10th Sunday of Matthew
Scripture: Matthew 17:14–23
Oops!
My wife and I have different tastes in movies. One genre that I enjoy, but she doesn’t, is horror. And among my favorites are the old Universal monster movies from the 1930s and ’40s.
That may seem like an odd thing for a priest to enjoy, but if you stop and think about those movies, they’re really commentaries on the human condition. They reveal something broken, but very real, about our fallen humanity.
Take The Wolf Man, the classic Lon Chaney, Jr., film. After being bitten by a werewolf, Larry Talbot gradually discovers that he himself is becoming one. At first he refuses to believe it. He even gives away the charm that was supposed to protect him when the full moon rises.
He soon learns the curse is real. In one haunting scene, while still in human form, he can recognize those who will become his future victims because he sees a mysterious mark appear on their hands. Then he notices that same mark on the hand of the woman he loves.
I won’t spoil the ending (you’ll have to watch it yourself), but what does this story tell us about being human?
The werewolf myth expresses, in a pagan and folkloric way, the fear that a person can become less than human, enslaved to irrational, destructive impulses. The image of God is obscured beneath something monstrous.
In other words, the werewolf represents fallen humanity: enslaved to the passions, to sin, and ultimately to death.
That’s what makes today’s Gospel so intriguing. Matthew literally says that the boy is “moonstruck.” That’s the Greek word.
Ugh!
Like the werewolf of folklore, this boy is no longer master of himself. His father says he suffers terribly, often throwing himself into fire and into water. Matthew immediately reveals what lies beneath the condition: the boy is under demonic oppression. His humanity has been distorted by powers he cannot control.
Perhaps that’s why “moonstruck” became such a vivid description. The moon has no light of its own; it only reflects another’s light. When its light wanes, darkness grows. Scripture often associates darkness with chaos and the realm opposed to God. Whether or not Matthew intends all of that symbolism, it beautifully illustrates the boy’s condition. He is living according to the rhythms of darkness rather than the light of God.
Seen this way, the boy becomes an icon of fallen humanity. He cannot master himself. He is thrown from one destructive extreme to another, captive to powers stronger than himself.
Aha!
But Christ is the true Light.
It’s no accident that this Gospel follows immediately after the Transfiguration. There Christ’s face shines “like the sun.” Now He descends from the mountain to meet a boy described as “moonstruck.” The contrast is striking: the Light of the world meets humanity trapped in darkness.
Christ’s miracles are never merely displays of power. They are signs that God’s new creation has begun.
Christ’s healing is therefore more than the cure of an illness. It reveals that the Kingdom of God has entered a world still held in bondage. The glory revealed on Tabor does not remain on the mountain. It descends into the valley, driving back the darkness and restoring human beings to communion with God.
That movement, from Tabor into the valley, is one of the deepest theological patterns in Matthew’s Gospel. Glory does not stay on the mountain. It comes down to meet us where we are moonstruck.
Whee!
And so Christ does exactly that. He comes down the mountain, still radiant with uncreated light, and walks straight into the middle of a father’s desperation and a crowd’s confusion.
The disciples had already tried and failed to heal the boy. Christ rebukes not the boy, but the unbelief around Him: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” Then, without ceremony, without struggle, He simply rebukes the demon, and it leaves. Matthew tells us the child was cured “from that very hour.”
Just like that. The moon loses its grip. The boy who had lived under the rhythms of darkness now stands in the light of the Son.
Remember that detail from The Wolf Man … the mark on the hand of the one destined to die? It is a mark of doom. Christ, too, looks upon this boy, but He sees something altogether different. He sees the image of God, buried beneath chaos and waiting to be restored. Christ does not mark him for death. He reaches into the wreckage of his humanity and gives it back to him whole.
That’s the Gospel in miniature. Where the werewolf story can only end in tragedy (the curse runs its course, the monster claims its victim), Christ’s story ends in restoration. One word, and it’s over. One rebuke, and the tyranny ends. The boy who could not master himself is his own master again, standing in the light of the Son rather than under the moon.
Can you imagine that father’s face? Can you imagine the boy’s first breath as himself again? Not thrown into fire, not thrown into water, but simply standing there, whole?
That is what the Kingdom breaking into the world looks like.
Not someday.
That very hour.
Yeah!
So what about us?
None of us has been bitten by a werewolf (that I know of). But every one of us knows what it is to be “moonstruck” in our own way … to be thrown into fire and water by something that feels stronger than our own will. An anger we cannot master. A craving we keep feeding even as it consumes us. An anxiety that throws us from one extreme to another. A grief or a wound that has us living by the rhythms of darkness instead of the rhythms of God.
Here’s the good news this Gospel gives us: Christ does not stay on the mountain. He comes down into our valley, into our particular fire and water, and He is not afraid of what He finds there.
But notice something the disciples had to learn the hard way. When they asked Christ privately why they couldn’t heal the boy, He answered, “Because of your unbelief. For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” And in some manuscripts He adds, “This kind goes out only by prayer and fasting.”
Here is an invitation.
Faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed, is what opens us to Christ’s power to do what we cannot do ourselves. Prayer and fasting are not techniques for forcing God’s hand. They are the practices that loosen the moon’s grip on us. They turn our faces back toward the Son.
So, whatever has its hold on you, whatever fire and water you keep getting thrown into, you are not sentenced to live by the moon. You were made for the light.
Bring it to Christ honestly, the way that father did: “Lord, have mercy.” Don’t wait until you’ve mastered it yourself, because you can’t. None of us can. That’s the whole point of the story.
Bring your mustard seed of faith. Take up the quiet disciplines of prayer and fasting that keep you turned toward Him. Trust that the same Christ who came down from Tabor still comes down into our valleys, still speaks the word, and still—that very hour—begins giving us ourselves back.
The moon has no light of its own.
But you were never meant to live by the moon’s light.
You were made in the image of the One whose face shines like the sun.
Let Him restore that image in you today.
Amen!