Practicing Trust and Falling

Beloved in Christ, 

At one point during Bad Bunny’s Superbowl Halftime Show earlier this month, he fell backwards off a tall platform, and was caught in the arms of the dancers below. It wasn’t just a dramatic stunt, it was a key moment in the performance. At a time when our national leadership anxiously strives to secure dominance by villainizing any perceived other, Bad Bunny’s show was a celebration of Puerto Rican identity and culture that was extending a celebratory embrace outward toward all of the nations and cultures that make up the American continent. It held up a vision of one America, united across national borders, culture, language, and race. The trust fall was an icon of how the revolutionary postures of unity, joy, and love always require us to rely on our ancestors, and on one another across all our diversity, to navigate hard times.

In our Old Testament reading from Genesis this week, the story of God’s people opens with our ancestor Abraham trust falling into the arms of God’s promise. In the later years of his life, a time when looking back seems far more natural than expecting a new future, God calls Abraham to set off for a place he does not know and has not seen, with an outrageous promise to become the spiritual forbear of nations with and through whom God will bless and heal the world. 

Faith is not so much an exercise we do with our brains, but a trust fall we make into the arms of God’s promises. We follow the way of Jesus by living as if God’s promise to set the broken and painful world to rights–by lifting up the lowly, by comforting the ones crushed by grief, by filling the hungry, and by levelling the rigged scales of justice–are true. This requires us to meet every day, make every decision, respond to every challenge, like we are trust falling into the arms of God. 

And just like Bad Bunny’s celebration of his own culture, and his vision for one America, we do not do the work of trusting alone. Our life together in the church is a way to practice falling into the arms of God’s promise by learning how to trust and rely on one another, our ancient ancestors, and the Holy Spirit of God.. A vital community of disciples is one where people ask for help from one another, give support to each other, study the lives of those who have gone before us, and learn over and over again that we are held, we are cherished, we are precious, and we matter incalculably. As we practice falling, day by day and week to week, we slowly are grafted the story that began with Abraham, and that invites us to open up the healing embrace of God’s love to the whole falling and fallen world.

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya