WHO DO YOU TRUST?
Jeremiah 17: 5-10
LUKE 6: 17-26
FEBRUARY 16, 2025
I almost forgot what day today is … I know that if my neighbor was still with us he would be reminding me of what an essential day today is for many Americans. Some of you still remember David Scott Todd … some of you if you close your eyes can see him with that cowboy hat taking his place right up front in church … and many of you can remember him wearing that orange and white jacket with a number 9 on it representing a guy named Chase Elliott while advertising a national restaurant chain named Hooters.
I remember David Todd and perhaps it is appropriate to remember David on the week when all of your stuff that has been sitting down in a corner of Hickman Hall, since the start of the year, will be picked up on Thursday because David Todd was there to load the truck with other church volunteers a few months before he went home to the Lord.
Yes, David was loud … boisterous I suppose … sadly, this man of potential was a literal prisoner for most of his life not being allowed to step beyond his Woodland Avenue home unless under the eyes of his keepers. He was baptized here in this church as was his brother who was born with cerebral palsy.
Earlier this week, I shared with a friend that I almost wish I had asked the family for David’s multicolored shirt that he would be wearing today because today is the start of racing season. The Daytona 500 is this afternoon and those loud NASCAR engines will roar, the pavement will get covered with rubber, and the cars will go round and round and round almost endlessly. David would be cheering on Chase and back in the day he told me that Dale Junior was his favorite and before that Dale’s father Dale.
You know church … those of you who were here two years ago … you helped David Scott Todd have a life. You were his first welcoming friends … you were people who put aside his brashness and bravado and comments that let’s just say weren’t always quite appropriate. Yes, this church family literally wrapped your arms around him … he sensed your love for … well, let’s call it was it was … your love for a man with an odd appearance who didn’t fit in pretty much anywhere … you showed him the love of Jesus Christ and he knew then that he could trust you. He truly did appreciate all of you and he told me so.
I know this sounds like a celebration of life message and I guess it is a reflection of life message because today I am asking each of you to consider where your trust lies and what journey your life is on. Who do you trust … or perhaps I should ask who trusts in you?
You could trust David Scott Todd to do what he said he would do. If I needed a hand his hand was there without excuses. In the times we live in … how many folks can you trust to be the hand for you when you need one? I just was talking with a pastor colleague about church leadership and he said, “the biggest problem I have is that no one wants to give of their time anymore but when you ask what they are doing with their time they shrug their shoulders but still they don’t have time for church … activities. But they want the church to still be there.”
Let me just say … it was a very interesting conversation.
“Jesus came down from the mountain … a great company of His disciples and a huge crowd from all around joined him there. They came to hear Him and to be healed … they wanted to touch Him.”
Do you trust in Jesus? Do you want to touch Jesus … be touched by Jesus … be changed by Jesus … should God trust you today to actually trust Jesus and obey Jesus in your life outside of church?
Now trusting in Jesus is obviously also trusting in God because as Christians we have paid close attention to the Christmas Eve revelation year after year about the baby in the manger … all those animals around Mary and Joseph and then of course you had the angels appearing to the shepherds and the shepherds after working a long hard more than 8 hour day they still trusted in what they saw and together they went to see the baby in this crude setting and what did they do after experiencing Jesus?
Well, let’s just say they trusted in their faith and according to Luke’s Gospel “They went quickly and reported what they had been told about the child. And, EVERYONE WAS AMAZED at what the shepherds told them. The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.”
You know … a Joy to the world the Lord has come … moment because of trust. The folks that the shepherds shared their faith experience with TRUSTED them enough to be AMAZED and the shepherds TRUSTED their moment with Christ so much that they returned home glorifying and praising God for all that they had experienced.
How often do you trust in your faith so much that you tell your friends who trust you so that they become amazed at your praise and love of God and truly impressed in the trust you have in following Jesus even if following Jesus goes against the polls?
So who trusts you? Who do you trust? Do you trust God? Jesus? Do you sense the Holy Spirit and when you are home do you continue to praise God for all that God is … do you trust God enough to be worthy of your praise much less to truly adopt the lyrics we sang “TRUST and OBEY for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.”
But friends … we all know that humanity has often neglected and ignored God … turned away from the teaching of Jesus Christ even castigated and mocked those who lived loving all of their neighbors and supporting the concept of feeding the poor and welcoming strangers … humanity while rejecting God’s teaching often seeks to align with the powerful or those they believe will provide them with something more tangible that benefits themselves or people like them.
Remember Aaron and the brass calf … the people declared, “Come on … make us gods who can lead us … Moses hasn’t a clue what has happened to him.” Later Aaron answered Moses when questioned about why the people were allowed to reject God and to worship this false god … Aaron’s answer was one that we might here in the 21st century, he said, “Don’t get angry with me. You know yourself that these people are out of control. They said to me … make us gods who can lead us.” By the way, God was furious with those who lined about behind the golden one.
And, the prophet Jeremiah reports what the Lord God said, “Cursed as those who trust in mere humans … who depend on human strength and turn their hearts from the Lord. They will be like a desert shrub that doesn’t know when relief comes. “
And, here we are in church … on a rainy gloomy Sunday. We each have easy access to a Bible … they should be and can be on our smartphones or perhaps you have a Bible or two whose pages you peruse from time to time. The questions I ask are not meant to be trivial nor to fill up the minimal hour of time that is set aside for church … some of you have told me how you are hurting. Some are sensing tremendous loss … some confused … and some of you are partying away I guess.
But in the course of history … if you have enough rational thinking to accept the reality that God exists and is real … then perhaps today is the day to consider God’s power versus our human limitations. I frankly trust in God’s Word when it tells us that the “Lord God probes every heart and discerns hidden motives” and that one day when this short life is over that God … the Creator of the Universe … God whose love gave us Jesus to clarify what God expects from us and who came to die for our sins but on Easter morning beat back the tomb because HE IS RISEN <<HE IS RISEN INDEED>> I trust in you to respond by the way. Whether you want to hear this or not … throughout Scriptures God is pretty clear and is always consistent so that you can trust in this reflection of what happens when we leave this place .. “The Lord probes the hearts and gives to everyone what they deserve, the consequence of their deeds discerning their hidden motives.”
I have been thinking about those NASCAR drivers a little bit this week. Actually about their pit crews because those drivers who are literally going around in circles cannot head in the right direction without the support of many people … the ones who change the tires, clean the windshield, fill the tank … thankless jobs but a driver can’t win the race without everyone making the commitment trusting in each other. It’s like church … actually it’s like the future of the church … it takes commitment and teamwork to keep a church moving forward and staying in the race.
If I tune into the race frankly I can’t tell the Ford’s from the Chevy’s from the Toyota’s because they all blend together in the race … that’s also the way God designed God’s plan … all of humanity is equal … equally loved … given the opportunity to love God and love all of our neighbors. It takes our trusting in God … and our ability to be faithful to God in our everyday words and actions.
I own one piece of NASCAR gear that I bought because of David Todd … it’s a Bubba Wallace cap. The front is a blazoned COMPASSION, LOVE and UNDERSTANDING … sort of the essentials of our faith. The Bible declares, “So then let’s run the race that is laid out in front of us. Let’s throw off any extra baggage, get rid of the sin that trips us up, and fix our eyes on Jesus.” It’s about trust … trusting God … and wanting to experience Jesus healing power by changing our lives to align with God as we go through the race called life. COMPASSION, LOVE and UNDERSTANDING … putting our trust in the right place not in mere humans who turn their hearts from the Lord. AMEN