Trust the Driver

Hebrews 11:1-3, 7-16

Imagine this:
someone comes to your house – or even meets you on the street – scoops up your car keys, takes the wheel of your car, and says “Hop in; let’s go!”

What do you do?

hop right in (passenger seat or back?) – ask where – grab keys back, etc

What I do when someone else is driving depends a lot on who the person is; on the relationship we have.

But this is the question – well, one question – implied for us in the scripture we hear today, this little poetic history from the Letter to the Hebrews:

By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.

By faith, Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Jacob, our ancestors, expected the impossible. By faith they lived on their expectations of posterity and future homeland more than on the reality of those things, waited or acted on the promise of God, even when they couldn’t know where they were going, or what God was doing about it.

Faith, the way it’s described today, is really a lot like getting into the passenger seat – or even back seat – of your own car when someone else is driving you to an unknown destination.

There are reasons why any of us might do that. Perhaps the driver promises to take you to somewhere you really want to be and don’t know how to get to: the moon, or true love, or a world without gun massacres, childhood cancer, cruelty, hate, or partisan politics – the “promised land”;  and your longing for those things is enough to take the risk of trusting the driver.

Or perhaps you know the driver well enough to want to go anywhere with them.

Sometimes you’re drawn to the adventure, and sometimes you just don’t see any other choice.

That’s the experience of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob we heard about today. The writer (or perhaps the preacher; this document for “the Hebrews” really reads more like a sermon than a letter) wants us to see ourselves in this same journey, to recognize ourselves in the invitation to live by faith. Wants us, as much as our biblical ancestors, to experience the substance, the reality of things we hope and long for; experience the here-and-nowness of things that are fundamentally intangible, things unseen.

This preacher – the one whose words are recorded in the Bible, and, for that matter the preacher in your pulpit today – wants all of us, you and me, to experience the active, living reality of God in our own lives and in the world around us. Wants us to be able to know in our hearts and bodies and minds the concrete reality of God’s active interest and love that guides and directs us, and know it whether or not we ever literally hear that direction and love in clear words, or see with our eyes the success of our guided actions.

That’s not easy.

Most of the time, on those rare occasions when I give someone else my keys and get into the passenger seat of my car, I…well, I kind of drive anyway. My foot will pump the imaginary brakes. I give unnecessary directions about which lane to be in, or try to speed up the car by silent willpower.

Even when I know I don’t need to – there’s plenty of time and the driver knows what they are doing – I automatically try to exercise control.

Perhaps you do, too.

In your life, if not in the car.

Perhaps you really like to do turn-by-turn route planning – careful management of your time, your money, your efforts and achievements – even when the destination isn’t all that clear: when you don’t know exactly where your career should go, what your kids will be like at 18 or 50, what you want to do in retirement, or what on earth happens after the diagnosis is confirmed or the new job is secured.

Or perhaps you don’t plan, but keep your hands on the wheel, making sure you have control to switch lanes, change the route, make your own decisions in the moment at all times. 

These are natural human tendencies, reinforced every day by the voices of our world that preach self-reliance and independence, and by the voices of the news that proclaim uncertainty and danger.

The tendency and temptation to keep things in our own control are reinforced regularly by the voices of a world that tell us we can’t trust the government, or strangers, or what you read on the internet, or hear from the other news services, or much of anything or anybody but ourselves.

Those voices tell us we can’t do something new, and that we can’t depend on anyone else to help us achieve what we long for.

But faith is all about trust. In fact, faith fundamentally is trust.

And trust is how we rest even when we are restless; how we love even when we are out of liking and goodwill; how we can act for good in the face of despair, how we achieve and discover more together than we ever could alone.

Trust is how we have living, growing relationships with anyone.

That’s why God wants faith for us.

Because God wants a living, growing, relationship with you. With me. Individually and together.
God longs for the kind of trust and delight that allows us to eagerly hand God the keys and the wheel.

God wants our hearts to be free to experience the wonder of the journey without the anxiety of deadlines; to trust whatever speed we’re moving, and to rest in quiet, deep, companionship when God just pulls to the side of the road and waits in silence for a while (you know, those times when nothing seems to be happening or moving or changing tor the better, no matter how much you work or plan or write to Congress or follow the doctor’s prescriptions or pray).

God doesn’t want us to give up planning and responsibility for our own lives, but God does want us to long for those destinations we can’t possibly get to alone – destinations like profound peace of heart, unconditional love, unshakable connection to God, the transformation of our world into a generous land of universal peace and prosperity, safety and welcome and shared joy.
God wants this longing in us, with a readiness to try routes we can’t plan for ourselves, because living only in what we ourselves can manage and plan and achieve is idolatry and isolation, and ultimately despair.

Now, you can’t will yourself to that deep trust and faith. Trust takes time, and practice – lots of time and practice – in any relationship. Trust and faith are mutual, not singular. That’s why faith isn’t willpower. It’s a gift of God, who plants seeds of love and faith within us, faith and love that grow into trust, sometimes in ways we don’t recognize. And God asks us to nurture those seeds with prayer and sacraments and scripture and community.

Because God knows that without that faith and trust, we won’t get to experience the reality of what we long for, the proof of unprovable love, the concreteness of intangible possibility and joy, and God wants that for us with all God’s heart.

That’s why God keeps reaching out for our car keys and inviting us to hop in,

so that God can take us, in unexpected and unpredictable ways, to the healing of the world and our own healing, to the substance of all that we long for, the conviction of wonder and grace and joy.