OUGHT TO DO

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

This Sunday’s Collect addresses the question, How can we know and understand what things we ought to do? Ought is a word we don’t hear very often. It comes from the Middle English “owen, to own, owe.” This word can express obligation (ought to pay our debts), advisability (ought to take care of yourself), natural expectation (ought to be here by now), or logical consequence (the result ought to be infinity).

Which of these definitions fits the meaning expressed in our collect on Sunday? I would suggest that all of these definitions fit. God gives us life, the model of how life can be lived, with the sending of the Holy Spirit we are given the power of love that allows us to live the life God gives us each day. In the 1928 Book of Common Prayer the following words were part of the opening exchange between priest and congregation:

“It is truly meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you…”

These words express the sense of obligation to give thanks under all circumstances in life and the bread and wine become the signs of Jesus’ life and death. There are many, many times when I do not “feel” like giving thanks in difficult times, yet I offer such thanks as an expression of my thankfulness for the totality of God’s gift of life. When I don’t feel it, I do it anyway as my “bounden duty.”

There are certainly many bills that I would rather not pay, yet I know that I ought to pay for the things which I have purchased. How much more ought I give thanks for the life that has been given to me. I am not a self-made man. God so loved the world that he gave. Thankful living results in a dramatic change in the way we treat one another because it flows out of the love of God which gives us all things to share with each other.

Why is it advisable that we seek to live our God-given lives in a particular way? I believe that we were created to live in relationship with others in the same way that God lives in relationship within himself as Trinity. It is advisable for our soul’s health and the wholeness of the world that we seek to live in loving relationships rather than envious and resentful ways. When we live in rivalry of others rather than in loving cooperation, the world becomes cold and murderous. So we ought to seek to know God’s ways for our lives.

We ought to seek what to do from God because what we have come to believe is “natural” behavior was shown by the cross and resurrection to be rather contrary to the God who is reflected in our very nature. We were created in the image of God (that is our nature). Jesus shows us what God, in whose nature we are made, is like. So we are asking God to help us live our lives out of our true nature by imitating Jesus in our relationships with one another.

Finally, there is a logic in asking God for the knowledge of how we behave and for the power to live according to that knowledge. Jesus is called the Word of God. In Greek, Logos translates knowledge, science, wisdom, Word. This Greek word is the root for words like logic, bioLOGY, psychoLOGY, and theoLOGY. Jesus was the fullness of God, the Word made flesh.

If we were wanting to learn to play a sport or play a musical instrument, we would logically seek an instructor whose knowledge of the sport or the instrument was good. That would be the logical thing to do. So, too, it is logical for us to look for a model for the ways we live our lives.

Our collect or prayer for this Sunday is rich. We ought to ask God how to live our lives. This knowledge, however, is not enough. We also need to ask God for the “grace and power” to act upon this knowledge. I have seen people who “know better” when it comes to living a life patterned after Christ.

In fact, I am such a person. But unless we open ourselves up to the grace and power of God, our knowledge will not help us when we are faced with the power of peer pressure. We are creatures who are influenced by the crowd. Only a dependence on God’s grace and power can counter the power of the crowd.

“O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them…..”

POWER PERFECTED IN WEAKNESS

Facebook is an interesting cyber place to reflect on the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday. On Monday I posted the following query:

My first question for sermon prep this week: Mark records that Jesus is rejected by his hometown folks and is therefore unable to do any works of power there, but that he only healed a few people who were sick. What is a work of power and how is it different than healing? Any thoughts on this question are welcome.

Within an hour of posting this question, I got two responses. One of the writers is a priest and the other person is not. The layperson is not an Episcopalian, but has a degree in Religion. See if you can figure out which of these responses is from the priest and which is from the lay person.

K.R. wrote:

“What I get from that is a "work of power" would create believers or a movement/followers of Christ. And while He was able to heal the sick this was not enough for people to believe or follow or to start a movement. Personally, this has happened to me in my spiritually dry periods. Something "odd" happens and rather than saying this is or was a work of a miracle, or divine intervention I immediately discredit it as mere coincidence or have some scientific explanation or justification. While I have been "healed" it has not worked any real power in my life. Does that make sense?? Well, just thought I'd add my two cents. Fascinating discourse!”

