Living By the Prayer Jesus Died By: A Prayer of Our Surrender (Ps. 31:5-8)

Henri Nouwen was an internationally known priest, professor and author of more than 40 books on the spiritual life.  He once wrote about how we tend to pray with closed hands.[1]   Nouwen wrote of watching an elderly woman being brought into a psychiatric center. She was wild, swinging at everyone and everything.  And as she lashed out, she gripped a tiny coin in one hand.  Perhaps it was like the coin you hold in your hand.  In spite of all her commotion and the pleading of the hospital staff, the coin remained in her hand.  She would not let go of that coin.  It finally took two people to pry open her clenched fist and take the coin away.  Nowen wrote, “It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.”  Nouwen reflected on how this woman and her coin were symbolic of the way many of us approach our life with God.  We pray with tightly clenched fists.  That is, many of us have at least one coin in our hands—one thing we will not or cannot let go of; one relationship, or dream, or hurt, or memory or possession that we are unwilling or unable to surrender in prayer to God.  We pray, Nouwen said, clinging tightly to that coin.  It’s as if we would lose our very self if we lost that coin.

 

I’d take this one step further.  We not only often pray with closed hands.  We often live with closed hands.  Many people live their whole lives trying to hold on to as these coins—these issues in life that are so important to us.  And if they were to lose those coins, they would lose part of their soul.

 

In our culture, we tend to call people who live with closed hands “control freaks.”  Control freaks are individuals who try to hold on to everything, including us.  They want to have their hands in control.  In his book Control Freak Les Parrott writes about these people.[2]  He tells of a young couple who had come to him for premarital counseling.  While he met with them, he hung a sign on his closed door which told others that a session was in progress and they were not to be disturbed.  Despite the sign, there was a knock at the door.  A woman stuck her head in the door before Parrott could even open it.  It was the fiance’s mother.  She said, “Oh, I thought you two might be in here, and I wanted to let you know your father and I are going to take you to dinner when you’re done with the counselor.  We’ll be out in the car when you’re ready.  But take your time—five or ten minutes maybe?”  This was a mother who wanted to keep that couple in her hands.  Parrott says he spent the rest of their session talking about control.  He writes, “At any given moment, millions of Americans are scrambling to take control of their jobs, spouses, kids, health, and time.”

 

You may not be a control freak.  But there are probably some things which you can’t imagine letting go of or which you are obsessively trying to gain control of.  There are probably some coins you will not release or some coins you desperately want to grasp.  A difficult project.  A prodigal child.  An ailing parent.  A dead church.   A close friend who is moving.  A boyfriend or girlfriend you can’t imagine being without.  A wound caused by someone.  The loss of a loved one.   And we do everything we can to hold on to these.  Or we do all we can to get hold of these.  And even if we wanted to, we couldn’t seem to release them.

 

Jesus, however, lived and died by a different image.  Jesus lived and died with open hands of surrender.  Jesus lived with his hands wide open, clinging lightly, not tightly to virtually everything.  This is reflected in statements he makes about his total and complete submission to his father:

• So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. (John 5:19 ESV)
• “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. (John 5:30 ESV)
• So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. (John 8:28 ESV)

It’s as if Jesus holds on to nothing.  Rather, he entrusts everything to God.  He receives only what God gives.  He does only what God commands.  Nothing less.  Nothing more.  Everything is surrendered to the Father.

 

We see Jesus’ open-handed lifestyle most clearly in his final words.  Jesus did and said many things in his final hours.  But for Luke, the most significant thing was the prayer Jesus died by.  Imagine the millions of ways Jesus could have prayed his final prayer.  Luke records the one prayer Jesus chose: ⁴⁶ Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.  (Luke 23:46 ESV).  Jesus not only lived with open hands.  He died with open hands.  If there was ever an open-hand prayer, this is it.  Here, at the end of his life, Jesus opens his hands as wide as they’ve ever been.  And just as he’s entrusted every facet of his life and ministry to God’s hands up to this point, so now he entrusts himself, his spirit, to those same hands.  This prayer revealed Jesus as one who courageously and faithfully turned every single thing over to the hands of God.  Not a coin was left in his wounded hands.

