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2nd Sunday after Pentecost
07 June 2026
Hosea 5:15-6:6
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13,18-26
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes away early.
-Hosea 6:4
This verse from Hosea reminds me of the spring weather pattern of recent days, with pleasantly cool mornings and early afternoons that heat up by mid-afternoon as the sun wears down the cloud cover. For Hosea, the morning cloud that gets worn away by the afternoon sun speaks of the fickle nature of faith among God’s people of Israel and Judah. In this scene God is like an offended spouse. “I’ll be in our bedroom, and you’ll be sleeping on the couch until you admit your wrong and apologize.” Israel and Judah, however, are like the offending spouse who thinks it will all just blow over if I change my behavior going forward. “Let’s put on our sabbath best and go to the temple and pray real hard and bring animals to sacrifice. The Lord will be so moved that he will surely forgive and forget.” But, that’s not the case. God’s people come with their woundedness on display, but their wrongdoing concealed. How do you conceal anything from the One unto whom, as we regularly pray, “all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid” (BCP 323)?
The Lord’s response to their liturgical effort to curry favor is to say, “People, we’ve been doing this same dance for far too long, as the many prophets I’ve sent to you attest. I’ve been asking for the same thing ever since the days of your first king, Saul, when I spoke to him through the prophet Samuel. Now, here we are all these many years down the line, and through Hosea I’ll tell you what I need. I need your steadfast love, not this fickle doing things your way and then returning to me when your way doesn’t work, which it never does. If this relationship is going to work, you need to do it my way.”
The theological term for doing things God’s way is faith. Faith doesn't always make sense, and often appears contrary to common sense. Take, for instance, the case of Abraham, whom St. Paul offers up as the paragon of faith, the father of all who are faithful. He has a good and prosperous life, with flocks and herds on a sprawling ranch in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates River Valley. Then, at 75, an age when one would think he would have some common sense, he suddenly decides to pull up stakes and move his whole ranching enterprise, a decision based on an encounter reported quite matter-of-factly in Genesis 12, when the LORD told him, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”(Genesis 12:1). Imagine being his wife Sarai, or his ranch foreman. “Where are we going?” “I don’t know, but we will know when we get there.” As the journey unfolds, Abraham finds that it’s the land of Canaan where the LORD leads him, a place he will settle as a place of blessing for all people who, like him, strike out from the familiar and embark on the adventure of faith.
Faith’s adventure may sometimes involve physical geography, like Abraham’s move from Ur to Canaan, but it always involves geography of the spirit. One day a man named Matthew is sitting at the toll booth where he works as a customs officer for Herod Antipas, who governs Galilee under the watchful eye of Rome. Nobody likes people such as Matthew. Those from whom he collects tolls regard him as a collaborator with an unpopular foreign government. His supervisors must keep close watch over him to make sure he doesn’t dip into the till. Matthew is very likely open to something new, so when Jesus walks by and says, ‘Follow me,’ Matthew steps out of the toll both, quits right there on the spot without giving two weeks’ notice, and sets out on an adventure of faith that will take him to where he could never even imagine.
It’s never too late to start on the adventure of faith. A father is knocked senseless by tragedy. His daughter has died. The mourners are at the house. This father, though, is a devout man.He serves as president of his synagogue. In his heart the words of the prophets have taken root, words like those in Isaiah 61: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. . .to comfort all who mourn. . .to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning. . .that he may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:1-3). This mourning father, the leader of his synagogue, knows of the rabbi Jesus and, contrary to all common sense, embraces the faith that Jesus is the one on whom the Spirit of the Lord God rests, and he trusts that if Jesus will just lay a hand on his daughter, she will live. At his pleading, Jesus goes with the father to his house.
Along the way, a woman with a twelve year affliction launches an adventure of faith that puts her personal safety at risk. Her affliction involves blood, so she is ceremonially unclean according to the Law of Moses, and anyone she touches will share in her ritual impurity. To dare touch the rabbi could lead to being stoned to death, but she takes the great risk of faith, believing that healing flows from him. She touches the fringe of his cloak, and then he turns. What will he say? What will his handlers do with her? “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” She is healed. Her suffering, her shame are behind her.
Jesus presses on to the house and goes alone into the room, where he takes the girl by the hand, and the breath of life is restored. Her father’s faith has made her well. And the report of this spread throughout the district.
The report continues to spread across the centuries, across the continents, and now to us, gathered here this day, a report that summons us to follow Jesus on the adventure of faith, an adventure whose path is blessing, with companions who encourage us along the way, so that faith does not wither away under the heat of trial or temptation, and whose destination is life, life of a quality beyond our wildest imagining.
