in what do you trust?

October 2, 2022 • Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-10 (The Inclusive Bible)
Rev. Jeff Wells preaching

[You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQw-qSRlo

We all put our trust in something – or rather some things. We may trust in a political party, an economic system, in power and privilege, or a long list of other things. Our U.S. currency says, “In God We Trust.” Yet, I have a feeling many who claim to be people of faith in the U.S. put more trust in wealth than in God. So today, we pose the question, “In what do we trust?” – “In what can we trust?” 

A big problem with institutional Christianity – and may with all institutional religion – is that it has so often asked us to have unquestioning, uncritical faith in things that don’t make sense to us or that we experience as harmful. The followers of Jesus have been told by church hierarchies and authorities that they must reject reason in order to have faith. But that sort of faith is blind. I don’t believe God wants us to be deliberately blind. The truth is we need both. Reason informs our faith – or to put in more poetically, faith dances with reason, just as it does with hope and love.  

Faith can be a slippery word. People have differing associations and interpretations of what “faith” means. Sometimes, the concept of “faith” has been used to hurt, injure, and destroy or “faith” has been coercively forced upon people. Contrary to Jesus’ own teaching and practice, the institutional church evolved in the direction of authoritarianism – dictating what we should believe and how we should experience our relationship with God. So, perhaps “trust” is a better word to use. I am going to use both interchangeably.

I have often heard people espouse false platitudes like “You just have to have faith” or “If you just have faith, everything will turn out all right.” I could cite passages from the Bible that people use to justify such an attitude. The other side of this shiny coin is the idea that if something bad happens to you, you just didn’t have enough faith. You may remember that one of Job’s friends said that to him after his wife and children died and he lost all of his property and possessions. When we find such beliefs deeply troubling and try to challenge them, someone might retort, “We just can’t understand the ways of God?” There’s a scriptural basis for that too. In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 55, we hear God declare, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Indeed, God sees and knows so much more than we can. God sees what has occurred and what are the future possibilities. God sees how everything impacts everything else and how deeply connected each living being and each non-living entity is with every other. As much as we like to think we have our lives under control, unexpected and sometimes devastating things happen to us with regularity. Our faith gives us the courage, strength, and hope to face the scariest and hardest moments of our lives. Every day, we need to walk life’s journey by faith and not by sight. Like Sarah and Abraham, we have to trust God’s leading and venture into the unknown. We may not be able to see or hear God the way we see and hear one another, but we can trust and actually know from our experience that God is constantly offering us the best individual and collective live-giving possibilities. Our trust in God does make sense. 

At the same time, while we walk by faith and not by sight, I truly believe God tries to open our eyes and our hearts to the things we can see – the ways we harm ourselves, others, and the Earth; the ways we walk past pain and suffering and do not help when we are capable; the ways we fail to give voice to the voiceless. 

The God in whom I trust is not authoritarian or deterministic – I could not trust such a God. And I freely admit that I don’t trust God for everything. If I believed God could fix every problem or prevent every bad thing from happening, I would be constantly disappointed. God doesn’t and God can’t work that way. God does not determine what happens or the choices we make. And yet, God is with us in every moment, every experience – the joyful and the sorrowful – in every relationship we have and every decision we make. God is very powerful, but God’s power works through relational and mutual agape love. It’s not enough for us to say, “I trust God.” Our faith demands that we listen for God’s leading and act upon what we discern we are receiving from God. 

Our faith is not static either – it evolves and flows. That’s true for each of us over our lifetime and it’s true for Christianity over the centuries. Nor is our trusting in God solely an individual endeavor. In fact, we are much more able to trust God and to listen, discern, and act if we do it together in community. We strengthen one another’s faith. We help one another discern what is from God and what may not be. 

Just this week I experienced a powerful example of this. Our beloved sister and friend, Louise, ended up in the Emergency Room on Saturday. After a misdiagnosis, she languished in the ER, which was crowded, loud, and chaotic. Because it was the weekend, little was being done to improve her condition. I saw it for myself when I visited on Monday. With God’s Spirit among us, Louise’s family and friends discerned a way forward. We determined to have a family member call the attending doctor. Meanwhile, I contacted the chair of the hospital Board of Trustees, who I know well through our UMC Annual Conference. He shared my concerns with the head of the hospital and Louise was home the next day with comfort care provided. Thanks be to God and our combined efforts, Louise is in her own apartment, feeling much better, and getting the appropriate care she needs. 

All this is to say our faith cannot mean simply, “Let go and let God.” Neither can we act as if it is all up to us. We can trust in God’s ever-present love and grace and know that God works in deep, creative collaboration with our own choosing to live, love, and act for good for ourselves and others. With such a grasp of God and faith, we can truly confess, “In God we trust.”

Copyright © 2022 by Jeff Wells
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