There are few things in life that can challenge one’s faith like sickness and death. In today’s Gospel, we encounter both. Rather than lose faith, both the father whose daughter just died and the woman suffering from hemorrhages demonstrate what faith is and show us how faith leads to hope.
The understandably distraught dad is convinced that if Jesus can just “lay” His hands on the dead girl she will live. Similarly, the woman who had suffered twelve years with what was likely menstrual bleeding felt all she needed to do was touch the Lord’s cloak and she would be healed. Neither one had much reason for optimism: the man’s daughter was dead, and the woman had suffered more than a decade with her chronic health problem.
I think it’s just fine that faith in these kinds of circumstances presents more as desperation than optimism. Hope is what remains when optimism runs out. This woman and this man both believed in Jesus. It seems the distraught father believed both in the Lord’s power to raise his daughter from the dead and in His willingness to do so. This woman, on the other hand, certainly believed in Jesus’ power to heal but perhaps thought she wasn’t significant enough to bother Him with her problem.
Imagine her surprise when, as she touched the tassel on his cloak, the Lord turned and “saw” her, told her to have courage, and affirmed “Your faith has saved you.”1 You see, she was significant to the Lord and He cared about her problem. Don Francisco, an early Contemporary Christian Music artist wrote a song entitled “Closer To Jesus.” In it, he sings about this woman, whose story is also conveyed in Saint Luke’s Gospel:
Now the story 'bout touchingIt’s very often the case that it is in facing desperate circumstances that we turn to Jesus. This is complicated by the reality that the Lord doesn’t always do what I desperately want Him to do. But trust in God, which is what faith really amounts to, isn’t about knowing that God will always do my bidding.
The hem of His garment
Nearly everybody knows
But that woman was healed
By her faith in God
And not by Jesus's clothes2
Trusting God certainly means casting your cares on Him and leaving the outcome to Him knowing that He cares for me. Trusting God means recognizing that God’s ways are not always my ways, as painful as this is at times. Not getting what you want doesn’t mean you your faith is somehow deficient. Confident that God makes all things work for the good of those who love Him,3 accepting God’s will no matter what it is it what it means to have faith. Hope is the flower of faith.
Don’t wait until you’re in dire straits to place your trust in Jesus. It is one thing to believe what Jesus can do but another thing entirely to learn how He does what He does. Trust Him by daily talking to Him, sharing with Him your cares and concerns, your joys and your sorrows.
“Courage,”4 as the Lord exhorted the woman in today’s Gospel. Ask Him directly for you want. This means knowing what you want and having some idea as to why you want it. It involves risk. It means making yourself vulnerable.
Be consistent and persistent in your prayers. Remain open to God’s will, which can and often does change how you pray about something. Like the grieving father and chronically sick woman, be bold. In our skeptical age, we sometimes lack such boldness. This is to our detriment.
Recently, I listened to rock legend Alice Cooper share his faith in Christ. When asked by the interviewer, “Who is Jesus you?”, Cooper replied:
He's the core of everything. He's life itself. He is the Light. You know, I mean it's if we don't all revolve around Christ, then we're way I out in space somewhere. He draws you in. He's the Light. You're drawn to that Light. And it's nothing you can explain in words, you know? It's something that happens to your heart, where all of a sudden you realize Who this is. And you realize, oh my gosh, I'm not worthy of this ... And yet, still, being hung on the cross He knew your name. He knew my name. And that made me go, “How can I not believe in this?”5It’s a safe bet that the two people in our Gospel today did not have a well-developed theological understanding of Jesus’ identity but, like Cooper, they were drawn to the Light and realized, through experience, just Who this is.
1 Matthew 9:22.↩
2 Don Francisco, "Closer to Jesus."↩
3 Romans 8:28.↩
4 Matthew 9:22.↩
5 See YouTube, “Alice Cooper: A Testimony of Finding Purpose Through God's Grace.”↩