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Faith Journeys Into Relationship with God

March 16, 2026

Isaiah 65:17-25 | John 4:43-54 |Psalm 30:1-6, 11-13

Today’s reading is all about faith formation, a journey that is at times richly fulfilling and at other times frustrating. Jesus calls us to have faith and trust that God is with us throughout this journey.

Jesus is traveling from Judea to Galilee, spreading his message and seeking followers who would worship God in spirit and truth. His travels are long, his time is nearing its end, and my sense from this Gospel passage is that Jesus is at moments dismayed. Jesus had already noted that a prophet “has no honor in a prophet’s own land” and now he confronts again a prevailing reputation as a miracle worker rather than the Christ.

In Cana, he is met by a royal official who is desperate for help with his dying son. He has heard of the Jesus’s miracles and walked 20 miles to beg Jesus to come with him to his home and heal his son. Jesus first responds, as much to the crowd around him as to the man himself, that “unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe”. This seems a strange response, but Jesus’s intent is to make this man and others think about what they really believe without the benefit of evidence.  Somewhere in this moment, I think that Jesus recognized this father’s first step into faith (he heard what Jesus could do and came to hear him) and how he might be taught to believe without seeing. Jesus tells the father to go home and that his son will live. The father does not press Jesus farther. Rather, he takes Jesus’s word to heart and departs. That walk home must have seemed especially long, balancing the trust he put in Jesus’s words with concern for his son’s life. He is met by his servants along the way and learns that his son began recovering at the instance of Jesus’s words. His belief is transformative and ultimately shared throughout his entire household.

In one of Fr. John’s recent sermons, he spoke of transactional relationships where a sign or action is required in exchange for the continued or eventual relationship. This need for evidence is tempting as we struggle for answers, hope, direction. Yet, today’s Gospel reminds us that Jesus will find us in those moments and give us something much deeper than what we seek. An answer to prayer, perhaps, but more importantly the opportunity for a deeper relationship of trust in and love with Christ.

Deborah Collins