 There is a kind of faith the church doesn't know how to talk about.
Not the faith of the triumphant testimony — the dramatic conversion, the answered prayer, the healing that arrived on cue. Not the faith of the theologically confident, who can articulate what they believe and why. The Gospels not only make room for this kind of faith; they name it and celebrate it. But there is another type as well. The faith that has been worn down by twelve years of bleeding, silence, and shame until it's barely recognizable as faith anymore. The faith that cannot make it to the front of the room. The faith that reaches sideways, invisibly, for the hem. That faith is all over our congregations. We mostly do not see it because we are not looking for it in the right places. The Woman and the Number Twelve Matthew 9 places two healing stories in deliberate parallel. A woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years reaches for the hem of Jesus's robe in a crowd. A twelve-year-old girl — the daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus — is dying. One has lived her whole adult life in suffering. The other has barely had a chance to begin. The number is not accidental. Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel. Twelve is the whole people of God. Matthew is making a structural argument: these two individuals represent everyone. The ones who have been sick longer than they can remember, and the ones cut off before they could begin. The exhausted and the barely-started. Both belong to the Twelve. Jesus goes to both of them. The woman's situation is specific and worth unpacking. Under the purity codes of her day, her condition made her ritually unclean. Anyone she touched became contaminated. She could not enter the Temple. She could not sit in community worship. She could not be held. For twelve years, the way the purity system was functionally applied in her context marked her as a problem to be managed from a distance. So she does not approach Jesus directly. She cannot. What she does is push through the crowd — invisibly, without permission — and reach for the kraspedon: the ritual fringe, the tzitzit (the blue-tasseled fringes commanded in Numbers 15 as a daily physical reminder of God's commandments). It is a theologically suggestive act of faith. A woman told for twelve years she was outside the covenant reaches out and grabs hold of a visible sign of that covenant. She is not reaching randomly. She is reaching for a sign that she still, somehow, belongs. What Jesus Does with What the World Calls Inadequate Faith Under the Law, contact with an unclean person should have made Jesus unclean. Instead, the logic of the Kingdom takes over: his cleanness spreads to her rather than her uncleanness spreading to him. This is the atonement in miniature. In Matthew 9, Jesus repeatedly crosses lines he was not supposed to cross — eating with tax collectors and sinners, allowing an unclean woman to touch him, taking the hand of a dead girl. Each time, the same thing happens: uncleanness does not transfer to him. His life transfers to them. Jesus stops. He turns. He does not ask how she ended up here. He does not make her explain the twelve years. He does not tell her to come back when she is cleaned up. He looks at whatever scraped-together, desperate, last-scrap faith she dragged to him — the faith that could not even make it to his face, the faith that reached sideways and invisible — and he calls it enough. Then he names her publicly. "Daughter." In front of everyone. He is not just healing her body. He is ending her exile. He is restoring her to the community that had classified her as a contaminant for twelve years. The word he uses — tharsei, "take heart," "take courage" — is a word of commissioning. She is not just healed. She is sent back in. Hesed Against the System This radical re-integration is the flesh-and-blood fulfillment of Israel's prophetic hope. What Hosea names, Jesus enacts in real time on a body the system had excluded. Seven hundred years before this moment, Hosea named the same tension. God's people had run through the cycle of faithlessness and consequence until the silence of God felt like abandonment. And into that silence Hosea speaks: "Come, let us return to the Lord. For it is he who has torn, and he will heal us. He has struck down, and he will bind us up." The God who tears also heals. The God who strikes also binds up. This is the shape of hesed — not a passing feeling, but a stubborn covenant loyalty that does not break. It is the love that holds fast regardless of the other party's condition. It is loyal love that goes all the way to the cross. Jesus brings this hesed into direct conflict with the religious metrics of his day. When the Pharisees object to his eating with sinners, he quotes Hosea: "I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." The system, as she experienced it, treated her as a contamination risk. God's hesed says otherwise. What This Means for Pastoral Care The people who approach God sideways are not doing it wrong. They are doing exactly what the hemorrhaging woman did. They cannot come boldly. Years of suffering, or shame, or silence have made boldness unavailable to them. What they can do is push through the crowd and reach — invisibly, without permission — for whatever part of the Word they can get their hands on. The pastor who knows this will build communities differently. Consider these practices:
