“Let God and Let Go!”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
The three aspects of this Spiritual Power are cleansing, renunciation, and repentance. Cleansing-wash your hands, hit the refresh button on your computer and it works much better. We continually refresh our perspective on life, letting go of viewpoints that cloud our vision. Clean the glasses of your mind and your heart so that you can look with love at all that is before you, that is the Cleansing power of Release.
Then there is Renunciation, when you swear you will never do that again, but as Jesus warned us, don’t make hollow promises; you can’t put new wine in old wineskins! True renunciation is an action of the heart, as we saw in Rain Man and his brother Charlie Babbitt. Letting go of old patterns of distrust and using one another allowed them to move into the emotional space of truly learning to care about each other as brothers.
And then, finally, last week, we looked at Repentance, which invites us to truly change direction, look at things from a different point of view by literally turning the other cheek in order to see and to go a different way. It is a true Metanoia, or change of mind and heart and consciousness, which is manifested in the transformation of mind, body and spirit. Myrtle Fillmore truly repented which was reflected in how she treated her body, loving it instead of condemning it. The bodily healing she experienced happened as a side effect of this change in her consciousness to love rather than hate or fear.
None of these three aspects of Release are easy, are they? And yet, our bodies do all three so naturally, without protest, every day all day long. Respiration, perspiration and elimination are all natural parts of how our bodies release and let go on a continuing basis. It is such a physical process, such a human process and it is not under our conscious control. If we had to consciously think about breathing, perspiring or eliminating, it would be impossible to do anything else. And yet, when we think of the Spiritual Power of Release as a truly transformative Power, it requires us to pay attention and be mindful of what we are choosing to let go.
The physical reality of this Power of Elimination is that if we are not able to do it, to let go of the waste material in our bodies, our bodies will die, poisoned by our own waste matter. We know that stagnant bodies of water like the Dead Sea are called that for a reason. There is no inlet and no outlet and therefore no life. The Great Salt Lake is much the same; no life, no flow no release. We have learned over the past three Sundays that nature abhors a vacuum. When we let go of something we are making room for something else to fill the void. As our bodies must receive a continuous flow of food and water and air in order to live, our Spiritual selves need to step into the flow of God energy and let go of anything that stops that flow, otherwise we begin to harden into criticism, cynicism and hatred. That is a recipe for the death of the Spirit in us.
In our human understanding of how to invoke this Power of Releasing, we have said with no small amount of resignation or disappointment, well, “Let Go and Let God!” It must be Divine Order, so I’ll just let it go. We trust at our human level that God’s will for us is Good and only good. And we tell ourselves the when one door closes, somewhere another one opens with an even better opportunity for us. We tell ourselves that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle as if we have nothing to do with all that we are handling!
The truth is that the Spiritual Power of letting go actually asks a lot of us. It is this power that is asking us to truly change how we look at our world, how we show up, how we interact, how we interpret or misinterpret or misrepresent our own behavior or that of others. When we say something in a teasing way that is borderline offensive rather than coming right out and asking for what we want or need, we are avoiding looking at our own “stuff.” And then when someone calls us out on it, we get become reactive, either explaining it away, thereby diminishing what we need, or blaming the other person for not understanding us. There are a zillion little ways for us to avoid looking at what we think, say and do that keep us truly insulated from this power of releasing in its most potent Spiritual form.
The title for today is “Let God and Let Go” and that was a very deliberate choice. For us to truly activate the Spiritual Power of Release, we have to begin from the point of view of Spirit, of God. We have to trust God in a whole new way, a spiritually transformational way, not a transactional way. When we activate the Spiritual Power of Elimination, we are asking for Spirit within us to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, by our human power alone. It is a an affirmation that says, “Spirit within does for me what I am not able to do for myself, and I trust the Power and Presence of Spirit in my whole being to manifest God in my life.” There is a reason that we have activated all the other Powers before we truly invite the transformative Power of Release into our Consciousness.
I came across a lesson from the Unity Archives of Charles Fillmore, in a Thanksgiving message from November 29,1922 and here is what he said about what it really means when we say we trust God:
“Talk about trusting God in everything and not understanding that God is Spirit, and that Spirit is being made manifest in me; that I am the necessity of God, that God is depending upon me to make Him manifest, and if I don't understand Him, how can I trust Him and manifest Him? I can't do it; you can't do it."
The essence of this Spiritual Power of Release, of Letting God and Letting Go is Trust and understanding the nature of God as Spiritual energy. And there is no greater illustration of that kind of trust than in the beginning of Advent story, when Mary hears that she is going to bear a child. It is in the gospel of Luke.
Luke 1:26-38 The Birth of Jesus Foretold
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (NRSV)
This first Sunday of Advent is Power of Faith in the Advent progression. Clearly, we need an unwavering Faith, just like Mary, to trust that God is being made manifest through us, in us and as us. For Mary, this was a transformative, whole body, fully embodied experience, to which she said yes, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” Talk about Letting God and letting go! When we interpret this story metaphysically, the number 6 is the first thing we need to notice. Metaphysically, the number 6 represents the perfect intersection of the human and the Divine. The Trinity in Unity is the Creative Process: Mind, Idea, Expression intersecting with the human: Mind, Body, Spirit. It is like the Star of David, two triangles intersected, a perfect balance of human and Divine.
Mary being a virgin is not at all literal: it is about her openness, her willingness to let go of what she thought her life would be and allow Spirit to claim her as the “Necessity of God.” It reflects the cleansing part of Release. She is a young woman whose heart is not full of bitterness or fear. She is able to fully respond with “Yes!” She is all in, like Myrtle Fillmore. And then there is more! Her cousin, Elizabeth, who was thought to be unable to bear children is also with child and in the 6th month. Again, this says to us that this perfect intersection of Divine/Human energy is present in Jesus, and in all of us, just like “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
What does this mean for us? Angels, metaphysically, are Divine Ideas, which in this story is taking hold of Mary’s consciousness. This Divine Idea will bring forth something holy and birth something very new and precious, Jesus the Christ who is the son of God, the very energy of God. This is birthing a new way for us, as humans to look at ourselves, as the offspring of God. When we let God and let go, understanding and trusting that as Charles said, “We are the necessity of God,” we open in our consciousness to all possibilities. That is an amazing spiritual Truth. That means when I can let go of trying to defend or explain myself, my borderline snarky comment, and honestly say what I need or desire, then “nothing will be impossible with God.” I have stepped into my true Spiritual Power of Release and created spiritual space for the infinitely creative energy of Spirit to manifest my good. Who wouldn’t want to do that?