Sometimes the commandments of Jesus seem a bit out of reach. For example, he commands us, “Be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). Be like God. We are even to become one with him. This is the whole purpose of God becoming human – so that we humans might become God. Only in Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit is any of this possible. That should be apparent.

We’ve got a long way to go. Coming into union with God is a journey. It is progressive movement, and not an instantaneous moment. Sure, God blinds Paul with his light, but even after his conversion, Paul is still irascible Paul, thorns and all, and even he needs growth (Acts 9:3; 2 Cor 12:7). Even heaven itself is an eternal dynamic ascent into ever greater union with God, and not a static, one-and-done, resting on your laurels kind of place.

When a young man comes to Jesus asking what good he must do to have eternal life, Jesus points first to the seemingly out-of-reach source of all goodness and says, “There is One Who is good” (Matt 19:16-17). Yet, he does not begin by commanding that the young man be good, even as the only good one is good. Rather, he begins with basic commandments – five of the Ten Commandments and the human side of the greatest commandment – that is, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 19:18-19). We have to begin at the beginning. We have to love the person in front of us, the image of God in others, before we can love God, before we can become like God.

These initial commandments are essential, but they are not sufficient. They are a necessary first step, but, alone, they do not perfect us or unite us to God. Even if we were perfect observers of these commandments, we would not be perfect.

There is a list of sins in the Great Book of Needs meant to aid penitents in confessing their sins in holy repentance. I’m sure many of you are familiar with similar lists, often called Examinations of Conscience. We might get the sense, while poring over these lists, that if somehow by the grace of God we kept free of these sins, then we’d be perfect. But it isn’t so. Perfection goes beyond the negative prohibition of sin and culminates, above all, in being with God – being with Being – with the Being One – with the One who is. After we fulfill the commandments, Jesus commands us, “Come, follow me” (Matt 19:21). “Be with me.” Only being with Jesus is enough.

The rich young man desired perfection. That’s clear, because he went away sad – saddened by his own unwillingness to follow Jesus (Matt 19:22). He knew that he lacked something. Keeping the commandments that he kept wasn’t sufficient. He yearned for more. He knew there was more.

We are created by our very nature and from the very beginning for union with God. Our created nature yearns for God. Even if we are committing no voluntary sins (and who among us can say that?) but even if we are like the young man and are seemingly guilty of nothing, it still isn’t enough, as the young man could sense when he asked, “what do I still lack?” (Matt 19:20) He could sense an absence and a need for growth.

Our need for growth is everlasting. Even when we die and are planted in the earth, our growth is not finished. Our ascent into union with God is never-ending. The divine nature of which we partake is inexhaustible (cf. 2 Pet 1:4). We begin to partake of the divine nature, but we never stop because there is no end of God. He is without end and he alone is all-sufficient for us. No riches are sufficient.

Jesus says to the rich man, “Go sell what you possess and give to the poor… and come, follow me” (Matt 19:21). If you would be perfect, turn away from the good created things that comfort you, and turn instead toward the true Comforter – the Holy Spirit.  Come, follow Jesus. Be with Jesus. Only Jesus is enough.

To be with Christ is pure joy and perfection. To be with Christ – even to suffer with him on the cross – is better than it is to drive a nice Lincoln to your big house with an air-conditioned home theater and every comfort at your disposal. It is better to be with Christ. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Matt 16:26; Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25).

As we progress in divine communion, we must turn our back on more and more of the things which distract us from that union – even good things. It’s not that the rich man’s things were bad. There is nothing bad about possessions in and of themselves. Except when they possess us.

We must regard our possessions as not really ours. All our things are actually the Lord’s. We are stewards and not the lords of creation. The Lord is the true possessor of all things. If he asks us to give something away, we’d better give it away because it is his to give, not ours.

St. Anthony the Great understood this. When he heard today’s gospel read in the church, he responded as though the passage had been read on his account, and he took it at its word. He went out immediately from the church, and gave away all his inherited possessions. He gave three hundred productive and beautiful acres to the villagers. And all the rest he sold and gave to the poor and to care for his sister. Then, no longer a rich man, he sought to enter heaven through the desert.

Jesus teaches that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. The disciples grasp a problem here very quickly – more quickly than I would have in their place. The immediate and more obvious conclusion would be, it seems to me, that the poor will have an easier time of getting saved (Matt 19:24). But that’s not what the disciples suggest. They don’t ask, “Can only the poor then be saved?” Rather, they ask, “Who then can be saved?” (Matt 19:25).

