Let’s pause for a moment to imagine what it would be like to be a trapeze artist. Have you ever wondered what that would feel like, if it is something you could ever do?

You would climb a ladder high above a crowd of people, seated, craning their necks to watch you. You would step carefully onto a small platform, just large enough for you and maybe one other person to stand.

And you would stand there, watching and waiting. Someone would send a small swing your way, and you would grasp onto it with your two hands, watching, waiting. And when you were ready, with a step, or a small hop, you would hold onto the swing and simply step out into the air, high above the ground.

If you wanted, you could simply swing, and return to the safety of the little platform. But that is not really what aerialists do. No. Instead, they swing out, and when the moment is right, they let go of the swing.

And there you are in midair.

If you time your movements right, you would reach out and grab onto another swing, or perhaps grab the waiting hands of another trapeze artist, swinging out to meet you. You would connect, and complete your planned routine, perhaps with a midair somersault, perhaps hanging by your knees, perhaps simply returning to the waiting platform.

But of course, what makes trapeze artistry fascinating, and scary to watch, is that moment of letting go, that moment in between, when you make a conscious choice to have nothing supporting you.

I’m sure you have figured out by now that in talking about a trapeze act, I am offering you a metaphor for our lives. For what are our lives but continual decisions about how to respond to what we are encountering: the decisions of when to hold on, and when to let go? Life is a series of changes, of transitions, when we are forced to launch off the comfortable, safe platform, and to take a step into midair. Seldom do we embrace these transitions, the steps into the unknown.

We tend to cling. The bird in the hand, we tell ourselves, is worth two in the bush. We ask ourselves, should I look for more fulfilling work, or is this job good enough? Should I quit my job and start sculpting full time? Do I really need AA, or NA? And we hesitate. We don’t let go of the swing, or maybe we don’t even grab onto it, but instead stand and wait for it to come back, thinking we’ll grab it the next time. Or maybe in the end we simply climb back down the ladder to the floor below.

Our service is full of metaphors this morning: think back to the poem we read a few minutes ago, about skipping stones. How many times do we hold on to the stone too tightly, only to have it go flying in the wrong direction? “What’s hard is what’s unteachable,” the poem tells us…”reckoning that point at which you must release…learning the hard way how to let go.” (“Skipping a Stone on Water,” by Charles Darling)

Our lives are in many ways a continual exercise in learning the hard way how to let go. Think of all the changes and transitions we face throughout our lives: the choice as we enter adulthood to leave home and family, the decision to end intimate relationships, perhaps to permanently sever ties with a person who is not good for us. Throughout our lives we constantly are challenged to let go of our expectations: our expectations of our partners, our expectations of wealth or success, our expectations that our bodies will not fail us, our expectations that we will not disappoint ourselves or the people around us. Life offers us, over and over again, opportunities to learn the hard way how to let go. Do we carry around resentment and anger, or do we let that go and forgive someone who has hurt us, who has wronged us? How do we let go of aspirations for success?

This practice of learning to let go is deeply religious work. It has a theological name: surrender. The theological concept of surrender exists in many different religious traditions. In Islam, for example, it means surrendering to the will of Allah, by following the five pillars of Islam. Christians also aspire to surrender to God’s will, – remember the prayer of “Thy will be done,” – but they also are taught the concept of emptying the self, in order to create space for the entering of the divine presence. In a well-known, and confusing story in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his disciples, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Later, it was said that Jesus added, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” (Lk. 14:26 and 33). What Jesus was saying was this: Let go of your daily lives. Give up your relationships and your possessions, in order to enter the religious life, to prepare for a divine encounter, to prepare for transformation.

Surrender, across religious traditions, urges humility, emptying, letting go of the self in order to reach the ultimate objective of a mystical union with the divine, or awakening.

