Coming to Trust, Easter 4, April 26, 2026

 

Coming to Trust

Homily by Lisa Wiens Heinsohn for St. John’s Episcopal Church

April 26, 2026: John 10:1-10; Acts 2:42-27

 

I’d like to begin today by asking you a question, and to ask you to really ponder it for a minute. Who or what do you really trust?

 

Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, and it has come to be called “Good Shepherd” Sunday because it always features a story from the tenth chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus compares himself to a shepherd, and to the gate for the sheep. In today’s gospel reading Jesus says that his sheep know his voice and they follow him. It sounds so easy. But it’s anything but easy. It turns out that sheep have to learn to trust a new shepherd. They don’t immediately accept someone knew. It takes time. If you google sheep trusting shepherds it turns out there is all kinds of information out there about how to gain the trust of your new sheep. And it’s all fairly predictable stuff. Be consistent and calm. Promptly and reliably meet the sheep’s basic needs. Don’t be aggressive. Trust is earned. Once it is earned, the sheep know the shepherd and react to the shepherd based on the trustworthiness the shepherd has displayed.

 

And in today’s gospel reading Jesus gives us indicators of how to recognize him, how to tell the difference between a true shepherd and a thief. The true shepherd knows and calls each sheep by name, just as Jesus called Mary Magdalene in the garden by name which is when she finally recognized him. There is a sense of being uniquely known and addressed by the divine with our unique stories, and gifts, and burdens. The other way to tell a true shepherd is what their motive is. Jesus says that his purpose is to provide life, and life abundant, to his followers. He is not here so that we can white knuckle our way through life, barely surviving. He is here so that we might thrive.

 

But that thriving is not the same as prosperity gospel. Jesus does not guarantee that we will always have comfort or ease or that if we follow the rules life will be great. Instead he promises intimate connection with us. He shows us that a life flipped outward, a life freed from being curved in on ourselves, can be: a life of radical awe and wonder and generosity. In today’s reading from Acts, the early church is full of awe and wonder. People are radically generous toward one another. If anyone has a need, others who have extra simply give what they have so that all needs can be met. My parents taught me that fairness doesn’t mean everyone getting the same thing. Fairness means everyone getting what they need. That is as it should be because we aren’t all cookie cutter versions of one another, thank goodness. So in the early church, after Pentecost, after God’s Spirit was lavishly poured out upon all people regardless of age or gender or social status, people were in a continual state of awe and gladness. It turned out that a brutal death at the hands of a cruel empire could not quench the healing power and presence of the Jesus they had known and loved. Because of that, everything changed for them. They became instruments of gladness and generosity. They shared everything they had and enjoyed one another’s company and learned to live again, as if for the first time.

 

Awe, and wonder, and trust characterized the early church. It characterized those whose lives had been deeply impacted by Jesus of Nazareth. You know it when you see it. And the thing is, it didn’t happen overnight. It happened through sustained contact with the radical, overwhelming, generous love of God in Christ. It happened when they learned they could trust the risen Christ just as they had learned to trust Jesus of Nazareth in human form. They learned to trust the risen Christ because he poured out his spirit lavishly upon them. The same characteristics he had shown in physical form—turning an abundance of water into wine at a wedding, feeding 5,000 people from a few loaves of bread and fishes, helping lifelong fisherman find such a catch of fish that their boats nearly capsized, healing a man born blind, freeing someone who had lain crippled for many years—he showed them after his resurrection, through a church that learned to share everything with each other and with anyone in need in the world.

 

Followers of Jesus have always paradoxically flourished precisely when they run out of resources and finally need to rely on the God who has been with them all along. It’s the difference between generating all the love, power and resources oneself and becoming a hollow bone for the flow of the divine to pour through us. We become able to do this when we come to trust through experience that God is real, is actually present, and is able to impact our lives for good if we allow it.  What has been happening in the Twin Cities since Operation Metro Surge is an incredible example of what happens when people dig deep and simply allow generosity to flow through them. It’s enormously powerful and real.

 

So how do we get from here to there? Trust is in short supply in today’s world. There has been an erosion in public trust in institutions of all kinds, including government, religion, the media. But all God needs is a tiny mustard seed worth of trust in our souls to begin to work the miracle of awe and wonder and abundant life within and through us. So I circle back to my first question: what positive thing do you actually trust?

 

I’ve shared before that my own first experience coming to trust any higher power at all, after emerging from the distortions of a more imperial version of Christianity that I grew up with, was through Al-Anon. My ex had a wee problem with drinking and so I began attending a local Al-Anon group. Like most people who attend Al-Anon, at first I thought I was there to help him. I quickly learned I was as messed up as he was and I actually needed help myself. So I worked the steps. The first step is admitting you have a problem. That’s harder than it seems. The second step is coming to trust that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. I had zero trust in religion at the time; I had felt really betrayed by a religion that claimed its God was loving while at the same time claiming God would send people to eternal torture in hell for believing the wrong thing. So I had to dig deep to find something I trusted. Eventually, I realized that I trusted the seasons. No matter what happened, the earth would keep turning. Winter would yield to the thaw of spring, which would become the heat of summer, which would die back in the fall, and then the great cold and silence of winter would happen again. Even if the seasons are wonky with global warming, even if nuclear holocaust happens, the earth still turns and wobbles on its orbit and the seasons happen, come what may. And with the rhythms of life come birth and death, growth and abundance, times for planting and for harvest, times for rest. I could trust that.

 

And over and over again in scripture, we see the picture of a God who is relentlessly on the side of the downtrodden, the hungry, the poor. We see a Jesus who associates with all people without distinction, the privileged and those of ill repute, the healthy and the sick, the innocent and the guilty. Whoever you are, the God revealed in Jesus is one who leads sheep by still waters so they can get something to drink, who takes them to green pastures so they can get something to eat, who course corrects for them when they threaten to wander off, whose sheepdogs protect them from the wolves and pumas and predators, who knows them, loves them and calls them by name.

 

So again I ask, what do you trust about God as you understand God? And what do you need to know to trust that you can have life, and have it abundantly? What mustard seed of trust do you need to know that God’s grace is a well that can never run dry, that can meet you in each and every stage of your life with compassion and love, healing and welcome?

 

Once we  begin to drink from this well, the well of God’s endless compassion and presence, we can come to trust in this God, and then let ourselves be overcome with awe and wonder. It doesn’t mean the problems go away. It doesn’t mean we never suffer hardship or loss. It does mean we are never alone. It does mean we don’t have to generate everything we need by ourselves. It does mean we have a beautiful, imperfect and sacred community of human and more-than-human kin to do life with, to share resources with, to dream and learn and laugh and cry with.

 

What goodness do you experience and trust in God as you understand God? May we let go fully into that trust and allow God’s abundant life to flow through us, no matter what are our circumstances or capacities, knowing that we are beloved and that God calls us each by name. Amen.

10am Service