Surrender to the Living God

Beloved in Christ,

Many years ago, I returned home from an afternoon of errand running with a car full of groceries and other household supplies. It took several trips to get everything inside, and when I finally finished, I sat down on the living room couch, glad to be done with some adulting. About ten minutes later, I realized that I had left the back door open, as well as the gate to the back yard, and our beloved dog Abe was nowhere in sight. I ran outside in a panic, fully expecting that Abe was long gone. When I got to the back gate, however, Abe was standing in the middle of the driveway, frozen in the face of his newfound freedom. We stared at each other for a few minutes, and I could almost see the wheels in his brain turning as he mulled over whether he would choose food, or freedom. He chose food, and we both went back inside, relieved and worn out from all the excitement. 

Part of the reason that story sticks with me is that it seems like a good icon of modern life in the western world. Consumer culture promises us freedom through endless options and the ability to impose our wills without restrictions. And despite the fact that our massive wealth and privilege as a society has made that widely possible, we are among the most anxious, loneliest, and most bitterly divided societies in human history. The promise of freedom through endless choice and unrestricted will has proven largely hollow.  So many gates have been seemingly thrown wide open, and yet the burden of navigating the world without any deeper spiritual scaffolding can be a paralyzing trap. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ promises something quite different than freedom through endless choice and the power to will whatever we desire. The gospel of Jesus Christ promises true healing and liberation through surrender to the living God, committing fully to God’s will over our own preferences, shaping our lives like the cross of Jesus, and relying fully on the power of the Holy Spirit. 

The great Lutheran theologian Soren Kierkegaard famously reflected that the biblical notion of “purity of heart” is a matter of being able to will the one thing. Finding true freedom and healing is not about satisfying our desires and getting what we want, but rather making our lives about one thing: the love of God as it is known in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. True freedom can’t be found from doing as we please, but in giving ourselves over to God. True liberation can only be found when we stop thinking our life is about us, and instead make our lives about the redemptive power of Jesus’ love. That’s how we exchange the world’s illusory freedom for the real food offered to us in the bread of life. 

In a moment of bitter political and cultural division and chaos, the life of discipleship, of putting Jesus rather than ourselves at the center, offers a powerful alternative to simply riding the outrage machine. The church, and the gospel we proclaim, is made for just such a moment. The world in this moment is hungry for real food, and longing for true liberation. That can only be found fully in the good news of Jesus Christ. In a distracted and anxious world, full of false promises, can we make our lives, and our lives together, about the one thing, by offering all we are and all we have to the power of love?

Grace and Peace, 

The Right Rev. Craig Loya