Trust

 Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C): Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

If there is a word of the day this morning it seems to be “trust.”

 We prayed at the beginning of the service, “O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you . . .”

 We heard Jeremiah, declare, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”

 Paul says to us, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”  Faith and trust are at least “kissing cousins,” if not identical twins.

 And Jesus in Luke’s Gospel declares a future reversal for those who are poor or hungry or who weep now.  He offers no proof.  The statements call for faith, trust.

  My bishop most of the time I was in the Diocese of Washington was a man named Ronald Haines. He liked to challenge people to tell the Biblical story in ten minutes or less.

One way of doing that would be:

 God creates humankind and asks, “Will you trust me?”

 Humankind says in word, “Yes.”

 Humankind says in deed, “No.”

 So God asks humankind, whom he has created, “Will you trust me?”

 Humankind says in word, “Yes.”

 Humankind says in deed, “No.”

 This goes on and on, until at the biblical story’s end—at our end—there is just the question from the God who created us,

“I love you. I forgive you. Will you trust me?”

 And we are asked yet again to answer with our whole being.

 The Bible is not naive in telling this story, however.  It knows that neither the question nor the answer are simple. God’s question about trust, is never asked on a sunny day.  The question is always asked on Good Friday. It is always asked in the time of trial.  The Bible knows it is only worth asking then.

 So the answer to the question only matters in the time of trial, in the time of choosing, when one is tempted to put one’s trust in self alone or nothing at all.

 The Bible is not naive.  It knows full well our world of despair and mistrust.  “Trust no one.”  “In the end you can only trust yourself.”  “Look out for number one.”

  The Bible is not naive.  It knows that there is much supporting evidence for this worldview.  We live in a world that breeds despair and mistrust, where despair and mistrust appear to be perfectly reasonable, even necessary, responses.

 But, the Bible says, this world of despair and mistrust is not the world of God’s creation. It is the world of our own creation, and our response of mistrust and despair only serve to make it worse, to give strength to the whirlpool of life that threatens to suck us down.

 The Bible offers us life lived not on our own terms but God’s.  The only way to get from Good Friday, where the world around us seems to be stuck, to Easter Day, which seems an impossible fantasy, is to entrust ourselves and our world to God.

    Again, the Bible is not naive.  It knows the difficulty in this.  It knows how mysterious this God is whose story it tells.  She is the enigma of all enigmas.  He is the slipperiest of all eels.  Where to look for this God in whom we are to put our trust?  How to know this God in whom we are to put our trust?

 The Bible tells us in its story over and over and over again: we look for God in all the wrong places. We resist with all our might the answer the Bible gives. Where to look for this God in whom we are to put our trust?  We assume—because we were taught as children that God could do anything—God was the most powerful being in the world—and nobody told us this didn’t mean God was “superman.” We assume that God is to be found in the place of power.

But the Bible tells us God is to be looked for in the place of weakness—the cradle in the manger outside the inn and the cross on the hill outside the city. And it is only when we look for God in these places that the power of God to transform Good Friday to Easter Day is unleashed.

 To find God on Good Friday means to completely let go of self-dependence.  This is a tough one, especially for those of us who enjoy a measure of success in this world.  (We are all tempted to exempt ourselves from this but we should not.  If you own more than one coat, Jesus said, you are in a position of success and should be ready to get rid of it).

 To let go completely of self-dependence is a cultural heresy—anathema to everything we have been taught.  And yet if we do not do this, we shall never know God who can make new life, we shall ever be stuck on Good Friday trying to save ourselves, trying to create our own new life, and breeding more mistrust and more despair when we inevitably fail.

  We have a saying, “I’m at my wits end.”  It is a cry of enormous anxiety, marking the brink of despair.  It is the place we will avoid going at all costs, but it is the place we are most likely to meet God.  It is only when our own “wit” is ended that we can embrace and be embraced by the God who saves.

 “O God the strength of all who put their trust in you . . .”

 Nice words, whose implications are staggering.  The trust results in strength—p power—but not our own, God’s.

 We are addicted to our own strength--especially we of economic privilege--we are absolutely addicted to it.  It is why Jesus says, “Woe,” to us.  He knows that our withdrawal from our addiction will not be pleasant—it will shake us to our foundations, rattle us as much as any withdrawal from any drug.

 When Jesus says “Woe to you who are privileged now . . .” he’s talking about the “DT’s” he knows we’ll have to go through when we’re finally forced to let go of our own privilege, our own strength, when we get to the day when, as they say, “you can't take it with you.”  It will not be pretty.

 Is Jesus saying we would be better off being slaves, or poor, hungry, weeping, oppressed, marginalized, desperate?

 In a way, yes.  Not because that is what God wants for us—what God wants for us is to embrace the truth that we have been given a creation where there is enough—even an abundance—for everybody.  But we choose to believe in scarcity instead, and so choose to live in fear and dependence on our own ability to get enough for ourselves and so play games of power and privilege and relegate God to a nice old grandfather in the sky who is pleased when we behave ourselves.

 Jesus is saying those who have nothing in this world are lucky—blessed—because they already have no choice but to trust in God.  But those of us who live in the luxury of trusting in ourselves, we will face a terrible day when we can’t do that anymore—and it’s going to hurt like hell.

 But the good news is that God will still be there for us.  We will still be able to choose to trust completely.

 But why not start now?  Why not prepare? Why not experiment living in the trust of God?  It begins with a prayer and an act we do all the time but perhaps don’t fully grasp the significance of it.

 The prayer is, “God, I cannot feed myself.  I am desperately hungry and no matter how much I feed myself my spirit is restless and sometimes starving.”

 The act is to get out of the pew and open our hands and, in words from the Prayer Book, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on [God] in your heart with thanksgiving.”