Effort & Surrender
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
What’s your favorite thing to do on a day off?
On my day off this week I took advantage of an opportunity to get together with a few other clergywomen at Camp Washington. We spent about 24 hours together, cooking meals and watching a movie and having good quiet time and doing some yoga.
I enjoyed the yoga especially because it had been a while since I’d last stretched like that. One thing I remember from the DVD we were watching was the statement that a certain pose was a combination of effort and surrender.
As we were twisted like human pretzels, some of our muscles were working hard and others were giving in—and that was the way the whole body worked together to allow a certain position. The surrender to the stretching supported the effort it took to get into the pose. Surrender was the most important thing in that pose. I think it’s fair to say that surrender is behind everything in yoga. Surrender supports effort, and that brings balance.
So it’s interesting to turn to our Scriptures today and see the importance of surrender and effort in the body. But it’s not in an individual human body. It’s in the Body of Christ. Even here in the Body of Christ the best outcome results from a balance of surrender and effort.
So, let’s take a look at the reading from Philippians. In the center of the reading—from verses 5 through 11—we see a celebration of the surrender that Jesus practiced. He surrendered his position in the Godhead and emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. He lived and taught, healed and challenged; but he also died as one of us and lived again to show us that death is not final.
Jesus lived a life that surrendered his divinity for the most part. And he lived this way in order to help bring humans like us into God’s kingdom.
This part of Philippians—verses 5 through 11— is actually thought to be the remnant of an ancient hymn that was making the rounds of the Mediterranean world some 3 or 4 decades after Jesus was crucified. It gives us the basic shape of our redemption: Jesus descends from On High, lives among us, dies as one of us, even on a cross, and then is raised again to his proper place in the Godhead. It parallels what we say about Him in the Creeds.
It’s the essence of our faith and the foundation of our hope, that one day we, too will be humbled by death and then be raised by God. It helps us make sense of our lives and the absurdities we sometimes have to endure.
Now look again at the second reading and you’ll see that the surrender of Christ is sandwiched on either side by exhortations to the believers in Philippi to surrender like he did—to surrender their own agendas and attitudes that said, “It’s all about me, and it will always be about me!”
Paul also tells the people to put in effort to will and to work for God’s good pleasure. There’s that balance of surrender and effort again, just like in the yoga pose.
What prompted Paul to write to these people in Philippi? It seems that Paul heard that the church there was having some problems. People weren’t getting along with each other. Two women, especially, were at each other’s throats. And that’s really serious, given that the church is the Body of Christ. When there’s dissention or strife in the Body, there is dis-ease.
Paul tells the people to have the same mind and to be in full accord. That’s nice advice to hear—but how do you do that? How do you even begin to work to be in sync with people who think so differently—with people you might not even like?
Paul suggests it happens when you stop thinking of yourself so much and put other people and their feelings first. He tells them to take a look at Jesus as an example—at how he set aside his claim to fame and his power, for the most part, in an act of surrender.
Surrender. We often associate surrender with weakness. You surrender if you’re defeated, if you’re weak. I think of historical tableaux like the surrender of British forces to General Washington at Yorktown or the surrender of Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. They were the losers. They were the weaker ones. They gave in. They gave up.
But spiritually the idea of surrender is a paradox. When we surrender, we are humbled, much like Jesus was humbled. We come to know we are NOT the most important parties in the universe and that our sense of control is ephemeral. But, it’s empowering, actually, to give up trying to control things so much and surrendering to God’s being in control. That makes you feel strong—or at least relieved.
Maybe it hooks in with Paul’s assertion that “when I am weak then I am strong.” When I surrender my need to be right all the time, or to be in control, then I can be of one mind with other people. I can more easily appreciate the other’s point of view, and work more competently with people who have different ideas and different ways. I can stop trying so hard—and that is really liberating. I can be strong in a new way.
We have chances to surrender to God each day, becoming of one mind with Christ as we minimize some of our personal priorities for the sake of the common good. We surrender when we apologize to someone we’ve hurt; or when we forgive and allow ourselves to move on. We surrender when we turn off the TV to really listen to our kids or our spouse; or when we think twice about buying something from the latest fall catalogue and send the money instead to a charity that helps people.
We surrender when we refuse to join in a gossip session at the office. We surrender over and over, day in and day out, and that is just what God has in mind for us to do. That’s how daily we are formed into the mind of Christ. Slowly but surely. Little by little.
And there’s that last big surrender, the surrender that comes when we die and give ourselves over into the great unknown—when we allow ourselves to pass into God’s hands.
Surrender is one of the most powerful movements within the spiritual life. Whether we are working together in the parish or in our families or our places of work, surrender can pave the way for God’s Spirit to get through to us. It can help people to talk, to reconcile, and to work well toward a healthy goal.
So—may God help us to practice surrender, especially at times when it seems painful or ridiculous. May God continue to turn us upside down and form us into people who are willing to try to consider God’s purposes first. May God help us to be paradoxically strong and sure as we surrender. For when we are weak, then we are strong.
Amen.
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