Trust

Text: Mark 6:1-13

It must have been terrifying to be one of Jesus’ original disciples. In the short time they’d been with him, he had been going at a dizzying pace, healing the sick and performing miracles and even raising the dead, while zigzagging back and forth across the borders of Jewish and Gentile territories on both sides of the Sea of Galilee. 

The disciples had often showed a serious lack of comprehension of Jesus’s words and his actions. And Jesus often faced rejection, first by his family and then by the religious community, and today, by the people of his hometown. He had been all powerful, stilling storms and bringing new life to the desperate, and yet today in the face of rejection he is inexplicably unable to bring forth much of that power.

And what does Jesus do? He shakes off the dust. And he calls his disciples together and sends them out into the world to be his witnesses, to heal and forgive and bring wholeness to all who want it wherever they are. And they are to go out without provisions, trusting that they will be cared for along the way - and if not, they’ll just shake it off and keep going. 

But the disciples have been rather thick headed and inept so far. So how can this be a good idea? 

Well, he sends them out two by two. They aren’t to live this life and do this work alone.They are to have companions on their way. That part is baked into the plan Jesus has for them. They are not alone.

Truthfully, sometimes I struggle with this. I need to be reminded constantly that I am not meant to be in this life alone. Our culture prizes the solitary hero, the self-sufficient pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps type. I don’t like asking for directions. I gloried in the old Saab advertising slogan “Find your own road” and have a special fondness for the song “I Did It My Way.” 

And at the same time, conversely but humanly, my heart sometimes sinks when I imagine that it’s all up to me to accomplish something big. Like doing God’s work in the world. I feel inadequate and maybe even unworthy. And so, I struggle.

It isn’t just Jesus’s original disciples who are called to go out into the world as channels of God’s grace and mercy, to offer healing and hope to a broken world. As followers of Jesus, this is our calling, too. Jesus sends us out, too, as thick headed and inept and untrained as we might feel. We say this every week in church: Send us out into the world, God, to go out into the world to love and serve. 

Living this life Jesus calls us to requires us to trust. Seriously and radically. To trust God, to trust that God will give us what we need, and to trust each other, that we will be safe together. That’s the core of this whole thing. To trust that God goes with us where we go and to trust that despite our human limitations we will honor one another, we will work for one another’s well-being, we will remember that our common life depends upon each other’s toil, and we will be there for one another through good times and bad.

Trust is in short supply these days. We are polarized as a people and even our “tribes” disintegrate further into factions at the drop of a hat. Fake news, we cry, at any story we don’t like. Being trusting feels naive. Trusting feels naive and possibly even dangerous.

But there it is. In all our relationships, without trust, we do not truly connect.

Ernest Hemingway, a guy to whom I don’t usually look for advice, said that the best way to find out if you can trust anybody is to trust them. Just jump in. 

Trust starts with understanding and believing in goodness but then we just have to do it. Our Bible stories are all about God being good, being trustworthy, loving us no matter what, unconditionally, and saving us no matter how badly we mess up. Such a God is trustworthy, all of our stories say, although you and I know that there are times when God seems far away and baffling. But still. God is good and God is love.

And with people, well, that’s even harder. It is hard to believe that those with whom I strongly disagree are also made in God’s image and therefore might be intrinsically good. It’s hard to believe that those so different from me might be ok to connect with. It’s hard to believe that basically people are trying the best they can and so deserve my empathy rather than my scorn or disapproval when I think they are making the wrong choices.It is hard to be trusting in our world that warns us at every turn not only not to trust but to be positively afraid of each other.

And we see every day the fruit of that fear. 

But we are called to something else. Jesus is countercultural, his voice stands over against the sound and fury of the wind and the waves and the world that calls us to fear. Jesus calls us to love God and love one another, to build up the community and not to tear it down, to repair the breaches between us and not to widen them. 

This is hard, hard work, being a disciples of Jesus, this loving and trusting and building up and repairing and bringing new life. We are meant to honor the divine in one another and there are days my heart sinks and I just don’t think I can do it. 

But Jesus sent out his followers two by two. We are meant to be companions to one another in this work. It’s not up to me alone or you alone but you and me together to build a community of trust, right here, to build many communities of trust in this beautiful and broken world. 

And, Lord help us, I cannot imagine a better time to begin that holy work than right now.