 

And as we saw last Sunday, this prayer comes from Ps. 31: In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me!  ² Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily!  Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me!  ³ For you are my rock and my fortress; and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me; ⁴ you take me out of the net they have hidden for me, for you are my refuge.  ⁵ Into your hand I commit my spirit... (Ps. 31:1-5 ESV).  Last Sunday we explored the first four verses of this Psalm.  We were relieved as we meditated upon this God who is a refuge.  That image is certainly one which comforted Jesus as he prayed from this Psalm on the cross.  For Jesus, God was indeed a refuge and a strong fortress.

 

But there’s so much more to the Psalm.  The one line which most captured Jesus was the line in vs. 5: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.”  In Psalm 31, this line is written by one whose life is out of control.  It’s written by one whose coins all seem threatened.  David writes in vs. 7 of his “affliction” and “distress.”  He writes in vs. 9 about his “distress” and his “grief.”  In vs. 10 he speaks of his “sorrow” and his “sighing.”  Eight times (vv. 4, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 20) he writes about enemies, adversaries, persecutors, and others who are making life miserable.  So much of David’s life is out of his control.  So what does David do?  He entrusts it all to God’s control.  Because he cannot even get these circumstances in his hands, he places them all in the hands of God.  He entrusts this chaotic mess and his very life into the hands of God.  David lived by this prayer.

 

And Jesus died by this prayer.  Why?  Because it enabled him to do what David did—turn everything, including himself, over to the hands of the Father.

 

And in dying by this prayer, Jesus modeled for us an approach to living.  Jesus lived and died with open hands of surrender.  We too are called to live with open hands of surrender.  Jesus’ final prayer shows that the best way to live is in constant surrender to God.

 

After telling the story of the woman dragged to a psychiatric hospital who clung obsessively to a coin, Nouwen wrote this: “When you are invited to pray, you are asked to open your tightly clenched fist and give up your last coin.”  This is what Jesus’ dying prayer invites us to do: open our tightly clenched fist and give up whatever it is we are clinging to.  A sin.  A selfish hope.  A broken relationship.  A financial situation outside our control.  Our job.  Our marriage.  Jesus’ prayer invites us to open our tightly clenched fist and give up those coins to God.

 

Contemporary Christian musician Chris Tomlin also reflected on this prayer in his new release “White Flag”:

The battle rages on

As storm and tempest roar

We cannot win this fight

Inside our rebel hearts

We’re laying down our weapons now

We raise our white flag

We surrender

All to You

All for You

This is what Jesus teaches us to do.  If we live by the prayer Jesus died by, we give up the fight within our rebellious hearts.  We refuse to fight any longer with God over something we desperately want or think we need.  We raise our white flag and we surrender it all to him.

 

Letters from the Land of Cancer is a book by award-winning author Walter Wangerin Jr.[3]  When Wangerin was diagnosed with cancer, he began writing letters to his family members to document his treatment and his feelings.  The book is made up of these letters “from the land of cancer.”  Early in the book, Wangerin reflects on Jesus’ prayer: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  He considers the possibility that Ps. 31 was a Psalm that Mary may have sung to Jesus when he was a child.  It could be that Jesus had known this psalm from his earliest years.  Perhaps Mary used it to try to instill within Jesus a rock-solid faith and trust in God.  And now, in Jesus’ final moments, this prayer from Psalm 31, given to him perhaps my Mary, enables him to face death courageously.  Then Wangerin, thinking about his own final moments and the cancer killing him writes “If all my life, like Jesus’s, is protected by the left hand and the right hand of God, why wouldn’t I be able to speak peacefully of this terminal disease?”  In the midst of his suffering, he learned to surrender.  With open hands, he entrusted even his cancer into the hands of God.

 

In his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? Philip Yancey quotes Austin Farrer who writes:[4] “A Christian who knew his own heart might pray in some such fashion as this.  My God…I wish to commit myself to you once and for all, so there shall be no taking back…I can commit myself into your hands; for though I cannot keep myself there, your fingers can hold me there, your strong, gentle fingers always giving way and never letting go; your wise subtle fingers, wrestling so gently against my puny rebellions, that I tire myself trying to climb out of your hands, and come to rest at last in those wounded palms.”  And isn’t that the best place for all the things we care about to be?  Isn’t that the best place for that coin or those coins to be?  Isn’t that the best place for us all to be?  If we learn to live by this prayer Jesus died by, that’s where it will all be—resting in those wounded palms of God.

