5th Sunday of Easter
May 14, 2017
Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31; John 14:1-14
Did
you ever play that trust game in youth group? Or watch others play it? I’m
talking about the one where you have everyone in two lines, facing each other
and with their arms out, and one person has to fall backwards into their arms,
trusting that their friends will catch them? Anyone played that? Familiar with
that game? How’d it turn out when you watched it or played it? Did you catch
the person? I remember playing it one time in youth group when I was in middle
school and thinking how cool it was that together we could catch this person
that individually none of us would be able to on our own. And then it was my
turn. [Pause.] They didn’t catch me. I fell. To be fair, it wasn’t completely
their fault. When I fell backward, I was so confident that they’d catch me that
I became completely deadweight and so I was heavier than they’d expected. The
game works better when you’re a little less trusting and so you hold your body
a little more rigid; it makes you easier to catch. But the whole point is to
trust that they’ll catch you. I trusted; I leaned all my weight on them!
In
the book of Proverbs it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean
not on your own understanding.”[1] We
are supposed to lean all our weight on
God, trusting God completely to catch us. The opening lines of our Gospel
passage this morning has Jesus telling his disciples, “Do not let your hearts
be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”[2] Except
in the contemporary translation that Piney Grove uses, Jesus says, “Don’t be troubled.
Trust in God. Trust also in me.”[3] We
talked a couple weeks ago about believe; today we’re going to focus on trust.
Trust in God. Trust also in Jesus. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and
do not rely on what you think you know. Trust
God. A couple months ago Piney Grove handed out pins to all their leaders
that say just that, Trust God. Here’s
mine.
After
Jesus tells his disciples not to worry, he says that famous I am statement, “I
am the way, the truth, and the life.” I’m not asking this morning if you believe that; I’m asking this morning if
you trust that. Do you trust Jesus is
the way, the truth, and the life? Do you lean your whole weight on Jesus, and
not on what you think you know? The second part of that proverb says, “In all
your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”[4]
So,
first, trust God will show you the way
to take. Trust God, acknowledge him, “remember the Lord in everything you
do and he will show you the right way.”[5]
There’s a promise God speaks through the prophet Isaiah that “when you turn to
the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you,
saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’”[6] If
you wander off the path, if you stray to one side or the other, you will hear a
voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way. Follow this way.’ God tells us the right way to go, through
his word, through each other, through prayer. And God shows us the way we should go, through his love that we see in each
other, through his image reflected in us, through the example set by the saints
who have gone before us. God will
show you the path to take. Trust
that.
Don’t
be like the Israelites, who even after having been saved from slavery in Egypt,
after having survived 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, after having
reached the Promised Land, at the point of literally looking from the edge of
the wilderness into the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey, they refuse to go in it! This is all
described in Deuteronomy 1. They are at the edge of the Promised Land. God has
set it before them. God has brought them to it. Their years of wandering are
over. Their years of exodus are over. God sets this beautiful land before them
and tells them to go on in [pause], and they say no. God has kept his promise,
and they say no. Moses says, “The Lord your God, who goes before you, is the
one who will fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, and in the wilderness, where you saw how
the Lord your God carried you, just as one carries a child, all the way that
you traveled until you reached this place. But in spite of this, you have no trust in the Lord your God,
who goes before you on the way to seek out a place for you to camp, in fire by
night, and in the cloud by day, to show you the route you should take.”[7]
God took care of them. God rescued them from Pharaoh. They saw with their own
eyes God do marvelous signs and miracles. And even though God kept all his
promises to his people, the Israelites did not trust God. And even while they
were not trusting God, God was still
going before them, showing them the way they should go and the path to take.
You see, God doesn’t give up on us. God’s patience wears thin, but it never
wears out completely. Even when we don’t trust God to show us what to do, God is still showing us what to do. There’s
a reason Jesus makes the comment later on, “Let those with ears to hear,
listen!” It’s because a lot of people with ears, a lot of people who are
capable of listening, don’t listen.
