Letting Go as Salvation

September 6, 2020 • 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Reading: Romans 13:8-14
Pastor Alexis Waggoner

I’m going to start by telling a story… or rather sharing a story. It’s from this lovely little book by Eric Carla, A House for Hermit Crab. We’re not going to read the whole thing, just a few pages. So to set it up I’ll say, the hermit crab has outgrown his home and needs a new space. We’ll pick it up there.  

Eric Carle in this story is channeling Paul, who likely wrote this letter to the Romans. Yep, I think this li’l hermit crab has something to tell us about letting go of obligation, caring for yourself and others, and finding salvation on the way.  

Paul gets to me, sometimes, because he gives the reader glimpses of his humanity throughout his writings, but for the most part he seems so self-assured. I feel like it hits you right off in this passage, which is part of why I chose the Message version! But in some other versions you get this extreme list of YOU SHALL!! If you stick with it, though, you find that this passage is really a critique of all of that, because it puts the emphasis elsewhere, on love. 

Love can be nebulous. As a Richard Rohr podcast I listened to this week pointed out — we use the same word (love) to describe how we feel about the people nearest and dearest to us… and how we feel about tacos! We say we love our family, and we love food. The English language has some shortcomings here, because we have one word that is supposed to encompass all these feelings! 

In this text, if you read between the lines you can see how Paul isn’t talking about a feeling but actual behaviors. He’s saying, all the things you SHALL or SHALL NOT do… those are done, or not done, because of your care, compassion, tender-heartedness toward the people around you. Perhaps this is a way of getting around the shortcomings of the word “love” and getting AT what it actually might mean 

In this moment, it is so easy to lapse into a cycle of shall and shall-nots. Or, maybe they’re better known to use today as “shoulds”… maybe you’re familiar with them! I feel it even sometimes when I’m sending out the daily newsletters, with that little “ACT” section we started including. Full disclosure: I do NOT do 100% of those action items myself (and I would invite you to consider also NOT doing so much :)). There are a range of “shoulds” that we pick up, some of them beautiful in their own way — just like the anemone, and starfish, and coral, that the crab picked up. But they don’t always work for us in perpetuity.

These “shoulds" can really run the gamut from existential to practical — on what kind of impact they have on us, and the world around us. My guess is you’re familiar with a variety of different types of “shoulds” and I’m going to throw a few out there. As I do so, I invite you to type in the chat as you’re comfortable, any “shoulds” that you’ve felt, currently, in the past, whenever. Some of mine are: I SHOULD put on “real” clothes to walk the dog. I SHOULD be going to more protest marches for BLM.  

We are living in the midst of this crazy storm, using our energy to manage the overload of tragedy, and meanwhile that very tragedy — and wanting to do something about it —  is often what’s compelling us toward the “shoulds.” The “shoulds” come from a good place. The things we feel obligated toward are often good things. Good shells…good starfish… and coral… and anemone. But when they don’t fit quite right… they will start to kill us. At least, kill our soul. Paul knows this. The hermit crab knows it. We all know it. We know it because we’ve experienced the guilt and the shame that comes when we don’t listen to the shoulds, to the things we feel obligation about. 

What does the hermit crab do when these things he’s carrying around start to feel tight and clunky and not quite right? He steps out of it, and engages in care and compassion… to himself and to his new crab friend. This happens to be the exact same thing Paul suggests: that we respond to these things that build up... the SHALLS, the SHOULDS, with our action, our conception of a deeper meaning of LOVE. 

So I appreciate the example of the hermit crab: taking what he’s amassed that no longer feels right — not rejecting it outright, or judging himself for living in it in the first place… but intentionally leaving it, with a careful eye toward his future, and compassion for his companion. It’s like he’s saying: “This structure worked for me for a while, it protected me, it was what I needed. But I’ve realized this is not all there is, and so I’m off to seek those new ways of being."

Letting go of “shoulds,” living into our understanding of love — as care, compassion, nurture — Paul says this is the path of waking up. That in so doing, you are freeing yourself from your “day-by-day obligations,” giving yourself the time and space to look around and see what God is up to. And this process of waking up is salvation — Salvation from the power the “shoulds” have over us. 

The kind of upside-down thing is… acting from “shoulds” vs acting from care and compassion and whatever else love means to us… the end result might look the same to an outside observer. We might still change out of our PJs before dinner time if that’s what’s most kind and compassionate to ourselves and those around us! We might still lift our voices for equity and justice. We might still refuse to steal and kill and be jealous. 

The difference, then, is where is that coming from? We are acting from freedom, not obligation. To be sure, we are still ACTING… this isn’t a gospel of sitting idly by, or a salvation into self-indulgence. Rather, we are saved from compulsion, from acting because we feel we SHOULD. We are saved from all those torments that accompany us when we feel like we’ve neglected the “shoulds” - it’s a movement away from shame, and guilt, and beating yourself up. We are stepping out of an ill-fitting shell, and what has accumulated on our backs… and into something new. 

From this place we can still ask the important questions: How can I be good? How can I be anti-racist? What is at the core of a word we use to describe both family and food? But the answers aren’t “shoulds"… they aren’t even really “answers,” at least not in the way that *I* want them to be. Instead, we find an invitation to a journey. The opportunity to be free from the weight of what we’ve accumulated… and wake up to the salvation that comes when we step into something new. 

Amen.

(c) 2020 Alexis Waggoner
All rights reserved.

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