What Are You Doing, She Asks?

Trust Me

Psalm 46:1-11

John 14:1-3; 15-21

I would like you to imagine that it is a bright sunny spring day and as you look out your front door, you notice that your neighbor’s garage door is opening. A moment later, your neighbor walks out carrying a ladder which he quickly sets up against the side of the house. Then, making sure that it is secure, he begins to climb up to the roof. His wife, who is inside, sees what is happening and she quickly runs out the front door.

“What are you doing,” she asks?

“I’m going to clean out the gutters.”

“I don’t think that is a good idea. You’ve never done that before and you’re not the most stable person on ladder.”

“How hard can it be,” he replies?

“I still think it would be better if we called someone.”

“Trust me,” he says. “I know what I am doing. I watched a YouTube video.”

As his wife walks back into the house shaking her head, because she can’t bear to watch, you know that she is thinking, “Famous last words.” And though you can no longer see her, you know that she has picked up the telephone and dialed the first two numbers of 911, just in case.

We cringe a little when we hear those words, “Trust me, I know what I am doing.” Because, in our minds, we are already imagining the worst. Like, when your child pulls out the cutting board and a very large chef’s knife in order to cut up a very small apple. In a panic, you immediately rush over and say, “Why don’t you let me help you with that.” To which the child replies, “Trust me, I know what I am doing.” And, in that moment you discover a very uncomfortable truth. If you’re going to trust the other person, then you have to give up control of the situation and place it in the other person’s hands. That is a hard thing to do, even when that other person is Jesus.

In the fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus begins to tell the disciples that he is going to be leaving them. He is going to be leaving them in two ways. The first way that Jesus is going to leave them is when he takes up the cross to die for our sins. Jesus has told the disciples this is getting ready to happen, but they do not understand what it means. The second way that Jesus is going to leave them is going to take place after the resurrection. After the resurrection, Jesus is going to return to the Father. This is new to the disciples and they are not ready to hear it. After three years of walking with Jesus and talking with Jesus, seeing his miracles, witnessing his healings, slowly comprehending his teachings, the disciples are going to be on their own, to carry forth Jesus’ ministry.

Now, Jesus has sent his disciples out on their own before to do ministry. He sent them out in groups of two in order to carry the message that the Kingdom of God was at hand. The disciples were given authority to cast out demons and to heal in Jesus’ name. Yet, they always knew that they were going to be coming back to Jesus after being away for a couple of weeks. This time, there would be no coming back to Jesus. Instead, they were going to have to wait for Jesus to come back to them, except that they had no idea when that was going to be. In the meantime, they were going to be on their own. Well, not really. Eventually, they will learn that the Holy Spirit will come and be with them, but Jesus will not be with them anymore, at least not in the way that he was with them at that moment. No doubt there was a look of great concern and anxiety on the faces of the disciples, to which Jesus replied, “Trust me. I know what I am doing.”

I wonder if we have heard these same words from Jesus in our own lives. I am willing to guess that if we have, it has been during those times when our faith has been put to the test, like when the doors of our life all seem to be closing right before our eyes and as we look around, we can’t find the open window. We turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, what are you doing?” The only reply we hear is, “Trust me.”

“Trust me,” is what Jesus says to us when the doctor calls to say that the test results are in and they are not what she had hoped. “Trust me,” is what Jesus says when we turn on the news and we hear report after report of a world continuing to be wracked by violence and chaos. As Ali reminded us last week when I asked her the question, “What do you find to be some of the challenges to faith?” and she pointed to all the bad things that go on in our world. Of course, we also hear Jesus say, “Trust me,” when we are standing at the grave side of one we love, trying to say goodbye, even though we don’t want to let go.

Trusting Jesus is the heart of our faith. As a matter of fact, my professor in seminary told us that wherever we see the word “faith” in the Bible, we can just substitute the word “trust” and we will begin to understand what faith is all about. To trust Jesus is to give up control of any situation in our lives and place it in his hands. And, that is hard to do, because that requires a willingness in our part to accept whatever Jesus decides to do, even if Jesus decides to do nothing.

We pray for someone to get well, and they only get sicker. We pray for a situation at work to improve and it only gets worse. We pray for our children to be kept safe and we get the dreaded call late at night that there has been an accident. We scream out to Jesus, “Do something.” And Jesus replies, “Trust me.” But, who does Jesus think he is to ask us to “Trust him?”

In a magazine called Weavings there is an article by Michael Downey called, “Care-fully Letting Be.” He writes that sometimes the situations of life “invite us to give up a naïve view of God as one who intervenes in human affairs like a traffic cop redirecting traffic so as to avoid a collision.” He goes on to write, “God doesn’t enter the world like a Hollywood hero who rescues the innocent, the helpless, the wayward at the last minute by daring [tricks] or superior force.” Instead of choosing to correct our waywardness or fix the [ugliness] of human life, God chooses instead to walk with us in the midst of them. This is in keeping with the words of the Apostle Paul.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes that Jesus, “Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.”

The Jesus who asks us to “Trust him,” is the Jesus who washed the dirty, stinky feet of his disciples. This is the same Jesus who defied the cultural expectations of the day in order to reach out to the woman at the well, the Garasene demoniac, and the leper who had been outcast from the community. This is the Jesus who was mocked and ridiculed for hanging out with sinners. This is the Jesus who, as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, is a high priest able to sympathize with our weaknesses because he has walked in our shoes. This is the Jesus who took up the cross for the salvation of the world, and after the resurrection, this is the same Jesus who made a promise to us that he would be with us always to the close of the age. This is the Jesus who says to us, “Trust me.”

Jesus invites us to trust him, not because he is going to snap his fingers and instantly fix everything. Nor, will Jesus feel compelled to make sense for us everything that happens in our lives. Instead, Jesus invites us to trust him because he is and always will be with us. His love for us took him all the way to the cross, through the grave, and back to the Father. Jesus has called us to be his own, and taking us by the hand, he will not let us go. He will walk with us through all the ups and downs of life, all the way into eternity. This is the Jesus who says, “Trust me.”