Trusting God In an Age of Distrust
Lessons: Isaiah 41:8-13; Psalm 27:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-12; Matthew 6:25-34
Last Sunday, our parish celebrated the twelfth Sunday in the season of Metanoia. The theme for this Sunday is trust.
We live in an age in which distrust is very high. Years of scandal have caused us to lose trust in our religious leaders and organizations. Years of corruption and inaction have caused us to lose trust in our political and educational institutions. The world has been flooded with AI content which causes us to distrust our own eyes and ears. We do not trust our neighbors. We do not trust our teachers, pastors, family members, country, or God.
A little bit of distrust, a little bit of skepticism, can be healthy. It is reminds us that we should test every spirit to make sure that they are true or false. But taken to the extreme, as it is now, causes the world to come apart. It causes apathy and indifference to reign supreme. And it can be easy to forget that trust is the foundation of the Gospel.
Today, we often use the term "faith" in the context of religious creeds. Churches often have "statements of faith". We talk about the "Catholic faith" or the "Christian faith". While our creeds and traditions are very valuable and should be revered, they can often cause us to misunderstand what faith actually is.
Faith is trust.
To have faith is to have trust. When we love or have faith in God, we trust that God is in control and that they have our best interests in mind. When we love our neighbors, we trust that our neighbors will return that love. The Gospel is rooted in trust. The greatest commandments are rooted in trust. To have faith is to have trust.
Our gospel reading for this week was the passage from the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus reminds us not to worry. As someone who has often dealt with anxiety issues in my life, this passage was always challenging to me. It was often difficult to simply not worry when it was my default mental state. Jesus knows that many of us have worry, and that it is a natural part of life. His message for us is that our trust in him should override our worry. Worries will always come and go, but trust and faith in God is for an eternity. Our reading from Hebrews reminded us of the prophets and saints through the ages who were able to overcome great amounts of adversity by having faith.
Even with our trust in God, many of us still have our anxieties, and that is perfectly fine. When I was younger, I often understood my anxiety as a sin. It was a failure on my part that I was still worrying about this life. But the scriptures remind us that we are saved by grace through faith. Trusting in God should not be a legalism. We are not condemned because sometimes we worry or distrust. God through Christ knows our burdens all too well. We are saved by his grace. It is a gift that we cannot earn. We simply must trust that God will sort it all out.
The ultimate examples of trust are the holy fools. The saints who were so trusting in God that they would challenge the status quo by following Christ's example in often radical ways. Saints such as Francis of Assisi or Basil of Moscow. While it is unlikely that most of us can acheive this level of saintliness, they are excellent examples to follow. To trust in God with all our heart is to go against a world of distrust and anxiety. When we put on the mind of Christ, we can be so trusting as to see the cross as a means of redemption rather than execution. I want to urge everyone to your best to be foolish.
Trust in God to the fullest.
