Hymns: Take My Life and Let it Be

Introduction- Priorities.

I have a confession to make!

When I knew what hymn we were studying today, and I sat down at my desk to study for this one…

I knew which West Wing clip I wanted to play…

Before I knew which scriptures we would study!

So…it’s a short one!

Toby and Sam are walking to breakfast, and talking about the President’s plans for dealing with illegal drugs.

There’s really only one sentence we need from this one…but I can’t help myself!

<play clip>

Is this what you meant when you said “Sam, you’re completely in charge of this?”

Yes, I meant Sam you’re completely in charge of this in the sense that you’re subordinate to me in every way.

Funny to be sure.

But…I wonder…

Is this what we do with God?

God, you’re completely in charge of my life…in the sense that I still want to call all the shots.

God, you can have everything I own…after I’m done with my Amazon Prime cart.

God, take my life and let it be…exactly how I have envisioned it.

Matthew

Real surrender.

The disciples have surrendered…to sleep!

And really, we should be sure to be kind to them here.

This is all happening after the Maundy Thursday celebration, their great passover meal.

This meal typically ran well in to the evening, and so it’s pretty late at this point.

I need my beauty sleep too!

But still…even thought Jesus asked them very specifically to stay awake with him,

the sleep hits their eyes, and they give in.

Been there!

Jesus knows he’s about to head to the cross.

This is one of those areas that we have to be careful on the balance between Jesus the second person of the trinity, fully divine, and Jesus the person, fully human.

I don’t know how full and complete Jesus’ picture of what was coming was,

But he at least knows enough to know where this story is going.

He at least knows that one of his friends is about to betray him.

He at least knows enough to know that he’s about to be tried by a kangaroo court.

He at least knows that he is about to die.

Worth noting: Jesus doesn’t want to go!

Here we’re fully on the human side, because I think this is a position that most of us hold.

Jesus doesn’t want to die!

Of course he wants to look after each of us, of course he wants to deal with the sin problem,

But if it’s all the same to God, Jesus would really like to not have to die to be a part of that.

If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

And then…the moment of surrender.

Not what I want, but what you want.

I don’t want to die, but if this is your plan…

I don’t want to have to give up what you’ve given me in this life…but if this is your will…

I don’t want to have to surrender the good life I feel like I’m living…but…

Not my will, but yours be done God.

What an incredibly bold, challenging prayer to offer up in this moment.

Not my will, but yours be done God.

That’s what surrender looks like.

Surrender trusts God.

I don’t think that Jesus could pray “Not my will, but yours be done” unless he trusted God.

Unless he knew that God was going to work all things for the good of those who believe in him.

Unless he knew how to keep track of all the actions of God in the past to know that God will act in this once again.

Unless he knew deep down that God was going to look after God’s creation, and in this case God’s son.

Jesus, through his cosmic connection to the Father through the Trinity has nothing but trust for God.

And that’s a healthy and vital piece of surrender.

Surrender doesn’t try to hold on to an outcome.

Again, Jesus would rather not die in this story.

The outcome I think that the human side of Jesus desires here is pretty understandable.

He doesn’t want this life to end.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

He’d rather the cup pass from him, but…

He’s not holding on to that outcome.

So many times in my life anyway I think the majority of my stress is coming from my having envisioned an outcome for what I’m struggling with.

I hit the lottery and all my financial struggles are solved.

The Penguins somehow execute a trade and get all the good player in the league without giving anything up.

The sun stops burning fair skinned scandanavian pastors to a crisp when they stand outside for a hockey tournament.

But…first of all a lot of the outcomes I dream up are pretty unreasonable…

So I probably ought not to hold too tightly to them.

Maybe we learn along the way that hard work and careful planning are a better way to deal with finances than buying a lot of scratch offs.

Maybe we learn that a rag-tag team can be a cinderella story no matter what.

Maybe we learn that sunscreen makes the hockey tournament more enjoyable.

Let go of the outcomes we desire, and let God have God’s way with us, and things get interesting in a hurry!

Surrender is willing to lay aside what I want, so that God can have what God wants.

What keeps us from surrender?

We don’t surrender everything.

In listening to this hymn that we’re about to sing together, you’ll notice that our hymn writer didn’t leave much out, did she?

Listen to everything she wants us to surrender:

Our hands and feet

This would be a poetic way of saying our actions.

The places your feet move you, and the work of your hands.

Have you surrendered those to God?

Or are they there to build up your bank account?

Are they there to build up your ego?

Are they there for the building of God’s kingdom, or the building of ours?

Our voice

Having once again spent the last two weekends cheering on hockey tournaments, these next few questions might be more rightly pointed at myself:

Are the words I’m saying building other people up, or tearing them down?

If people found out what my profession was after I was done cursing, would they believe me? Would I be embarrassed?

If all people had to go on was the words we spoke, would they know we followed Christ?

If all people had to go on was our social media account, would we be identified as a Christian our would we be identified a played out partisan?

Are our lips surrendered to God? Or do we still hold the reigns on that one?

Silver and gold

We’ve started our stewardship campaign a bit earlier than we usually do.

For good reason I think, actually for a bunch of good reasons (stay tuned!)

But…that money you have?

Is that God’s?

Is God completely in charge of it, or is it subordinate to you in every way?

Again, the question that comes to mind is “does that wealth build up God’s kingdom, or is it too busy building up mine?”