You,
also, are capable of listening. You have ears. Listen! Listen to what Jesus is
saying to you. Listen to all the promises God has kept to his people. You can trust him. And, you can trust him
with every area of your life. Because
I know, it’s easy to say, “Oh, I do trust him. He’s brought me through so
much.” Well, good. You trust him with certain areas of your life. But if you
trusted him completely, then you wouldn’t try to be self-made. You wouldn’t try
to be self-sufficient and do everything on your own. You wouldn’t gamble and
try to provide for yourself, when God provides everything you need. Trust God to show you the way. If you
don’t feel like he’s doing it, if you feel like you’re listening and all you’re
getting is static, then keep listening. Keep praying. An answer will come from
somewhere. Sometimes the answer is to start down a path, and then God will give
you feedback about whether that’s the right path or whether his way is more a
little over here. Pray for discernment. Ask God to show you the way. Ask God to
show you Jesus. Trust Jesus. Lean your whole weight on him, and not on what you
think you know.
Second,
trust God’s truth. God’s truth is
not always what we want to be true.
It’s not always what we want to hear. Sometimes we don’t like the answers we
get to our prayers. I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to move up here from
North Carolina. I know I didn’t want
to leave behind my support network. But God said, don’t be afraid. Go. I will
be with you. I’ve spent the past three years rebuilding my support network, and
now it will change again some as we move again. We don’t always like what God
tells us. We don’t always want to be charitable toward our neighbor. Most of us
would much rather hold on to our grudges and our list of how a certain person
has wronged us. And God says, let it go. Yet why does God say, let it go?
Because it’s healthier for us. We’ve got to let go of past wrongs, past sins,
and past hurts in order to be healthy now. God wants what’s best for us, and
holding on to the past is not what’s best for us. Trust God’s truth, even when
you don’t like it. Even when it’s inconvenient, because it means you have to do
something you don’t want to do, or something you’re not used to doing. You
might have to change your habits!
Yet
we know this. We know we need to spend time with God every day, to nurture that
relationship. We know we should read God’s word every day, yet how many of us
do that? (I expect our leaders to all say yes, by the way.) So, when you get
stuck on remembering what God has said or discerning which path God wants you
to follow, turn back to the Bible, back to what you know God has said. Maybe
write it down in your own hand. Keep a prayer journal. Or get one of those
adult coloring books that’s based on Bible verses. Write out a verse you need
to hear on an index card and tape it to your bathroom mirror. That’s how I
could dig up that random Isaiah verse about God saying, “This is the way. Walk
in it.” For a season in my life I had that verse on an index card taped on the
wall next to my bed. I read it in a devotional and it spoke to me so much at
the time that I wrote it out to remind myself. You can’t trust the truth of God
if you don’t know it, if you don’t remember it, if you don’t have ways to
remind yourself. Trust what God says, and I happen to think God really likes it
when we write down what God says.
God
says he is the way, the truth, and the life. Our opening prayer this morning
this morning began, “Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.”[8] So,
finally, trust that to know God is
everlasting life. Our first reading today was about Stephen’s death.
Stephen is considered the first Christian martyr, the first one recorded to be
killed for believing in Jesus and refusing to recant that belief. While the
authorities were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, accept my life.”[9]
Stephen knew that to know Jesus is life, and so come what may, we don’t need to
be afraid of it. To quote from today’s psalm, “our times are in your hand,
Lord.”[10]
Our times are in God’s hands, not in our own. The verse before that one says, “I
trust in you, O Lord, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand.” I
trust in God. We trust in God. That means our life is in God’s hands and
knowing that God holds us in his hands means we don’t need to be scared about
when our life will end or worry about change or be afraid of endings.
I
know there is some anxiety over my leaving and a new pastor coming. I have anxiety about moving! And I know
I shouldn’t. I know that my times are in God’s hands, and if I truly trust
that, then God will work out all those details and there will be answers to all
my questions. St. Julian of Norwich from the 14th century wrote, “All
shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” I
trust that all shall be well. I choose to trust that, even during times that
don’t seem so well. I trust, because my times are in God’s hand, that all shall
be well. For a more recent quote, from last century, well, 1983 to be exact, is
a song that Christian artist Michael W. Smith wrote when some good friends
moved away. The refrain says, “And friends are friends forever, If the Lord's
the Lord of them. And a friend will not say never, 'Cause the welcome will not
end. Though it's hard to let you go, In the Father's hands we know, That a
lifetime's not too long, To live as friends.” Trust that. A lifetime’s not too
long, because our times are in God’s hands. Because Jesus is the way, the
truth, and the life. Trust God. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in
God. Believe also in Jesus. Lean your whole weight on him, whether today is a
happy day or a sad day, lean on him in all that you do, and he will show you
the path to follow. All shall be well.
May
God give us the grace and the courage to trust him with every fiber of our
being and with every area of our lives. Amen.
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