In whom do you put your trust?

by Steve Elde

Text: Psalm 146

While I was in seminary, students and faculty took retreats together at Covenant Harbor in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We got out of the classroom, sat at table together, rested and played, reflected on the scriptures together, prayed and worshiped together, and got to know each other. One experience that brought us closer together was the ropes course. Some parts were more challenging than others. We climbed to the high platform, strapped on a harness that was connected by a pulley to a rope held by someone below, then walked across a rope bridge, trusting that those below would hold us if we lost our footing and started to plummet toward the earth. Not for the faint of heart.

That was nothing compared to another element on the course. It didn’t look like much. A tree stump stood several feet high. Steps were carved in its side. From below, it looked like nothing. We discovered, however, that the ground looked very different from the top of the stump. It was a long way down. There were nine of us in the group. Eight stood below, facing each other in two lines, our arms outstretched and interlaced. Each of us, in turn, climbed the stump, stood at its edge with our back to those waiting below, then fell backwards into their arms. It seemed simple enough. It wasn’t.

It was terrifying. A few of my classmates climbed the stump ahead of me. When they hesitated, I thought, “What’s the big deal?” “Just lean back and let go.” Then I climbed the stump. Looking down, I understood. I turned my back on them and closed my eyes. I hesitated. How could I be sure that they would catch me? What if they dropped me? What if I hit the ground? I could not shake my fear. Falling backwards, it turned out, was not as simple as I had thought. “Take your time,” someone said. “We’ll catch you.” “You’ll be alright.” “Whenever you’re ready…” “We’re here!” I stood there for what seemed like a long time, but it was actually only a few seconds. Then, leaning back, I let go. Gravity took over. It was exhilarating, and, for a moment, absolutely terrifying. For a split second, my head was lower than my feet and I thought, “I’m going to die.” Then came the strong, gentle embrace of those waiting for me. I looked up into their faces. They were smiling at me. “You did it!” someone said. “Good for you!” It’s a “trust fall.” Maybe you have done it. Once you have gone over the edge of the stump, the next time is easier.

Trust is at the heart of our relationship with God. Faith is trusting. Like that fall backwards from the stump, faith allows you to let go, to hope against the odds, sometimes against all common sense, that there will be arms to hold you when you need them the most. “We do not hope for what we see,” Paul said. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” we read in Hebrews. It starts with letting go when we cannot see.

“Trust” appears only once in Psalm 146, in verse three. There it is a word of caution. But it permeates the whole psalm. The Hebrew is batach. It describes a trust that is complete. With batach, you let your guard down. You entrust your life to another, someone worthy of your trust. You can reveal who you are, your strengths, your weaknesses, your fears, your doubts, your hopes. You lay them out there. You are vulnerable. To trust is to risk.

The psalmist tells us, “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help…When they breathe their last breath, they return to the earth; on that very day all their plans perish; they come to nothing.” Be careful whom you trust, especially the people you trust. People disappoint you. People make promises and break them. Some people will take what is precious and destroy it, they will tear you to pieces, as Jesus said. Don’t give to people the trust that belongs only to God.

But those who trust completely in God will not be disappointed. “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” That word “happy” (esher) is also translated “blessed.” I like “blessed.” It describes something deep, something lasting. Put your hope in the Lord, trust the Lord, and you will find blessing.

Why is it hard to trust? Once burned, you remember the pain. Trust betrayed is not forgotten. You can’t unremember. We are wired this way so we won’t get hurt again. We learn the hard way. We remember those times when trust has been broken. We catalog them, in spite of ourselves. It happens every day, in our life and work, with people we thought we knew.

Four words, “May I help you?” can trigger two words, “Just looking!” They are a defense against trusting too much, fed by memories of getting ripped off. “Caveat emptor.” “Let the buyer beware.”

Friendships are broken, marriages come apart, because of broken trust. For six years I was staff facilitator for divorce recovery support at University Presbyterian Church. Every Monday evening people whose trust had been broken, and some who themselves had broken a trust, gathered to tell their stories, to listen, to ask hard questions in a safe place, to weep, to rage, to sit in stunned silence, picking up the pieces. Betrayed trust is painful.

Eight years ago our whole financial system became an insider’s game of short selling and junk mortgages and unsecured debt that collapsed under its own weight and devoured people’s pension funds and life savings and nearly destroyed the economy. We’re still picking up the pieces. We were snookered. No one likes to be snookered.

