Should You Trust
Hi, this is Ann Mary Mullane for Sunday to Sunday Witness. I would like to introduce you to a four-episode mini-series by Father Matt Pennington, the pastor of the Nativity of Our Lady Catholic Community in San Louis Obispo, California Father Matt is also featured on a Sunday to Sunday video episode that you may enjoy from our website.
Once upon a time on an island called Manhattan, there emerged a very clever man. Clever in all the ways that we most profoundly reward cleverness. He had a gift, the gift for making money. He knew how to invest money, how to leverage money, how to make money work for him in such a way that he acquired Fabulous Wealth.
So successful was he at this very profound gift that people began to invite him to invest for them. Charitable organizations and academic institutions gave him their endowments, trusted him completely, because of his special gift. There was almost an incantation that he could, he could voice a 10% return. 10% return. The market could rise and fall, interest rates go whatever way you choose, and you could always be assured of 10%. People cashed in their pension funds. They didn't take vacations. They put every single dime that they had into this fund because they were guaranteed 10%.
He was like a miracle worker. Revered, trusted, honored. And in December of last year, he revealed that all of his investments were a scam and that the academic institutions and the charitable organizations and all of the people who had sacrificed had been duped. Billions and billions of dollars gone, banished.
His name was Bernard Madoff and he was charged and sentenced last week to 125 years in prison. You cannot open a newspaper or a magazine or turn on the television without hearing some story about Bernie Madoff. So I will add to the fury and I will tell you one tiny chilling little story.
He met with a widow 30 days before he revealed the Ponzi scam that he'd run for all those years. She was recently a widow. Her husband had left her a fairly comfortable annuity for her to live on. She was elderly, she was not in good health, and she needed to make sure that the money that she had would last her for the rest of her life.
He met with her. He reviewed her portfolio and he agreed to take her on as a client, and he said to her as he walked her out of his office, "you can rest easy now because your money is safe with me".
When I hear those stories, I feel this great power of suspicion creep over me. Do you know what I mean? Like an armor that creeps over your heart and your mind and your spirit. An unwillingness to trust because there's always someone, some swindler, some pedophile, some adulterer. Someone who has been given trust and who has abused that trust.
And it creates in me and in us a spirit that says, no one is gonna take advantage of me. No one is ever gonna get anything past me. I'm on guard. I don't trust anyone.
A certain amount of trust and skepticism can be very, very helpful, but you must beware because, in our relationship with God, we have to trust. This gospel story is a story about suspicion. Jesus goes into his hometown. He is preaching in the synagogue, and the people attending the service are unwilling to trust him.
They know him. They know his mother and his father. They know his friends and his family. They are acquainted with everyone in his circle, and they are suspicious about his ability to speak to them in any kind of revelatory way. How could he possibly be someone who could perform these deeds? How could he have this wisdom?
How could he potentially speak to us in any kind of a profound way about the power and the presence of God? It says in Mark's Gospel, "so great was their lack of faith that he could perform no miracles". He could perform no miracles, the son of God because the power of their skepticism and their suspicion actually thwarted his ability to work miracles.
So I guess the question I need to ask you this morning is do you want a miracle in your life? Of course, you do. You wouldn't be sitting here if you didn't want some kind of a miracle, and so the only way you're going to get that miracle is to do the most difficult thing of all. Is to trust. Let go of suspicion and doubt.
Because listen to me, God will always speak to you and work in your lives through the people and the circumstances that are most alarming. If you think you're only gonna hear the voice of God here, you're mistaken. God will speak to you through that mother-in-law who never stops nagging at you. Through the child that is always pulling on your garment and wanting your attention. God is gonna speak to you through the boss that you despise.
You have to trust, you have to have faith. You have to believe, even when all evidence is to the contrary. If you can do that, watch out. Step back because that's when the miracles all start happening.
I hope you enjoyed this episode from the homilies of Father Matt Pennington. His homilies provoke reflection, inspire and entertain. If you would like to hear more from him, you could visit frmatthomilies.podcastpeople.com. A link to podcast people is also included in our show notes. This is Ann Mary Mullane for Sunday to Sunday witness from Kearny, New Jersey.