The question is whether you can see it. If your ministry is calibrated to recognize visible, articulate, participatory faith, you will likely miss it. It often looks like a brief prayer at a food pantry table. A quiet presence in the back pew. A hospital room where someone can only whisper the name of Jesus. That is last-scrap faith — and it is met, again and again, by hesed with skin on. What Is Your Twelve Years? So, what is the thing that wakes up with you? The thing that drains you quietly, day after day. The thing you have stopped telling people about because nothing has changed and you are tired of looking disappointed. Twelve years of trying to stay sober. Twelve years of leading a congregation that will not turn. Twelve years of praying the same prayer against the same silent ceiling. He stopped for her. He went to that house. If all you can do is reach sideways, reach. If all you can reach is the hem, reach for the hem. He has already stopped. What is your twelve years? I'd love to hear where you're reaching for the hem these days — leave a comment below. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz is an ELCA-rostered intentional interim minister and congregational consultant based in the greater Houston area, with fifteen years on the faculty of the FIND School for Spiritual Direction in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. He writes on congregational transition, spiritual formation, and the theology of the unseen at The Marginal Note on Substack. [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]
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 Walpurgis Night at the Heidelberg Thingstätte, 2007 Image: I, AndreasF, CC BY-SA 2.5 There is a specific kind of restlessness that accompanies the last night of April.
In the Gulf Coast heat of Texas, we feel it as the final gasp of manageable air before the humidity of summer descends. But in the older, colder soil of our ancestors, this transition carried a different kind of weight. On the night of April 30, the world crosses a threshold. In the liturgical calendar we are still basking in the afterglow of the Resurrection. But the folk memory of the West has another name for this night: Walpurgisnacht — the eve of May 1, when winter yields to spring and, in older imaginations, unseen powers stirred. For those of us who serve as pastors in the Lutheran tradition, that ancient European rhythm lives somewhere in our spiritual DNA. Our forebears preached and prayed in those same northern lands where St. Walpurga herself once carried the faith. So even here in Texas, far from the Harz Mountains, the night still feels familiar — a faint echo from the old country reminding us that the battle between light and shadow is both ancient and ongoing. The Paradox of the Patroness It is one of the more profound ironies of church history that this night bears the name of a saint. Walpurga was a seventh-century English missionary to the Germanic tribes — a woman of courage and intellectual seriousness who traveled into the heart of pagan darkness to lay the foundations of the faith. When she was canonized on May 1 in the year 870, her feast day became a kind of spiritual fortification. Her relics were said to produce a miraculous oil used for healing, and the medieval mind naturally turned to her for protection against the harmful magic believed to be most potent on the eve of her feast. Walpurgis Night was, in its origins, a night of Christian defense — the Church bearing witness on terrain the darkness had claimed. But as centuries passed, the name of the saint gradually became shorthand for the very darkness she came to dispel. The Witches’ Night of the Harz Mountains eventually swallowed the memory of the missionary. The cultural inheritance of Walpurgisnacht arrived in modernity with the Christian content largely stripped out — leaving a celebration that flirts with the diabolical while having forgotten entirely the woman whose name it bears. This is how it usually goes. The Church names something, consecrates it, and then watches the name outlast the consecration. The Reality of the Night Here is something worth saying plainly, because many pulpits decline to say it at all: for some people, tonight is not a metaphor. While most people mark April 30 with nothing more sinister than a bonfire and a beer, there are practitioners for whom this night carries genuine spiritual intention — people who approach it with deliberate seriousness and whose intent, whatever we make of its ultimate efficacy, is not neutral. We do our congregations a disservice when we