This is a sermon about learning from women who stood at the edge of before and after and who found God there. This is a sermon about history and about the future, because this is a sermon about the eve of something – who knows what?
Maybe faith, then, is less about believing a fact about God and more about entrusting God and the people around you with the truth about who you are, your joys, and your needs alike.
If we believe, at the bottom of it all, that we are loved unconditionally by God, we can live like we have nothing to lose. We can pray and sing and question and argue like we have nothing to prove.
Perhaps the gospel writer is alluding in the double mention of 12 years that healing does not fully happen in an instant. Healing emerges as multiple layers are unpeeled over time. It happens within and through ongoing relationships.