Building the Muscles of Trust

Sermon from Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018
Mark 13:1-8

These are scary times – times when many of us feel on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop.  Every week, it seems, what comes through social media or the news is word of shootings, and fires, and contested elections, and incivility, and mistrust, and dysfunctional government, and, and, and…. 

In the fear and anxiety, sometimes it’s hard to believe that God is in control.  We say we believe that, as we offer the Nicene Creed every Sunday, proclaiming our faith in God the “maker of heaven and earth,” the God who promises us “the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”  How do we reconcile God’s sovereignty and God’s promise of new life with each frightful failure or tragedy we see?

Well, if you think things are bad now … let me take you back to a much scarier time – the years 66 to 70 AD.  The Jewish population of Jerusalem had risen in revolt against their Roman rulers.  After some initial success, things went from bad to much worse.  The Romans weren’t known for coddling rebels, and they answered the revolt with massacre and destruction.  The ancient historian Josephus wrote of fires raging, and blood running in the streets, and the Temple in Jerusalem being utterly destroyed.¹ 

It’s hard for us to imagine the weight of that loss for the Jewish people of the time.  If we watched some foreign power destroy the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the National Cathedral all at once, maybe that would come close.  The Temple symbolized everything the Jewish people trusted – God’s rule in their present lives, as well as the hope that, one day, the divine king would come as God’s viceroy on earth, ruling from the Temple in Jerusalem.  Instead, now the Temple was gone, and God’s people were slaughtered and dispersed – again.

It helps to know that context to get a sense of today’s Gospel reading.  We have to hear this story both as a memory of what Jesus taught his disciples and as a reflection on what Christians decades later were experiencing.  Scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written sometime between 70 and 80 AD – in which case, the Jewish Revolt would have colored everything they remembered and all the stories they’d been told about Jesus.  Once blood had run through the streets and the Temple had been flattened, Jesus’ words about the end times would have seemed incredibly pertinent.

So, what’s he saying here – both Jesus in the story’s own time, and the Jesus whom the Gospel writer remembers 40 years later?  Listen to it again:  “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come” (Mark 13:7).  What’s more, he told his followers they’d run up against false messiahs, political leaders concerned with their own agendas and power.  Don’t let them lead you astray, Jesus said; don’t look for a quick fix for the woes that will afflict you.  In fact, don’t expect the scary times to end quickly at all.  But hang in there, for “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). 

Despite the suffering, Jesus told his friends, God’s work will yet be finished.  For Christ will return in glory, scattering all the pretenders to the throne and gathering the faithful under God’s own rule.  Even though the darkness may seem overwhelming, darkness is not the story’s end – whether you’re seeing the smoke of Jerusalem in 70 AD or the smoke of Paradise, California, in 2018.  “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs,” Jesus said – and birth pangs bring new life.

Last week, Fr. Jeff preached about the power of small acts, the cascading effect they can have in helping to realize God’s kingdom and set the world to rights.  I believe in that with all my heart.  So, I want to take a step back from that truth about small acts and look at what impels them, because I think that’s where Jesus is taking us in this dark reading today.  In the face of wars and rumors of wars; in the face of one mass shooting after another; in the face of earthquakes and fires and devastation – what’s God asking of us, deep down?

Here’s what I believe is our foundation, the ground of all our difference-making in God’s world.  That foundation is trust – trust that this is, in fact, God’s world and that God’s not done with it yet.

Trust is not easy.  And it doesn’t just happen.  So, to build our trusting muscles, I want to encourage you to do something that may seem radical in our current climate of fear and loathing.  I want you to trust “out loud,” in how you live and what you say.  And here are two outward-and-visible ways to do that.

First, I’m asking you to make a commitment of some financial support for this parish family in the coming year.  Many of you have already done that – in fact, 155 of you, and thank you very much for it.  If you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll take one of the pledge cards in front of you and fill it out today.  You can put it in the plate as it goes by this morning; or take the card home, and give it some prayer, and bring it back next week, when we celebrate St. Andrew’s Sunday.  