pretend otherwise. The world is more spiritually inhabited than the secular imagination wants to admit. Pastors who have spent any time in the margins of parish life — in recovery rooms, in homes where something feels wrong, in conversations that happen after the meeting ends — know this without needing to be convinced. The appropriate response is not fear. It is not obsession. It is clear-eyed pastoral awareness, grounded in the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord of every night, including this one. We are not uninhabited people. Christ dwells in us. That is the unshakable center. The Waffle House Index of the Soul In emergency management, the Waffle House Index measures the severity of a disaster by whether the restaurant is open, operating on a limited menu, or closed entirely. A Waffle House that stays fully open through a hurricane is a sign that things are not as bad as they could be. The spiritual equivalent is worth considering. A faith that is primarily a social habit closes when the pressure rises. A theology that is thin moralism operates on a limited menu — it can manage ordinary days but has nothing to offer when the atmosphere turns heavy. A robust confessional faith — one grounded in the Real Presence of Christ, the authority of the Word, and the identity conferred in Baptism — stays fully operational precisely when everything else is shutting down. The bonfires lit across Europe tonight are meant to frighten the darkness away. They are man-made and temporary, producing more smoke than light. We point instead to the Easter Fire — the light that the darkness has not overcome and will not. Every Easter Vigil, when the Paschal Candle is kindled, we proclaim that there is no night Christ has not already entered. A Pastoral Word Do not be afraid. But do be aware. Our work on a night like this is the same work it is on every other night — and that is exactly the point. We are not a people who hide under the bed on April 30. We are a people whose protection is not dependent on the calendar. The sign of the Cross was made over us at Baptism. The Name of Jesus was spoken into our lives before we had the language to receive it. The body and blood of Christ have been placed in our hands at a table that has been set against the presence of our enemies. That is our craft. The ancient Creeds are our confession. The Word and Sacrament are our weapons. The Resurrection is our victory. Not because we have conjured anything, but because Someone else already won the ground being contested. The sun will rise on May 1 — not because of a fertility rite or a folk custom or a bonfire on a German hillside, but because the Lord of Life has commanded the earth to bring forth its fruit. The darkness, whatever it intends tonight, does not get a vote. So we stand with Saint Walpurga — heirs of the same missionary courage, children of the same confessional faith, whether in Bavaria, Saxony, or south Texas. Reclaim the night. The Easter Fire is still burning. For more on the Christian theology of blessing, sacramentals, and spiritual disturbance, the teaching document "The Warfare of Things: A Guide to the Sacred and the Profane" is available as a free download here. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack]  Image: freepik.com Most people who contact me about this topic start the same way. They apologize first. They say something like, “I know this probably sounds crazy,” or “I don’t know if this is even a real thing,” before they get to what they actually called to say. And what they actually called to say is usually some version of this: something is wrong in my house, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I want to say clearly: it doesn’t sound crazy. And yes, it is a real thing. The Christian tradition has always understood that places are not neutral to us. Because of the Incarnation—the fact that God became flesh in Jesus—we know that the physical world matters deeply to Him. What has happened in these spaces continues to affect those who dwell there: through memory, through relationships, and sometimes in ways we do not fully understand. This is not because places themselves hold some independent power, but because God’s creation, though good, is not untouched by sin, suffering, and history. For that reason, blessing and consecration matter—not as magic, not as superstition, but as the church’s practiced response to the reality that the physical and spiritual are not as neatly separated as modern Western culture assumes. When the church blesses a space, we are speaking God’s Word into it, naming it as belonging to Jesus and placing it under His promise. A blessing properly done does truly set a place apart. It becomes more than a mere building; it is consecrated—rightfully reclaimed and marked as holy ground for the life of the family and the glory of God. The ancient church blessed homes, fields, ships, tools, and thresholds. The medieval church developed rites for the reconciliation of spaces marked by violence