More Trustworthy Than Tacos--September 22, 2021

More Trustworthy Than Tacos--September 22, 2021

"By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel." [Hebrews 11:28]

To live by faith is to trust things to work even when we don't understand how they work, and to have the humility enough to acknowledge they can do their function with or without my understanding.  It requires being able to say, "I don't know how this does what it's supposed to do, but I have reason to trust that it does." And to live by faith in God, then, is the capacity to be able to say, "I don't know how you'll do it, or what you're up to, God, but I trust you to do what I cannot comprehend."

That shouldn't be controversial, honestly, because we place our trust every day in countless things without really grasping how they work or why they do.  I can't really explain how tiny controlled explosions under my car's hood get me to work without blowing me up, but I trust my little sedan to get me on the road safely every morning and every evening.  I have almost no clue about how my smart phone knows when I've moved or turned direction just a few feet and can give me directions, but I trust it to get me to places I've never gone before.  And aside from a foggy recollection from high school biology about sugars and chemical energy, I'm not really clear on how my body takes a taco and turns it into new muscle or skin cells and a supply of energy to get through the day.  I don't know how tacos work, but I keep putting them in my body, because, well, I have faith that food keeps me alive, even when I don't really understand the mechanics of it.

We could add to that list everything from how ibuprofen helps alleviate a headache or muscle pain for me, or the MMR shot I had to get back in seventh grade in order to go to school, or the COVID vaccination I got back in the spring.  I don't really understand, beyond the very simplest level, how these chemical concoctions work--but the question, really, is whether I have reason to trust that they will, along with tacos, GPS on a smart phone, and the internal combustion engine.  

Now, certainly, to be sure, every one of those things I regularly put my trust in can let me down in some ways.  Sometimes a spark plug needs to be replaced and the car's engine doesn't get me where I'm supposed to go.  Sometimes GPS makes a mistake and tells me, curiously, "Recalculating... recalculating."  If I take too many Advil over too short a time I could do serious damage to my liver, and sure, I could still get a COVID diagnosis even if I've gotten the shot.  Even tacos can let you down--or have you running from the table with urgent indigestion--if you get a bad taco.  But you get the gist--because each of these regular parts of our lives have shown themselves dependable, I trust them.  I have faith that each of these things will do what it is supposed to do, apart from whether I truly understand how they work.

That's the kind of faith Moses had to have--and to nurture in a whole nation of his people--when God describes the Passover to him.  Seriously, this idea would sound like nonsense to anybody who didn't trust the God speaking the instructions: "You kill a lamb, and take its blood and put it on your doorposts, and then eat the lamb for you dinner... and while you're eating inside, I'll be striking down the firstborn of everyone in Egypt, but when I see the blood on your doorposts, I won't kill any of you.  You know, because of the blood."  No one had ever seen anything like that, and for that matter, no one had ever seen a plague like God was announcing, that would kill the firstborn in every family!  There had to have been some people whose initial response was, "I don't even believe this plague stuff is real!  There's not going to be a death of the firstborn, because this is all made up. So I'm sure not going to go put lamb's blood on my doorpost over such an outlandish story!"

But Moses trusted, and he convinced the people to trust him as well, even though they really didn't know how to explain what was about to happen, and even though they didn't have a way of understanding what was in the lamb's blood that would make it able to prevent them from dying. That's hard--maybe it even sounds impossible.  But when you trust the one who is telling you to do something, even if you don't understand how it will work, you trust what they tell you to do.

Now, it's true that there are lots of messages thrown at us every day, all with a product to sell us, and they are not all worthy of your trust or mine.  From the endless medications and their long lists of side-effects on TV and internet ads, to the all-too-often empty promises of political candidates and parties, we are constantly having to weigh and sift the claims made to us and then have to decide which are trustworthy and which are selling snake-oil.  But when you have reason to believe someone is trustworthy, then yes, be prepared to trust even when you understand how it will work.  Trust, even when you don't know what the point is.  Trust, even if you can't explain or predict what comes next.  When you know you are in the care of someone trustworthy, that's what you do.  That's how faith works.

Today it is surely worth being smart and reflective about which voices and promises you'll trust.  Absolutely.  But if you have found the living God to be trustworthy, then, yeah, let's do what the living God leads us to do, even if sometimes we don't know how it works, or what God will accomplish, or if we can't see the endgame of all of it.  Maybe we don't have to know how something works in order to trust that it does.  The question is whether the One in whom we place our faith is worthy of it.

God is.  God is even more trustworthy than tacos. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Lord God, give us the courage and humility to faith in you even when we don't see what you're up to, and show yourself to be worthy of our trust in this day.