M.C. wrote:

“What strikes me is the relational nature of healing and salvation. The people rejected him so he could do nothing except for healing a few sick people. Whatever these works of power are, they are participatory. I suppose along the same lines as "your faith has made you well" from last Sunday.”

These responses to the question I asked are grand and honest considerations of the text and life. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection challenge us to ask questions about the nature or character of God and what real divine power is about.

The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible says “By its very nature the Hebrew language is concrete and colorful. It made little progress in developing abstract concepts. It expresses ideas of power in a variety of picturesque ways. Greek is far more abstract, tending to consolidate its thought into well-defined ideas; but its words possess great flexibility. The Greek word “Dunamis” was used by the 70 translators of the Old Testament into Greek to express no fewer than twenty-six separate Hebrew words and phrases for power.”

Dunamis may be more familiar in its English derivatives: dynamite, dynamic, and dynamo. Power is explosive, a source of change, and an ongoing power source. This notion of power was also used interchangeably with the word describing God.

Often we think of an explosive as being a bomb or other device that brings about violence and physical injury or death. Consider the bombing of Iraq that began the current conflict. The opening salvo was referred to as “shock and awe.” Human power is often expressed using what we consider to be divine characteristics, but is God’s power better expressed as what human beings call weakness? St. Paul certainly thought and wrote in those terms.

Consider Paul’s words to the church at Corinth. Although Paul spoke of his mystical experiences of the risen Christ that were too large for words to describe, he also told his quarrelsome flock that he had been struggling with what he called a “thorn” in his flesh. He said that he had asked God to remove this thorn three times, but the affliction remained. Whatever the thorn was, it seems to have potentially impacted Paul’s ability to bring the Gospel to those who heard him.

You know how that goes: “Physician heal thyself.” If Paul’s thorn made him seem foolish or cursed in the eyes of those to whom he was sent, we can all probably understand why he might ask God to remove this affliction. We know that we are judged by how we look and that first impressions are important in our world.

When the thorn is not removed, it drives Paul to a deeper theological reflection on the Gospel and the fruit of this reflection is contained in this passage:

“Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Paul expressed an understanding of Jesus the Christ that probably shaped the writing of the Gospels. Just as God in Christ appeared to be at the mercy of the world and the world’s judgment was that Jesus should die, God’s power in Christ was exercised in what we humans call weakness or non-violence. Ultimately, human power, economically, politically, socially, and militarily is about avoiding shame and blame and claiming credit.

In his book, The Power Game: How Washington Works, Washington Post columnist Hedrick Smith describes politicians as “surfers riding the waves of power.” Jim Grote and John McGeeney (Clever as Serpents: Business Ethics and Office Politics) commented on Smith’s observation stating that “the waves of power are the waves of blame and credit that are constantly generated by the mob.” They offer this bit of advice to those engaged in life: “What must be learned is a vigilant detachment from the fear of blame and the craving for credit.”

KR and MC were keen to pick up on the social nature of power. God’s power is not expressed in Jesus’ fear of being blamed or his craving for credit, but the power of God is ultimately expressed in community that is not driven to and fro by fear and craving. Jesus’ people created a powerful environment that expelled Jesus from their midst. He was judged as common and ordinary and perhaps illegitimate. KR found that he tends to discount those odd things that happen to him and miss out on the life changing power that these things communicate and confer.

Receiving a healing does not necessarily change our hearts and minds or draw us closer to God. Most of us survive many assaults on us over a life time, but these times do not lead most of us to become part of a community that turns away from the fear of blame or craving for credit. We seem to turn back to these things even when invited to a larger vision of reality. Jesus presented this larger vision to the hometown crowd and was immediately challenged. Perhaps if the message was delivered with threats or promises from someone who claimed to be god and was backed by military might…oh, wait a minute, that is what Caesar did.

In weakness by human standards, Jesus and Paul delivered the message of salvation, of God’s power to change the world into the Kingdom of Heaven and because it seemed so weak many rejected both the message and the messengers. The community of Jesus’ youth rejected him and what he offered. The world continues to underestimate the power of God to transform what is into the Kingdom of Heaven.

As I wrote above, power is explosive, a source of change, and an ongoing power source. Explosive really means to drive out with applause or the clapping of hands. With a loud shout and applause, God raised Jesus from the dead driving death out of our future and the power of God is the guidance system into the Kingdom of Heaven moving and changing this way and that through the course of history. And it is God’s love for us that continues to be the power of God that works best when we let go of the power of the mob generated by fear and greed.

I welcome any of your thoughts and reflections.

FEAR OR FAITH?

Here is the Gospel for this coming Sunday. Take some time to read the passage a couple times. What words or phrases get your attention? What do you notice about this passage now that you may have not seen before?

Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea.

Last week’s Gospel reading told about the passage by sea of Jesus and his disciples to the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee. This week Jesus and the disciples again travel back to Jewish side of the Sea. They are greeted by a large crowd.
Large crowds can be exciting and terrifying. Consider the gathering of people in the streets of Iran. To some such gatherings represent a threat against public order, while to others these demonstrations are courageous acts in the name of democracy. Whatever the reasons that motivate such crowds, there is a potential for violence breaking out.

Jesus was no stranger to large crowds. His preaching, teaching, and healing often attracted many people. Again, the motives of those who flocked to him were mixed, but the authorities probably perceived a threat in the mobs who followed Jesus. Did Jesus see a similar threat of violence in the mobs who followed him?

Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, "My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live."

This man was not a rabbi, but more like the chief administrator of the synagogue. Jesus’ reputation as a healer had moved this man to seek out Jesus on behalf of his daughter who he believed was dying. Jairus believed that the touch of Jesus’ hands on his daughter would bring her to life.

As a parent, I can completely understand Jairus’ actions. If my child were sick to the point of death, I would certainly look for a doctor who could save his or her life. There were physicians in Jesus’ day, but their knowledge and skills were limited. For many, illness was the result of sin and was only curable by spiritual means.

You might wonder how such a young child might have so completely sinned that she was being punished by illness. Jesus did not connect sin and disease. He forgave and healed, declaring sin to be forgivable and disease to be healable. This was a rather remarkable change in belief, even for moderns today. I still hear and see the old sin (wrong thinking/actions) produces disease paradigm offered among Christians (liberal and conservative), New Agers, and just about all other manner of humanity.
It is difficult to NOT feel like we are being punished when we get sick or when things do not go our way. The belief that God will get us if we trespass against his Holy Laws (of course interpreted by human institutions) is strongly held. It seems that we need to believe in the hammer of God in order to maintain proper order and conduct in society.

He went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse.

She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well."

Mark is a wonderful story teller and here is one of his most interesting narrative devices. By placing one story inside of another, he creates a very strong message about Jesus and about faith. Notice below that a large crowd followed Jesus as he headed toward Jairus’ home. Not only did they follow him, they “pressed in on him.” In the midst of this crowd a woman who was ritually impure due to bleeding for over 12 years moved toward Jesus. Mark says that the woman had been treated by many physicians and was broke and still ill.

The message of faith is about this woman believing that Jesus somehow represented God and offered a new view of God that would accept her just as she was. She acted contrary to the common wisdom of the day that branded her an unclean sinner and went to Jesus. See how Mark builds upon the first story of Jairus’ faith that led him to seek out Jesus too.

Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

This woman’s bleeding stopped. She experienced the “shalom of God” and she was healed of her disease. Was she a notorious sinner as some might have supposed? It does not seem to have mattered whether she was or was not. She is healed by the power of Jesus’ presence without Jesus consenting to her healing or forgiving her of any particular sin. Now that was a very new thing coming into the belief system of the world.

Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, `Who touched me?'" He looked all around to see who had done it.

But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

What healed this woman? Her faith led to healing. What was the nature of this faith? She believed that God could and would heal her without reference to her being a sinner or not. She believed in a God of compassion rather than a cultural god that demanded people be divided into good and evil, pure and impure, worthy and unworthy.
And so Jesus, confirms her faith: “Daughter, your faith has made you well (whole); go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” Wellness (wholeness) precedes peace and healing and the mercy of God which this woman claimed did not fail her.

