Week of Proper 7: Monday, Year 1

Above: Abraham’s Departure, by Molnar Jozsef (1850)

Trusting in God

JUNE 26, 2023

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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Genesis 12:1-9 (An American Translation):

The LORD said to Abram,

Leave your land, your relatives, and your father’s home, for the land that I will show you; and I will make a great nation of you; I will bless you, and make your name so great that it will be used for blessings.  I will bless those who bless you, and anyone who curses you I will curse; through you shall all the families of the earth invoke blessings on one another.

So Abram departed, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him.  Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.  Abram took his wife Sarai and his nephew Lot, with all the property that they had accumulated, and the persons they had acquired in Haran, and they started out for the land of Canaan; and to the land of Canaan they came.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the sanctuary of Shechem at the terebinth of Moreh, the Canaanites being then in the land.  Then the LORD appeared to Abram, and said,

To your descendants I am going to give this land.

So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.  From there he moved on to the hills east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.  There he built an altar to the LORD, and called upon the name of the LORD.  Then Abram set out, continuing on his way to the Negeb.

Psalm 33:12-22 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

12 Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD!

happy the people he has chosen to be his own!

13 The LORD looks down from heaven,

and beholds all the people in the world.

14 From where he sits enthroned he turns his gaze

on all who dwell on the earth.

15 He fashions all the hearts of them

and understands all their works.

16 There is no king that can be saved by a mighty army;

a strong man is not delivered by his great strength.

17 The horse is a vain hope for deliverance;

for all its strength it cannot save.

18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is upon those who fear him,

on those who wait upon his love,

19 To pluck their lives from death,

and to feed them in time of famine.

20 Our soul waits for the LORD;

he is our help and our shield.

21 Indeed, our heart rejoices in him,

for in his holy name we put our trust.

22 Let your loving-kindness, O LORD, be upon us,

as we have put our trust in you.

Matthew 7:1-5 (An American Translation):

[Jesus continued,]

Pass no more judgments upon other people, so that you may not have judgment passed upon you.  For you will be judged by the standard you judge by, and men will pay you back with the same measure you have used with them.  Why do you keep looking at the speck in your brother’s eye, and pay no attention to the beam that is in your own?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Just let me get that speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a beam in your own?  You hypocrite!  First get the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see to get the speck out of your brother’s eye.

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The Collect:

O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

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I hear and read people use the words “faith” and “believe” in reference to God.  But what do they mean?  I do not know, unless they stop to explain, but I know what I mean.  Just to be clear, faith is active trust in God, that God will keep divine promises.  Actions demonstrate faith.  Faith and belief are identical in my mind.  To believe in God is to trust in God, not merely to accept the existence of God intellectually.

Abram trusted and believed in God as he understood God.  One ought not to assume that Abram belonged to the cult of Yahweh, which originated after his lifetime.  No, Abram was almost certainly a polytheist, a description which applied to most people on the planet at the time.  And the voice that directed him to leave Ur (located somewhere in Mesopotamia; scholars disagree where in the land between the rivers) for Haran then to Canaan belonged to the deity Abram knew as El Shaddai (God of the Mountains).  This was a Mesopotamian and Canaanite god.  El was, in fact, the chief of the Canaanite pantheon the Elohim, or “mighty ones.”  And study of the Bible tells me that Elohim was another early name used for God.  Monotheism is a recent development in the history of religion, and Judaism has never included the doctrine of the Trinity.

(I am a history buff, and this fact does inform my approach to the Bible.)

Anyhow, subsequent tradition associated Yahweh with El Shaddai and Elohim.  And the author of this part of Genesis used the sacred name Yahweh for the deity who spoke to Abram.  Most importantly, Abram listened and obeyed.  He left everything he knew and ventured into the unknown.  He could have stayed home and been comfortable, but he obeyed the voice.

Jesus, in this day’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount, says not to judge others.  Our information is partial, but God knows everything.  So judgment belongs to God.  Each of us has judged others, and perhaps only those who will die immediately will not judge others again.  So we have committed this sin, and will do so again.  We might even be doing it now.  And I am at least as bad about this as are many other people.

So I address myself as much as anyone else when I write that judging others demonstrates a lack of trust in God, that God will keep divine promises.  Do I believe–trust–that someone who has done something terrible to me has thwarted God’s plan for my life, for example?  Do I doubt that God is in control?  Apparently I do, and I am not alone.  We all need more trust in God.  And, by grace, it is available.

Thanks be to God!

KRT

http://blogatheologica.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/trusting-in-god/