Bring Him Here To Me

Matthew 17:1-17

¹⁷ Yeshua answered, “Perverted people, without any trust! How long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me!” (CJB)

“O unbelieving (apistos) and perverse (diastrephō) generation, how long am I to be with you? How long must I put up with (anechōmai) you? Bring him here to me.” (MOUNCE Reverse Interlinear NT

“Pistos” is often translated as “trustworthy.” “Apistos” would then translate as “untrustworthy.”

“Diastrephō” translates as “to subvert, pervert, make turn away; (pass.) to be perverted, depraved, turned from the truth. Definition: to distort, turn away; met. to pervert, corrupt, (Mt. 17:17; Lk. 9:41) to turn out of the way, cause to make defection (Lk. 23:2; Acts 13:8) διεστραμμένος, perverse, corrupt, erroneous.” (billmounce.com- Greek dictionary)

So, the passage could accurately be translated as,

“You untrustworthy, corrupt generation! I’ve had it with you!”

Now comes the interesting part. I could not find anything in a Google search for the following search terms: “Jesus calling people names”, “Jesus calling the disciples names (or bad names)”, “Jesus being mean to the disciples”, “Jesus being rude to the disciples”, or “Jesus the name-caller.” Every single listing was either a rationalization explaining why it only seemed like Jesus was calling people names but wasn’t really;  references only to the names he called those mean old Pharisees and Sadducees; or a complete re-ordering of the words. For example, the search term “Jesus being mean to the disciples” resulted in a whole slew of listings such as this one: “What does being a disciple of Jesus mean?”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Putting the passage in context, a man complained to Jesus that the disciples couldn’t heal his son, so he was coming directly to Jesus to ask him to do it. So, I am assuming that Jesus was talking to both the disciples and the complaining man. It’s also totally obvious that Jesus was absolutely exasperated.

Here’s where we come to the crunch. Really, we have only two choices if we are going to make the supposition that Jesus was indeed “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The first (and apparently the most popular) choice is to do a cannonball into the waters of Denial, and simply pretend that it isn’t possible for Jesus to have gotten exasperated, or for him to have said nasty, rude, and offensive things to his friends. This choice leads to a lot of slimy, devious explanations of what Jesus must have really meant when he said such things.

The other choice is to simply take Jesus at his word, and give him the credit for saying exactly what he meant to say. Of course I subscribe to the second choice, because I don’t like prevaricators and quibblers. There are way too many biblical spin doctors out there, and they make my teeth hurt.

Okay then, let’s break it down. Let’s not put undue weight on our preconceptions and conventions. If Jesus was really the embodiment of God’s love, then no matter what he said, it was his friends he was talking to. We all remember times when we’ve been exasperated with our friends. Did we really mean to reject them, or were we just trying to get them to play fair?

Also, take note that Jesus says, “How long must I put up with you?” That question implies strongly that the thing that exasperated him was a thing that just kept on happening, over and over. So, my assumption is that the disciples had formed the habit of always deferring to Jesus, and maybe even being overly submissive and not at all self-reliant. They kept on ignoring what Jesus told them to do, which was to take charge of themselves, and be confident on their own account. They wouldn’t own up to what they believed, and stand on their own two feet. The passage also implies that they were somehow perverting the message, and putting emphasis on the wrong things. If that’s true, then it looks like the problem was that they kept on putting Jesus on the spot, the same way his mother did at the wedding in Cana, and forcing him to put on a dog and pony show with the miracles, when that wasn’t what Jesus thought was important. In fact, I suspect he thought it was utterly beside the point.

If performing healing miracles were his true mission, then things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did, would they? If his mission in this world was just to rescue wedding planners, then history would have forgotten him utterly!

No, it must have been that his disciples just kept on leading people astray (diastrephō), as well as distracting Jesus, because they insisted on making the miracles into a thing, and once they’d made them into a thing, then they had painted Jesus into a corner. The disciples never seemed to realize that they’d put Jesus into a position where by responding to a real human need, and acting to relieve a person’s immediate suffering, he was forced to give credibility to the whole miracle-worker thing, even if that wasn’t what was most important. Jesus simply couldn’t refuse to help the man’s son, because Jesus was compassionate and kind.  In addition, if he had refused, it would have put him in a false position.

Jesus yelled at them because they were paying attention to the wrong things. They were acting like carnival barkers and insisting on peddling Jesus as the Amazing Miracle Worker. The disciples had fallen prey to sensationalism, and that sort of ideology was completely wrong-headed and perverted as far as Jesus was concerned. It went against the Way that he wanted to teach people to follow. It went against the meaning of friendship.

He wanted his disciples to understand exactly how awful it was to exploit a real live human being’s pain and misfortune in order to show off. He wanted them to see how they were manipulating him, and he wanted to make sure they knew that not only was he really pissed off about it, but that it was just plain wrong for them do something like that.

So he told them so, in no uncertain terms. He wanted them to be abashed. He wanted them to ask themselves why their Master would say such mean things. He wanted them to see clearly how bone-headed they were being.

Lastly, he wanted to make sure they knew that he was putting up with being manipulated like that for the simple reason that he would always be trustworthy, and he was going to keep on counting on them to be trustworthy too, in spite of everything. He wanted to show them that he would always act out of compassion, and he would not ever let them down, betray, manipulate, or coerce them, because he was their friend.

In the end, he showed them just exactly what friendship meant to him, and they never forgot it.