I live in a beautiful place, but one without wifi. For an internet connection, I rely on a hotspot generated by my phone, which in turn depends on the signal strength at any given moment. It can take forever to accomplish a simple task, like posting and sending Water Daily, when the connection isn’t as strong as it can be. This comes to mind as I read about the effect his townspeople’s skepticism had on Jesus’ ability to wield the power of God:
Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.
All he could do was cure “a few sick people.” It is hard to imagine that anything can impede the power of God to effect what it will, especially when channeled by one whose faith lacks nothing. But Jesus attributed the “connectivity problem” to the unbelief he encountered in that place where they thought they knew him so well. People further away accepted him fully as he was; his homies could not believe that the Yeshua they’d grown up with was indeed the Anointed One, the Messiah. Their lack of faith held him back.
This should not surprise us. We think of Jesus as the power behind miracles, yet over and over he commends the faith of the people whom he heals, saying, “Your faith has made you well." Jesus responded to the faith he encountered – and I guess he still does. It puts a lot of pressure on us, doesn’t it, to think that God responds to the faith of those praying.
It can be a quick jump from there to the notion that someone who is sick or hurting doesn’t experience healing because they lack faith – and unfortunately, some in the healing ministry tell people that. Wrong. The faith to which God responds needs to be in the community that is praying for someone to be healed. God does not punish people for lack of faith – it just seems that God’s power is impeded when there is a lot of disbelief in a system. That’s why communities in which healing is regularly invited and expected tend to see a lot more of it than those who think it’s rare and don’t exercise their faith in prayer.
Does that put a lot of responsibility on us as people of faith? You bet it does! It means our faith matters more than perhaps we wish it did. It means we do all we can to strengthen the faith of those around us. We make space for questions, sure, but we don’t encourage disbelief. The stronger the faith in the community, the more invitation there is for Jesus power to be released in and through us.
As our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, has said in, quoting St. Augustine, "Without God we cannot; without us, He will not.” And he added, “Together with God we can and we will.”
Without us, God will not. The Omnipotent can, of course, but has chosen to give us that much power to participate in God’s work. Let’s tap into the signal and let the connectivity and power flow!
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