December 29, 2024

Letting Go

I almost chose to not preach from the lectionary this week. None of the scripture readings seemed to grab me. Until I took a second look at this passage from Luke’s gospel. And here’s what I read all over again for the first time: “And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey.” – “they went a day’s journey.” Think about that for a minute. Mary and Joseph left this city for home without their twelve-year-old son, and didn’t notice that he wasn’t anywhere around for an entire day of traveling. Now, those are some seriously laid-back parents. Their inattention is written off with this simple explanation: “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers . . . .” They had just been in a major city, about sixty-five miles from the little town where they lived – a three or four day journey by caravan – and when they left, they didn’t bother to make certain their twelve-year-old son was with them – “Assuming that he was in the group of travelers.” Now, there’s a Bible story for you. But it gets better. After traveling for a whole day without him, they finally figure out he’s not there, so they head back to the city to look for him. It’s a big city. They search for three days! I don’t know about you, but in those circumstances I would be just about at my breaking point. When I finally did find that kid sitting in the temple talking with the rabbis I wouldn’t know whether to squeeze him and slobber all over him for joy, or strangle him! Here’s what Mary did: “When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’” OK, that’s when I decide to strangle him. “But,” scripture says, “they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.” She “treasured all these things in her heart.”

The picture I’m getting is of parents who give their twelve-year-old an unbelievable amount of rope, and who aren’t terribly anxious about what he’ll do with it. As far as his mother is concerned, the whole episode seems to have been a treasured learning experience. I don’t know, maybe it’s because people didn’t live as long back then so life was more compressed, but it seems that these parents were already well into the process of letting go of this boy – of giving him wings and letting him fly on his own – at twelve. But it’s clear that the boy was letting go of the apron strings as well. When his parents found him, he said, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” A rather precocious twelve-year-old, to say the least. So, it finally sunk in to me that this story is about letting go. And I figured that’s a pretty apt theme for this last Sunday of 2024, a time for letting go of one year as we reach for another.

You and I tend to cling to so much. And, at times, our death-grip on the things of our lives can be strangulating. We cling, of course, to our possessions. I was walking down the driveway to the mailbox the other day when I spotted a squirrel running off through the underbrush toward a tree. I had an instant, silly thought. I said to myself, “The foolish little animal thinks this is his land. It’s not; it’s my land, and he doesn’t even know it.” Then, of course, I chuckled a bit at myself. It’s not my land any more than it’s his. We’re both just using it while we’re alive on this earth. Some other humans like myself have some pieces of paper on file somewhere claiming that I and my wife “own” this property, as if any creature can own the land beneath its feet. Those pieces of paper on file don’t really make it more mine than the squirrel’s. It’s all just part of the planet that we both happen to be inhabiting for the moment. That realization caught me a little off guard. I want this to be our land. There’s something comforting in the thought of holding that possession. It gives me a sense of security. But changing my outlook, and letting go of “our land,” also felt a little liberating to me. I wonder how much any of us might mature as human beings if we were able to let go of our sense of ownership – of that need to cling to possessions as if we ourselves were the center of a constellation of things that make us important. And that sense of ownership can also be extended to our children. letting go of them is especially hard. But Mary and Joseph are good examples. When a child is given wings and plenty of space, it can be a wonder to behold how they can fly. Letting go of the things to which we cling might actually allow us to have greater respect for those around us, our neighbors, our children, and maybe even the squirrels.

Simone Weil offered a vision of this kind of letting go. She wrote: “To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of . . . free choice at the center of each soul. Such consent is love. The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor.”

I tink she’s got it right. We not only hold tight to our possessions, perhaps we hold even tighter to ourselves – or, more accurately, the sense of ourselves – the identity we have created for ourselves over a lifetime of working, relating, and creating. The problem with our desperate hold on this identity is that it’s an attempt to cling to the past, to all that we have known and valued about ourselves and our world. And we are not allowed such a luxury. Life is a dynamic, evolving thing. At times, it seems the only constant is that everything changes. So we are called upon to let go of the past. At regular intervals in the course of our living the parameters of our lives change, the particular challenges to be faced change, even our identities must change.

The pastor and writer, Mike Yaconelli, offered a vivid image of this reality in an article before his death a number of years ago. He wrote: “Once you find where [God’s] trail is, you are faced with a sobering truth in order to go on, you must let go of what brought you here. You cannot go on without turning your back on what brought you to this place. It is like swinging on a trapeze. Once you have gained the courage to swing, you never want to let go . . . and then, without warning (around age 50, for me), you look up and see another trapeze swinging towards you, perfectly timed to meet you, and you realize you are being asked to let go and grab onto the other trapeze. You have to release your grip. You have to reach out. You have to experience the glorious terror of inbetween-ness as you disconnect from one and reach for the other.” I think Yaconelli’s trapeze image is a great one to “hold on to” – so to speak. Every stage of life, it seems, involves a letting go of one bar to reach for another. That can be a very frightening prospect, but it’s absolutely essential.

Ultimately, what all of our years are preparing us for is letting go of life itself. That’s the final challenge. I have spoken to you before about my brother, Bill. In his final days with ALS disease, somehow, he managed to hold on. But in the larger sense he had been letting go – through a remarkable and inspiring process. I believe I’ve related to you before his words to me after his diagnosis. He said that if he could choose a way to die, this agonizingly protracted withering away would be his choice. Because, in his words, “death is the last great adventure in life, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.” That’s facing into death, and a form of letting go that I have found unbelievably courageous and has inspired me ever since.

Michael Jinkins, the President of Louisville Seminary, writing in the Christian Century some years ago, asked, “. . . ‘What happens when we die?’ I think I would have to say now, ‘We let go.’ . . . Faith is a matter of learning to let go, to entrust ourselves to God. When we die,” he says, “we really do let go. Like a tiny infant unable even to hold onto her mother’s finger, unable to grasp and pull ourselves up, we let go when death is here, and in letting go we are tacitly entrusting all we are to God for whatever may come.”

So, here we are at the doorstep of another year. In truth, January 1st will probably be virtually indistinguishable from December 31st. But all the emotional freight attached to the turning of the calendar makes it a very convenient time for this sort of reflection. The child left behind in the big city and finding his way to the temple and to his future is, in some ways, our story. It summons us to consider what we are letting go of, and what we might be reaching for. The answers to that query may differ among us, but the basic reality is the same for us all. Freedom, growth, and grace in living require that we loosen our grip, so that our hands will be ready to find what the Lord and the future have in store.

I wish for you all open hands, open arms, and open minds; and a very happy New Year.