Commending our Spirits
The letting go
While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
Acts 7:59-60a
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:11-12
I don’t know how long my car has left, but I had a really hard time letting go of my last one, an over 200,000-mile 1997 red Toyota Tercel. It was not in great shape when I got it, and it was even worse shape when I left it. Once it was beyond any hope of selling, I went on one last joyride like it was a dying pet, then went to the salvage yard for $300 for parts. “Thank you, Terry. To the dump, I commend your spirit.”
On a serious note, I’m sad that I won’t be in town in two weeks for the final graduation of Sterling College. Not only because of the immense loss it will be for our community, but also because even in loss, there are still people to celebrate. For all graduations, there is always that bittersweet joy, a goodbye for us in the stands, a new life for the student. Do you remember your graduation(s)? Do you remember who was there? Do you remember seeing your favorite teacher on graduation day, and suddenly they no longer looked like a cross between a boss and a parent, and you realized they’re just a person? They were always just a person, but now you can see it because they no longer have control over you. Maybe your parents and grandparents were there too, not only to celebrate, but so that the graduate can remember they no longer have control over you either (thank heavens).
We call them “commencements,” as in a new beginning, but really we could also think of them as “commendations.” They are being sent off, no longer in the care of the people and place they once were, for their care is being handed over: they are commended.
When we decide to follow Christ, we not only have a new beginning with our souls, but we also have commended to him our spirits. Luke tells us that Jesus said on the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). John tells us that upon death, “He bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30). Jesus was echoing the psalmist saying the same thing, “You are my refuge, into your hand I commend my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God” (Psalm 31:4b-5). It is remarkable that in the midst of intense suffering on the cross, at the exact moment where he could have had reason to say, “God, how’d you let me get here? I can’t trust you anymore,” Jesus did the exact opposite. He said, “God, I fully trust you; I hand myself fully over to you.”
We also hear in today’s reading that what Jesus does is not just something only God can do. Stephen says in his final moments as the first Christian ever martyred, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). Commending our spirits is something any of us can do, especially when it seems like it’s all about to be taken away from us.
If you find yourself in intense suffering, this might be one of the most powerful prayers you can pray. When the hells of the world are around you, your body and mind searing pain into you, your enemies mock and surround you, when it is all simply too much, there are so many worse prayers you can pray than, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” We can pray it even when it’s not the pain the world gives us, but the pain we give ourselves, for it is also one of the best rock bottom prayers. At the moment we realize where our selfishness has gotten us, and we now know for real that we cannot do it alone, and like many people on the first day of AA, we no longer even want to be in charge, so we give over control, and God begins with us again. Like with my old car, or with the prodigal son, it’s like here you go, God, have at this broken-down person, I’ll take money for parts at this point.
While this is the perfect prayer for those moments, we don’t have to wait for intense pain or rock bottom to hand our spirits over. Our whole life with Christ is an invitation for us to let go of more and more control over how things are supposed to be. After all, we do pray “Thy will be done.” God’s people are named after Israel, whose name means “he who struggled with God and endured.” Jacob didn’t live because he was more powerful than God, but because, once he finally believed God was blessing him, he could let go and become a transformed man, from manipulator to grace-receiver. Like Jacob, we also struggle with God for control: control over his creation, control over his children, control over the Holy Spirit. But when we give up control of our lives to Christ—not to Christianity, not to a pastor, but to Christ—we gain so much more back. It’s funny how when we give up control over our salvation, we live in far more grace than when we think it’s in our hands.
For example, think of all the debates you’ve ever been in. How does it feel to need to “win” a debate versus a conversation where you didn’t care if you “won”? Which felt freer? Which conversation explored the truth more honestly? When you feel like you have to win, you feel like you have to control the conversation, scoring points, changing the subject, framing it to your will. But when you have given up control of the conversation, and the idea of “winning” doesn’t even make sense, you’ll find that you’re actually far freer to speak what your spirit feels and more likely to arrive at the truth. As authoritarian powers and persons eventually learn, once we try to control truth, we lose it, because truth isn’t ours to control, it’s God’s.
Earlier this week at the 4C’s, we were talking about forgiveness at our bible study. As we were talking, it became clear that we all had some struggles with it. After that conversation, I would be shocked if there was a single one of us here in this church who, if you thought about it for a minute, had nobody that you still needed to forgive (you probably won’t have to think about it for a minute, or even ten seconds). Why? Because forgiveness is also about letting go of control (I can’t help but notice that Stephen, after letting go his spirit to God, his last words were one of forgiveness: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60)). In the New Testament, the main word for “forgiveness” is aphiémi, or “to let go,” or “release.” I imagine most of us have trouble letting go of a pain, a hurt, a grudge, a suffering, or a real injustice because we are trying to hold onto control which the pain, the hurt, the injustice took from us. So often the injury and injustice was someone exerting their control over you in a way that was deeply wrong. If they exercised improper control over you to hurt you, a grudge doesn’t get rid of the hurt, but it does let us feel like we have more control again.
