Breathing Under Water: Letting Go of Control
Isaiah 55:1–2 NRSVUE; Philippians 2:12–13 The Message;
We are now three weeks into this journey we are calling Breathing Under Water, so named for a book by Fr. Richard Rohr about the spirituality of the 12 steps which undergird many recovery communities.
In week one, Hunter introduced us to the first step, which is about admitting our powerlessness. We told the truth that there are some things we cannot fix by trying harder. There are parts of our lives, our relationships, our habits, our histories, and our world that do not become whole simply because we have decided to become more disciplined, more responsible, more impressive, or more in control.
Last week, we moved from powerlessness to hope. Not the sentimental kind that pretends everything is fine, but the deeper hope that says God is already moving toward us. Hope as support beneath us. Hope as the father running down the road before the son can finish rehearsing his apology. Hope as the grace that comes before we know how to believe fully.
And today, we come to surrender.
That is not an easy word.
For some of us, surrender sounds like defeat. It sounds like giving up. It sounds like becoming passive in the face of pain or injustice. It sounds like calling harm “God’s will” because we do not know what else to do with it.
So we should be clear: that is not the kind of surrender we are talking about today.
The actual language of the third step is: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood (God).”
This kind of surrender is not giving up on life. It is not giving up on healing. It is not giving up on justice. It is not shrinking away from responsibility. It is not staying in a harmful situation and calling that faithfulness.
This kind of surrender is not resignation.
This surrender is a choice to rest in the hope we began to understand last week.
If Step Two asks us to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us, Step Three asks whether we can trust that Power enough to stop fighting God’s love and grace. Step Three asks whether we can turn our will and our life toward God’s care.
The kind of care we understand comes from God matters here.
Fr. Richard Rohr writes that we will never turn our will and our life over to any kind of God except a loving and merciful One. Of course we won’t. Why would we surrender ourselves to a God we believe is cruel? Why would we open our lives to a God we believe is disappointed before the conversation even begins? Why would we trust a God who seems mostly interested in catching us, shaming us, or measuring us against someone else?
We won’t.
At least not freely.
We might comply. We might perform. We might become religiously anxious. We might try to manage God the way we try to manage everyone else. But we will not surrender in love to a God we do not believe is loving.
That may be why so many of us have confused faith with effort.
If the spiritual life is a contest, then the goal is to score well. Believe the right things. Do the right things. Avoid the wrong things. Look faithful enough. Serve enough. Give enough. Pray enough. Hold enough together.
But that is not freedom. It is not wholeness. And it is not the gospel.
Rohr names this danger when he says that, as long as the spiritual journey is treated like a moral achievement contest, many people will never feel worthy, ready, or able to come forward. And some who do come forward do so by denying the parts of themselves they do not know how to bring into the room.
That rings true to me. And I spent a whole lot of time at camp this week helping young people to understand this kind of faith – faith that is not confused with effort.
Because if we don’t understand this kind of faith, religion can become one more place where we learn to hide.
If we think God’s embrace of us is about our effort, then we only bring the acceptable parts of ourselves to God: the helpful part, the competent part, the faithful part, the part that can answer correctly, the part that can say, “I’m fine, thanks,” without blinking.
But the fearful, angry and grieving parts stay hidden. The resentful part stays hidden. The controlling part stays hidden. The part that is tired of being needed stays hidden.
And then we wonder why we do not feel whole.
Isaiah knows this pattern.
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”
That is where the text begins: not with accusation, but with invitation.
Come.
Come to the waters. Come even if you have no money. Come receive what you cannot purchase.
And then Isaiah asks the question that cuts through so much of our anxious striving: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for that which does not satisfy?”
That question is not only about money. It is about the economy of our lives.
Why do we keep spending ourselves on what cannot feed us?
Some of us spend ourselves trying to be needed. Some of us spend ourselves trying to be right. Some of us spend ourselves trying to keep everyone around us happy. Some of us spend ourselves trying to avoid conflict. Some of us spend ourselves trying to curate the version of ourselves that looks capable, faithful, calm, useful, and fine.
And because we are church people, we can make all of that sound holy. We can call it service. We can call it commitment. We can call it excellence. We can call it leadership. We can call it being dependable.
Sometimes it is those things. Sometimes the work is good and necessary and loving.
But sometimes what looks like faithfulness is fear with a church name tag. Sometimes what looks like responsibility is control. Sometimes what looks like strength is our refusal to admit that we are tired.
Isaiah asks: why keep spending yourself on what does not satisfy?
Not to shame us.
To invite us.
Come to the waters. Come receive what you cannot manufacture. Come be nourished by grace. Come stop trying to buy what God is already giving.
That is where surrender begins.
Not with clenched teeth. Not with one more self-improvement plan. Not with the inner voice that says, “You really should be better at this by now.”
Surrender begins when we hear the invitation underneath all the noise: come.
Come thirsty. Come empty-handed. Come without enough. Come without proof that you have made enough progress. Come to the God whose grace is not for sale.
This is where I hear an echo of the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turns water into wine. So often, the abundance of God comes where people have run out. The jars are empty. The party is at risk. The resources are insufficient. And into that ordinary lack, Jesus brings abundance no one could have produced by trying harder.
