Are We Trusting in the Right Things?
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Our Easter refrain is still ringing in my ears in a beautiful way. However, I’m always struck by remembering how our Orthodox brothers and sisters utilize it–as a common greeting when meeting friends, regardless of the location, for forty days after Easter. At Trader Joe’s, on the street, in a parking lot, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed… for forty days! We’re lucky if we get two Sundays out of it. Forty days would almost make one think that for a follower of Jesus, resurrection was really, really important. Yes.
So, with my tongue hanging out a little bit from a full Lenten/Easter season with extra speaking and writing and services, this week I made time for a short hike with a friend. Nearby Taylor Mountain is more of a hill than a mountain for someone from the Pacific Northwest, but an hour’s hike gets you about 1,500 feet up with an amazing view across Sonoma County, all the way over to the coastline. It was on the way down a steeper stretch of trail that I remembered something from years ago.
When I was still in college and then the business world, I volunteered for many years with Young Life’s ministry to high school students. Two different years I took a group of high schoolers up into British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies through a Young Life backpacking program called Beyond Malibu. We were in that stunning wilderness on our own for a week with a couple of trained guides. Our expedition left from the shore of the Princess Louisa Inlet (sea level) and climbed almost straight uphill for two solid days before reaching a plateau 4,000-5,000 feet up, from which we could then scramble up some peaks. Naturally, climbing UP all that vertical elevation meant…eventually we had to come DOWN. One entire descent day we picked our way down a very steep rock composed of huge slabs of granite, one after the other for about eight hours. We all had heavy packs. And when we first started down, most of us did what was pretty instinctual–we leaned our weight back, because we didn’t want to pitch forward on our faces and fall a thousand feet down the steeply-pitched slope. But as we leaned back, our feet would go out from under us, and we would fall onto our backs. Finally, one of the guides walked over and said, “You know, the only way this is going to work is if you…trust your boots.” We asked, “What are you talking about?” She said, “Your boots were made to grip rock like this, but you are going to have to trust them. You have to lean forward and put your weight out over your boots as you go down…and trust that they will hold. It will feel all wrong at first.”
That was a hard thing to do. It did feel very wrong, but she was right–the only thing to do was trust. We learned to lean out over our boots. And they held, and we could walk down those huge slabs, feeling a little bit like Spiderman scaling the sheer wall of a building. Trust your boots.
The world feels sort of like staring down a vertical sheet of granite rock these days. Pick your topic–war, genocide, starvation, millions displaced, fear, racism, environment, protests, nationalism cloaked in Jesus-words. It’s a mess. It’s dangerous. It’s enough to make Christians want to retreat to a nice plateau, pitch a tent, and just wait it out. Play it safe. However, in these days after Easter, it seems to me that is exactly what we must not, cannot do. Jesus never said that resurrection means we lay low until we are somehow beamed off the planet. We believe that because we belong to God in life and in death (Heidelberg Catechism), we need not be afraid. Because God is for us, because his love is so deep, we can trust him. He is trust-worthy. Leaning outwards instead of backwards can take many forms. Building friendships, inviting people to meet Jesus, campaigning, voting, protesting, donating, opening conversation with people who differ with us. Following Jesus is supposed to look different than what’s going on around us. How can we value people, affirm morals, love sacrificially, protect those on the margins when all the traffic seems to be going the other direction? Some days the risks of trusting Jesus seem huge. These are the days we see if our boots will hold.
Scripture is downright repetitive when it comes to God’s trustworthiness. Proverbs 3, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” Isaiah 26,“Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD, the LORD himself, is the Rock eternal.” Psalm 56, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.” 2 Corinthians 5, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”
I don’t know which part(s) of life feels like a steep and dangerous granite slab for you right now, or what might be making your pack extra heavy. I do know that as people and as leaders, God calls us to an active, radical trust. God’s word will hold. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Our boots will hold. We need to lean forward.
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and currently serves on The Fellowship Community Board.
These are the expressed views of Dan Baumgartner and not necessarily broader views of The Fellowship Community.