Trust issues

This is my homily for today, the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C.  The readings for today are here.

We’ve entered a new phase in our journey through COVID: mass is now mask-optional.  As you can see, I’m trying to go without a mask.  We’ll see how it works out.  I’ll put a mask on later, when I’m giving communion.  As I look at it, my not wearing a mask today is an exercise in trust: I’m trusting that archdiocesan authorities, and the public health experts who advise them, are setting a good policy.  I admit I’m not entirely comfortable with not wearing a mask.  Trusting in others isn’t easy, even when the others are experts.

How are you at trusting others?  Do you have trust issues?  “Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings”, says the Lord in that first reading from Jeremiah.  

“Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings.”  We may be able to relate to that.  It seems many of us don’t think human beings are particularly trustworthy.  For many years now, social survey outfits have asked the American people, “Can most people be trusted?”  What do you think: can most people be trusted?  Yes or no?  Back in 1960, which is right around the time when I was born, 55% of Americans said yes – they agreed with the proposition that most people can be trusted.  Back then, we were rather a trusting lot.  But 40 years later, at the end of the millennium, when my generation had reached adulthood, the percentage of Americans who agreed that most people can be trusted had declined to 35%.  Only about a third of Americans thought most people can be trusted.  

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam offers many bits of evidence to illustrate that our trust issues have grown worse over the years.  Hitchhiking, which requires mutual trust between two strangers, used to be common; now it has almost disappeared.  Driving on our roads requires cooperation and trust among strangers, for example in the act of letting another car merge onto a highway.  But by many measures, the behavior of drivers has gotten worse over the years as our trust in others has declined.  Putnam reports that driving above the speed limit has increased over the years.  He also cites a stop sign study which shows that fewer drivers come to a complete stop at stop signs than was the case in the 1970s.  I’d add anecdotally that few drivers slow down in school zones, and some don’t stop when a school bus puts out its stop sign at a bus stop.  

Here's another example of the decline in social trust: hoarding.  Just two years ago, people were desperately driving from store to store, looking for toilet paper – remember that?  In a community with a healthy level of trust, people are less likely to hoard; they’re more likely to believe that a friend or neighbor will share with them if they’re low on a necessary item.  But it’s hard to trust others, isn’t it?  Professor Putnam notes that we can get caught in a vicious cycle in which decreasing trust in others leads us to be less trustworthy ourselves.  If I’m less likely to think that someone else would share a scarce good with me, I’m less likely to share it with someone else.  Hoarding toilet paper is an act of distrust in others.

As another sign of our dwindling trust, Putnam also points to the increase in the number of lawyers in the United States in recent decades.  When members of a community believe other members are trustworthy, they’re less likely to sue one another.  One of my children was sued when the car he was driving collided with a neighbor’s car as my kid was backing out of our driveway.  Until then, I didn’t think Arlington Heights was the kind of place where neighbors sued one another.  I learned otherwise.

So God is asking a lot of us today.  God is asking us to put aside our trust issues.  He’s saying, “Don’t put your trust in yourself or your wealth.  Don’t put your trust in your lawyers.  Trust me instead.”  Trust in God.  He says it flat-out in our first reading: “Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord”.  And all those beatitudes and woes in our Gospel reading also are about trusting God.  Consider this contrasting pair: “Blessed are you who are poor”; “Woe to you who are rich.”  In God’s kingdom, it seems it’s better to be poor than to be rich.  Just try to wrap your brain around that for a moment: how can it possibly be better to be poor than to be rich?  That seems contrary to what has been ingrained into us.  A quip from the last century, attributed to the writer and editor Beatrice Kaufman, the wife of the famous playwright George S Kaufman, went like this: “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich.  Rich is better.”  That’s the epitome of Kingdom of Earth thinking.  Today, God is inviting us to think in a different way: in the Kingdom of Heaven, it’s better to be poor than rich.  The thinking here seems to be: If I don’t have a lot of material things, then it’s easier for me to put my trust in God.  

Likewise, this pair from today’s Gospel: “Blessed are you who are now hungry”; “Woe to you who are filled now.”   How can it be better not to have food to eat?  Again, the idea seems to be: when we lack something, if we trust that God will provide it for us, he will see to our needs.

What I’ve just described, this business of relinquishing our plenty, making ourselves poorer, and then trusting in God to care for us – this is the way of St. Francis of Assisi.   It’s what he did in his own life, and it’s in the rule he wrote for his friars.  They are to beg for what they need, and God will provide it – through other people.  It seems fair to say that a person with trust issues wouldn’t make a good Franciscan.  In St. Francis’s vision, a friar had to trust every single day that others, maybe complete strangers, would see to his basic needs.  

I understand that most of us aren’t quite ready to take the leap to give up all we have.  For most of us, relinquishing our possessions is what happens when we die; as the title of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play co-written by Beatrice’s husband, George S Kaufman notes, You Can’t Take It with You.   It’s better if we put our plenty to good use while we’re still alive.  The proof that we own our possessions, and not the other way around, is that we can relinquish them for a good and noble purpose.

There are people right here in our local community who are poor, not because they’ve willingly embraced poverty, but because life has dealt them a hand full of woes.   For one reason or another, they don’t have some of the material blessings that some of us are fortunate to have.  Today’s Gospel is Good News for them, and perhaps a word of warning to people with many possessions, that outcomes and social status may be very different in God’s kingdom.  

Folks living in poverty come to St. Edna Parish for assistance because they’re hungry and in need, and I’m so proud of how this community has given and given to provide food and financial assistance to them.  This faith community is like those strangers who took care of St. Francis’s friars – we’re being God’s presence on earth.  Even during this time of COVID, the donations to our Outreach ministry and our food pantry have stayed strong.  You haven’t hoarded; you’ve given.  You’ve trusted God enough to give what you have to others.  That is an amazing achievement by the St. Edna faith community.  I believe with all my heart that, whenever we give food or money to people in need, by making ourselves just a little poorer, we’re storing up treasure in heaven.  

Do we have trust issues?  Let’s try to get past them, because God really wants us to trust in him.  God himself is completely trustworthy: he keeps his promises, and he will never stop loving us.  But for us to trust God more, we may need to make ourselves a little poorer.