St. Andrews’ Pictou, NS June 5^th 2005 Holy Communion

 

Unleashing the Bounty of Trust

 

Genesis 12:1-9

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

 

In my ministry in Toronto and working with hundreds of men who had been abused there was one reality that never ceased to amaze me: “How in the world, do these men get up every day and live and function without the ability to trust?”

 

Almost all of the men were abused in what we would usually call within the context of “a trusting relationship.” The men were abused by a parent, sibling, cousin, relative, neighbour, clergy, or someone with some kind of “trust connection.” A few were abused by strangers, but mostly by someone you would usually trust. It still makes me shudder that abuse could happen from a member of a group that calls itself, “The Christian Brothers.”

 

What happens in all cases of abuse is that trust is shattered. The ability to trust is destroyed. The belief in trust is taken away. The ability to trust is eliminated as a means of relationship. Trust, the very basis of personal relationship is then seen by the victim to be the source of their undoing: for the abused, trust becomes the vehicle of betrayal and destruction and must therefore be avoided at all costs. (Consider a man or woman trying to get married having learned these kinds of assumptions.)

 

On the other hand, trust is also the vehicle of healing and restoration, the way you find yourself and go back to who you are, the way you make friends, the way you achieve intimacy and love: an absolutely necessary and vital component of achieving a healthy human life.

 

But for many people, trust is like walking through a field of landmines that may give either death or life. You don’t know whether each step might bring a beautiful experience of love, or if it might blow you leg off. For victims, extreme caution is the only way to go.

 

In total contrast to the picture I have just painted, we have the 75 year old Abram, his wife Sarai, and their nephew Lot, who are wealthy, established, settled and secure at a mature point in their lives. Trust is the issue here because God is calling them out of safety on to challenging new goals in their life’s journey. Trust facilitates the response.

 

In an age when we argue about retirement at 65, God is promising Abram that he will make a great nation from him and Sarai, in spite of their senior years. God is asking a lot for Abram to leave home and kindred and go off on this wild venture. (You will notice that there is no information about what his wife Sarai thought about this move; whether she was consulted, agreed or not.)

 

This family move was more like a tribal migration that involved all of their servants, and slaves. The notable issue here was that Abram built altars along the way on his journey to the Negeb. The altar’s they built on the journey represent the trusting relationship that Abram had with his God. That promise was to be fulfilled: Abram and Sarai, later renamed Abraham and his wife Sarah were to become parents to three world religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

 

God was to do great things beyond belief with the risking that Abram and Sarai took based on their trust in God.

 

That very trust in God that Abram and Sarai had was to change world history.

 

In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul addresses the theme of trust in Jesus Christ. Paul explains that God’s justice worked through the trust that Abraham and Sarah had in God. In other words, the trust in God accessed a power not available except by the risks taken in trust. Paul tried to get the people to understand that keeping a law was different than the same action that is done as a result of a trusting relationship.

 

The Gospel reading opens with an incident that seems out of character in our day and age.

 

Matthew is a tax collector sitting in his tax booth. Jesus walks up and says “follow me,” and this grown man, an adult with a secure job and a good one at that, leaves it all and follows Jesus; just like Abram and Sarai followed God’s call. I may like to say that Matthew trusted Jesus, but many people in Pictou County might think that Matthew was in idiot to quit a secure high paying job and follow this itinerant preacher, Jesus who didn’t even have his own church!

 

It wasn’t like Matthew was upwardly mobile and joining a well respected group. People just thought that they were a bunch of second class sinners; the elite considered them outcasts.

 

“When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners (i.e. non observant Jews?’”)

 

Trusting that Jesus is doing what he is supposed to be doing, we see a different picture.

 

“But when he heard (their objections,) he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6)  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’”

 

By Matthew’s trust of Jesus we find out one of the great Biblical truths about Jesus’ ministry: “that what is demanded of the would-be entrant into the Kingdom is faith, loyal trust. There is no demand for a prior conversion of life and conduct, and entrance into the Kingdom is not a reward for moral rectitude.” Anchor Commentary on Matthew, Albright & Mann p. 106.

 

We have seen that trust in God flower in world history:

-unleashing a spiritual power that flourished in three world religions from Abraham and Sarah’s response,

-that trust in Jesus Christ unleashed a power for Christ’s message around the world,

-we see that Matthew’s risking and trust highlights God’s desire for our communion with God and God’s desire to dispense mercy.

 

There are great benefits that we might give and receive from unleashing the bounty that trust may bring.

 

To unleash the bounty of trust, we need to know the three different levels of trust:

-         trust in God,

-         trusting ourselves,

-         trusting each other.

 

I find that the inability to trust God is often mirrored in the inability to trust ourselves and each other; the levels of trust are all connected.

 

To learn how to trust, we need to give ourselves permission to both not trust and to revoke trust when that is necessary. The key is that we need to trust ourselves how to discern who we should trust.

 

The nature of a relationship is what determines trust and if trust can and should exist.

 

Abram and Sarai had a relationship of 75 years on which to trust God in order to break up camp and set out on a tribal migration.

 

Paul had a conversion experience and relationship with Jesus Christ that gave him the basis of trust with which he could conduct his ministry.

 

I think that we can conclude that Matthew did not feel good about scamming and stealing from the innocent for his good fortunes. Matthew had a bad reputation, but he heard about Jesus’ reputation and that Jesus’ actions were grounded in his relationship with God for his ministry to call Matthew into his service. (This was a small community like Pictou and everybody knew everybody’s reputation back then just as you all know what is going on here in the present day.)

 

We should not expect trust to either exist or grow in a vacuum; trust is a living system that lives and exists as a life-giving conduit between people or God spiritually connected in a life giving way. Trust gives life. Trust does not exist in a destructive relationship. We call that kind of sickness “a dependency.”

 

We need to teach our children and we need to know ourselves, that trusting relationships may open up the bounty of life for us, but that not all people are worthy of our trust.

 

Trust is irrespective of title, power, or position in that trust can only exist in life-giving relationships because “what gives life” is simply all that ever matters.

 

Remember Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

 

The same is true today: when we extend mercy, we build trust in exactly the same way that Jesus did! (In a vital, authentic and life giving connection.)

 

When you heard the Gospel read did you not hear about the huge bounty released by trust?

 

“…suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him saying, ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live.”

 

That man passionately trusted and believed in Jesus, and the healing bounty of that trust brought his daughter back to life!

 

“The suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

 

That woman passionately trusted and believed in Jesus, and the bounty of that trust brought the power of healing to her 12 years of suffering!

 

Life giving relationships of trust unleash the power of God to heal and restore.

 

In trust we experience and receive Holy Communion. Our trust in God allows us to receive the bread and wine of life to feed us in the way we need.

 

Bona fide trust in life-giving relationships with God in Christ and with each other, unleashes the wholeness that God intends for us in order that we might receive the bounty of life.

 

“O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

 

AMEN                    Rev. Alan Stewart