Matthew 17:14-27

Possibilities of Faith

Matthew 17:14-21     Jesus Cures a Boy with a Demon

Matthew drew the story from Mark, abbreviated it considerably, and used it to illustrate a different point.  Consistently with this section of his narrative, his focus was on the disciples and their faith.

The man’s prayer to Jesus was a faith-filled prayer: he addressed Jesus as Lord, the address used by disciples after Jesus’ resurrection, and he asked for mercy for his son.  Significantly, the disciples could not cure the boy, even though, when originally sent out on mission, they had been given authority by Jesus to heal and to cast our demons [10:8].

At the beginning of the incident, Matthew had mentioned that a crowd was present.  Earlier in the narrative, in his collection of the parables of Jesus, Matthew had mentioned how Jesus had criticised the crowds for their failure to believe [13:13-15]; and later he referred to their response of praise to God for the many cures that Jesus worked [15:31].  Crowd response was still ambivalent.  In this incident, however, Jesus returned to his criticism of the faithless generation.  It is hard to discern what point Matthew was trying to make.  Somehow the boy’s predicament seemed to be connected to absence of faith.  The faithlessness, whose gravitational pull dragged constantly on the crowds, dragged on the disciples as well.  

Only at this stage did Matthew disclose that the boy’s problem was demon possession.  The detail was irrelevant in Matthew’s use of the incident (though it had been highly important in Mark’s narrative).

Jesus contrasted the little faith of the disciples to the faithlessness of the crowd.  Yet, their impotence was the result of their insufficient faith.  In the mind of Jesus, faith was not assent to statements or the perception of truth.  More than perception, faith involved the disciples’ entrusting themselves to Jesus, and sharing his vision.  Their power would arise from his authority and their conscious awareness of that authority and their reliance on it.  Apparently, their failure was due to their thinking that their authority was somehow independent of their indispensable connection to Jesus.

Matthew would repeat the same message later in the narrative [21:21] in a different context.  Extracted from its original setting in Mark’s Gospel, where the reference was clearly to the temple mount, the reference here to this mountain lacks relevance.  Matthew’s point was to emphasise that God might do what seems impossible, even through disciples, provided they remain close to and trusting in God.  Coupled with the authority of God, even little faith can accomplish much. At the end of the Gospel, Jesus would promise that he would be with his disciples always [28:20].  That continual presence would be necessary to bring the “nations” to faithfulness.

Second Prediction of Death and Resurrection

Matthew 17:22-23      Jesus Again Foretells His Death and Resurrection

Matthew’s mention of the disciples’ gathering in Galilee was awkward.  Perhaps it served to highlight Galilee, from where, after a long and ambivalent mission, they would soon depart.  Or it may have served to throw light on the purpose behind Jesus’ recent actions with the disciples: he was gathering and grooming them for the future.

This second prediction of Jesus’ death added the detail that Jesus would be handed over to the hands of others.  The passive verbs indicate the action of God.  God would hand over (betray) Jesus into human hands.  The precise meaning of the actual word used by Matthew can be specified from the context.  Translating it as handed over, however, anticipates the action of Judas, but the reference is not to Judas’s action.  Rather, God’s action is a continuation of Jesus’ becoming human, and therefore vulnerable to the decisions and actions of others – as all humans are.  Similarly God would raise Jesus.  God was always sovereign.  The identity of the killers remained undisclosed.

Matthew softened Mark’s criticism of the disciples, referring instead to their distress, rather than to their fear and inability to understand.

The Community’s Stance towards Temple and State

Matthew 17:24-27     Jesus’ Attitude to the Temple Tax

This anecdote is unique to Matthew, and is better interpreted as story than as incident, whatever about its origin.  Perhaps, it connected with the preceding comment of Jesus in that it indicated the kinds of pressure under which Matthew’s community had to live.

It is possible to imagine such an incident happening during the public life of Jesus: Jews commonly discussed the obligation to pay the annual half-shekel temple tax.  In the Diaspora at the time Matthew was writing, Jews tended to pay the tax, seeing it as an affirmation of their Jewish identity and loyalty.

Though the Jewish members of Matthew’s community were experiencing tensions from the local synagogues, even before the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 AD (twenty years before Matthew wrote his Gospel), they may have paid the temple tax as a way of asserting their faithful observance of the Torah.

The conversation between Jesus and Peter may have served to remind Jewish Christians that they really had no obligation to pay a temple tax, given their relationship with Jesus.  However, Matthew seemed to have approved their choice to do so freely.

The situation changed after the Temple was destroyed.  As a way of humiliating the Jews of the Diaspora, the Roman administration insisted that they continue to pay the annual tax, not to the no-longer-existing Temple, but to an imperial fund set up to pay for the erection and upkeep of a pagan temple in Rome, dedicated to Jupiter.  Given the effective Roman bureaucracy, there was no way any Jew could avoid paying without being accused of treason.  Jews hated the imposition, but could escape it only at the price of death.  In this context, the rest of Matthew’s anecdote throws light on the Christian community’s solution to their problem.

The explanation reflects something of the attitude expressed in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, where disciples were invited if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.  That response was to be an act of non-violent resistance, serving to assert the dignity of the one forced, and to highlight the injustice of the one forcing.  Christian Jews were forced to pay the tax – but they could preserve their own dignity at the same time.  The point of the story was to make of the payment something of a farce.  The disciple bowed to Rome’s power, but at the same time affirmed that God was master of the world, of the sea and fish in it, and of all the empty military and religious structures of Rome.

Yet, to survive in a hostile world, Christians needed the tight support of each other.  They needed clear goals and strong mutual bonds.  The teachings that Matthew proceeded to group together would all deal with life and relationships within the Christian community.

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