TRANSLATION MATTHEW 17: 14

As they came near the crowd a man approached him and went on his knees to him, “Master,” he said, “show kindness to my son, because he is moonstruck, and suffers badly, for he often falls into fire and often into water. And I brought him to your pupils but they were unable to heal him.”

Jesus answered, ” O faithless and corrupt people, how long will I be with you, how long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.” Then he chided the demon and it came out of the boy, who was healed from that hour. Then, when they were on their own the pupils came to Jesus, asking, ” Why were we unable to drive it out?” He told them, “Because your trust is so tiny. Amen I tell you, that if you have trust as big as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Readers who are expecting something like the astonishing account of this incident in Mark’s Gospel, which has the needy father crying out to Jesus, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”, will be disappointed with Matthew’s carefully edited version, which reduces the savagery of the evil spirit’s possession of the boy, and the desperate faith of the father.

We have to remember that Matthew understands Jesus’ power to heal as the ability to take the diseased person’s suffering upon himself, to bear the evil. Jesus and his intimate pupils have come from a vision of his intimacy with God which Jesus has interpreted as the necessity of his suffering.

The disciples’ inability to heal is interpreted as lack of trust, that is, in the God who bears evil. Their trust does not enable them to enter the need of the boy, who is described as “moonstruck” by Matthew, who is building up a picture of what he means by the Greek word “pistis” = trust or faith. It is loyalty to Jesus who can implement God’s rule in the world but must do so through rejection and suffering. This is the trust that moves mountains.