There is an ancient story in Therevadan Buddhism about the Buddha’s assistant, a monk named Ananda. Ananda served the Buddha for many years, and spent much time recording the thoughts and sayings of the Buddha. He was instrumental in making sure that the teachings of many years would be preserved. The story is told this way: “After the Buddha’s final Nirvana (or death) five hundred enlightened monks convened a Council at Rajagaha for the purpose of collecting all the Buddha’s teachings and committing them to memory so they could be handed down to future generations. (It was believed important that all present be enlightened, so that their own personal desires would not corrupt the purity of the teachings.) Because he knew so much Dharma it was essential that Ananda be present, but he was not yet enlightened, (and so the enlightened monks ordered him to achieve enlightenment.) Now that he no longer had to look after the Buddha’s needs, he had more time to meditate and so he began to practise with exceptional diligence, hoping that he could attain enlightenment before the Council started. As the time for the Council’s commencement got closer, he practised harder and harder. During the evening before the Council he sat meditating, convinced that he would not be able to attain enlightenment by the next morning. So he gave up and decided to lie down and sleep. As his head touched the pillow he became enlightened. Ananda was warmly welcomed at the Council the next day and over the following months he recited thousands of discourses that he had heard…” (https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/disciples09.htm, #64.)

Ananda let go. He decided that he simply would be unable to attain enlightenment in time, and so he made a conscious decision to let go of the aspiration, and to sleep. And in that moment, after surrendering, he achieved awakening, the union with the Divine. Ananda let go, and he liberated himself from all the pressure, the demands of the 500 monks who were insisting that he attain enlightenment. He was at peace, able to sleep, deciding that the goal was beyond his reach. Ananda surrendered.

What might you be able to attain if you let go of the trapeze swing, let go of the skipping stone? It takes tremendous courage, to face that sense of free fall, the knowledge that there is suddenly nothing under your feet. It takes courage, and it takes faith: faith that there will be a safety net below you, or something else to grab onto. And sometimes it takes humility: a knowledge and understanding that you have reached a point where letting go of the swing is the best thing you can do.

One of the best examples of surrender is the decision to enter treatment; to choose to stop drinking alcohol or to use narcotics. The goal in making that decision is not awakening in a religious sense, but rather, it is a secular one. People choose to put down what was supposed to be the thing that helped them cope, and to admit that a problem has gotten too large for them to solve on their own. The goal might be different, but as with spiritual awakening, the decision takes courage, and it takes humility.

I freely admit that I struggle to surrender to the will of something greater than myself. But I do recall vividly a moment when I chose to surrender in another way. My husband came to me and told me, “We’ve been trying hard for a long time. And things are better between us. But it just isn’t good enough, and I think it’s time to separate.” And in that moment, I responded, “I won’t fight you. I’ll stop trying.” I let go of my hopes and expectations in that moment: the hope of reconciliation, the expectations that I would always be married.

We liberal religious people seldom talk about surrender. Often for us, the emphasis is on self-improvement, on personal growth, on becoming the best people we can be. We might seek wisdom and greater understanding, but we are likely to try to acquire it through books and education; to fill ourselves up. We don’t often think too much about being humble, about emptying or losing our selves in order to make room for transformation, to seek the Mystery and to become one with it, to seek what is beyond us and greater than us.

We cling to the ordinary in our lives. We long for equilibrium, for comfort, for the semblance of control that a predictable daily life seems to offer us. But what happens to us if we try to stay squeezed onto the tiny platform in the trapeze act? If we never take a deep breath and jump, if we never allow ourselves to experience that moment of letting go? Buddhism teaches that the harder we hold onto to what we care about, our desires, our expectations, the more we suffer. It is the holding on that creates suffering, not the letting go. And Jesus told his disciples, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 10:39).

This is a message found across traditions, in many languages. If letting go were easy, the teachings might have lost their force by now; might have dwindled away and become irrelevant. But here we are, clinging to everything familiar, even if what we are used to and comfortable with might make us suffer, might keep us from growth and wisdom.

“Save your strength to swim with the tide…
Let it all go and flow with the grace that washes through your days…
Let go, and the wave’s crest will carry you to unknown shores,
beyond your wildest dreams or destinations.”

My friends, may you have the faith you need to let go, and transform.

Blessed be,
Amen.