Resurrection + Sabbath = Surrender and New Life
It is true what some people say, “We keep looking for life in what we already know - while new life waits in what we are afraid to release.” The words “resurrection and surrender” for many years in my faith journey were words that made me uncomfortable, and often the feelings that I associated with these words, when spoken by some Christians, left me wanting to run for the hills. I think what helped to transform these words for me was when I heard the song Surrender by U2 performed live. It was the year I was in the Seminary in Vancouver. My friend got me a ticket to go to the concert. It was the first concert I went to by myself. I had listened to the song over and over as I was writing papers in my dorm room. The words occupied my thoughts throughout the day, “At the moment of surrender I folded to my knees. I did not notice the passers-by and they did not notice me. I’ve been in every black hole at the altar of the dark star. My body’s now a begging bowl that’s begging to get back, begging to get back to my heart and to the rhythm of my soul and to the rhythm of my unconsciousness, to the rhythm that yearns to be released from control.” It was at that concert that all my fears about where I was going in life, and what life would hold for me were released as I sang the words with all the people gathered in the stadium. I had always believed that surrender was giving up. I was told in a youth gathering at an Alliance Church that we should give up all the things we really enjoy (our guilty pleasures) because they lead us away from God. But something in that didn’t fit with my understanding of who God is. Why would giving up having a latte and instead giving that money to God, change my life? What I have come to understand later in life is that surrender is letting go of control, it feels like loss at first before it feels like freedom. Surrender is not weakness but courage! It is not failure but transformation. It is not ending by beginning. If I were to reinterpret the teaching about the latte, I would reframe it. I can enjoy that latte while being present to someone in my life, or a stranger who is seeking connection, and in that gesture I am answering God’s call. It isn’t about the latte, it is about one’s intention.
Surrender for me in that moment, as I sang my heart out, was about letting go of needing to be everything for everyone. It was about releasing an identity that no longer fit. As this word surrender came into focus, the word resurrection started to change. I came to learn that resurrection is not a return to “normal”, not the restoration of the old. It is not about going back to your life before you got off track, it is about getting a fresh start, a new life, with new perspectives. I had spent a year learning about the practice of Sabbath before going to the Vancouver School of Theology. Sabbath is a weekly practice that helps us resist the lie that we must keep producing, proving, or repeating. Through sabbath practice God teaches us that we are allowed to stop doing things, and that we are not defined by what we do. AND what emerges is that which we have been avoiding. Both resurrection and sabbath are truly radical concepts. Resurrection asks us to trust what we cannot yet see, and sabbath asks us to release control that we believe we need. Furthermore, both resurrection and sabbath require a kind of surrender. We need to ask ourselves in our personal lives and in our communal lives, what part of our past still feels necessary to hold onto and what might it be protecting us from? Where is resurrection happening in our midst that is quietly trying to take shape? I’m hopeful that maybe this time I can live more fully into resurrection and sabbath. Let’s embrace these God given practices and trust in God, and may the spirit of God surprise us in new and wonderful ways this Easter season. Blessings, Rev. Karen