Perhaps, as poor men, they already knew by experience how difficult it was to be saved. As poor men, they knew that their poverty alone was not enough to save them. And here is a rich man whose wealth is not enough either. So, who then can be saved? And the answer is: it’s impossible (Matt 19:26). We can’t save ourselves.  The rich cannot save themselves and the poor cannot save themselves. Only with God is this possible (Matt 19:26). Only in Jesus. Only Jesus is enough. And that is why Jesus commands the rich young man to follow him, to be with him. That is the only way to perfection, the only way to eternal life.

There is only one way, and it is grace, the life of God. Our salvation is an act of God. It’s not that we don’t have something to do with it. We must do something insufficient, and he makes it sufficient. Divine Grace supplies what is lacking. Jesus takes our small and insufficient offering, as he took the five loaves and two fish, and he makes it great and sufficient. He takes our poor offering – our prosphora – of bread and wine, and he makes it himself, by the descent of the Holy Spirit upon us and upon our gifts.

Bread and wine are not enough to save us. Only the body and the blood of Jesus Christ saves us. It is for the remission of sins and for life everlasting. The divine flesh of Jesus is our life. Only Jesus is enough to perfect us, to save us, to give us eternal life.

In general, we should keep our word. The word is a powerful thing to have given. Remember that it is by the power of the word that the Lord creates the heavens and the earth.

Jesus teaches us to let our yes be yes and our no be no. Anything more, he says, is from the evil one (Matthew 5:37). James teaches us not to swear an oath, any oath at all, either by heaven or by earth (James 5:12). We are to be careful with what we say.

So then, what is to become of us if we have sworn an oath that we should not have? It is not uncommon for us to speak when we should be silent or say what we do not really mean. Is our word to mean nothing in such a case? Yes. Nothing.

Our words have meaning only to the extent they are aligned with the word of the Lord.

Any word we speak which goes against the word of the Lord is utterly empty and void of all meaning and power.

We are not the creators of truth or meaning. We are not creators at all in the true sense of creation out of nothing. We co-create or sub-create to the extent we live in Christ and are one with God by his grace. To that extent, we are instruments of God’s creative energy.

But what folly it is to try to give substance to any thing or purpose that is against God’s will!

This is what Herod does today.

Herod promises Salome anything up to half his kingdom as a reward for her sensual dancing (Mark 6:22-23). The lusts of men cloud their ability to see things as they truly are.

So Herod gives his word, but it is an empty word that ought not to be followed through upon. Especially when Salome reveals her mother’s designs, Herod ought to break his word. Yes, it is better to break our word than to break the word of the Lord.

But, in his cowardly fear of others’ thoughts, and knowing full well the wrongness of it, Herod follows through on his own word and disregards the word of the Lord: “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13). He not only kills, but kills the one who speaks the word of the Lord in truth – the prophet of the Most High, the voice crying out in the wilderness, “prepare the way of the Lord” (Luke 1:76; Mark 1:3).

Notice too: Herod only promises up to half his kingdom. All who are there presume this easily includes the life of John, the Baptist and Forerunner of the Lord. But John is the greatest man born of woman (Matt 11:11; Luke 7:28). He is a greater man than Herod and his life is worth more than half of Herod’s kingdom by far. So, in breaking the word of the Lord, Herod even breaks the true meaning of his own words.

This is the way that it always is. Our sin is not only our vain attempt to go against or undo the word of the Lord, as if that were possible. It is also a vain attempt against our own selves. It is not in our true nature as God has created us to foolishly try to defy the Almighty. Yet, we seem to keep on trying….

The way for us to keep our word is for us to live according to the word of the Lord. We exist by the power of his word.

When we speak words in folly that go against the word of the Lord, these words have no authority or power, and we are not to try to follow them. Rather, let us – as soon as possible – spit on the foolish words we spit out in the midst of our anger or our lust. Let us disregard them, as they are without substance or purpose. Let’s repent of them

On the other hand, when we speak words that are in accord with the word of the Lord, they are as already given by the Lord. Let’s obey these with fervor. Our speaking of the words in these cases is a good step toward aligning our will with the will of God. This is how we ought to use our words, which God has given us: to take our place in the chorus of saints, ceaselessly praising the name of the Lord.

If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will move the mountain. And nothing will be impossible for you. (Matt 17:20).

Our faith should be like mustard seed.

A mustard seed is tiny, but its tininess is not the whole story. Remember, the littleness of the disciples’ faith is the reason they cannot move the mountain – that they cannot cast the demon out of the boy and heal him.