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?"

The bearers of the bad news of Jairus’ daughter truly lacked sympathy. It almost sounds as if they were criticizing Jairus for running after Jesus rather than spending time with his daughter during her last moments of life. Their message was fearful and Jesus responds not to those bearers of death, but to Jairus himself.

But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, "Do not fear, only believe."

Jesus’ words place fear and faith or belief as opposites. Jairus’ greatest fear, certainly mine as a parent, was that his child might die. Most parents take on tremendous guilt about what happens to their children and Jairus was no different. His fear was deeply tied to his belief that his daughter’s death was his fault. She died because of something he had either done or failed to do. How hard this news must have been for him.

Jesus commands Jairus to return to faith, to believe that his child was not the victim of his particular sins.

He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, "Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at him.

In Israel, there were professional mourners who would come to the home of the deceased and mourn their loss. There was a very full ritual surrounding death that reflected a belief in the power of death over life. Jesus interrupts that ritual mourning and states that “the child is not dead, but sleeping.”

The professional mourners laughed at Jesus. They have been to many homes and seen death first hand so to hear that this little girl was only asleep made Jesus into a joke for them. In our society, I think death continues to hold sway. We have our own rituals to make it look cosmetically less threatening or real, but these rituals only make clearer how frightened we are of death and how powerful we think it is.
Like Jesus’ own resurrection, the bringing back to life of this little girl is a sign that God is about life and that the fear of death with all of its rituals is about our fears not our faith. Look at the burial office in The Book of Common Prayer. Do you see a different view of death there? Wholeness (the woman who bled for 12 years) and life (the little girl who was 12 years old) are God’s response to our fearful ways of being.

Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha cum," which means, "Little girl, get up!"

Jesus tenderly awakens the little girl in the presence of her mother and father: “Little girl, get up!”

And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Jesus’ action causes amazement in the parents, but he orders them not to tell anyone about this moment when death was no longer believable. He asks that they instead feed their little girl.

Notice that the woman in this reading had been bleeding for 12 years and that the little girl was 12 years of age. Why do you think 12 might be a significant number to be repeated?

Come to church on Sunday with faith in your hearts.

THE SEA JOURNEY TO GOD

THE GOD TO WHOM WE SURRENDER DEFINES OUR SENSE OF REALITY

We are told that Jesus is the Son of God. That means that we believe that Jesus is the full embodiment of the God he calls “Our Father.” To accept Jesus as the Son of God is to accept a relationship with a God who is hardly like the gods in whom we have put our trust.

By dying on a Roman cross rather than leading a military campaign to take the world back for God, Jesus is showing God to be someone rather different than most of us have imagined.

A God who places love above all other values and lives that love out in the world as non-violence is infinitely reject-able or infinitely embraceable. Our Father will not threaten or do violence against his creation in order to get us to change. If the God of Jesus took the side of the violent against their victims it would be the one action that would signal that such a god never really existed. RWC+

HOW ARE THE SEEDS GROWING?

Study this picture carefully. Do you see anything in it that might suggest whose hand is shown?






Mark 4:26-34

Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

Elementary Sunday school classes usually include growing a plant as part of the way children learn about God as creator. Some children like me would not be content to let the plant grow up without “checking” on it by digging up the seed to see how much it had changed since I put it in the dixie cup planter. Of course, my plant had to really struggle to overcome my investigative explorations.

Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven as if it were the product of seeds cast on the ground by an anonymous seed spreader. The one who spread the seeds does not seem to be as curious about how the seeds were doing as I was with my plant. This person simply stands waiting for the harvest time to come. The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like that process. Seed has been scattered and gone into the grown to take root. This seed could be Jesus’ teachings; Jesus’ miracles, Jesus’ demonstration of power in his capacity to love everyone, or his own physical body which was scattered on the ground by the authorities of the world’s religion and the Roman empire.

The scattering of Jesus’ body and his disciples were not intended to produce growth in the Jesus movement, but rather to snuff it out. The seed scattering is done by the one who wishes to spread the Kingdom of God and that seed scatter would most certainly be God. The Kingdom of God is not like the other forces that we believe direct and drive human history. It is slow in its coming, but sure. Jesus’ teaching assures those who listened to him that the one who planted would also harvest when the time was right.