The servants still fill the jars. They still participate. But they do not create the miracle. They make room for it.
That is surrender: making room for grace to do what we cannot do by force.
Paul gives us another angle on this in Philippians. In The Message, Paul is not telling the church to collapse into passivity. He tells the community to live salvation out with reverence and seriousness.
But then he says the part we must not miss: God is the one working in us.
That is the great paradox of the Christian life.
Do we work?
Yes.
Does God work?
Yes.
But our work is response, not proof. Our work is participation, not control. Our work is consent to the grace already moving within us.
Grace is not opposed to effort.
Grace is opposed to earning.
There is work for us to do. There is healing to practice. There are patterns to notice. There are prayers to pray. There are choices to change. There are truths to tell. There are neighbors to love. There is justice to seek.
But the work does not begin with us, and it does not depend entirely on us.
God is already at work in us.
That is what keeps surrender from becoming passivity.
Surrender is not, “I will do nothing.”
Surrender is, “I will stop pretending I am the source of my own salvation.”
Surrender is, “I will participate in what God is doing, instead of trying to control what only God can heal.”
This is why Matthew’s words matter too.
Ask, and it will be given you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened.
Those are not passive words. They involve desire. They involve movement. They involve vulnerability.
To ask is to admit we do not already have everything we need.
To search is to admit we have not already found everything.
To knock is to stand before a door we cannot open by our own force and trust that someone is on the other side.
That, too, is surrender.
Not silence. Not helplessness. Not doing nothing.
But asking instead of controlling. Searching instead of pretending.
Knocking instead of breaking the door down.
There is a world of difference between knocking and forcing.
Control forces.
Trust knocks.
Control says, “I have to make this happen.”
Trust says, “God, I am here. I am willing. Open what only you can open.”
And Jesus says the door will be opened.
Not always the door we expected. Not always on our preferred timeline. Not always in a way that lets us keep every illusion intact.
But opened.
Because God is not withholding grace until we become better at faith. God is already inviting. God is already drawing us toward life.
That is why Rohr can call this kind of surrender sweet.
Not because it is easy. It usually is not.
Surrender can feel like loss before it feels like freedom. Letting go can feel like free falling before we discover we are being held. Opening our hands can feel terrifying when we have spent a lifetime believing our grip was the only thing keeping us safe.
And some of us learned to grip honestly: in homes where adults were unpredictable, in systems where mistakes were punished harshly, in families where peace depended on reading the room, in jobs where productivity was treated like self worth.
So surrender has to be spoken gently.
No one should be bullied into letting go. No one should be rushed into trust.
The God revealed in Jesus does not pry our fingers open.
God invites.
Come to the waters.
Ask.
Search.
Knock.
There is a softness in those invitations that we should not miss. God is not standing over us saying, “Surrender faster.” God is not grading the purity of our release. God is not turning the spiritual life into another contest where the people with the most serenity win.
God is merciful. God is patient. God is loving.
And because God is loving, surrender becomes possible.
So what might surrender look like this week?
Maybe it looks smaller than we expect.
Maybe it looks like praying before planning. Maybe it looks like taking one thing off the list because your body is telling the truth. Maybe it looks like letting someone else help. Maybe it looks like saying, “I do not know what to do next.” Maybe it looks like asking for what you need instead of resenting that no one guessed. Maybe it looks like admitting that the thing you keep calling responsibility is actually fear.
Maybe it looks like opening your hand for one breath and praying, “God, loosen my grip.”
Not forever. Not perfectly.
Just honestly.
Today, in our ritual action, we will take the stone that has helped us tell the truth these last weeks, and we will release it into water.
The stone is still real. The burden is still real. The grief, the fear, the responsibility, the wound, the longing, the resistance—none of it disappears because we drop a stone into a bowl.
But the water into which we drop the stone tells another truth.
The water reminds us of baptismal grace. The water tells the truth that we are held in something deeper than our own effort. The water tells the truth that what we release is received by God.
We are not throwing our lives away.
We are entrusting them to care.
And that is the invitation of this week.
Come to the waters. Come empty-handed. Come thirsty. Come tired of spending yourself on what does not satisfy. Come with your clenched fist and your small willingness.
Ask.
Search.
Knock.
And trust this: God is already at work within you.
Not because you have mastered surrender. Not because you have become perfectly serene. Not because you no longer feel the urge to control.
But because grace was moving before you knew how to name it.
Surrender is not the opposite of hope.
Surrender is what hope makes possible.
If God is not loving, surrender is dangerous. If God is not merciful, surrender is foolish. If God is not trustworthy, surrender is impossible.
But if God is the One who invites the thirsty to water, if God is the One who turns scarcity into abundance, if God is the One already working within us, if God is the One who opens when we knock, then surrender is not defeat.
It is rest.
It is consent.
It is the unclenching of the soul in the presence of mercy.
God meets us here.
In this actual life. In this actual body. In this actual week.
And God leads us toward wholeness.
So loosen your grip.
Open your hand.
Come to the waters.
The grace you cannot buy is already being given.
The work you cannot finish alone is already being carried by God.
The door you cannot force open is already being opened by love.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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