Jay’s Blog – Easter as Surrender
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Most of the good stuff in life involves letting go, surrendering.
I wouldn’t have said that earlier in my life, definitely towards the beginning of my career. I would have described myself as a doer, a highly productive person, as someone who “got stuff done.” Other people described me as that person, as well. Throughout my work life, even until recently, I’ve had people say, “I don’t understand how you do all you do.” I have to admit I took a strange pride in that, as if I was somehow capable of accomplishing more than a “normal” person.
As I near the end of the sixth decade of my life (which, I’m learning, is not as old as it may sound to some of you), the Lord is teaching me many things, things that I wasn’t ready to learn earlier in life. One of those is that most of the great things that happen to you in life come as a result of letting go, of releasing, of surrendering.
The idea of surrender seems really counterintuitive, or at least it was for me. My doctorate is in leadership studies, and leadership seems mostly an active endeavor- stepping into people’s lives, charting courses, removing barriers, providing people with resources, managing change, and communicating clearly. I have a competitive streak, and over the years I’ve engaged in various physical challenges: marathons in my 30s, triathlons in my 40s, and obstacle and adventure-type races like the Warrior Dash and Spartan Race in my late 40s and early 50s. These were clearly active: setting goals, following training regimens, eating certain foods in certain amounts, and being very disciplined.
My faith life was very active, too, measured in many ways by the work I did for Jesus. I spent a decade actively involved in a ministry in Uganda, building churches and schools, and I traveled there often. I served on boards and in leadership positions at school organizations and other Christian nonprofits across the country, a role that required extensive travel. I tried to be pastoral here, caring for and loving people well, marrying some and burying others. And I read all the books on marriage and parenting and did all the things, trying to be very active and intentional in raising my kids, as I believed the Lord had called me to.
I’m realizing now, that while Jesus had a very active life of preaching and healing, his greatest work came at the end of his life, in surrendering. In John 3, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The act of “being lifted up,” Christ’s passion and sacrifice on the cross, an act of suffering and death, required not active doing, but surrender. Jesus allowed Himself to be captured by the Temple guards, to be convicted of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, to be turned over to Pilate and consigned to crucifixion, to be scourged and crucified, and to have the wrath of God visited upon Him for all of our sins.
Jesus wasn’t a victim, but He did surrender. In John 10, He tells His disciples, “No one takes it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” In the Garden of Gesthemane that Maunday Thursday, which we commemorate today, Jesus prayed “Let this cup be taken from me; but not as I will, but as you will”– a prayer of surrender. Jesus surrendered His life to God’s plan, turning Himself over to allowing things to be done to Him so that He could win victory over sin and death, kill death, and save, heal, restore, and renew us. Easter is about surrender to passion, from the Latin passio, meaning voluntary endurance of suffering for the redemption of humanity, representing supreme sacrificial love.
And the process of surrender wasn’t only reserved for Jesus. In John 21, Jesus prophesied over Peter’s future, telling him that, “When you were young, you went where you liked. But now that you’re older, someone else will take you where you’d rather not go.” In 1 Peter 4, Peter encourages early Christians to endure suffering, suffering as he endures, so that they will be free from sin. In Acts 21, Agabus takes Paul’s belt, binds him with it, and prophesies that Paul will be bound up and delivered to the Romans. Paul fulfills this prophesy by surrendering to his imprisonment, and generations are saved, right up to you and me, because he released his plans to the Lord’s.
Surrender is critical to our life and ministry, as well. In The Road to Daybreak, Henri Nouwen notes that “Just as with everyone else, most of my life is determined by what is done to me and thus is passion. And because most of my life is passion, things being done to me, only small parts of my life are determined by what I think, say, or do… my passion is a much greater part of my life than my action.”
Nouwen touches on a great truth here, one I came to realize later in life–that for all my activity, my discipline, my doing, it’s my passion, my surrender to God’s work and His hand in the face of things being done to me, sometimes things that bring me pain, that really determine the course of my life.
As I look back over the past decade of my life, I am now slower to speak and more likely to listen. More content to wait on the Lord to work in my life and in the lives of others than to try to actively bring about that change myself (realizing from past failure that I couldn’t). I find joy in watching others flourish in doing and in growing, more than in myself. I am comfortable with stillness and silence, and learning to rest. I am more present in conversations with others, listening and trying to hear and understand instead of thinking about what I’m going to say next. I am now more interested in teaching and equipping than doing. I have forgiven the past, and I’m largely free from it. I am better able to live out my life as the Beloved of Jesus, not because of what I do, but because I am His. And I am more at peace.
Every one of these things came at the price of surrendering to the Lord, pressing into Him and His doing to me and allowing things to be done to me, enduring the passion, rather than actively doing something to bring them about. Now he is teaching me that in the fourth quarter of my time leading Grace, my most important years will involve equipping the next generation of leaders and stakeholders to carry on the mission and vision that God began here, that my generation inherited from others and will pass on and pray will continue. Successfully passing on that torch will involve continued surrender–letting go of my innate desire, after nearly 25 years, to be in control, to be the builder, to own the vision, to lead by doing. I’m learning that sometimes the best leadership isn’t doing, but surrendering.
Even the end will involve surrender. I was reading an article in Christianity Today about the rise in euthanasia in countries outside but near to the U.S., like Canada. The article reaffirmed the Church’s moral teaching throughout the ages, that murder–the intentional taking of innocent life–is intrinsically evil, and that actively intending the death of an elderly or sick person and deliberately bringing about that death through positive action, is always morally wrong. It’s wrong because, among other reasons, it deprives us of our ability, right, and responsibility to surrender.
My father died of complications from Alzheimer’s and prostate cancer. At the end of his life, he was in a memory care facility. He had long since forgotten me, spoke in gibberish, and, in a sense, was no longer “useful” to society. And yet, every time I went to visit him–every time–his care providers would tell me how kind he was to them, how sweet, and those who were Christian would tell me how they saw the love of Jesus in him. By going to see him, I learned greater compassion and care, and how to honor my father as God called me to do. My father continued to minister to me and shape and mold me and others, long after society would have said he useless, all because he chose to surrender, even in that state, to God’s hand in his life.
Jesus’ primary reason for dying and being resurrected (again, something done to Him) was to save us from our sin and to restore us to life and a relationship with God. But there were many other meanings, including showing us how to surrender, and that surrender to His work and goodness in our lives is so much of living, and transcends even death itself.
Jay Ferguson, Ph.D., Head of School at Grace Community School, writes regularly on his blog, JaysBlog.org.