He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."




Jesus then offers another parable or comparison to the crowd who are hungry to hear what he had to say. This parable, however stood in sharp contrast to the first parable. The mustard plant was considered a noxious weed that no one would ever intentionally plant it in a garden. As Jesus says of the mustard seed, it is small, but grows into a large plant where birds of the air can make their nests in its shade. Jesus comparing the Kingdom of God to the mustard seed plant certainly says something about how welcome the Kingdom of God will be to most people, yet it also provides shelter for birds’ nests.

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.



Jesus taught people “as they were able to hear it.” What is so hard to understand about the Kingdom of God that he would have to resort to parables? How able are we to hear what Jesus has to say to us about the Kingdom of God? I suspect that Jesus understood us better than we understand ourselves and he knew that the Kingdom of God is so radically different from the way the world normally organizes itself politically, economically, and socially that we need to be taught in such a way that we actually come up with the meaning of the Kingdom contained in these parables.

The end of the story states that Jesus taught his disciples the meaning of the parables of the Kingdom of God privately. It may be that Jesus’ predictions of his own death was the additional teaching that Jesus offered his disciples in private. Did they really understand this clearer meaning of the parables? It seems that Jesus had to die for his disciples to fully understand how God was growing his Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Consider that Jesus tells us what we are able to hear. What prevents us from hearing more? Do we really want to know the deep meaning of the parables? What would such an understanding mean for how we live our lives?

GOD GRANT...

Millions of recovering people sit in 12 step meetings each day praying the following prayer together:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
The courage to change the things I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.

This prayer originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr seems to me to be much more soul deepening than I first imagined. We live in a world of considerable pain and suffering; injustice and violence; and unforgiveness. This prayer is addressed to God and asks for three gifts: Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom. Each of these gifts works together in a complementary way that allows us to live in a world of tangled relationships without becoming impossibly trapped in that system that says we can change anything we want, but stands ready to prove that all such efforts are doomed to failure. It is the boom and bust mentality that has pervaded and formed our world since the beginning of human history.


























The popularly known and used Serenity Prayer offers us a way out of this boom and bust thinking. For most people who offer this prayer of intercession for themselves, the qualities prayed for are gifts bestowed by God on those who honestly ask for them. But these things for which we pray in this prayer are more than gifts. Each of them represents the three persons of the Trinity.

God the Father is the serenity or peace of God. Rather than being a severe and demanding super parent with ambivalent swings of love and violent hatred for his children God the Father was revealed by Jesus as being accepting of all creation without any exception save our propensity for self-destruction. As the creator of all that is, the Father loves all that is created because he sees his Child in that which is created. The Father is the serenity of God who loves and accepts us without condition or demand.

Jesus came to reveal this view of God the Father to the world whose belief was and continues to be anthropomorphically constructed. That is to say, we collectively have a god of our own creation rather than accepting the God who creates us all.
God the Son is the Courage of God. The word courage is translated as one who has heart or as a passionate love that is lived out in the world and is the one who comes to save us from our own self-destructiveness. Jesus was Serenity’s only and best gift to the world and Jesus took the creative power and unconditional love of his Father and lived it in his life in such a way as to begin to create something new in our world that would free us from the bondage of sin and death, of self-destruction.

When I was a small child, I watched my Mother make a tuna sandwich and tomato soup for me one cold winter’s day. I barely came up to the counter on which she worked, but overtime, I learned how to make a tuna sandwich and tomato soup. I came to believe that I could do the very thing I saw my Mother do. I also came to believe that I learned to navigate the social, emotional, intellectual, and physical waters of life by watching both of my parents' behavior. I came to believe by watching and then by doing with their oversight and guidance, and then by actually doing it myself.

Just so, Jesus became the heart and love of God and the one given to us so that we might come to believe that we, too, could become what we witnessed Jesus be and do in the world. Jesus said that he and the Father were one and he invites us to be and do what we have witnessed him be and do in the world. Jesus, like my parents and your parents, became our teacher, the One who incarnated the deep Serenity of God the Father’s acceptance and love for us. We are all coming to believe in Jesus as we witness his life through our hearing of the Gospel. We come to believe that we really can love others as God the Father loves.

