Tenth Sunday after Pentecost; The Holy Martyr Myron. Post-feast of the Dormition.
1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23.
Read Matthew 17:14-23
There are no biblical or extra-biblical accounts of cataclysmic seismic events occurring upon the command of the apostles. Hyperbole is a figure of speech that uses extreme exaggeration to make a point, and Jesus uses it to good effect when addressing them. If they had even the tiniest speck of faith, Jesus says, they could do the most mountainous thing. Their performance in his absence revealed that they didn’t even have that. They eventually would, though, and it would be hard-won.
What they would have to go through to have such faith, Jesus foretells to them. Their distress made it evident that they didn’t fully grasp who was in front of them, even when he said that, “he will be raised on the third day.”
Looking back, on our lives and theirs, we can see the occasions when we all were missing what seemed unbelievable then, but it is believable now. When we see that the faith we didn’t have in the past, we now have in the present, we can draw upon that in the present to have faith for the future. We see that by looking at who Jesus really is and listening to the point he is making in our lives when we listen to what he says.