And then there is politics. Everyone wants us to trust them. Sydney Harris, a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, once suggested that when it comes to electing presidents, we look for people who will give us over-simplified answers, justify our ways, castigate our enemies, vindicate our selfishness and make us feel better. We trust them. Then our trust is betrayed. “Put no trust in princes...” Israel didn’t have a great record with its kings. Few were worthy of trust. David betrayed a trust when he sent Uriah to the front lines to be killed so he could have his wife. David thought he had gotten away with it until Nathan blew the lid off of the whole thing.

In Galatians Paul acknowledges his dark past, when he “violently persecuted the church of God and was trying to destroy it” and then, having had a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, did a 180. It was difficult for some to trust him. “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.” Hard to believe.

In Luke 7, John the Baptist doesn’t quite know what to make of Jesus, isn’t sure he is the real deal, not sure he can trust him: “Are you the one who is to come?” In John’s Gospel, Phillip tells Nathaniel he has found the one of whom the prophets wrote. Nathaniel asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Or, “Can I trust this guy?”

When you have been ripped off, when you have been betrayed, when you have hoped and been disappointed, believed and been hurt, you become cynical. “Never again,” we tell ourselves. Misplaced trust can make us hard, bitter. So the psalmist tells us to be careful, not to put faith in those who are sure to disappoint us.

“Be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it,” Mark Twain said, “or be like a cat that sits on a hot stove. It will never sit on a hot stove again…but it will also never sit on a cold one.”

Here it is, when you have been burned, that the mercy, love and grace of God come in, and, with them, forgiveness and hope. To forgive when you have been hurt deeply, to love again when you have been betrayed, to show mercy to those who do not deserve it, requires a deeper kind of trust. When our trust lies in ruins, God can pick up the pieces and restore what has been broken. But we must let go. Nothing is beyond redemption. No one is beyond redemption. No one wants to get hurt again. But we need not live in fear, our present determined by a broken past, our life a broken record that keeps playing the same thing over and over again. At the heart of the Gospel is this: What was need not determine what is, and what is need not determine what will be.

Let go of those who are no longer worthy of your trust. Let go of your disappointments. Let go of those who have disappointed you. We may believe we can change the outcome, change those who have broken our trust. We can’t. We can only speak truth in love, then let go, giving to God what we cannot change.

To start all over again, to learn to trust again, requires that we climb to the top of the stump, lean backward into our fears and fall into the arms of the God who waits to catch us. Learning to trust again is the stuff of death and resurrection. From the death of broken trust can rise a stronger faith, not dependent on people who have betrayed us, but on the God who alone is trustworthy, who looks out for us.

The Lord gives justice to the oppressed, food to the hungry, sets the prisoner free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are crushed down. The Lord loves those who do what is right, watches over strangers, looks out for those who are forgotten, used and abused. But the wicked the Lord brings to ruin. Those who snooker will get snookered. From Psalm 37: “Do not envy the wicked. They will soon fade like grass. Trust in the Lord and do good. Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. He will vindicate you...and make the justice of your cause shine like the noonday sun.”

Ultimate trust, complete trust, batach, belongs to God alone. God does not, will not, break that trust. God remains faithful, whatever comes. That is the promise. And we are in

good company. Jesus was betrayed and denied by those closest to him, but remained faithful, steadfast to the end. The cross is the most radical expression of trust. In Jesus, batach (trust) and esher (blessing) come together. He gives them freely to us. We need only to let go, to take the plunge into the grace and mercy of God, knowing that God keeps his word and will take us through.

How can we trust again when trust has been broken? It begins with remembering, then taking little steps, one at a time to the top of the stump. Think of an experience in your life when trust was broken, a trust that remains broken. Might have been yesterday, might be 20 years ago, but it still holds you. You can hold onto it, or, in your freedom, you can let it go, giving it and those who have betrayed your trust to God. You can’t forget it but you can ask God for the grace to forgive. And if you have broken a trust, acknowledge it. If you can, find the person whose trust you betrayed and seek forgiveness. What was need not determine what is or what will be. Take the plunge backwards into the mercy and grace of God. Then live true to your word, faithful to every trust.

“Blessed are those whose hope is in the Lord…” the psalmist says, and, we can add “…who have learned to let go.” “The Lord will reign forever…for all generations. Praise the Lord!” Amen.