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Back on the Day of Pentecost, I mentioned Ben, the young evangelist we had in the junior night youth group during my time at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Helena, MT. Part of Ben’s abilities came from the Faith he was steeped in thanks to his family. I got to see this first hand almost from the start of my time at St. Peter’s with Ben’s mother Lizzie.
As an intern at St. Peter’s, I ended up being involved in a number of Bible Studies throughout my time there, and Lizzie was a part of many of them. In fact, I remember her in one of the very first Bible Studies. While I don’t remember what Scripture we were covering or what the topic was, I do remember her response as being incredibly wise and insightful.
That was how Lizzie was all the time. Over the year through many different Bible Studies, I saw her give many sage thoughts. If someone said something a little off in their interpretation, she was the person you wanted responding because of her kindness, reasoning, and ability to bring us back on track. I heard her say things that opened up my own thoughts on Scripture in ways that had never occurred to me before.
Lizzie is really intuitive in her approach to Scripture. She has a natural sense of what our Faith teaches us, and she us able to use that to listen to what God is saying through the Word of Scripture right now. It is a true gift she possesses.
Now in our readings today, we see the breadth of the core of our Faith, what Scripture as a whole has to tell us. We begin with David mourning the loss of Saul, the king before him, and Jonathan, Saul’s son. We end with Jesus, Son of David, centuries later encountering death Himself. Yet Jesus, through the power of the Resurrection, is able to bring a young girl back to life, a young girl whose father Jairus, a leader in the synagogue, sends for Jesus to help in the first place.
The Resurrection is what our Faith is all about. Our Faith teaches that though sin led us to death, God through our Lord Jesus Christ has deemed to raise us up into new Life through our Lord.
It took a long time to get there. From our readings, there’s a period of roughly 8-9 centuries. The Resurrection wasn’t something we came to understand, or was even actualized, for a long long time.
But what if we could have understood what God was working sooner? What if we had our eyes and ears open like Lizzie? What if we didn’t have to wait because we were paying attention and knew what God was trying to say to us?
In the midst of the time from Saul and Jonathan’s death to the raising of the leader of the synagogue’s daughter, we have another story: the tale of the woman with the hemorrhage. As Jesus is going to raise the young girl from the dead, this woman sees Him and the crowd around Him. Yet she has great Faith. She knows the power of Jesus. She knows if she just can touch His cloak, she will be healed.
And she is. Jesus even tells her that her Faith has made her well.
Not all of us have this same Faith. Not all of us are able to intuit what God is saying to us so quickly or so deeply. But what if we could? What if we could have a Faith that makes us whole?
This Faith is one that is open to what God is saying. It is one that constantly listens. It is one that realizes that God is giving us the answers if only we will take the time to hear them.
It can take time, a long time even, to come to this Faith. Yet this is the goal. This is what we should strive for. And when we make it, we will be able to hear and know what God is saying to us too so that we might allow the power of God to make us whole, perhaps for the first time ever.