Luke 9:37-45

     After the amazing story of the transfiguration, Luke tells a story that is peculiar in some ways. When they had come down from the mountain the next day, a man came to Jesus and told him of his son’s terrible suffering. This was his only child and had strange convulsions until his mouth foamed. The interpretation of the father and the society was that a evil spirit or demon possessed the boy. The symptoms suggest that the boy’s condition could have been epilepsy. With no other explanation, it must have felt like a demon.
     Regardless of whether it was a physical illness or an evil spirit, the father’s anguish is understandable. His son is afflicted with a terrible condition and there is nothing he can do about it. Then he’d had some hope. There is this Jesus traveling about the countryside with his disciples. The father takes his son to the disciples in the absence of Jesus, his hope high and…the disciples are unable to help.
     Jesus exclaims, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?”
     Scholars point to God’s “complaints” in Number 14:27 and Isaiah 65:2 in looking at the words of Jesus ere. It seems to be an expression of weariness. The work of Jesus couldn’t have been easy on him. He traveled a great deal, taught, healed, and tried to train the disciples. He’d just had a “mountain top” experience, one in which the suffering may also have been discussed. He returns to find his disciples have failed in his absence (and the one who’d gone with him hadn’t done too well, either). It must have been terribly discouraging. He knew that he might have only a relatively short time. These were the followers designated to carry on when he was gone…and they couldn’t heal this child.
     Yet Jesus still responded to the need of the father and his son. He rebuked the demon, which left the boy, whom Jesus returned to his father. And all were astonished at the majesty of God.
     While everyone was still amazed, Jesus turns to his disciples and reminds them that he would be delivered into the hands of men. As one scholar say, with the conjunction of these two stories, what they are hearing is that the majesty of God is to be delivered into the hands of humanity.
     Jesus frequently tried to teach the disciples that his mission was not to be a conquering hero, but they simply couldn’t hear it most of the time. The disciples didn’t have a clue here what he was talking about, although they were afraid to ask him about it. That might not be surprising—who would want to understand the cross.

How do you feel about a story of how the earliest disciples also failed in some of their tasks?
When he could have simply let them find out in the course of events, why do you think Jesus continued to make sure to tell the disciples about the cross?