To be clear, forgiveness has nothing to do with minimizing how real the injustice is, or how real the pain is, or how wrong it was, or anything like that. It’s about, in a paradoxical way, taking a form of control by letting go control. We’re no longer trying to hold onto the injustice, we just release it back to God. It doesn’t mean that if we do forgive, it will happen quickly, easily, or completely. Imagine you have a boat tied to a dock, and that boat is the anger you have at someone or some group. And it’s a boat that also should probably go to the salvage yard because it just makes you upset every time you look at it or even think about it. To forgive is not to say the wrong wasn’t real, but to simply say, “I’m not gonna keep this boat tied to my dock anymore.” Then if you untie the boat, what happens? It floats away. It may take a long time because you aren’t even trying to push it away. It’s just out of your hands, floating. You have commended the whole thing to God, the hurt and your heart. And being able to do this is no small thing.
Let’s not kid ourselves: to trust and follow Jesus is not a small thing at all either. We are commending all of ourselves to his hands. Grace may be free, but it’s not always easy to accept if when it means I also have to let go. It’s one of the many meanings for us in baptism when we make vows or renew them as adults, the moment we say, “I now commend my spirit to you, God,” like a graduation for the soul. And so is repentance a commendation, where we say, “Lord, I know I have messed up again. Here I am again. To you, I commend my spirit. I’m giving up control.” When you’re exhausted of holding onto your sin and your shame about it, just untie the boat and let it float.
But here’s a predicament: I don’t believe we can fully do this without belief. Six times in our John 14 reading, Jesus says, “believe,” and it’s everywhere in John’s gospel that believing in Jesus is the key. But what if we don’t believe? Can we just make ourselves believe? I know we and many of our friends can get a lot of things from treating Christianity as a metaphor; I did too. But you don’t commend your spirit to a metaphor. You commend your spirit because you believe it. If someone tells us there’s free food at the church on Front Porch Forum, we go because we believe it’s true. If someone says there’s a unicorn farm where you fly to the stars in Danville, you’re probably not driving to Danville. We can’t commend our spirits to Christ without believing that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And we all know that we can tell if someone really believes something if it shows up not only in what they say, but what they do. If we say we believe in forgiveness but don’t actually do so, where is our belief? If we say we believe we should care for the needy and never do, do we really believe in what Jesus told us?
If you feel a pang of guilt at that, so do I. But to the extent that we are all sinners, we all struggle with belief. Maybe we struggle to believe that when we give ourselves to God, not only will he receive us, he will pour his Spirit back out on us; maybe we feel like we’ve tried that and it didn’t go as promised. But just as we don’t need to wait until we are struggling in our lives to commend our spirits to God, we don’t need to wait until we fully believe either. As Christ said to his friends, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, but if you do not, then believe because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:11-12) All throughout the gospels, we see sinners like you and me following before they fully believed in Jesus because they didn’t even know who he really was. Yet they act before they fully believe. Like on the road to Emmaus, they just wondered, “Were not our hearts burning?” (Luke 24:32). So while we can’t just force ourselves into more belief, there is good news. If believing is more than just what we intellectually know, but what our bodies actually do, then we don’t just commend our spirits as an effect of what we believe, but part of how we can come to believe is by commending our spirits. You can grow in belief by walking the walk of faith; it’s not a one-way street. What we do can help us grow in belief, because what we do is belief. We are not saved by works, but also, as James tells us, works are our living faith (James 2:14-26).
I pray you believe in your bones that Jesus is always pouring himself out for you and sending his Spirit for you. But if you don’t feel that, try giving him a little more of your spirit by doing the hard things he taught, so that you may believe that the Spirit is always moving. To commend our spirits to him is like hitting the ping-pong ball back to God that his Spirit already sent to you; no matter how many times you commend your spirit to him, he will send his back. This is a rhythm of Grace, giving ourselves over to the God who already gave himself to us.
And this is why Christian funerals need not be somber, for death is like a graduation. Maybe not by being martyred or by finishing agricultural college, but by living faithful lives until the end, when we become fully commended to God’s grace. But we don’t have to wait to graduate. We can live with commended spirits today by letting go more and more control into more and more of the new life in Christ. For Christ on the cross already commended his spirit to us, and he’s still commending his spirit to you in this very moment. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. You can believe in him. You can trust your spirit with him. And you will receive far more than you could ever control. Amen.
For more discussion of this week’s readings:
