Proper 5a 2026; 7 June; Pent. 4
Genesis 12:1-9; Ps. 33:1-12; Rom. 4:13-25; Mat. 9:9-13, 18-26
Jack Hardaway
OH YE OF SO MUCH FAITH!
Alright. Up you go Abram.
Get ye hence.
Become a migrant family and go to a land where you will not be welcome,
but you will prosper, against all odds and opposition and become a blessing for the whole world.
And so God enters into human history like never before.
The faith of Abram and Sarai, who become Abraham and Sarah.
Oh ye of so much faith!
The journey itself is a mess, and horrible things happen, they do horrible things, situations full of desperation and compromise, but they somehow make it. It is not a tidy story, God getting involved with humanity, all the intricacy and intimacy and pettiness and betrayal, the whole soap opera.
Faith is like that, in the details and the mess, finding dignity and beauty in the mess.
Faith calls us to remember who we are and where we came from, and because of that we are to practice radical hospitality to the stranger, the alien, the migrant, the desperate, the compromised, the lost, because that is where we come from, that is where God found us, and where God meets us.
Compassion isn’t about being nice, it’s about honoring God’s presence in the mess. God is revealed in the soap opera. So love the story. Pay close attention. Faith is there. So much faith.
I love the call of Matthew and how Caravaggio portrays it on the bulletin cover, Matthew saying “who me?” with one hand while still holding some ill begotten coins with the other, light seeking him out in the shadows.
Matthew leaves it behind and follows. One of the twelve, a collaborator, an extortionist, an outsider, excluded and unclean by his own deliberate choice, or perhaps it was the only choice left to him, as is often the case.
And then there was another choice, and he takes it. He gets up and follows the call.
The Gospel account today is full of people whose lives are a mess, and the most messed up are the ones who looked like they had it all together.
This is where we find the faith of God, the faith of Abraham and Sarah, with compassion and mercy, not perfection.
And in the middle of this story of God’s calling to us, Jesus gets up and follows the call of a grieving father. Faith. And then life out of death.
So much faith.
Matthew up and goes.
The grieving father’s prayer of lament and begging for a miracle.
So much faith.
The woman who needed healing, interrupting all the other goings on, faith as interruption and courage, so much faith.
And the girl child who wakes from death.
Her faith is the greatest of all, the faith to live.
So much faith.
In the middle of all the pain and drama and hypocrisy the light seeks us in the darkness and faith opens wide.
These stories of messy lives call to us to have faith and confidence in our own mess and to have mercy and compassion for everyone in the mess, not because it is nice, but because God meets us there. That kind of faith.
Have faith, like Abraham and Sarah, like Matthew and the grieving father, like Jesus and the suffering woman, like the girl child and the holy God who loves us in all our flamboyant shame. That kind of faith.
Oh ye of so much faith.
These are our stories, our own lives, the calling is always there with us. Have faith in that.