or desecration. Martin Luther retained the practice of blessing and the liturgical tradition has never entirely lost it. In practice, this often looks like a pastor moving through the rooms of a home, speaking Scripture aloud, praying specifically over each space, and anointing doorposts and thresholds with oil—a physical, unhurried act of reclaiming territory for the Lord who already owns it. What the church has mostly lost is the pastoral fluency to talk about it plainly. So let me offer a framework. These are not steps to diagnose a phenomenon, but ways of listening carefully so that what is needed can be brought to bear. The Weight of History First, I want to understand the history involved. What do you know about what happened in this space before you arrived? Not because every difficult history produces spiritual disturbance, but because history matters. Sin and trauma leave what we might call a “social debt” in a space—a residue of what has taken place that continues to shape the life of those who dwell there, both visibly and in ways harder to name. We look at the past to see where the peace of Christ needs to be specifically applied. Discerning the Experience Second, I want to understand what is actually being experienced. There is a significant difference between a vague sense of unease, a pattern of relational conflict tied to a space, recurring nightmares, a sense of presence, and phenomena that are more difficult to categorize. I am not interested in sensationalism. Many presenting problems are explainable in the physical or psychological realm—structural issues, environmental factors, or even the heavy lingering fog of personal trauma and grief. (I recently saw a meme that showed a guy with a flashlight exploring his attic with the words, “Homeowner relieved to discover disturbing sounds in attic to be ghosts and not structural issues he can’t afford to repair.”) But I am going to take your report seriously, helping you discern whether what you are feeling is a matter for a home handyman/contractor, a counselor, or a pastor. The Spiritual Landscape of the Heart Third, I want to understand the spiritual condition of the people in the space. This is not a judgment—it is a pastoral question. A Christian is not defenseless; you belong to Jesus. But where we turn away from Him—toward things that promise control, knowledge, or power apart from God—we can place ourselves in a state of confusion and vulnerability. We must be honest about the fact that such vulnerability is rarely left a vacuum. Jesus himself describes malicious spirits as creatures who, finding themselves wandering through arid places, are perpetually looking for a place to rest (Matthew 12:43–45)—and they are more than happy to take up residence where the door has been left unlatched. When we seek spiritual agency outside of Jesus, we inadvertently offer a standing invitation to forces that exploit our desire for control. This is not to say that suffering is always the fruit of one’s own choices, but that the doors we open matter. Our interior lives shape both what we perceive and how we bear it; therefore, the remedy is not just “clearing” a room, but a return to the protection and presence of the Lord. The Church’s Provision Fourth, and most importantly, I want to point toward what the tradition actually offers. There is no space in which Jesus is not already Lord. The question is not whether He is present, but whether His presence is being trusted, spoken, and received. Theologically, we live in the “between time.” Because of Good Friday and Easter, the decisive victory has been won; the cosmos is redeemed. In military terms, D-Day has passed and the outcome is certain, yet we have not yet reached VE Day. In this tension, there is still resistance, suffering, and “groaning” as we await the final fulfillment of that victory. While the greater strategic battle is over, skirmishes remain in the shadows. The church has specific resources for this reality: prayer, the formal rite of blessing, the speaking of the Word into the space, anointing, and the presence of the community. These are not folk remedies or spiritual placebos. They are the church’s concrete, practiced response to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord of every space, every history, and every power that operates within creation. We are simply applying the victory of the King to the territory He has already claimed. Now what? This is not paranormal investigation. I am not interested in evidence of the supernatural for its own sake. I am a pastor. My concern is for the people who are suffering and for bringing to bear the gifts Jesus has given His church. This is not something you are meant to carry alone or solve privately. If you are carrying something like this and don’t know where to bring it—and I understand that making that first contact can feel as awkward as the apology you rehearsed before calling—the contact page is the place to start. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] |
