B Cycle – 16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time 24

Eph. 2:13-18

Children trust their parents will always be there for them.  Lovers believe the one they love will always love and overlook their faults. We trust friends will not betray the secrets we share.  Yet we know parents can and do fail their children, lovers betray the one they love, and friends do reveal our secrets. The experts tell us what we lack in our emotional upbringing will motivate us to seek to fill what we lacked: affirmation, attention, love, security, approval and belonging.  

Yet we hesitate to reveal those needs because we hesitate to reveal our deficiencies.  We do not trust others with our secrets.  Instinctively our human nature teaches us people we love will disappoint us.  We do not begin life that way.  As infants we are dependent on our parents for everything. Trust grows as our needs are taken care of and it continues to grow until somewhere in our childhood we learn a different lesson about trust.  Our parents teach us not to trust strangers and not to venture alone into isolated places.  We are encouraged to be bold while still being cautious.  To approach life and relationships with some degree of awareness.

That approach to life is normal and applauded.  However, when it comes to our faith being cautious is a barrier that prevent us from experiencing the life God desires us to experience.  In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul speaks about a “dividing wall” between us and God.  That wall is caused by our lack of understanding about God’s love for us and how we react to our sin and our lack of understanding the death of Jesus. Because we do not understand it, we do not trust God’s goodness and that prevents us from experiencing the healing presence of Christ in our lives.  Saul of Tarsus was not aware of that dividing wall until he encountered Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. 

Saul’s blindness was real, but it was also a spiritual blindness.  His vision and the eyes of his heart were opened by the prayers of Ananias (Acts 9).  I invite you to read that chapter in Acts because in it we are shown what we need to overcome that dividing wall between us and God.  What we need for a spiritual awakening.  Ananias did not want to pray over Saul, but he overcame those fears by trusting in God. When life is crumbling around us it is hard to trust God’s promises.  Life has taught us to be cautious.  A child enters a new school expecting to make new friends but instead of being welcomed they are ignored.   Life has taught us to be self-reliant and to be extremely cautious when entering new relationships. Yet, that is what God is inviting us to enter with Himself, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

How did King David learn to trust God so completely he voiced it in psalm twenty-three.  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  Really, how can you place your trust in God when your spouse, your best friend or your father betrayed you.  How can you trust when life is full of pain, suffering and filled with people seeking to take advantage of your trust?  Our ability to trust anyone is earned by them not betraying us.  Has God done enough to allow us to give Him our complete trust?  If our belief in God is founded on our knowledge of God, it will never be enough to trust His promise of salvation.  We need to know Him and to feel His embrace as Paul felt it that day. 

Paul is telling us our image of God is based on the law and judgement.  Measured by that standard we do not believe we are not pleasing God and avoid any encounter with Christ. Our experiences of rejection and betrayal had not equipped us to feel God’s love.  We approach God with doubt, confusion, and uncertainty.  We know our short comings and hope God is merciful rather than believe we will experience His embrace of forgiveness as did the prodigal.    

David’s life as King was not easy.  He was in exile for years, reviled by his brothers, rejected by his wife, guilty of murder and we know his sin very well.  Yet he wrote, “…only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life.”  How can we overcome all the tragedies of life and still say, “God is my fortress and stronghold in whom I trust?”  The answer is we must become what Jesus told us to become and that is to be like little children.  Yes, we must let go of our desires for self-control and just open ourselves to be loved by God, nurtured by God, and allow Him to reset our soul back to its original state. 

Our mantra must become psalm twenty-three and we must repeat it each day, each night and never allow life’s ups and downs to change our trust in God.  We need to encounter Christ in sacrament and in the Word and in our prayers.  We need to invite the Spirit into our lives and pray for it to fill our hearts with the “love of God.”   Once we begin this journey as children, we need to allow the Spirit to take our hand and lead us into the heart of God, to understand the significance of the cross. To feel our sin being removed and the penalty of our sin lifted.  To have our guilt tossed into the sea and to become new creations is Christ.      

Once we experience the freedom of children and the healing power of God infusing us everything changes.  We can worship freely. We trust because we know the promise of God is that He will give strength to the weary (Is.40:29) and renew our strength each day (Is.40:31).  We will overcome all that comes to destroy our trust as we know we are living according to His will.