LEAN NOT ON YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING: TRUSTING TOGETHER

October 22, 2023 • Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Proverbs 3:1a, 5-6 (The Inclusive Bible)
Rev. Alexis Lillie

You can view the full worship video recording at:
https://youtu.be/BHrcUzf7j0I

I have grown a lot in this particular area of my life, but my default state is to have difficulty discerning paths forward when there are multiple options. I tend to second-guess myself, to play everything out to the bitter end in my mind and catastrophize how my choices could go wrong. I can easily paralyze myself by overthinking and overanalyzing all the options. I have trouble trusting -- trusting my own inner divine wisdom, trusting that the Spirit is weaving goodness into my life, trusting that I'm surrounded by people who care about me and who are going to help ensure, as much as possible, that I'm going to be ok.

Part of how I've grown in trust is to allow myself to exist more and more in community. I’ve learned to practice vulnerability so that I'm able to more readily rely on the wisdom and discernment that comes when others know you deeply. For me, I've outgrown some of my internal lack of trust by first developing others-trust.

The story I always share to illustrate this, is the journey that led me to become a military chaplain, which I did for almost ten years in the Air Force Reserves. I was in seminary and considering what my options would be for ministry. The idea of chaplaincy had intrigued me and crossed my mind but I didn’t think much of it. I was raised in the military, so I’ve always had a heart for working with service members. But I never really considered working in the military myself, since I devoted nearly the first 20 years of my life to it as a family member! However, over the course of several months, two separate people – independent of each other – mentioned to me the possibility of becoming a chaplain in the Reserves as something I might be called to.

On my own, I had a curiosity about the possibility of chaplaincy, but I didn't quite trust it. It might not have been brought to fruition were it not for the insight expressed by others whom I trusted and that I was in close relationship with. This support gave me the additional trust I needed to step into the opportunity.

In this way, trust is developed with others and not in a vacuum. Even when we are making decisions for ourselves and drawing on our inner wisdom, we are doing so affected by, and through, all the various relational touchpoints we have. We are learning to trust something greater than ourselves.

If we reflect on our passage today, we might be drawn to the obvious, and correct, interpretation of the passage: that this "something other than ourselves" is the divine, God. But back up a few verses to the first part of the chapter. These proverbs are being told by someone. The teacher is giving instruction to the reader, or in the case of the original community, the hearer. Ancient communities passed things down verbally, through sharing and storytelling. This type of instruction happened in community by necessity. The speaker is inviting the listeners to learn from them, and from one another.

So yes, the reader is told to trust God, but what if part of developing any type of trust in the first place actually happens in community? What if God's trustworthiness is made manifest by others?

I want to note, this is different than only trusting “something other than ourselves.” It's not that inner wisdom, or even "our own understanding" doesn't exist or isn’t to be trusted. Rather, we are developing these trust muscles in relationship with others.

Why would developing trust in God become a communal endeavor? It makes sense for a few reasons that I’ll mention here and then expand upon.

• The community sees what we can't

• The community remembers what we forget

• The community holds what becomes heavy

In these ways, we build multi-directional trust: with ourselves, and with things that our greater than us: the divine and our community.

First: we nurture this trust by seeing communally what may not be seen if left to the individual. When we are with others, we are part of a whole, and we see ourselves in relation to others. We provide wisdom and discernment to and with one another. We support one another. As we are seen in community, we grow in ways we simply can't when we're on our own. God speaks to us through those in our community as we develop others-trust, which can then grow into divine trust.

This often happens to me within the community of Church of the Village. I am a "doer!” I love checklists and systems and getting things done. I need to be in relationship with people who remind me it's ok to get out of the weeds and imagine, envision, create, and re-create. I can trust these different ways of doing things, even find God in them, because my community is in it with me!

Think also of my Chaplain story. I was intrigued by the idea, but it may have stopped there if it weren't for multiple others speaking this as possibility into my life, inviting me to trust what came next.

Second: The community helps us remember what we might otherwise forget. This is something I practice on my own sometimes by reading through my journals. When I look back a few months or a year, here are some things in there I have definitely forgotten. (To be fair, some things should stay forgotten!) But for the most part, it is life-giving to read through the things I've gone through and remind myself, especially in trying times, that I have gotten through difficult things in the past and I can trust the same will be true in the future.

There are ways to do this for ourselves, individually (like reading through journals), and it's really powerful to have someone speak this truth over you. To remind you of what you've walked through, because they were walking with you. To reflect back to you how you got through what you were facing, that everything is temporary, and you (in community, and in relationship to the divine) can overcome.

Plus, it's a two-way street because when you're in consistent relationship with others, you're being accompanied, and you're also accompanying. So you are witnessing others' journeys of endurance as well, and in turn providing those reminders, these trust opportunities, for them when they go through difficult times.

Finally: The community can help hold what becomes heavy. Like I mentioned, there are some things we get through that we'd rather forget, and while we're in the middle of them they might be too heavy to bear alone. In this way, suffering also happens in community. We learn to trust that our suffering can be experienced in solidarity, and perhaps even diffused a bit when it is held by others.

There's no denying these have been heavy weeks. I cannot imagine the depth of communal suffering taking place specifically in Gaza, and throughout Holy Land. It has rippled out around the world to be felt by everyone in some capacity, and certainly caused suffering in our own community. In this, I have seen how we bear one another's burdens as much as possible. Our trust in one another -- and in "something greater" -- grows when we experience others helping to carry our burdens.

At the end of our passage for today we're told if we do these things – if we develop trust, if we don't rely only on ourselves, but engage with God by engaging with community – we will be on a God-infused path. I don’t know about you, but some of these paths that I'm on, and that I'm seeing around me, they don't feel too God-infused. Not the least of which is the "path" that seems to be unfolding in the Holy Land. And I get angry about that. I get angry when I'm trying to trust, trying to do the "right" things, and life still feels some ways in shambles. Whether on a global stage, or personally. When day-to-day life gets challenging. When finances are hard. When a relationship ends. When you’re trying but you feel like you still can't make the change you want. This stirs up some righteous indignation, which makes sense.

Also know, Proverbs are their own type of literature. They exist all over, not just in the Bible, and they're not promises. They are wisdom sayings, but they aren't guarantees. It’s not that if you input “this,” you’re guaranteed the output will be “that.”

I invite us to consider not that this then makes God less trustworthy, but rather that it makes life in community more necessary. When reality is doing its thing, when life feels unbalanced and we want that input/output model, we need to help one another see what is possible; remember where we've been; and hold what feels too heavy.

This builds the trust that we are seeking as, together, we learn to rely on the divine Spirit that is powerfully present in and through our deep reliance on each other.

Copyright (c) 2023 - Rev. Alexis Lillie
All rights reserved.