Comments for Jim Other sermons.           

I believe that all matters of faith come down to one question: Can God be trusted or not? And one may answer this question in only one of two ways: "yes" or "no." There is no "maybe" or "sometimes" or "it depends." Jesus’ testing in the wilderness clarified the question for him. He couldn’t sit on the fence. Neither can we. Why is it so hard to trust God? It is because what God promises often seems impossible. To trust God often seems to be irrational, foolish, or even dangerous. And it is because the world has turned us into chronically suspicious people. Yet the Bible is one long series of stories about trust. Starting with Genesis.

Abraham and Sarah are called by God from the town of Ur of the Chaldeans (modern day Iraq) to leave their ancestral home and journey to a land they have never seen. God’s promise is that the land will be given to their descendants, who will multiply and fill it. To understand this story we must understand the context of the Ancient Near East at the beginning of the second millennium BCE. God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah of great posterity was the equivalent to our understanding of eternal life. The Hebrews paid scant attention to life after death. What mattered most was children. So God calls Abraham and Sarah and makes a promise. The land will be yours and your many descendants.

So they leave everything and come to the new land. But there is a problem. Sarah has never been able to bear children, and now, anyway, she is too old. How can the promise be kept if that is so? Within the context of the time and culture this couple explores alternatives: Abraham can have a child by Sarah’s servant, Hagar. Or custom provides that the son of a male slave within the household can be proclaimed heir. These accommodations may be seen as quaint, revolting, and patriarchal to us today; but in context what we find is a couple asking this question: Can we trust God? God has made a promise. And it seems impossible. So, understandably, they take matters into their own hands and explore alternatives. In Chapter 15 of the Book of Genesis we find a very discouraged Abraham (Referred to as Abram here). Seeing this, God offers words of comfort, saying, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." Abram replies that there is no offspring. But God answers that Abram’s and Sarah’s very own son will be their heir. Trust the promise. Trust God. Then, in this wonderful gesture, God takes Abraham out to look at the night sky. Imagine a brilliant, moonless, desert darkness – the black sky filled with millions of gleaming stars. And God says "Look up and try and count those stars. So shall your descendants be." And Abraham trusted. And the scripture says "And Abraham believed and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." Translations can be clumsy. But what these words mean is that Abraham trusted God, against all the evidence, and that was enough. Abraham trusted God. And God took care of the rest.

Look at the issue of trust in your own life. Why is it so hard to trust? We yearn to trust, do we not? It feels wonderful to truly trust someone, does it not? But isn’t it true that we tend to trust up to a point? We have all experienced times in which we have offered trust and that trust has been betrayed. And, if we are honest, there have been times in which, for whatever reason, we have betrayed the trust of others. President Ronald Reagan quoted an old Russian proverb to Mikhail Gorbachev, "Trust, but verify." That is perhaps a worldly-wise way to proceed; assume trust but check it out. Trust until we are disappointed. Jesus even said, "Be wise as serpents, but gentle as doves."

Trust is a state of mind, a way of being in the world. The developmental task of first years of a child’s life is to learn to trust. If that task is not accomplished well, relationships thereafter will have problems. Scientific research is now showing that in cases of physical and emotional healing, a patient’s trust of the doctor or therapist or healer is critically important. No trust. No healing. Educational studies are now suggesting that students learn better when they believe their teacher loves them. An inward attitude of trust is healing. And an attitude of unconditional trust penetrates to the very depths of the soul and transforms. Whenever Jesus heals someone of some infirmity, he makes the point that this wasn’t magic power at work. He says simply, "Your faith, that is, your trust, has made you well."

And yet, sadly, our personal relationships and our relationships to the institutions that shape our lives are largely poisoned by mistrust. Norman Mailer presciently declared in the 1950’s that we were entering an age of paranoia. Just the other night, I heard commentator Mark Shields on PBS declare that the last few years have been marked by a dramatic decline of trust in our major American institutions. We have been betrayed by accounting firms, corporations like Enron and Worldcom, Wall Street, defense contractors, clergy who abuse and a church that covers it up, the apparent absence of weapons of mass destruction, and now Martha Stewart!

So when we talk about the importance of trusting God, all of the fear of betrayal, all the suspicion and dread, all the woundings and disappointments rise to the fore. All this makes it very hard to say yes to God. And if trusting means trusting something that seems impossible, it is so much the harder. God says, "Fear not. I will be with you. Trust my promises. Even and especially when they seem impossible. All I want is your trust. All I want for you is to be like a mother hen that gathers you under my wings. All I want is to care and comfort you. And all I want from you is your trust. And then all will be well."

Hard to trust that. But was it any easier for Abraham and Sarah to trust? Wouldn’t you wonder if someone said you were going to have a baby, and you believed yourself to be infertile and also happened to be ninety years old? The promise was impossible. Which is, of course, the point. What God wants is unconditional trust, and unconditional trust transcends what we think is possible or impossible. Jesus says, "With God all things are possible." That is not a pep-talk phrase designed to boost the morale of the troops. What Jesus is saying is a declaration of spiritual reality, which is the deepest kind of truth. A reality more real than this world around us – the world of mind and body, the world of the senses, the world of human interactions. Trust God, fear not. Seek first the Kingdom of God and all else will be given you. What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe?

But look at what happened? Were the promises of God kept to Abraham and Sarah. Yes, they were. She bore Isaac and a great people. But this wasn’t the last time trust was asked for. Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac. The marriage of Jacob and Rachel kept getting postponed, and they went through the same infertility issues. In other words, we are being asked to trust God, again and again, every day of our lives. We have to make that choice over and over, in ways great or small.

Last Monday night the Spirituality Committee led the Executive Council on a journey through the history of this congregation, a journey of spiritual discernment. It was fascinating. People were saying things like, "It’s really about relationships. Look what God has been doing over the years." It became clearer than ever to me that, on the evidence itself, God’s promises have always been kept to this congregation. When has God ever let CCC down? When has God ever betrayed our trust?

Earlier you heard from Betty Stith about the recommendation of Sandy Dodson for our next associate minister. What does it tell us that, through the search committee’s hard work and prayers, they are presenting a candidate who was at the very top of the list? Something is going on around here. Can it be that the hand of God can be trusted to do what is best for us? Can it be that our prayers make a difference? I close with the words of the Taize chant we sing at 9:00 AM worship:

"Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
Those who seek God shall never go wanting.
Nothing can trouble, nothing can frighten.
God alone fills us."
AMEN

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