Reading Francis

Do you trust me?

I don’t know if you ever have this experience, but I have found that some themes, questions, and challenges keep coming back to me, generally because I haven’t satisfactorily addressed them before. How many times have we committed to getting to Mass early, or at least on time? How many times have we challenged ourselves to get enough sleep? Or eat better? Or exercise? I could go on. These things keep coming back for one reason: they continue to be problems I haven’t fixed. 

It turns out, this is the third time I’ve written something around the question, “Do you trust me?” One of them was on my walk through the book of James, and another was from the readings of one Lenten Sunday. In both, I referenced Aladdin, the Disney movie whose protagonist asks that question. I’ll spare you that this time.

Take three.

Over the last few weeks, that question of whether I trust God has popped back up again, like a beach ball that won’t be submerged for another moment. It started while I was reviewing my journal from a retreat I made a couple years ago that focused on seven themes in the life of St. Francis of Assisi that also marked the papacy of Pope Francis. Though I didn’t notice it at the time, my failures on all seven themes, really, came down to one thing: 

I would rather trust my ability to control my own life than trust God to provide what I need.

Last Sunday’s gospel, from Luke 10, has Jesus commissioning 72 followers to go out with nothing of their own to spread the good news and heal the sick, trusting God to provide for their needs. 

On Monday, Jacob wakes up from a dream of God’s blessing and says “If God remains with me, to protect me on this journey I am making and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I come back safe to my father’s house, the Lord shall be my God.” Conditional, sure, but it’s still God that Jacob trusts to provide, just as Jesus encourages his followers to expect God to deliver the food and clothing that they need. 

On Wednesday, Matthew’s Jesus sends out the twelve, and Thursday he echoes the call from Luke 10 to go empty-handed, expecting God to provide for their needs. He even tells them on Friday that they are going out “like sheep in the midst of wolves,” and should trust God even for the words they should say. 

On Sunday, Paul tells the Colossians to trust that God is in control of everything.

I think a lot of people would prefer to trust more visible forces. On Wednesday, this line from Psalm 33 jumps out:

The LORD brings to nought the plans of nations; he foils the designs of peoples,

But the plan of the LORD stands forever; the design of his heart, through all generations.

As much as the wide view of history renders true this sense that nations come and go, the big ones sure seem important during their brief time on top.

I can’t help but notice, too, that those who trust in God don’t seem to fare any better than the rest of us. Paul was executed, as were eleven of those twelve disciples, eventually. Trusting God doesn’t spare us from anything, and sometimes it even sets us up for more suffering. 

Nonetheless, I guess there’s this: Among the people I’ve seen who are most full of peace and joy, those who are at home in community, at home in poverty, in right relationship with creation, you find a lot of people who put their trust, not in their country or their bank account or their connections or their wits, but in the God who asks us for our trust. They are by far the best witnesses and seem most committed to worship. 

I have heard several missionaries say that we have it backward: they weren’t going to the peripheries to convert the poor; they went to the peripheries and were converted by the poor, by those who trusted God because they had nothing else to fall back on.

So God’s question recurs for the third time.

Do you trust me?