Trusting

2 Kings 2: 11-12

1 Corinthians 15: 1-8

John 17:6-19 and Luke 24:49-53

Trusting

Today is the end of Easter. Actually, Thursday was—40 days after Easter. Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus, when in the presence of  500 or more followers he gives them, and us, his command to go and make new followers, teaching them all that he taught, continuing his work to bring God’ kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But we are told in Matthew’s Gospel that even though so many saw the risen Jesus on that day, some still did not believe. They could not place their trust in Christ.

I suspect that what makes ultimate trust possible is all the little entrustments that we learn to make all along the way. We hope wisdom is cumulative, and the more we learn to trust in matters small, the more graceful we become in our ultimate entrustments.

Arguably trust (or faith, if you prefer) is the most important resource we can develop. Without it, we would all hole up somewhere, with our only excursions beyond being those of absolute necessity. The obverse dimension of this is, of course, the cultivation of trust-worthiness. It is as our entrustment is vindicated that we develop the capacity for more of it. I don't know who taught you to swim, if ever you learned, but I do know that you would not have learned to survive in the water if there weren't a teacher present whom you trusted to make the learning environment a wholly safe one for you.

I don't know who taught you to ride your first two-wheel bicycle, but I do know that in all likelihood you would not have learned were it not for that trustworthy other who ran alongside of you, as you wobbled from side to side, on that day when the training wheels were first removed.

A child would not be able to take the first step onto a school bus and leave Mom and Dad behind were it not for the fact that, preceding the first school bus ride, there were firmly in place a series of successfully completed developmental tasks, reflective of the child's experience that others in her life have proved themselves trustworthy.

I don’t know who taught you how to drive, but there certainly had to be trust there too. In fact, the person teaching you probably placed a lot of trust in heaven above while doing it.

This reliance on the trustworthiness of others can eventually lead to the ability to trust ourselves -- our little inside voices, senses, and intuition—if we learn from others to place our trust beyond people. We can go off to unfamiliar territory, establish ourselves, and be successful.  Louise Kaplan has written beautifully about this process: "... we manage to hold together when the world lets us down. Although we feel temporarily abandoned and vulnerable, constancy prevails. We retain enough of a sense of our personal worth and the worth of others eventually to convert disenchantment and disappointment into challenge. Constancy enables us to bend with the shifting winds and still remain rooted to the earth that nourishes us."

Where does this constancy, this trust that we can face uncertainty and hard times, and hold together come from?  It comes from believing in God. God is the only real constant in the universe. If we allow God to be the source of our little inside voices and our intuition, we are able to go through life with a certainty that pushes aside the uncertainty of the future.

Just as we learn so many other things in life, we learn to believe in and trust God from the actions of others who believe in and trust God. It is the love of God extended to us by those who live their faith that bring us to Christ, especially at moments in our life when we need something beyond ourselves to hang on to.  It is because they show us they are holding on to something more than themselves that we want to know Christ.

There is a story by Hugh Price Hughes titled, "The City of Everywhere." In this story a man  arrives in a city one cold morning. As he gets off the train, he sees that the station is like any other station except for one thing everyone is barefoot. No one wears shoes.  He notices a barefoot cab driver. "Pardon me," he asks the driver, "I was just wondering why you don't wear shoes. Don't you believe in shoes?" "Sure we do," says the driver. "Why don't you wear them?" asks the man. "Ah, that's the question," the driver replies. "Why don't we wear shoes? Why don't we?"

At the hotel it is the same. The clerk, bell boys, everybody is barefoot. In the coffee shop he notices a nice looking gentleman at a table opposite him. He says, "I notice you aren't wearing any shoes. I wonder why? Don't you know about shoes? Don’t you believe in them?" The man replies, "Of course I know about shoes.""Then why don't you wear them?" asks the stranger. "Ah, that's the question," says the man. "Why don't we? Why don't we?"

After breakfast he walks out on the street in the snow but every person he sees is barefoot. He asks another man about it, and points out how shoes protect the feet from cold. The man says, "We know about shoes. See that building yonder? That is a shoe manufacturing plant. We are proud of that plant and every week we gather there to hear the man in charge tell about shoes and how wonderful they are.""Then why don't you wear shoes?" asks the stranger.

"Ah, that's the question," says the man.

So many people are like that. They know about God. They may even believe in God. They may even pray to God. They may even gather with others to hear about God. Then, why don't they trust in God? Ah, that's the question. Why don't they trust in God? . . . Why don't we?