 

Jenny Allen in her book Anything writes that it was only when she and her husband learned to pray this prayer that they began to experience God in new and surprising ways.[5]  She and her husband Zac climbed into bed one night.  They were tired.  Physically.  Emotionally.  Spiritually.  Zac took Jenny’s hand and spoke into words something that had been bubbling in their hearts: “God, we will do anything.”  Jenny writes that “God had been opening our eyes to how precarious our temporary lives were and how numbly we were moving through them.  We were over it.  We were over building our lives.  We were over houses and cars and nice Christmas cards….We had loved so many other things more than God…So we prayed ‘God we will do anything.  Anything’…the prayer held in it a thousand little deaths.  In saying anything, it meant we were handing him everything.”    Will you hand him everything?  It’s how Jesus died.  And it’s the only way we can truly live.

 

Last week I shared this material with some of those who had gathered at Lipscomb University for an event called Summer Celebration.  After my class, a woman hung around until almost everyone else left.  Then she said, “I have a question.”  “Tell me your question,” I said.  “Well,” she said, “how do you do this?  How do you live with hands wide open?  I mean, look at what happened.”  “What do you mean?” I asked.  “Well,” she said.  “Look at what happened to Jesus.  He lived with his hands open wide and he ended up dying on a cross.  Won’t that happen to me if I live that way?”  “It can,” I said.  “But,” I added, “this is the only way to live.  God will only work through us and in us to the extent that our hands are wide open and our lives are fully surrendered.”  She shook her head and walked away.  It is truly a challenging call—to live by the prayer Jesus died by.  It may mean suffering and death.  But it will also mean a life of great fruitfulness and service to God and to others.

 

It will lead to a life like that of Charles de Foucauld.  Foucald was born in Strasbourg in 1858.[6]  He was orphaned at the age of 5 and lived a difficult childhood.  At 23 he enlisted in the army.  The military took him to Africa where he fought in a conflict.  Foucauld was an atheist for the first 28 years of his life.  But at age 28, he converted to Christianity.  Filled with such a love for God and for others, Foucauld was ordained as a priest at age 43.  His real life’s work had just begun.  Foucauld was convicted to surrender his entire life to helping others know the great love of God.  He decided to return to Africa and to practice a “ministry of presence” among Arabs, especially among the poor.  For the next 15 years he lived out the love and lifestyle of Jesus among the poorest of the poor in Africa.  He became known as the “apostle of the Sahara.”  Though he was murdered in 1916, his humble life of service to nonbelievers inspired the establishment of three religious movements in the twentieth century.  Each sought not to isolate themselves in a monastery or retreat but to live out the way of Jesus in the midst of unbelievers.  Foucauld became known for his incarnational approach to ministry and for his deep surrender to God.  He captured this spirit in a famous prayer known as the “Prayer of Abandonment.”  It was a prayer he had come to live by.  It was the prayer Jesus died by.  I want you to join me in reading this prayer out loud:

Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you; I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

For I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands,

Without reserve, and with boundless confidence,

For you are my Father.”

 

Imagine what could happen if that prayer became your prayer.  Imagine if every day started and was sustained by that prayer.  Imagine what could happen at Highland if this was Highland’s prayer.  Imagine what God might do through a church so surrendered to his will.

 

Close your eyes.  Hold that coin in your hand.  Imagine that this coin is something that’s bothering you today.  Something that’s stressing you.  Something you’re wrestling to get control of.  A project.  A child.  A marriage.  A sin.  Now silently pray this: “Father, into your hands I commit _____.”  Now, think of that coin as something you know you’ve got too tight a grip on.  Something you’ve almost become obsessed with.  A promotion.  A relocation.  An award.  Now silently pray this: “Father, into your hands I commit ______.”  Finally, consider that coin to represent your entire life.  Your possessions.  Your relationships.  Your career.  Your family.  Your friends.  Your goals.  Your aspirations.  Your health.  Your identity.  Now silently pray this: “Father, into your hands I commit my life.”  Open your eyes.  May you leave here committed to living by the prayer Jesus died by.

 

We’re going to pass around some baskets right now.  If it would help you to start letting go of something, drop your coin into that basket.  Drop your coin in that basket as a way of saying to yourself, to others, and to God that you’re going to try to entrust whatever that represents to you into the hands of God.