Faith: letting go

5 min read

I remember leaving my bedroom for the last time. I was getting married, and I stood in the space where I'd grown up, where I'd played with my brothers and learned from my parents, where I'd lived through the good and the hard and the becoming of a young adult. I was letting go of it.

Then some years later, when the house was finally sold and my father and stepmother moved further away, I went back in. Even though so much had changed since I'd left, I found myself saying farewell — to the home, to all its memories.

Letting go is not easy. It brings back the things that connect us, the roots that hold us in a place.

The many faces of letting go

It's the same with people and animals. I remember sitting in a vet surgery several times with our dogs at moments when their life was coming to an end. Sometimes it was a gentle, slow process — is it now? Is it? And sometimes it was sudden, and they had to be put to sleep to stop the suffering. That sense of letting go of this faithful, loving animal is the most difficult thing. Learning to live without their constant attention and affection and wanting to play.

And then there's letting go of the people in our lives who are very close to us. Family members and friends who move away and we have to farewell. Or who die, and we say goodbye in the ultimate way.

Last week we farewelled a dear friend and colleague, Vladimir. It came as a surprise, a shock. Going back through the memories and the associations and the connections and the stories, putting some of those together for his memorial service. Letting go is hard.

But it's also letting go of the things we accumulate and acquire. Letting go of the controls we think we have over our life. When health problems hit, or crisis, or something else we didn't see coming, we realise that our grip on life is thin. We don't have the control we think we have. Life appears in a different way, a different place. It slips through our fingers.

Abram and Sarah: go, with no destination

This week, one of the readings is an ancient story — a kind of metaphorical, symbolic beginning for the Hebrew people. This couple, Abram and Sarah, who become Abraham and Sarah, patriarch and matriarch of the Hebrew people, are spoken to by God. Abram, pack up everything and go. Leave your home and the city and your family and your roots and your connections. Leave it and go.

And they're not given a destination. Just a direction. Go. "I will lead you to the place that I'm leading you to."

Their life becomes a journey. They don't settle in one place. They move through what is named as the promised land — a land their ancestors will discover much later and settle. But they are nomadic. Constantly moving. Engaging in new experiences. They take steps in faith and trust in this God, and then steps back where they try to regain control for themselves. It's a two-way thing — moving away and then moving back.

What does it mean to let go of the control and the security and the comfort we think we have, and put our faith in this mysterious God who calls us into the unknown?

Nicodemus in the dark

In the gospel story this week, there's this figure — Nicodemus. A Pharisee, a religious leader, who comes to Jesus in the darkness. It's a metaphor for his own life. One who should know, who should have wisdom, comes to Jesus because in him he sees the wisdom he lacks in himself. He comes wanting to know the way into life.

And Jesus says, "You're a religious leader. Shouldn't you know?" Then he goes on: "You must be born again. You must be born from above. Born anew." Nicodemus is confused. "I can't be born again. How can I enter my mother's womb?" And Jesus says, "No, you must be born of spirit. Born anew. Born in a new way" (John 3:3-8, NIV).

You have to let go of the control and the belief systems and the things that crowd in on your life and hold you. Trust in that which is unknown. Trust in that which you can't see. Trust in that which is of the spirit of God.

And he goes on to say that the spirit blows where it will. It's like the wind. The wind comes — we know where it's coming from, but we don't know where it's going. Sometimes it swirls around and switches and changes direction. When we think we've got a grip on the wind, we haven't. We can't control it.

The spirit is like that.

Surrender into mystery

In these stories, we're invited into the place of letting go. Of surrender into the mystery and wonder that is God. It's counterintuitive. Countercultural. And very difficult.

I can't quite put myself into the journey of Abram and Sarah — packing up and leaving, not with a destination, not with a plan, but with a faith. A faith in a God who will lead them. A God who makes promises, but promises where they can't see the way through to those promises being realised. They try to take control and make the promises fulfilled, but they mess it up. And they have to let go. And when they let go, they discover God is there and there's a direction.

I must say, in my own life and experience, when I try to take control of things and make them happen the way I think they should, it often comes unstuck.

When I let go and surrender and trust in this infinite mercy and grace and mystery of God, things happen in a way I don't understand. In a way I can't control. And I stand back with awe and wonder and say, "Wow. God is there."

An invitation

This journey through Lent invites us to let go. To let go of the things we're gripping onto — the seductions, the compulsions, the possessions. To let go and trust in this infinite God.

So here's a question worth sitting with this week: What are you holding onto that you already know, somewhere deep down, you need to release? Not because it's bad, necessarily. But because your grip on it has become the thing that keeps you from trusting. What would it look like to open your hands — even just a little — and see what God does in the space that's left?