So, now that I’ve mentioned pledging, I imagine that, for many of you, your brains have switched into prayerful consideration where to go for brunch or how many touchdowns Patrick Mahomes will rack up tomorrow night.  Preachers say the word “pledge,” and our defenses go right up.  I get that.  I’ve been there.

Before going to seminary, Ann and I were part of the Episcopal congregation in Blue Springs, and I can remember sitting in my car in the parking lot, mad at the church.  I’d gone to a meeting about how to get involved, and it had ended with a pitch for financial pledges.  I felt like they’d pulled a bait-and-switch, and I was steaming.  Ann and I were a young couple with two little kids, and I didn’t make very much as an editor.  And now, the church was telling me I was expected to pay what I saw as a regressive tax – 10 percent from everybody, no matter how much you earned.  Well, though I reveled in righteous indignation about the unfairness of it all, we did make a pledge, but certainly not 10 percent.  And because God has a biting sense of humor sometimes, I found myself helping to lead the pledge campaign the next fall.  Pesky deity.

Soon, Ann and the kids and I were off to seminary.  By the time we were sent to our first assignment, in Springfield, Missouri, Ann was very sick, and we were loaded with debt.  We worried a lot about how we were going to manage that debt on top of the rest of life with two kids.  But we also decided we needed to step into our fear about that deep uncertainty, and we needed to tithe – not just give consistently but work toward giving 10 percent of what I earned, which is what “tithe” means.  Honestly, that sounds more faithful than it was, because part of the decision came from realizing that I couldn’t very well stand up in front of that church and ask them to work toward a tithe if I wasn’t doing it myself.  But, hey, at least a sense of professional obligation got us started.  Now, tithing has become what we do – and not just us, certainly.  There are other faithful souls in these pews this morning who do the same thing.

Giving 10 percent is the biblical standard, what scripture’s witness to God’s heart asks us to do.  But for me, the power of tithing isn’t about meeting a biblical standard.  It’s about trusting God enough to head down the road of discipleship when I can’t even see around the next corner.  That pledge of ours is an outward and visible way to remind myself not to get shaken by whatever scares the living daylights out of me in the moment.  Pledging is an exercise to build the muscles of trust.  And it can start with literally any amount.  A dollar a month?  Go for it.  It’s the commitment that builds the trust.

So, I said I’d suggest two ways to trust God “out loud.”  Pledging is the first one, and here’s the second – one that involves prayer and proclamation.  Once this sermon finally ends, the next part of our worship is saying the Nicene Creed together.  But before we do, I want to confess a liturgical sin: When I say the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed and I’m not leading worship, I change a word from what’s printed in the Prayer Book.  We’re supposed to say, “We believe in God, the Father Almighty”; and “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ”; and “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”  But I don’t say “believe” anymore.  The verb I use instead is “trust.” I trust in one God, the Father, the Almighty; I trust in one Lord, Jesus Christ; I trust in the Holy Spirt, the Lord, the giver of life. 

To me, the word matters.  Think about it in terms of a human relationship.  If I believe that Ann loves me, that’s one thing – and a very good thing.  That knowledge brings me peace and comfort and meaning that I don’t get from any other part of my life.  But if I trust that Ann loves me, it takes me one step further.  It empowers me to act – to raise kids when I never thought I’d be any good at it; to uproot our life to go off to seminary; to come to this parish where I didn’t think I’d fit in; to do a job I never saw myself doing.  Knowing love is a comfort.  Trusting love changes your life, rewiring your heart and strengthening you to step out of the darkness and await the light to come.

So, in addition to filling out that pledge card in front of you, I invite you to join me in the liturgical sin of slightly rewriting the Nicene Creed.  In fact, there’s no time like the present.  As you’re able, please stand – and consider taking the risk to start rewiring your heart by changing just one, transformative word in our statement of faith:

We trust in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We trust in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,

and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

We trust in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We trust in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

1.       Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VI, Chap. 5, Sect. 1.  Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm#link62HCH0005.  Accessed Nov. 15, 2018.