While we are watching Jesus, we are also beginning to change our behaviors. We are repenting, turning away from old ways and seeking to make Jesus’ ways our ways through imitation. This, of course, is sometimes very difficult since we have imitated the ways of the world that see God as tyrannical and violent for most of our lives. We have believed in this humanly constructed god and the world that is kept in check by this god’s powerful and violent threats. But Jesus promised his disciples and those who are coming to believe now help in the person of the Holy Spirit.

God the Holy Spirit is the Wisdom of God which takes God the Father’s peace and love as it was courageously lived and poured out by Jesus and allows us all to enter into God’s serenity and courage in the practical and daily ways we lead our lives. The Holy Spirit comes as we begin to live what we have witnessed in Jesus. As I finally was able to make tuna sandwiches and tomato soup, so will we need to try this new way of faith in our daily journeys. Jesus assures us that we will not be alone when we step out to live in this faith.

There are times when we feel love for another person, but we discover this love we wish to share is rejected. We have seen how the world dealt with Jesus’ offering of the Father’s love to the world and we have read that the Holy Spirit was with him. The Holy Spirit gives us the courage to try to express that love of God in practical ways, but also gives us the wisdom to know when our efforts need to take another course or when what we thought was God’s love simply turned out to be a version of our own personal agenda for the other person. The Holy Spirit or Wisdom allows us to discern our own motives and then empowers us to follow the path of God’s love.

The serenity of God which passes all human understanding is requested in our final blessing each week. May the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. And may the blessing of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be with you and abide with you this day and always.

The blessing of God is Serenity, Courage, and Wisdom and the Holy Trinity expresses the reality of God as community without violence or exclusion. Each Sunday we come to learn about God the Father by witnessing the life of Jesus and those whom Jesus called to follow him and we are invited to come forward to receive the Person of God: Father (Serenity), Son (Courage), and Holy Spirit (Wisdom) in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We are called to receive God in Trinity and to make God a reality in the communities in which we live. God grant me….

Here are other versions of this prayer and a bit of history behind it’s author and the prayer itself.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.

A Note about The Serenity Prayer's Real Author

You'll find many references online to some not being sure who really wrote the above prayer, some claiming that Reinhold Niebuhr was not actually the author. Many have researched it, including trying to find out if it even goes back to 500 A.D. Despite all the research, though, it still goes back to Niebuhr being the author.

It certainly appears that Reinhold Niebuhr did indeed write The Serenity Prayer. Niebuhr himself discusses the prayer and how it came about it in his book, The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses. You can read the page yourself via amazon.com here if you wish: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses, page 251. Niebuhr states,

”... The embarrassment, particularly, was occasioned by the incessant correspondence about a prayer I had composed years before, which the old Federal Council of Churches had used and which later was printed on small cards to give to soldiers. Subsequently Alcoholics Anonymous adopted it as its official prayer. The prayer reads: 'God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.' ...”

In addition, Niebuhr's daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, wrote an entire book about her father's prayer, The Serenity Prayer: Faith and Politics in Times of Peace and War, that explores the circumstances around which her father wrote this prayer, the wide range of versions of this prayer, and the real essence of the prayer's meaning. She quotes The Serenity Prayer on page 277. NPR (National Public Radio) interviewed Sifton about her book, which you can listen to via NPR's website: The Serenity Prayer: Faith in Times of Peace and War.



This painting of seeks to convey that relationship between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son and the world form a trinity. Both the Father and the Son raise the right hands in the sign of blessing over the world and the Holy Spirit (depicted as a dove) also forms a trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God is shown as undivided in blessing the world. Their are three distinct persons within this understanding of God, but all three are connected by the love and blessing that they show together towards the creation and the the love and blessing they show and pour out towards each other and the world. The Trinity is three persons, undivided and yet One God.

