Give up. Submit. Lose. Abandon. Change. Surrender. Not the most popular words in the lexicon of successful living.
Click to listen to “Sweet Surrender” by John Denver
John Denver suggested they probably should be in his lesser-known classic “Sweet Surrender”, a song oddly written and recorded using only two chords. (For the musically curious, they were E and A7.) And in Romans 12, Paul gives us his take on surrender in just two verses, suggesting surrender is not only a way to live, but the way to life.
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
Other translations render the word “offer” as submit, present, give, or place before. All imply the intentional act of surrender of self. And why is it that our “bodies” are what we are called to relinquish? Could be because everything we do takes place in the confines of a body. Or taken a little further, our life composes a “body of work,” a lifelong collection of decisions, actions, sacrifices that add up to a life well-lived, or not. We are talking about a lot of little, and a few not so little, expenditures of self over successive seasons of life.
I’m afraid a real shortcoming of the evangelical tradition comes from giving so much attention to the momentary decision to accept and follow Jesus, while downplaying the notion that real self-surrender happens in multitudes of moments over a long period of time. This kind of living is not quick. Or easy. Or cheap.
Yet the considerable costs also afford a long list of benefits. Increased joy and purpose. Potential for greater impact on others. Openness to new ways of thinking and understanding. The chance to accomplish things we might have never imagined, let alone attempted. Built in guardrails against entitlement and complacency. Enhanced happiness with a side of diminished anxiety. Add to all that the satisfaction of being more like Jesus who knew more than anyone about the price and product of surrender, sacrifice and giving up.
Richard Rohr writes that “Letting go is not in anybody’s program for happiness, and yet all mature spirituality in one sense or another is about letting go and unlearning.” I’m betting that somewhere along the way the good friar had listened to that simple and not so simple song by John Denver. And to the simple, and not so simple pleadings of the Apostle Paul.
I’m thinking we should too.