When we give to the church, when we give to mission in the world, are we giving out of a place of guilt or obligation, or are we giving with a deep and profound sense of Joy?

Our intellect

This one’s good for Presbyterians, isn’t it?

We pride ourselves on our deep intellectual approach to faith.

And yet, even as I am pursuing a doctorate in theology and writing some papers to go with that, a few questions pop in to my mind to keep me humble:

Am I amassing this information for my own benefit, or so that I can be a more faithful disciple?

Am I learning more about the Bible so that I can walk closer to God, or am I learning more so that I can show off in the next small group meeting?

Am I scared of reading and studying more because somewhere along the way someone told me that I don’t have much of an intellect, and so I’d better stay hidden in the corner?

(Maybe that’s more humble, but it’s also not a surrender to God either!)

Am I chasing after more worldly information, or am I chasing after Godly wisdom?

Am I properly vetting the information I’m receiving to make sure that it’s accurate, or am I just going with whatever that news story on Facebook says?

We surrender to the wrong thing.

I wrote this sermon while I was sitting at the coffee bar at Barnes and Nobel.

And there’s a big ad, visible just over my laptop screen, for cake pops.

And I think it’s a really, really good thing that I’m writing the sermon that I’m writing right now.

Because I want to surrender to those cake pops so bad right now…

(I didn’t, don’t worry).

But there are lots of lesser things that we could surrender to, what one preacher called “Surrendering to lovers less wild.”

We can surrender to success. Give up everything in our lives to get it too, our cash, our will, our intellect.

We can surrender to our egos. Once again, we can give everything we have in the service of making sure that everyone else knows that we’re top dog.

We can surrender to a political viewpoint, which is what happens when so many uncritically accept the information they hear from their “trusted” news sources.

We can surrender to our sinful desires, whether they be cake pops or lust or greed or gossiping.

And look, some surrenders don’t cost us much.

A surrender to a cake pop only means a couple of extra minutes on the bike this week…

But the more we surrender to something other than God, the less we have to give to God.

And God wants it all.

We try to be at the top of the subordination ladder.

How did I know that was the West Wing clip I wanted to open with?

Because I think if we’re honest, this is the way we surrender to God most in our walk of faith.

As we walk down the street and we tell God our plans, I can hear God say “Is this what you meant when you said ‘God you’re completely in charge of this?’”

And I can hear us, whether we’re bold enough to say it out loud yet or not, “I meant God you’re in charge of this in the sense that you’re completely subordinate to me in every way.”

I’ll surrender to you God, so long as you make sure my plans work out the way I want them.

I’ll surrender to you God, so long as you give me the desires of my heart first and foremost.

I’ll surrender to you God, so long as I look good in the process.

I’ll surrender to you God, so long as no part of this life I’ve created for myself has to die.

Friends, we can try to play that game.

You know what? It doesn’t work out.

God’s going to get what God wants, no matter how we try to stack the deck in our favor.

It’d be a lot more simple to just say “Not what I want, but what you want.”

It’d be a lot more simple, carry a lot less stress, and lead to a lot less struggle, if we would just simply surrender to God.

Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee.

How can we get better at this?

Building Trust

A long time ago, when I was a Youth Pastor, I would take the confirmation class away on an opening retreat.

Because Confirmation is a team sport, I’d bring the parents along with us, because…fun!

And I would always open the retreat with what was called a trust walk.

This is where you are blindfolded, the entire group.

Everyone lines up and puts one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them.

And the only one who can see anything is the person at the front of the line.

What was so funny to me about this exercise among parents and teens is that the teens did substantially better at it!

They’d spent at least three years at that point on retreats and doing team building with me, they knew that they could trust me not to let them get hurt or worse, embarrassed.

But the parents didn’t know that.

They didn’t have enough experience with me to know that I would keep them safe.

That was trust that we’d have to build.

How do you build trust? It’s really simple and it’s really complicated all at the same time:

You have to put yourself in more situations where you have to trust someone.

If you want to build trust with God, you have to open yourself up to more situations where the only way out is to allow God to do God’s thing.

Have that conversation with someone where you have no idea what you’re going to say next.

Go on that mission opportunity where you’re going to be completely out of your comfort zone.

Dive in to that new church group that you’ve had your eye on for a while.

Say yes when L and N calls you.

Maybe these things are scary!

Being scared is a fantastic way to build trust.

Especially when that trust is in God, who will never fail or falter.

Let Go

Again, something that sounds painfully simple, but is probably one of the hardest things we have.

We have to let go of our desire to have every piece of our lives be subordinate to us in every way.

So here’s what we’re going to do:

It might be strange for a pastor and worship leader to suggest we NOT sing…but!

If you’ve got this down pat, if you have completely surrendered every piece of your life to Christ, if you don’t feel the slightest tinge to control things, then please don’t sing this next hymn.

For everybody else…

Let’s make this a prayer.

Sometimes just offering it as a prayer is enough to spark and inspire action.

Let’s pray that Christ would take our lives

That it would be what he wants, not what we want.

That we wouldn’t be holding on to slight pieces of life trying to control them.

That we would offer our hands and our feet rather than trying to make things work on our own.

That we would offer our intellect for the greater good of the kingdom.

That we would offer up silver and gold for the cause.

That we would lay down our very lives at the foot of the cross.

Again, if you’ve got that all down already, go ahead and sit this one out.

For the rest of us though…

Take my life…and let it be consecrated Lord to thee.