Faith Lens: In Jesus, God Shows Us We Can Trust
Faith Lens is a weekly Bible study that engages youth and young adults in connecting world events with the Bible, faith, and everyday life.
Editor’s Note – Invitation to Small(er) Church Listening Project Survey:
To every smaller church leader faithfully serving week after week: we see you. The impact of your ministry cannot be measured by the size of your church, your staff, or your budget.
But too often, the voices and experiences of smaller church leaders get overlooked. The Small(er) Church Listening Project from Youth Ministry Consultants was created to change that, and ELCA Youth Ministry is excited to be part of this important work.
We’ve already heard from over 200 leaders like you and would appreciate hearing your perspectives whether you worship 50 or 250 on a weekly basis, find yourself in a rural, urban, or suburban context. Your voice and your ministry matters!
Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SmallerChurch
Prepare
Developmental psychologists tell us that one thing adolescents and young adults must do on the path to adulthood is convert the wise council of adults who have aided them in childhood into an internal council that represents their value system. As young folks mature, it is helpful to reflect with them on values like trustworthiness by considering the traits of trustworthy people in their lives and their own (and our own) capacity to be trustworthy.
Brené Brown writes about trust in her book Dare to Lead. She uses the acronym BRAVING to consider seven aspects of trust: boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, nonjudgement, and generosity. You can see how she defines these terms here(you might even print this handout for your group to compare your answers in the opening exercise).
The religious authorities, the chief priests and scribes, ask Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing this?” Truthfully, authority is not exactly trust. Authority is about formal power for decision making. Trust, however, develops through relationships. At the same time, many people in authority will point out that without trust it doesn’t matter what formal power you have, no one will go along with your decisions.
Opening Exercise
Pass out sticky notes – three or four per person. Have participants list characteristics of trustworthy people. Have one person share one of their traits. Ask if anyone has a similar trait and cluster the similar traits together. Repeat with another person sharing and gathering similar sticky notes. Repeat until all the notes are shared. Ask, “What do you notice?” and affirm all answers.
Text Read Aloud
Can I Trust You?
Once, when I was a teenager and a new driver (no, there were no dinosaurs then…though there were also no smartphones—yikes!), I went to a youth group Christmas party at someone’s house. My parents were concerned about parking and suggested I park down the block a bit to avoid any problems with other new drivers and their cars. But when I got there, it was dark and I was too nervous to park far away and walk. When it was time to leave the party, things happened as my parents feared: I avoided one collision, but in doing so scraped up someone else’s car. I worried that I had betrayed my parents’ trust by not parking where they’d told me to. Yet, when I explained the situation to them, they had enough trust in me to have made a choice based on that situation: walking a far distance, alone at night.
Trust is complicated. How do we know who to trust? What makes a trustworthy person? And how do we become trustworthy people ourselves?
It is a tense scene in today’s story from Matthew. We’re late in the gospel—the Monday of Holy Week. In the story’s timeline, yesterday Jesus entered Jerusalem (awkwardly, riding a donkey and its colt at the same time) and drove the moneychangers from the Temple. On the way into the Temple this morning, he cursed a fig tree because it didn’t have any fruit. And now, back in the Temple, he is confronted by the chief priests and elders. They are scared.
Between the big parade and the brouhaha in the Temple, they are worried the people are getting stirred up. And if that happens, there’s no telling how Rome will react.
Can I Trust You?
When the chief priests ask Jesus, “By whose authority are you doing this?” they are asking Jesus, “Can we trust you? Can we trust you to keep the people safe, teaching in ways that lead to life and not to death?”
The early Christians who first heard Matthew’s Gospel had many of the same questions. In 70 AD, in the recent past for them, the people had gotten stirred up and rebelled. Rome came and squashed the rebellion, killing over a million people and destroying Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside. They wonder if Jesus is more of the same, and if following him would be risky. Can they trust Jesus?
The poet Maya Angelou was quoted as saying, “If people show you who they are, believe them.” This is Jesus’s response to the chief priests and elders—in a parable. There were two sons, one said he’ll work in the vineyard and doesn’t; the other said he won’t work in the vineyard but does. It is as if Jesus tells the chief priests, “I could tell you all day by whose authority I do these things, but why would you believe me? I could tell you that I want life for the people, but why would you believe me? You will only believe me if I show you.” And, by the end of the week, he will show them on the cross. Jesus is how God says, “You can trust me.” Trustworthiness isn’t proved by saying the right thing. It is revealed when our actions match our words. And in Jesus God makes and keeps God’s word to us.
Reflection Questions
When the chief priests ask, ‘by what authority are you doing these things?’, what things are they talking about?
Why are the chief priests and elders wondering if they can trust Jesus?
Thinking about what you know about God from your experience, from worship, or from Scripture, what makes God trustworthy?
What practices or disciplines can we try to become more trustworthy people?
Closing Activity
Like the sons whose words don’t match their actions, play the improv game “What Are You Doing?” The first person mimes an activity like doing their math homework. The second person comes in and asks, “What are you doing?” The first person must answer with anything other than what they’re actually doing: “Playing ping pong.” Now the second person must mime playing ping pong and answer (with something else!) a third person’s question, “What are you doing?”
After everyone has had a turn, reflect together: What happens to trust when our words and actions don’t match? What helps someone become a person whose actions show that their words can be trusted?
Final Prayer
Faithful God, in Jesus you show us that we can trust you. When we are uncertain, unsure, or afraid, put trustworthy people in our lives to help us. Grow us into trustworthy people who mirror your love and faithfulness in the world, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Bio
Adrianne Meier serves with the people of God at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington. Right now, she is furiously picking and preserving the harvest of her garden and learning to play the tin whistle.
