For those who want a change from the Gospel

Trinity 1 – Exodus 19:2-8a (Related)

I’m writing this on my first day of retirement. I have served the Church of England I hope faithfully for 39 years, and now I’m free to do what I want. You can’t help, at a time like this, look back over your career. Yesterday a friend rang me to say ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ That was lovely, but to be honest at the moment all I can think of are my failures and defeats. I have often asked myself if I could do it all over again, would I go and do something very different, like being a lumberjack? I wonder if I had known what was to happen, I would have gone and done something less exciting, like Chartered Accountancy or something. Perhaps it’s better not to know, but there have been times when I have said to God, with Jeremiah ‘ You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived!’ (20:7). It can be quite hard training ordinands for their minitry on days when you feel you wouldn’t wish the C of E on your worst enemy!

I wonder if you noticed the deal in this story, which lies in the chapter before the Ten Commandments are given by God? He promises the privilege of being his special people ‘if you obey me fully and keep my covenant’. The people’s unanimous response is ‘We will do everything the Lord has said’. But only in the next chapter is the covenant, the deal, set out clearly. They’ve agreed to keep it, but they haven’t yet been told what it entails. Sounds a bit like joining the Masons, where you swear on your life not to reveal any ‘secrets’, but you only discover what secrets you’ve promised not to reveal until you progress through the ranks. So isn’t all this a bit unfair on God’s part?

Maybe the key idea here is ‘trust’, and the key verse v.4. ‘You yourselves have seen what I did.’ These people had a history with God, and in the light of that there is a fundamental understanding that he is for them, that he acts to bless them, that his purposes for them are good, not evil. When you trust someone you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It just isn’t conceivable, after what they have been through, to believe that God isn’t going to act justly towards them. So they have no problem, in theory at least, with agreeing to this covenant deal without actually knowing in details what it means.

My son has a friend who has made his home in another country, where they have seen significantly less damage from the Covid pandemic. In reflecting on this, he contrasted his country with the UK, and decided that where he lived the people basically like, respect and trust the government, and so are happy to obey the lockdown rules, which significantly lowered the impact of the virus. Here the levels of trust in the government are under the floorboards, lying has become commonplace, and slogans have replaced strategies, and that’s without the eyesight-testing antics of the man who actually runs the country. Trust is vital for any society, and the Israelites trusted their God, and so were willing to commit themselves to him (although of course the reality became very different – God is far more trustworthy than the people were).

How are you with trusting God? What have you seen that he did? What have you got to look back on, times when God has proved his faithfulness and trustworthiness to you? How does that build your trust in him for the future? Are you able to give him the benefit of the doubt, even when his actions in your life seem decidedly doubtful? Maybe today is a day to look back, count your blessings, and recommit yourself to him for the future, come what may.