Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 4/6/08
Why Trust?
1 Peter 1:17-23
I recently heard the story of a guy who went to his broker to get some reassurance amid all the fluctuations in the stock market. He asked his broker if he was worried. The broker replied that he was sleeping like a baby.
The man was amazed, “Really? Even with all these unpredictable shifts?”
“You bet,” the broker said, “just like a baby. I sleep for a couple of hours, and then I wake up and cry for a couple of more.”
These are anxious times for a lot of people. There are a lot of retirees who have found their investment income dramatically reduced. There are home owners around the country who have watched the value of their most significant investment plummet. For some, the shifts in our economy have been devastating, and in the face of such devastation it is neither unusual nor particularly surprising to wonder where God is, or whether God even cares.
In the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul points to creation and says the evidence of God is right there in front of us, v.20, “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.”
Certainly, amid our anxieties, there are those who can look at the world around us – at its beauty and complexity – or consider the miracle of our own human capacities, and find reassurance there. It is inconceivable to them that all of this could have happened through chance alone.
At the same time, however, there are others who consider this same creation and arrive at a very different conclusion. For them, it is far easier and far more logical to believe in the infinite possibilities that are embodied in this expanding universe than in a transcendent, sentient God who shapes and guides our world.
On top of it, there are the questions raised by experience itself – how a caring God could allow some 300,000 children to be recruited into the horrors of war in Africa. Or tolerate the devastation of AIDS, or seem to accept the starvation that plagues so much of our world. For still others, these questions have moved from the theoretical or abstract to the deeply personal in the face of loss, or in their own encounter with the uncertainties of this world.
No, in spite of what Paul has said, the witness of creation and the testimony of our own experience, does not lead us logically and irrevocably to God. Why believe? Why trust in God? Peter points the way, v. 21, “Through him [that is, through Jesus] you have to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory…” We make the choice to believe, in other words, because of what we have seen in Jesus Christ.
Consider Jesus’ resurrection. Who or what besides a transcendent God, a God acting from outside the limits of our existence, could have reached in and raised Jesus from the dead? It is not the earth alone that leads us to believe. It is, ironically, that very moment when the chains of this earth’s natural cycle were broken – that moment when new life was created out of the oblivion, the emptiness, of death itself that points in God’s direction.
Or consider the cross. It is God’s love that we see evidenced there; a love that knows no bounds, a God so passionate about each and every one of us that there is nothing he will not do to bless us, to provide for us, and to be there for us.
It is the cross and resurrection taken together that leads us to believe not only that there is a God, but that God’s very essence is love.
But there is a second reason to believe, and to place our trust in him. It is through our faith, our trust, that we open our lives to the blessings that God’s longs to share.
John Madden is one of the great football analysts on television today. He is one of the best known names in sport’s media. He is also, as he would be the first to tell you, deathly afraid of airplanes. What that means in practice is that during the football season instead of spending a few hours on an airplane flying from one game to another each week, Madden spends days traveling by bus. He spends an enormous amount of time quite literally on the road.
That’s the power of trust. Madden believes that planes can fly. I’m sure there is no doubt in his mind on that count. The issue, rather, is that he doesn’t trust them. It is the lack of trust that commits him to all those hours on the road. It is because he doesn’t trust them that that he closes himself to the great blessing that planes can be.
The same holds true in our walk with God. Saying we believe isn’t going to get us there. As James put it, “faith without works is dead.” It is making the active choice to trust God that is going to open our lives to his Kingdom and to his blessings. Author Brennan Manning puts it this way:
The most brilliant student I ever taught in seminary was a young man named Augustus Gordon. He now lives as a hermit six months each year in a solitary cabin deep in the Smoky Mountains above Liberty, Tennessee. The remaining half-year he travels the country preaching the gospel on behalf of Food for the Poor, a missionary outreach feeding the hungry and homeless in Haiti, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands.
On a recent visit I asked him, “Gus, could you define the Christian life in a single sentence?” He didn’t even blink before responding. “Brennan,” he said, “I can define it in a single word: trust.”
Manning continues, speaking now from his own experience:
It has been more than four decades since I was first ambushed by Jesus in a little chapel in the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania. After thousands of hours of prayer and meditation over the intervening years, I can state unequivocally that childlike surrender in trust is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.
The real question, then, that faces us this morning is not so much whether we believe. The real question is whether we are willing to place our trust in God. And before we blithely answer that question, consider this: trusting God may mean going to a place we would rather not go – a place contrary to our inclinations or natural desires. For some, it may mean forgiving someone who has hurt you, or seeking the forgiveness of someone you’ve hurt. For others, it may mean learning what it means to love our enemies, or actually listening to what Jesus says about money and material possessions. For almost all of us it means learning to put God and others ahead of ourselves – letting go of the instinctive “what’s in it for me,” and choosing instead to put the needs of our spouse or of our children ahead of our own desires.
As you leave this sanctuary and go back out into the world, will you choose to place your trust in God? It is the key to opening ourselves to that beautiful life that God wants to share.
Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2000), p. 4