We are a people of faith

Bishop Scott Bullock
The Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 10, 2025

One summer, perhaps around 1970, my father decided to build our family a raft to make our swimming more enjoyable. You see we looked on the shores of the small lake in Michigan called Gale Lake to which we enjoyed total access because our home bordered the long, thin lagoon that led to the lake. But the lagoon was a muddy mess, so we wanted to swim out to the lake where it was clean. Somewhere my dad obtained 6 heavy, 55-gallon drums which we painted to retard rusting. Then he constructed a wooden platform, maybe 12 feet square, also painted by us kids with all kinds of cartoon figures like frogs, turtles, and fish. He then lashed the drums on the underside of the platform with metal cables and being a smart, inquisitive 5-year-old, I remember thinking, “That’s not going to work.” 

The heavy creation I was sure would immediately sink to the bottom of the lake. Dad explained about the buoyancy of the drums filled with air that could hold up the weight of the platform not to mention any swimmers might be on top. So the great day of the launch arrived. Men from the neighborhood gathered to lift up that impossibly heavy raft and put it in the water. To make us feel good, dad even invited us children to help lift the raft. We were strong. We splashed the raft, partially submerged, it looked like it was going to sink just like I thought.

But then it rose up and floated. That heavy thing floated. But how is it going to stay in the middle of the lake? That was my next question. Perhaps two dozen heavy cinder blocks were loaded onto the raft, and our motorboat took them out, pulling the raft as its cargo, to the middle of the lake, to its permanent location. Dad attached the chains to the underside of the raft and, once in location, he then let the anchors loose — the cinder blocks — and that’s how the raft would stay in place when strong winds and water would try to move it to the shore. Before long, our marine amusement park was ready to go.

In the celebration that quickly followed, my dad stood on the edge of the raft with his toes perched on the platform, his back to the water, he pushed off, threw his legs over his head with a yelp of joy, did a back flip into the water. My brave older brother immediately followed closely behind, and then all eyes turned on the youngest. Seems a bit too scary for me so dad offered some reassurance and careful directions, and he charged me to make a fearful backflip with the leap of joy. Before long I was a pro, too. 

Today I’m not so sure, at 61 years old, whether I would try that. Maybe I will someday. But for that little boy, every step of the raft adventure is what I can see now was an act of faith. Though I cannot see how the whole effort would work out, it did not make it any less possible. Not being able to see the possible but trusting that it could be — this is what faith is all about.

The letter of the Hebrews, which we heard today from the New Testament, gives us the classic, Biblical definition of faith — “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” 

With one of the great errors of our modern age, faith is all often juxtaposed with knowledge: as if, “I have faith” or “I know.” But in fact we all live constantly by faith, don’t we? For the act of faith is living with evidence of things unseen. We do it constantly. That boy on that lake made multiple acts of faith: 

• The raft can float though I can’t see how.
• The raft will stay in place though at first, I can’t see how. 
• I can do a spectacular back flip, though at first, I can’t see how.

That gave evidence of truths that I could not have first seen, but my inability to see how did not cause the raft full last game for the whole last or the backflip to be less exhilarating. And while this is a memorable childhood memory, I have since discovered that each day requires a childlike faith and trust to pursue only what faith can see as possible. Despite claims to the contrary, unless we are a people of faith, we can’t live fully, for without faith that boy would still be sitting on the shore. Let’s not live on the shore. Let’s be people of faith and leap into life, life no less full because we can’t always see or understand it.

Our faith gives us evidence to see what we are blind to and to go forward and trust, and the voice of that faith is Jesus himself. Living by faith and listening to him does not limit us, it opens us to the fullness of life. But remember, just because our limited brains cannot understand something, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true or doesn’t exist. Life is so much bigger than our understanding and we need faith to live by it. So, faith is really the only way to live fully. So, Jesus light of the world, give us your light of faith and open our eyes to see what only you can show us how to live more abundantly.