No, that can't be so. For all you have to do is take a second look at these lessons and, bang! (to make a pun), what is it that hits you right between the eyes, even in July? Here is a gospel lesson about a woman who cannot stop bleeding, who has spent away her life's savings on ineffectual physicians, about a teenager who dies and leaves her parents grieving. And here is an Old Testament lesson -- from the Book of Lamentations yet! (3:22-33) -- which speaks of young people "bearing the yoke" and "biting the dust" and "giving one's cheek to the smiter" for "insults" and a Lord who "causes grief." Also, we find the Apostle Paul writing about "a severe test of affliction." How American is this? On second thought, this too -- insufficient health care, dying adolescents, fearfulness, severe tests of affliction -- is all too American. I don't have to tell you that as we look around our country it seems to be at the point of death like Jairus' daughter. It is like the poor woman with the hemorrhage. As a people we are bleeding and all the doctors have not been able to staunch the flow, for all the money we spend on them. Suddenly the "livin'" doesn't look so easy anymore. Nor does the believing.

And then I am reminded that when you, gentle reader, will be reading this, it will no longer be summer but fall. Symptoms of decline begin to fill the air. The weather will chill. What was green will die. The autumnal storms will again rage on the high seas. Kids will drag themselves back to school. Unemployment will mount. This newsletter will appear in the season called Michaelmas, when the lectionary speaks of "war in heaven." Now how easy is it to believe, even for Americans? Will you repeat the question, please: When is faith real?

We are tempted to answer again, especially as the religious/superstitious folk we are: Faith is real when we do it hard enough, sincerely enough, conscientiously enough. Faith produces miracles, healings, happy endings when we have enough faith. The extremes of suffering and want in our country can be avoided, so we imagine, if we just keep the right "attitude," which also goes by the name "faith." This is, as we said before, faith in faith itself.

That is the way our superstition spoils the story of Jesus and Jairus, by reducing faith to a kind of magic. And we can commit the same mistake by the way we misunderstand the lesson from the Old Testament. At first glance, Jeremiah seems to have no better reason for believing than this, believing is what God demands. You'd jolly well better believe, or else. If you don't, there's hell to pay. Believe because that's what God's Law requires.

Nor would I want to deny that that is what Jeremiah is saying, though only in part. And that's all he's saying if you don't hear the rest of his message, the gospel. But yes, it is true, Jeremiah does blame the people for not living up to God's law. And the afflictions they are suffering, just as the afflictions America is suffering, do come upon them as punishment from God. And God's wrath is real. However, if that is all the motivation we can find for believing, namely, the threat of divine wrath and of unpleasant consequences, faith will never happen. Fear might happen, a base kind of fear. But no one has ever been scared into believing. God's anger does not make sinners trust God, only resent God. That's all we get out of the Old Testament lesson if we miss God's other Word in this lesson, the Word about God's mercy "never ceasing." That Word, about "the steadfast love of the Lord [which] never ceases," is why the prophet can say, trustingly, "The Lord is the side I'm on; therefore I will hope in him." Without that Word, "faith" is not real but