Who Do You Put Your Trust In?

Gospel Readings for October 22, 2023

One of my favorite memories as a kid was driving with my parents and having to be the GPS person – when I say favorite memories, I mean memories to think about, not memories that were my favorite to be in. Because this was intense – navigating when to get on the Southern State or whether or not we were taking the cross island was bad. Parents were yelling, I was like “why does the route keep changing,” and eventually, my parents would just take over doing the directions. But I specifically remember the actual GPS and one feature that it has: the reroute feature. There were often wrong turns or mistakes that would cause one to fret if they didn’t know how to adjust their route, but the GPS does it for you. It will literally reroute you to exactly where you need to be, no matter where you are. Although sometimes it seems like it doesn’t know where you are, which is always the worst, and it shows you driving through a lake, but it always finds that route for you, it gets you back on course. And these reroutes are persistent. Google, Apple, Waze or whatever you are using put it in your face that you are going the wrong way – they will be like: reroute available 5 times in 30 seconds. So to put it lightly, GPS is persistent.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that this analogy isn’t my own, but that of Bishop Barron’s, but it is almost kind of a perfect analogy for God, minus that the GPS doesn’t willingly want to help us. We all have a path that God intended for us, something that will best align with our human nature, something involving us doing the good and striving for ultimate happiness, which is God Himself. This is the path that the GPS intended for us to take, but sometimes, for one reason or another, we veer off that path. And when we veer off that path it isn’t like God just doesn’t come along with us, but rather sits back and watches us. No, he is with us and he is there. He gives us the reroute, he speaks to us and says “Hey, this isn’t the place to go. You can do better.” And he doesn’t send us the reroute once or twice. It is persistent. So what do we have to do? Just like we put our trust in the GPS’s routes, we need to put our ultimate trust in God, who is the source of all life and goodness. We just need to trust him, that’s what we have to give him.

I am not sure how many of you have seen the show “Blue Bloods,” and I recommend it if you haven’t. But the general gist is that there is this cop family, Tom Selleck is the NYPD police commissioner, his father was the commissioner as well, all of Selleck’s sons are cops, and his daughter is a district attorney. As expected, the show centers around the daily lives of police and detective work, and I want to focus on one of the sons: Danny Reagan. Reagan and his partner Biaz are always going back and forth about taking on cases based on each other's gut and hunch. And sometimes they will plead with each other and simply say: just trust me. They implore the other to understand that they have a hunch, they have some sort of other knowledge that the other person doesn’t have, and therefore, they ask that they place their trust in each other. This is exactly what God asks us to do – he asks us to, above all else, to place our trust in him.

In the gospel today, the people are confused as to what should be given to God and what should be given to the material world. Jesus makes it clear: Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. The answer is clear. We are to give to God what belongs to God. But what belongs to God? The answer to that is clear but not the easiest. What belongs to God is our complete love, and our complete trust. What belongs to God is trusting in him that the route he has given us works. Because he knows. He is in the business of knowing, because he is in the business of loving. What belongs to God is trusting in his reroutes when we didn’t trust or understand that first route, that first plan that he gave us. When we don’t put our trust in him, we fall astray. It’s a fact. Who do you put your trust in? God or yourself?