This, by the way, is what it means to move a mountain, in my opinion.[i] Most of us have a mountain in our lives that needs moving. It’s found most often deeply rooted in our hearts. And there’s usually a demon or two who planted it there and who try to keep it there.

If we had faith like a mustard seed, we would say to that mountain of passions or addiction; ill-will, resentments, or unforgiveness; selfishness and self-centeredness; gluttony, lust, and wickedness; unkindness, impatience, and failure to love – we would say to that mountain in our hearts, “move.”[ii] And it, with all its attendant demons would “be taken up and cast into the sea” (Matt 21:21), that is, into the abyss of hell,[iii]where all such inclinations and the demons that harbor them belong.

You know as well as I do, it would be easier to move a mountain in the literal sense. Butnothing will be impossible for us if we have faith like a mustard seed.

I do not say that we should have faith “the size” of a mustard seed. Some translations[iv] add a comment here about size, which does not appear in the Greek. Jesus does not say “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed.” He says, “If you have faith like or as (ὡς) a mustard seed.”

The tininess of the mustard seed is an important part of the power of the image, that’s true, and Jesus speaks about that in another place (Matt 13:32), but to overfocus on that attribute alone causes the image to lose its potency. If we think a little faith is enough because we hear our faith should be like mustard seed, we may have missed the point.

When we say to one another, “have a little faith,” I hope we don’t mean it in the sense that Jesus does when he tells his disciples that they fail to cast out the demon because of their “little faith” (Matt 17:20).

Size alone is not the point. It’s important that we’re speaking here of a grain of mustard and not a grain of sand. There’s a world of difference between the two – and the difference is life.

Jesus is not, I think, making a quantitative comparison between the littleness of the disciples’ faith and the size of the mustard seed, as if their faith was even smaller and they only need a bit more of it. Rather, I think he’s making a qualitative comparison between two tiny things. If your faith is so little, let it be little in the way that mustard seed is little – not like a grain of lifeless sand, but like a grain of living seed. It’s alright to have a little faith, as long as it’s little in the way that a mustard seed is little and not in the way that the disciples’ faith was little that day. The difference is life, growth, & potency.

St. Paul speaks of having “all faith so as to move mountains” (1 Cor 13:2). The kind of faith that moves mountains is not “little faith” but “all faith.” Faith that is like a mustard seed is total faith.[v] A mustard seed is tiny, but it contains the whole. It has the total mustard plant within it – a great shrub rather like a tree, “so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matt 13:32; cf. Luke 13:19).

Jesus also teaches that a mustard seed is like kingdom of heaven. So, let our faith be like the kingdom – small, maybe, but full of life and spirit and capable of growing to greatness.

How can a mustard seed move a mountain? Only because it can do something a mountain cannot do: it can grow. It is alive and not lifeless rock. And life always wins. Patient growth has the power to reshape the whole earth.

If we have a living, growing faith, we can trust that that mountain within us that needs to move will move. We can see it begin to erode, in fact – its stones broken by the growing roots of our faith, weakening to rubble the mountain that seemed immovable and preparing it to be swept away by grace.

In the meantime, if our faith is little in the way that shouldn’t be, how are we to transform our faith into the faith that is like a mustard seed? One way is by the prayer and fasting that today Jesus says is necessary to cast out this kind of demon (Matt 17:21). Such is necessary because, through these means, God transforms our faith from some dry and lifeless assent to propositions into a living seed of the word within us, that grows and grows, like life in a womb.

A mustard seed is an embryonic mustard plant. The kingdom of heaven is like an embryo. An embryo can grow to become a king. Growth is key. Life is that which grows. If we stop growing, we’re dead. Eternal life is eternal growth. Let us grow ever closer to the infinite Lord for all eternity, and let us begin to grow today.

 

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[i] “The mountains here spoken of, in my opin­ion, are the hostile powers that have their being in a flood of great wickedness, such as are set­tled down, so to speak, in some souls of various people.” Origen, com­mentary on matthew 13.7.

[ii] “If they had had this faith within them, they would have been like the grain of mustard seed. By the power of the Word they would have thrown out this burden of sins and the heavy mass of their unbelief. They would have transferred it, like a mountain into the sea.” hilary of poitiers. on matthew 17.8.

[iii] “Then such a man will say to this mountain—I mean in this case the deaf and dumb spirit in him who is said to be epileptic— “Move from here to another place.” It will move. This means it will move from the suffering per­son to the abyss.” Origen, com­mentary on matthew 13.7.

[iv] e.g. NIV and NAB

[v] “When someone has total faith…, then he has all faith like a grain of mus­tard seed” Origen, com­mentary on matthew 13.7.