We have two possible routes out of Kelowna, heading home. One route takes the main highway. The other takes Glenmore Road, a more leisurely two-lane alternate that winds through a forested valley.
I prefer Glenmore Road. So do many other drivers. At rush hour, Glenmore can turn into an endless line of cars following each other’s taillights.
Except that the two routes are not really alternates. Because Glenmore and the highway meet. At an intersection where, on the other side, Beaver Lake Road climbs a short steep hill out of an industrial area on the east side of the highway.
There is, of course, a traffic light controlling the intersection.
The little gnomes who live inside traffic lights usually provide an advanced green for left turns. Sometimes it isn’t long enough. A loaded semi-trailer struggling to get started on the steepest part of the hill out of the industrial area, trying to turn south onto the highway to Kelowna, can block traffic through a complete cycle of the light. Or longer.
At the same time, the stream of cars turning north off Glenmore Road can romp through unimpeded.
Normally, Joan and I expect to go straight through, to reach the shopping centre where we shop for groceries. But the other day, instead of going through, I swerved into the northbound left-turn lane.
“You don’t want to go this way,” Joan protested.
“Trust me,” I said.
She did.
I turned left, and then immediately turned right, into a driveway that offered a back entrance to the shopping centre. I was parked before the tangle at the Beaver Lake light had sorted itself out.

The central affirmation
Okay, it’s a flippant illustration. But it reminds me that trust is an essential quality in our society. “Trust me,” you tell your children when they protest against your rules. “You’ll understand someday.”
“Trust me,” says your investment counsellor. “Trust me,” says the aspiring politician.
And surprisingly often, we do.
We trust other drivers on the road not to swerve into our lane. We trust our banks to keep accurate records of our debits and credits. We trust our doctors, our dentists, our garbage collectors, to perform their professional duties properly.
And if they betray our trust, we feel outraged. Because we trusted them, dammit!
Trust is what Jesus talked about. Except that, according to most of our Bibles, he didn’t use the word trust. My concordances tell me that the word “trust” rarely appears in the gospels.
Rather, Jesus said, “Believe in me.” He told his disciples, “Have faith” --  aa if faith was a thing you could grab and own.
But in the original Hebrew, I understand, faith wasn’t a thing, a noun. It was a verb, usually written as its root, “mn”. You didn’t have faith, you did faith. You faithed life. You faithed your friends, your family. You faithed each day.
Faith doesn’t work as a verb in English. I think the closest substitute we have is trust. “Trust me,” Jesus said, “and you can walk on water. Trust me, and you can move mountains. Trust me, and you will discover endless life.”
It seems to me that trust is -- or should be -- the central affirmation of the Christian church. Not creeds or catechisms. We trust Jesus enough to follow his example, wherever it leads us.
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN

Vern Ratzlaff called last Wednesday’s column on selective use of the Bible, “a wonderful look at our strange perspectives.”
Vern went on to share his own journey: “While I was attending a (liberal) seminary I was also attending a very conservative church (won't go into details here). At the seminary I was taught that the story of Jonah is metaphor, it didn't really happen, and that the story of Hosea and Gomer was fact. In the congregation I was taught that the story of Jonah is factual, but that the story of Hosea and Gomer is metaphor -- G-d would never have told his prophet to marry a prostitute. So I realized that I couldn't depend on some other system -- I'd have to decide for myself. It was a remarkable freeing exercise.”

“Your column seems to assume that no ‘Jubilee years’ have been celebrated in modern times,” Lee d’Anjou wrote. “Not true for Roman Catholics. We are in one right now and have been since the first day of the calendar year that began with the first day of Advent in 2015.”
Lee suggested, “For information on your computer, see dynamiccatholic.com/yearofmercy. This site is not bad for information about Catholics.”

