him was evidence of some kind of evil power. That idea that sickness means we are possessed or have done something wrong and are being punished still persists, even though it is an inaccurate and damaging way to explain illness, mental or otherwise. Sickness is not a punishment from God. Ever. Being in pain doesn’t mean we have done something wrong.
It is in the middle of that swirl of explanations that Jesus says, “You faithless and distorted generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” And, as I said when we talked about the other times that Jesus talked about his followers being people with little trust, his words are less a condemnation than a frustration wondering aloud what it was going to take for them to finally catch on to the persistent presence of God. Translator JB Phillips offers this take on those words:
“You really are an unbelieving (untrusting) and difficult people,” Jesus returned. “How long must I be with you, and how long must I put up with you?” as if to say, “Just how long must my patience last? Bring him to me.”
Matthew says the boy was healed “from that hour on.” Whatever happened in that moment changed the boy’s daily life from then on.
And Jesus kept talking about trust when they asked him why they couldn’t heal the boy. “The reason is your trust is puny,” is the way Sarah Ruden translates his answer, which Jesus followed by saying, “If you have trust the size of a mustard seed, you could tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. “
So, if we are not going to let ourselves settle for explanations, what do we do with all of this?
Well, let’s start by looking at the boy one more time. The father brought him to Jesus because he was worried about his safety. His affliction caused him to throw himself into fire and water, which must have been terrifying for his family. The dad was asking for safety for his child, for some sort of reprieve that allowed relationships to be restored, that gave them a way to look at their lives together that wasn’t hopeless.
We don’t need a diagnosis of his illness to be able to understand that kind of healing, and to know that kind of healing often takes time. We have a lot more scientific knowledge that allows us to treat illnesses, both mental and otherwise, in many different and helpful ways, but that doesn’t mean they just immediately cease or disappear. Healing is often incremental, and some times not complete. Even so, it can lead us to feeling restored. Healing doesn’t necessarily mean going back to the way it was.
I talked with my brother this week. As you may remember, he had a stroke last October. He has healed in many ways. He is cognitively aware and clear. He is back at his job and able to do it well. He can drive and take care of himself as much as the next person, I suppose. Still, things have not gone back to the way they were before the stroke. He has been a musician his whole life. He now has very limited use of his left hand and can no longer play the piano or guitar and he can no longer sing. Yet he would say he has been healed. He does say that because he trusts that God is with him in ways he can’t explain, even as he is not able to do everything he once could, including things he loved.
And that brings me to the whole move a mountain thing.
Again, Jesus was not calling anyone out, or trying to make it seem that the reason the topography of Palestine hadn’t change was because no one had enough trust. That kind of damaging theology has led to some folks feeling like illnesses have gotten worse or loved ones have died because they didn’t pray enough. That’s not what Jesus was saying. His words are an invitation to a different kind of trust, a persistence, a tenacity. The kind of patience a gardener has, or perhaps a parent, to let things grow rather than expecting immediate results. Most of the time, the way we move a mountain is not in some grand gesture, but one shovel of dirt at a time.
We do the work and we trust God, that whatever happens next, we will still all be in this together.
I want to close on a personal note because I am listening hard to these words as I continue to navigate my hearing. The more I worked on this sermon, the more I felt like I was the one who most needed to hear it; pun intended. In ways I have just begun to realize, I can see that what healing looks like, or should I say sounds like, for me does not mean hearing like I used to ten or fifteen years ago, or even what hearing was like when I had conventional hearing aids. I am going to live with some limitations, many of which are present now and I don’t know if I will be able to move them a shovelful at a time or not. I have to trust and keep doing my morning exercises, talking to the people who are working to help me, and just doing my best to learn how to hear in a different way. That’s how my mountain will move, or at least how I hear this passage: I am invited to trust that God is with me and that healing is a work in progress.
Whether we find ourselves in the boy who was so tormented by his illness, or the father who so desperately wanted relief for his son, or the frustrated disciples who couldn’t figure out what to do, we all have our mountains, or perhaps mountain ranges that we can’t see over or get past. Jesus’ invitation is to trust that our shovels will be enough, and I say our because God is with us and we are with each other. None of us is shoveling alone. We are moving each other’s mountains as we care for each other. We may not get over the mountains, but our trust in God means we will dig on through together. Let’s keep shoveling. Amen.
Peace,
Milton
