In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.

So much of life, brothers and sisters, is discerning truth from falsehood. When we are continually hearing an unchallenged lie or a misunderstanding, we can come to accept it unquestioningly as just fact. A misperception in our life distorts all of our approach to one another and leads to deeper misunderstandings as each one of us is blinded and deafened to the truth.

And knowing that we do not know is the beginning of wisdom. Realizing that we have made great mistakes, that we have misunderstood, that we are lost, that we have sinned, that we are caught in a place that we cannot escape by our own strength and our own understanding—this is where we have to start from in order to find our way to the truth and to all mercy.

We heard in the Alleluia before the Gospel today a verse from Psalm 88: "I will sing of your mercies forever. With my mouth I will proclaim your truth from generation to generation." And so much of the Orthodox faith is reminding us, working into our minds and our hearts God's mercy and His truth, inscribing in our hearts God's love and His ways for us. Because the Lord knows that all the world is bound up, caught, tangled and trapped in lies and confusion and misunderstanding and falsehood—that each one of us is struggling to know, to remember what it is that we need. We need to be shown again and again the mercies of God and His truth and to be led to the life of all.

And meanwhile, there is the crowd around us, pressing in on us from every side, pushing us along in our daily life. And so often as we are caught up in that crowd, we lose our way. We think to ourselves, "Surely I can't have the truth of this because so many others disagree—all these people who are influential and famous and powerful and wealthy and popular and attractive, people that I like, people that I'm afraid of who think otherwise. Surely the Gospel can't really be right. Surely these things that the Lord teaches us can't be everything that we need to follow."

And meanwhile, in the midst of all this, it is so difficult. We tell ourselves that it seems we have no capacity to stop and be quiet, to still ourselves and look around, reflect, ask the basic questions: What do I know for sure that actually isn't true? And what is it that I can come to recognize that I do not know, that I need to learn? We don't stop because everything seems so very urgent. We have to rush with everyone else, keep up with the crowd.

And so we're given a gift today in the Gospel—the gift of something utterly new, something that this world does not understand. A woman bound twelve years to an illness that no one could cure, who finds healing from the Lord and is made whole. And a girl that all the crowd are sure is beyond help, that there is nothing that can be done for her, is raised to new life.

The disciples asked the Lord, "Master, we're here in the middle of all this crowd of people. How can you ask the question, 'Who touched me?' Everybody's touching everybody. Who touched you?" But Jesus saw the one woman who in the midst of all that crowd had actually come knowing what it is that she had and daring to reach out from the midst of everyone else to grasp what it was that she needed—to touch just the hem of Jesus' robe. And so it was that He turned to meet her and to send her reassured in peace, knowing that her life had been restored to wholeness.

And when everyone is full of dismay and grief and even ridicule and mockery of the idea that this little girl could possibly be restored to life, Jesus tells the girl's father, "Do not worry. Only believe. All will be made well."

In the epistle today, we hear the Apostle Paul speaking to the Galatians, a community that was badly divided over the question of how to receive the Gentiles into the Christian faith. Did they have to be circumcised, to be made Jews, to follow the ritual commandments of Judaism in order to follow the Christian faith, to be members of the church, or not? And this was a huge dispute that was there not merely in the Galatians but in all the churches. And to this St. Paul says that the whole thing is focusing on things that ultimately do not matter. "Circumcision or uncircumcision matters nothing." The only thing that we should boast in, he says, is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who saves us and who has through the cross made a new creation—something utterly new that the world does not understand, that is beyond all the concerns and anxieties and divisions of this passing life.

Brothers and sisters, we all are being made members of that new creation. That is what begins in our baptism where we put on Christ and in Him are made new. We are called to something radically new—to be living lives according to God's mercy and truth, not to be bound up in and consumed by earthly cares, worldly matters, anxieties of this passing life, but rather to be reminding ourselves and one another daily of the Lord's mercy and His truth, that He has brought us all out of bondage, has made us new and is sharing His whole life with us, that we may find life in Him and may enter into His presence with thanksgiving and give glory to God now and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever.