Trust

The scriptures referred to are Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 and John 3:1-17.

When you woke up this morning, you threw off the covers made by someone else, got out of a bed you didn't build, put on slippers you didn't make and went into a bathroom filled with things which were installed by plumbers, probably before you bought your house. You put on clothes neither you nor your spouse sewed. You might have eaten food grown and made by others. You drove to church in a car you didn't engineer. And you entered a building built by people long gone. And none of this would be possible if human beings weren't the most cooperative animals on earth.

You may object and point to bees or ants but they are really extended families. We do things for and in connection with people we are not related to. Unless you work in a family business, your boss and coworkers are not kin. How often do you buy things online from a company run by strangers offering products made by other companies, often overseas? You trust them to deliver what you ordered and they trust that you are paying them via a card you legitimately have in your name. Our civilization is held together largely by strangers trusting strangers.

Trust underlies all relationships. And at the beginning of any relationship, extending that trust is a leap of faith. And faith simply means trust. If the relationship goes on long enough, a history is built up that underlies and supports that trust. You find a barber or hairstylist you know is not going to make you look bad. You take your car to a mechanic you know has done a good job fixing it on other occasions. A long marriage is normally based on each partner knowing the other person is reliable and has their back.

Even science is a faith-based venture. A scientist's work starts from and builds on the work of other scientists. They have to trust that the research and experiments were done properly, meticulously written down, astutely analyzed with all factors accounted for and peer-reviewed before it was published. And they have to trust that no one working on the scientific paper fudged the results to, say, get a grant or keep corporate funding or make a name for themselves. Which has happened all too often recently.

So when we talk of religious faith, it is not something wholly unlike all other human activities. The main difference is that in religion the person we put our trust in is God. And studies find that believing in a god or gods is a natural and universal human trait, found in the vast majority of people in all societies. Evidence of religious behavior in humans goes back to the Middle Paleolithic era, 100,000 years ago. And it was an essential part of all complex civilizations up until the 20^th century. Even today atheists account for only 7% of the world's population, with China accounting for 2 out of every 5 atheists.

Today's lectionary readings are all about the importance of trusting God. We start with Abram being called to leave his country and extended family and go to the land of Canaan. Originally from Ur, an important city in the Sumarian empire, Abram was being told to move to an area with a lower level of civilization, a rural area with a collection of independent cities. This is a big change and a major decision for Abram. God promises Abram land, descendants and eventually a nation that will be a blessing to the earth. It is his faith in God and his promises that motivates Abram to travel hundreds of miles from his kin and previous life. It takes a long time for him to see even one child of his but still Abram continues to have faith that God will do what he says.

One interesting detail, though, is that at one point, because he is getting up there in age, Abram designated a servant of his, Eliezer of Damascus, as his heir. (Genesis 15:2-3) So he is hedging his bets. But God tells him that he will have an actual son to be his heir. God tells Abram to look at the stars and says that his descendants will be as numerous. At night, you can see about 8000 stars with the naked eye. And right after God says this, we are told, “Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) And only then does God make a covenant with Abram.

The Hebrew word translated “believe” here has the underlying sense of confirming or supporting. And the word given as “counted” literally means to think or calculate. Which is why the NET Bible translates this as “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord considered his response of faith as proof of genuine loyalty.” Abram takes God at his word and that puts him in the right relationship with God.

In our passage from Romans Paul uses this verse to show that we do not get right with God by our actions. We cannot be perfect in all that we do. Or as Paul puts it, paraphrasing Psalm 14:3, “There is no one who is righteous. No, not one.” (Romans 3:10) We may try to get right with God by working to do everything the way we should but it's like someone with a broken leg trying to walk properly. The leg has to be fixed, something only an orthopedic surgeon can do. And it all starts with trusting the doctor to do what he says he can do. I have seen patients who did not trust doctors and they refuse to be helped.

Now in some cases, the treatment has to begin right away. If a person has a stroke and gets to the ER in the first 3 hours they can be given a clot dissolving medication that can reverse the damage. But it has to be given in that window of time. With God, however, there is no such time limit. Look at the man crucified next to Jesus. He rebuked the other dying criminal, who has been harassing Jesus, by saying, “Don't you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus remember me when you come in your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:40-43)

There is nothing at this point this man who was a violent criminal can do to right the wrongs he has done. (Matthew 27:38) He can't promise to clean up his act and go to synagogue every Sabbath from now on. He is dying. But he admits he has done wrong, expresses his belief in Jesus' innocence and in the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the promised king, all evidence at the moment to the contrary. He simply believes Jesus and trusts him to save him at some point beyond the time of their deaths. And Jesus gives him an assurance he gives no one else: that he will be with Christ in paradise that day. He says that on the basis of the man's faith.

God can work with someone who trusts him, even just a bit. One time a father brings his sick son to the disciples who are unable to help. When Jesus enters the scene, the father goes to him. He says, “...if you are able to do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus says, “If you are able? All things are possible for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the boy cries out and says, “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:22-25) The man was struggling with doubt but did have some faith in Christ and Jesus was able to work with that and heal his son.

When it comes to sin, though, it doesn't seem fair that repenting and believing is enough to be declared righteous by God. Shouldn't the person do something to redress the things they've done wrong, to fix the damage they've caused? Yes, but they can never undo all they've done. They can control their temper but they cannot erase the memories of the terror they've caused their loved ones. They can try to reestablish a history of trust with the partner they've cheated on but they cannot take away the hurt and betrayal they felt. If God demands absolute justice, none of us can ever set everything right between us.

Our salvation, our restoration to a right relationship with God, depends, as Paul says, on God's grace. It is God's gift freely offered to those who trust him and accept it. It is not what we deserve; it is what we could never deserve. God loves us enough to extend his grace, his undeserved and unreserved goodness, to us.

Salvation is the ultimate do-over. As Jesus says, it is essentially being born all over again by water and the Spirit. And it is a do-over because to be with God we must be holy. There are people who think that since we are saved by grace through faith and not by anything we do, it means we don't have to do anything ever except believe. But that's misunderstanding what salvation is.

To be saved is to become the person God created you to be. And we are all created in God's image. Our sins distort and blur that image in us. In Jesus we see clearly what God is like. So to be saved is to become Christlike.

But it is a process. Paul speaks of believers at Corinth as being like infants in Christ, requiring milk and not yet being ready for solid food. (1 Corinthians 3:1-2) Eventually we are supposed to become “a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ's full stature. So we are no longer children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes. But practicing the truth in love, we will all grow up into Christ, who is the head. From him the whole body grows, fitted and held together through every supporting ligament. As each one does his part, the body grows in love.” (Ephesians 4:13-16) In this passage Paul is talking about the body of Christ, of which we are all a part. But the parts of the body have to grow, too. An adult would have a hard time walking if one leg stayed as it was when he was a baby.

It starts with trust. And it continues with trust. We keep trusting in God and his promises. We trust in his love and grace. And because we trust him, we do what he says.

Stephen King wrote a short story in which a brother and sister spend their summers on their grandparents' farm. They love to play in the big barn, which has a high wooden beam that runs the length of the barn. They like to walk along the beam as if it were a tightrope. And then one day the brother hears his sister scream for him. He runs into the barn and finds that she has slipped and is hanging from the beam, dozens of feet from the ground. She can't look down and see him so he lets her know he is there. He knows he can't pull her up and so he runs around the barn grabbing armfuls of hay and piling it under her. He keeps doing it until it is a very big pile. And finally he tells her to let go. And without seeing what he has done, she lets go. And though she breaks her leg, her life is saved. Because she trusts her loving brother to save her.

Trust is the opposite of fear. We can trust God to save us because he loves us. What Jesus did on the cross shows that. (1 John 4:10) He suffered the consequences for our sins so that we wouldn't have to. What God did on Easter morning also shows his love. Jesus' promise to the robber next to him would mean nothing if death had the final word. Most of Jesus' promises don't work if this life is the only one. After all, Jesus defined a disciple of his this way: “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24) And he also said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

So we trust God with our life. And we trust his promise that death is not the end but that it gets better. We call that hope, which someone has called the future tense of faith. So we walk by faith and live in hope. But that is not all.

We trust God because he loves us. Faith proceeds from love. Faith should also lead to love. If someone loves you as much as Jesus does, you grow to love them as well. Paul points out that faith without love means nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2) Paul says that in the end 3 qualities remain: faith, hope and love. And of these three, love is the greatest. (1 Corinthians 13:13) Just as Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor.

Faith is the doorway to our journey with God and the ground that supports us on our way. Hope guides us to our destination. Love gives us the strength and energy every step of the way. And Jesus embodies all 3. He trusted God enough to go to the cross and that shows us we can trust him. He put his hope in being raised from the dead and our hope is anchored in his resurrection. He loves us and we can love him back.

So our salvation comes not from our feeble attempts to be good but from trusting in the grace of the God revealed in Jesus. And because we trust and love him we want to spread that love to others, the way you want to tell others about any good news you receive. Like “I went to this doctor and he cured me!” And as we see in Jesus going to the cross and bursting from the tomb, actions speak louder than words. So we show that love not only with our lips but with our lives, which are full to overflowing with good and loving actions. As James points out, it's not faith vs. works. We are saved by grace through faith and good works just naturally follow.

Abram, later renamed by God Abraham, went on a long journey away from the life he knew. He just had God's word that things would turn out right. But he trusted God and that was enough to go on. In our journey we move from faith to love to hope to telling and helping others. It's an adventure. There will be challenges. But the one leading us, Jesus, has walked this way before and we can trust him to get us to the place we will call home forevermore.