THE HOLY SPIRIT MOMENT

What is it like to experience the coming of the Holy Spirit in your life? Pentecost celebrates this coming in words that may seem strange, but which seek to describe the power of God’s love coming into the world in a radical new way. When the Holy Spirit came down on the early disciples it was described as fire and a mighty wind. For the prophet Ezekiel it finally came to him as he hid from the enemies he had just slaughtered in self-righteous violence and it came as “a still small voice.”
Within the Christian tradition there are other disciples of Christ who have described it differently, but all the same knew somehow that they were being filled with God’s love and that there lives would never be the same again. Here is the great Anglican apologist, C.S. Lewis describing his experience:

“When I was an undergraduate in Cambridge, if I were to say that Christ came to me, I should be using conventional words that would carry no precise meaning. For Christ comes to men and women in different ways. When I try to record the experience at that time, I use the imagery of the Vision of the Holy Grail. It seemed to me like that. There was, however, no sensible vision. There was just the room, with its shabby furniture and the fire burning in the grate, and the red shaded lamp on the table. But the room was filled by a presence that in a strange way was both about me and within me like a light or warmth. I was overwhelming possessed by someone who was not myself. And yet, I felt more myself than ever before. I was filled with intense happiness and almost unbearable joy as I had never known before or never known since. And overall, there was a deep sense of peace and security and certainty.” This was Pentecost for C.S. Lewis.

As we come to this Pentecost Sunday, consider your experiences of the Holy Spirit. To speak of these experiences is not to brag or to claim spiritual superiority. In fact, such experiences usually free us from the need to seek spiritual superiority and instead allows us to know, as Lewis wrote, “a deep sense of peace and security and certainty.”

Such peace is the work of the Holy Spirit and this peace is established through the indwelling of the Spirit in each of us and in our communities and over time in the world. The Holy Spirit is the driving force of history blowing through the sails of our ship and taking us to the Kingdom of Heaven. What is the nature of the Holy Spirit’s power and guidance?

According to our Gospel reading from John for this Sunday, the Spirit of Truth (A.K.A the Holy Spirit) “comes to guide us into all the truth.”

Remember Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Jesus did not answer him because the answer to his question could only be revealed after Pilate condemned and crucified Jesus. Once he did, the truth was revealed in the resurrection and in the proclamation of the church that Jesus was the Son of God. This truth is revealed to individuals and communities first because the Holy Spirit's power to change human history is transformative through the human heart which is broken by love.

That is why Jesus says in our Gospel reading: “And when the Advocate comes, she will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

You see the truth that Pilate asked for was revealed in his inability to see Jesus for who Jesus was. He was trained in the ways of the world and the world’s operating system would never recognize a victim, a mere member of a captive and backward people as being the Son of God. Such titles were reserved for emperors of violent and powerful empires, not itinerant Jewish hill-billy preachers and healers. Unlike C.S. Lewis, Pilate’s times alone were filled with practical matters that crowded out any thought that he might be wrong in his judgment of Jesus. The Holy Spirit comes to those of us, who like Pilate, missed our many opportunities to believe that Jesus was something more that we thought. We discover the truth in a somewhat embarrassing and painful way. We discover that those whom we abuse or simply ignore are really Jesus present wherever we turn.

The Holy Spirit proves the world wrong about what makes for righteousness. Righteousness is about being in relationship with God and others. The world is wrong on this score because it considers relationships in terms of power and control over others rather than relationships of mutuality.

Marriage is a Christian sacrament because it describes being in a relationship that is mutual in love and comfort and support and that is dependent on inclusive forgiveness to hold it together rather than threat of violence or exclusion. Jesus goes to the Father and is seen no longer as an historical figure. The Holy Spirit brings the loving relationship of Jesus and the Father to the human community.

Finally the Holy Spirit proves the world wrong about judgment because while the world thought that Jesus was being judged and thrown out of creation, it is ultimately the ruler of this world (satan) whose power and influence has been subverted and is in the process of being overturned.

Has the Holy Spirit come to you with forgiveness or a loving relationship with God and others in community or as the bringer of peace without fear? Perhaps C.S. Lewis’ experience is something with which you can identify. Perhaps this Spirit of Truth has come to you like rushing wind or flames of fire. Or, perhaps the Holy Spirit has come to you as a still small voice. May the Holy Spirit be with us all this Pentecost Sunday.

Even so come Lord Jesus. Amen.