Steve Roney elaborated further: “Jubilee years have not, as you maintain, been arbitrarily forgotten in Christianity. They are still regularly observed in the Catholic Church. Indeed, this year is an extraordinary jubilee year.
However, they no longer have the same specific features they did in the time of Leviticus. No slaves, so no manumission. Forgiveness of debts has been rendered a dead letter by the bankruptcy laws. As to the return of all property to its previous owner, this was understood by Talmudic authority to apply only to the Holy Land when it was in full possession of the Jews. Accordingly, this element of the Jubilee year was gone by the time of Christ, and was intrinsically non-binding on non-Jews.
“This is for obvious reasons. How does one determine otherwise which previous owner to whom to return the property? And what property ever remains ‘yours,’ as all property has had some previous owner? Nor was there ever any question of returning property in the Holy Land to the Canaanites. It was a question of re-imposing the original tribal divisions of Palestine. Hence not applicable to property outside Palestine, or to non-Jews.
“We would face the same problems if we tried to apply this aspect of the Jubilee of Leviticus in Canada. Which previous owner? This would not be solved by saying ‘the aboriginal one.’ Which aboriginal one? Property ownership was pretty vague and constantly changing, even at the tribal level.”

Marjorie Gibson: “For many years I led classes and studied the Bible, not as a religious belief, but as how a people in ancient years dealt with life. My personal reaction is that to take the Bible literally (as if it were dictated by God), seriously hampers the good this volume offers.”

Dorothy Haug thought that I had “nailed it in the last sentence -- but then, I sometimes feel all of religion only confirms what we always want to believe. For me, the Bible is most useful when I am challenged to be better than I am -- to love my neighbour as myself principally -- or when I am in company with others seeking to understand the mystery through music, ritual, social discourse.”

Mc McGrew: “I couldn’t agree more. However, you said nothing about the art of picking individual verses, taking them out of their original context, and stringing them together to make the Bible say what you want it to say.”

Ted Spenser shared some skepticism: “Among the early observations was that of the preacher exhorting us to indolence, or something like it, on Sundays (this was in the EUB and, therefore, in my pre-teen years) and, a few days later, sitting in our living room going on about how onerous was the task of sermonizing on Sunday.
“Grains of salt have been useful -- nay, imperative -- items ever since, especially in pronouncements from the theological cognoscenti, whatever their stripe. Would we, in the United Church at least, do well to have a big bag of salt at the door with a sign reading ‘Take lots: you’ll need it.’? If the bag and sign were there, could we begin to get it right? Might we even stop vilifying those who are found to be reducing the salt requirement?”

A few letters continued to come in about my column on royalty watching. Ted Wilson wanted to correct a comment from Tom Watson: “Royalty do not proclaim themselves to be Royalty. Everybody else does. They just inherit their title whether they want it or not. Edward VIII decided he didn’t, so George VI and then our present Queen came to be Monarchs. Isobel Gibson had it right -- it’s the hand they are dealt and Elizabeth has done a heck of a job.”

PSALM PARAPHRASES

Psalm 65 seems to come up only once every three years. But the message should be front and centre all the time:

1   We can't put it off any longer, God.
2   We come crawling to you, because we have all fallen short of your expectations.
3   We have all missed the mark. 
But you have not held our failures against us.
5   We stumbled, and you picked us up; 
we were sinking, and you helped us swim.
4   You treat us with honor and respect. 
You make us welcome. 
It is more than we dare ask, more than we could ever expect.
6   We have no right to such kindness. 
You push mountains into ranges; 
you calm the raging oceans;
7   you spin the earth on its axis. 
Before you, we are as insignificant as ants, parading our puny armies.
8   If you stamp your feet, we will be squashed.
9   We boast of our science and technology, 
but by ourselves we cannot make even a single seed sprout;
we cannot shape a single raindrop.
10   We destroy, but only you bring life.
11   Through the cycle of the seasons, with reckless generosity, you share the wealth of the earth.
12   As tiny drops of dew gather into rushing streams, 
so our small thoughts gather into a torrent of gratitude.
13   The whole world celebrates your goodness. 
Like dolphins dancing through the waves, 
like antelope leaping through long grass, 
the earth jumps in a shout of joy.

 For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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