A homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 18, 2022
Am 8:4-7, 1 Tm 2:1-8, Lk 16:10-13
Trust.
It’s at the heart of every relationship: personal, business or governmental. It underpins every transaction.
It’s the first byword of the Boy Scout Law: A Scout is trustworthy.
A trust — a structure that manages finances for someone or some group — ensures stability and security in perpetuity.
And speaking of finances, even our money says simply, “In God We Trust.”
Trust is an absolute.
And yet, we’ve shaded it through the years.
Nuclear-arms-reduction treaties gave us the perverted notion of “Trust But Verify.”
People whose trust was betrayed will offer to trust their betrayer again in some things, but not all things. A handshake with fingers on the other hand crossed behind their back.
Is any of that, or any similar scenarios we can imagine, trust?
Truly trust?
In team-building exercises at work, we’re asked to close our eyes and fall backward, trusting that someone will be there to catch us.
In our living rooms, we’re asked to trust that what we’re being told by our leaders and by their mouthpieces is true and that they will stop us from falling into disarray.
In our houses of worship and under starry skies, we’re asked to trust that there’s a plan for us and that it’s for our own good.
In God we trust?
Everywhere, always, we’re asked to trust. Trust in the safety of bridges and elevators and skyscrapers. Trust doctors and nurses and our military and first responders.
Trust is the core of relationships. Trust is an absolute. Trust has to be absolute.
Without trust, or with a trust betrayed, we’re paralyzed. Life becomes mere existence.
Trust or mistrust. Yes or no. Black or white; no gray.
That being said, trust can grow. Proper trust does not get deeper — if trust is absolute, it’s as deep as it can get — but trust grows wider.
As Scripture tells us today:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones …”
Trusting someone gains us an insight into their character, into their skills, into their likes and dislikes and their overall personality. Trust is a doorway into other people’s lives. And into our own.
Two-way trust allows us to open ourselves, to reveal ourselves, to take a chance that what we shine a light onto will stay private if necessary, or will be appreciated as part of who we are and where we are in our journey and not be ridiculed or otherwise criticized.
To trust is a leap of faith, and for us humans, it’s often terrifying. But we have God’s grace to catch us as we fall backward in that exercise.
God catches us, every day, every hour, every millisecond of our lives.
In God we can trust.
Can God trust us to be true to the Law of Love? Because God really wants to.
