Job 38; Isaiah 26: 4; Jeremiah 17: 4-6, 12-14; John 10: 22-30

Trust issues

I believe that in our day and age we face a real crisis of trust. Let’s start with a question: how can we trust in a time when it seems we can no longer trust anyone or anything? I would like to give you the answer right away: I believe that the way we can trust God most reliably in our day and ages is through trusting God’s grace.”  The people of Northern Ireland refer to the brutal Civil War between Catholics and Protestants as “The Troubles.”  When we look at the book of Job we see a man with nothing but troubles, nothing but the deepest suffering.  Isaiah and Jeremiah lives in a time of exile or coming exile, a time of deep troubles.  These prophets are not psychics, but they have a sense of the direction of history and God’s role in it.  They refer to nature.  Isaiah speaks of trust as rock and for Jeremiah a person who trust God is like a tree planted by the water.  When we look at John we see Jesus referring to His followers as “sheep.” He does not do so because He thinks His followers are less than intelligent people, on the contrary, He mentions sheep because the people of His time on earth knew them and understood their nature and one thing they knew them for was their trust. It is as if the sheep know instinctively that however far they stray, this shepherd will track them down, cradle them in His arms and bring them home gently on His shoulder.  It is all about the shepherd intently watching over them rather than the lack of insight of the sheep.  It’s about trust.  God asks Job to trust God implicitly:” Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell, if you have understanding.  Who set its measurements, since you know? Or stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone?  When the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy? “

But, friends, trust is not our strong suit. We don’t do trust well.  Yes, we do not have a pretty good idea of trust in each other in this church, but in general our trust level is low.  We don’t trust our representatives in general, except our local one.  We don’t trust corporations or people or schools or the ability of our planet to sustain us. Our faith in the future is at a low ebb.  Friends, in the movie “The God’s must be crazy” a Bushman from the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa finds a coke bottle a pilot has thrown from a plane. He tries throwing it up in the air, but it comes down again and hits him in the head. He tries burying it, but a hyena digs it up again.  “The gods must be crazy,” he mutters. The other Bushmen soon discover how useful the coke bottle is: you can make sounds with ii when you blow in it, you can use it as a hammer or a cooking utensil or to stretch out cobra skin.  But it doesn’t take long for jealousy to emerge. Everyone wants to own the bottle. One child is hit over the head with it. The Bushman who found the object has enough.  He sets out on a long journey to the ends of his earth to dispose of the annoying object.  “The gods must be crazy.” It makes sense sometimes, for in our world we sometimes lose trust in God.

Friends, after all the concern about the availability of guns no one needs to the mentally ill or the disproportionally angry, Congress failed utterly to get anything passed.  The gun manufacturers are too rich and powerful.  It makes you want to give and lose trust. We see a bombing in Boston and you wonder how we can trust our public places if they evil or the crazy populate it with us?

I don’t know if you ever saw that famous Simpsons episode where the whole family is Rio de Janeiro for carnival.  Homer is kidnapped and his wife Marge is quite worried about him. Of course she is also in Rio during the carnival so she wants to dance.  “Gosh, I am worried,” she says, “but I also feel like dancing. What shall I do? I guess I’ll do both at the same time.”  So Marge worries…and dances, she dances …and worries. It kind of sums up our life: we don’t quite trust, but try to trust at the same time. We, like Marge, go back and forth.

We cannot lose trust.  We cannot thrive without it.  We must give the world a chance, but at the same time we must be realistic.  The world will eventually disappoint us.  It is just a matter of time.

Friends, we can bear to lose trust in our leaders.  We can bear to lose trust in people in general even.  We can bear to lose trust even in our schools or in the Church as an institution, but we can never afford to lose trust in God’s grace. That is just not an option.  God’s grace is at work in spite of the enormous obstacles of evil and suffering. God’s grace trickles through somehow.  Thanks be to God for grace that never ends.