In the waning years of the so called “golden age of television”
a show premiered in 1956
that I wager would never make it past the tv censors today
or survive the litmus test of today’s second reading:
It was entitled “Do you trust your wife?”
Of course, with our digitally fueled imaginations
it sounds like a show about marital fidelity.
But having lived through that Ozzie and Harriet era
I instinctively knew the show was nothing of the kind.
Rather, it was an admittedly patriarchal game show
in which, after a few preliminary questions to the couple,
the husband was then asked a series of questions
and had to decide whether he should answer himself
or trust his wife to do so.
So much for the golden age of television.
Over the past five weeks,
our lectionary has sidelined the Gospel of Mark
which takes center stage in this cycle B
and instead arranged an evangelical detour
through the 6th chapter of John
with its feeding of the 5000,
rich theological discourse,
and 18 fold repetition of one word: bread,
a rhetorical drumbeat unprecedented
in the whole of the New Testament.
So you would think that in these final moments of chapter 6
there would be some climactic disclosure about the bread,
but instead,
this culmination of John which prepares us
to pivot next week back into Mark
is ultimately not so much about food
as it is about trust.
Not about being offered sustenance,
but whether that sustenance is safe to consume.
Not about the quality of the bread,
but the reliability of the bread giver.
In my youth [deep in the last millennium]
there was a famous broadcaster regularly deemed
“the most trusted man in America.”
Walter Cronkite was not the best educated, best dressed,
or best looking of the generation of WW II correspondents
who dominated the early days of television.
His wife once said that, in a way, he looked like your family dentist, not surprising since his father and grandfather were both dentists.
Yet Cronkite was picked in 1962 to anchor the “CBS Evening News,” and for two of the most tumultuous decades in our history, he was the authoritative voice of news in America:
the man who told the world that President Jack Kennedy was dead,
who let the world exhale when announcing the safe landing
of astronauts on the moon,
and, in 1968, offered the brutal assessment
that the Vietnam War could not be won.
Why was he so trusted?
Some attributed it to his voice.
Biographer Douglas Brinkly wrote:
“He had a voice that everybody recognized. It’s like hearing Bob Dylan sing a song. … In five seconds everybody knows who’s [singing or] talking. That’s important for a broadcaster….”
And then Cronkite slowed down his cadence, didn’t rush his points. He also knew when to make the pregnant pause, when to be silent in special events.
He summarizes “Cronkite was able to seem comfortable and real”
in the admittedly unreal context of a cavernous broadcast set
and the artificiality of early media.
Nonetheless, he was not only the most trusted name in broadcast
but the most trusted man in America.
It is no great revelation to admit
that trust levels in our country are not very high.
On the contrary, public trust in the government is historically low.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that
only 22% of Americans trust the federal government
to do what is right most of the time.
Our confidence in the supreme court has plummeted,
having fallen 23% just in the last 4 years.
And, Gallup reports that only 8% of us find congress trustworthy.
And what institution did Gallup find that people trust the most?
I thought maybe the military or medical professionals?
No – small businesses, local artisans, & neighborhood shops.
It is ironic that we trust small businesses
when the trust game in this country is actually big business.
Studies show that 70+% of customers who do not trust a company
will not buy from it,
recommend the business to others,
or share information about it on social media,
depriving them of big bucks.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Deborah Mills-Scofield writes
“Trust trumps everything. And everything flows from trust ….”
Northwestern’s Kellog School of Management
recently conducted a trust project
and confirmed that warmth upstages competence
when judging someone’s trustworthiness.
Ironically, often the world of business has it backwards,
since companies consistently stress competence
over warmth,
though consumers prefer it the other way around.
Closer to home, it raises the question for me, and maybe for you:
“what makes a faith community or church trustworthy?”
And, more personally: “why should you trust the preacher?”
Some might not think that the trust factor is important
in something like worship, but when you consider
that people are leaving organized religion in droves,
you have to wonder why people actually do show up.
Why did YOU show up in person and online today?
I think the writers for the Harvard Business Review are right
and that the legendary hospitality, warmth and friendliness
of this worshipping community to people in all their diversity
is why the face-to-face and online community is so vibrant.
As for trusting the preacher,
we actually have no data to explain that
and I am actually engaged in a 4 year study
with neuroscientists at the University of Chicago
to figure out what generates trust in a preacher
and the God she or he tries to represent.
While it’s not possible to have a focus group with Jesus’ disciples,
run them through an fMRI during a replay
of the Sermon on the Mount,
or use optical scans and EEGs
as they watched a video of his bread of life discourse,
there are some pretty clear indications
why Jesus was trusted by so many,
why thousands flocked to his preaching,
and even why people were eventually willing to die for him.
Some trusted him, like the Israelites in the first reading,
because he performed wondrous miracles:
healings, feedings, even raising some from the dead.
Others trusted him because of his ability to befriend
members of the Sanhedrin and Samaritans,
fishermen and Pharisees.
And then there was his legendary compassion, empathy, warmth
to distraught widows, grieving siblings,
and even tree-climbing tax collectors.
So, if Jesus was so trustworthy, why did many of his disciples
abandon him and return to their old way of life
after delivery of this pivotal bread-speech?
Was it because his language about needing to eat his flesh
and drink his blood sounded vaguely cannibalistic?
Or because he disparaged the desert miracle of manna,
teaching that it was not truly life-giving?
Or because he chided them for wanting another sign,
diverting them from seeking food that spoils?
Or, was it because he evolved into an unwelcome Messiah
who shattered expectations
and invited folk into a discipleship
consisting of more than bread and circuses …
ultimately requiring that followers become like him,
not only distributers of bread …
but living sustenance in their own right:
threatened with being consumed, spit out,
and ultimately sacrificed for the wellbeing of the world.
Beautyland is an unusual coming of age novel,
about Adina – an alien born of an earth mother –
sent to study earth and report on human behaviors,
communicating with her superiors through an old fax machine.
Adina eventually reveals her identity to her best friend,
who readily believes that she is an alien and encourages her
to compile her notes and publish them as a book.
Her memoire, Alien Opus, becomes a sensation,
spawning polarizing reviews and demands from the public
to meet the author.
Some believe her story, and others think she is a mentally disturbed liar.
She eventually relents and holds a single public appearance
in a large space brimming with folk,
many holding up placards proclaiming their belief in her,
others denouncing her as a huckster and charlatan.
While I don’t think Adina was intended to be a Christ-figure,
pondering today’s readings while listening to the audible version
of Beautyland
sparked many such connections for me.
Adina is an alien who teaches us what it means to be human;
so did Jesus, that transcendent child of the Trinity,
who took on flesh to teach us the same and more.
Adina came to understand that human trust is fickle,
but it did not deter her from her mission,
even as she faced death feeling very alone.
Jesus understood that, abandoned by all but a few women and a boy
as he hung on the jib of the tree,
wondering aloud why even God had forsaken him.
So is the gist of this gospel whether or not to trust Jesus
and the eternal promises he doles out in the form of bread?
Or, whether God can actually trust us, the baptized,
to be the spiritual equivalent of the Jesus store,
neighborhood franchises of the Christ initiative,
local purveyors of holy bread and its eternal promises,
so that any who come to trust our witness
might also find life eternal.
Happily, in this eucharist God wagers again,
placing the living presence of the only-begotten in our hands,
trusting that it will journey within us from hand to heart,
there embedding the divine promise
that, if we live as witnesses to the gospel faith,
if we proclaim with Peter that it is the Christ
who speaks the words of eternal life,
then we, too, can actually become what we eat–
Through Christ our Lord.