100808 - 21-C Serenity

Yr C ~ P11 ~ Luke 12:22-34
He doesn’t stop there, but for the first 9 verses of today’s gospel reading it seems like Jesus is saying “Don’t worry – be happy. Don’t worry about your life, about food or clothing. Think about the birds – they don’t worry about those things but they get what they need. Aren’t you more valuable than mere birds? Can your worrying make you live longer, or add an inch to your height? And what about the flowers? They don’t really do anything useful but they’re gorgeous. God makes everything beautiful – even you! Have a little trust! So relax. Chill. Life is good. Enjoy it. You’re blessed. Let other people worry about stuff.”
 
Don’t worry – be happy. Sh’yeah right. That’s easier said than done. Two weeks ago when I was on holidays sitting on my deck in the morning enjoying a coffee and writing in my journal (ahhhh!!!) I suddenly found myself writing notes about this message. I’m supposed to be on holidays! What am I thinking about this for? I’m my own object lesson here. I was plenty worried about the weight of this message and the potential that it has for the future of Faith United and Harmony United. What if no one from Harmony comes today? What if they’ve already decided? What if they don’t like me? What if… 

 
And Jesus says, “Do not worry!” – Maybe I should listen! But I’m just like everybody else. I end up worrying about all sorts of stuff I can’t help.  That reminds me of a prayer I bet you know. It’s called the Serenity Prayer. We had it on a plate hanging on the wall of our kitchen growing up. I read it every day. Let’s pray it together:
 
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
 
That is the commonly known version. It was popularized through the AA and 12-step organizations. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It’s talking about stuff beyond your own personal power to change. For example, if you’re in AA you can’t change that the thing you’re addicted to is readily available – but you can change the rhythms of your life that put you into contact with it.  That’s the next part
 
The second line is: grant me courage to change the things I can change. Again, for an addicted person that makes all the sense in the world. You may need help in the courage department but if it’s within your grasp to make the change maybe you will. And then of course, the real blessing – the wisdom to know what is within your power to change and what isn’t. That’s great stuff. There’s not one thing wrong with it. But it isn’t what Niebuhr originally wrote.
 
Reinhold Niebuhr was a great American theologian in the last century. Perhaps you’ll recognize his name because President Obama has named Niebuhr as his favourite theologian. Niebuhr was a champion of social justice – so when you hear his original version of the Serenity Prayer I hope you’ll notice a couple of significant changes from the one we all know so well.
 
Here’s Niebuhr’s version – "God grant me the senility to forget those people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into those I do like, and the eyesight to tell the difference."
 
No? Ok, this is really Niebuhr’s version – 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. 
 
It’s very close to the one we all know, isn’t it? But there are some key differences. What should we accept with serenity? Not the things we can’t change but the things that cannot be changed. Accept with serenity not just the things beyond your power but the things that are beyond anyone’s power – the unchangeable. You can’t change the rhythm of the seasons. You can’t change that you get older each year. You can’t change that every single person will someday die. And the really big one that we constantly try to undo – you can’t change the past. We must learn to accept these realities with serenity because anything else is futile stupidity.
 
Jesus said the same thing a couple of thousand years earlier. (Niebuhr knew he heard it somewhere before!) Luke 12:22, 25-26 – “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear… And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?” Serenity to accept the unchangeable.
 
But the next line from Niebuhr is the really interesting one. He asks for courage to change the things that should be changed. He’s saying that as followers of the Way of Jesus we ought not to be worried about whether we have the personal ability to change something but to seek the courage to change the things that should be changed. It’s not about fighting the fights we can win – it’s about fighting the fights that need fighting.
 
So now we’ve gone from “don’t worry – be happy” to “don’t worry – get busy!” I think that pretty much sums up the last couple hundred years of mainline Christianity – get busy! And man, have we ever been busy! Come with me now as I go on a bit of a rant! Jesus said, “Consider the lilies.” I’d like you to consider the mainline church.
 
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the demise of the mainline church – how we’re losing membership and buildings and downsizing our national structures and how obviously those are all signs that the church is failing in today’s society. Right? I think that’s bunk!
 
We are not failing – if anything we are victims of our own success. I’ve always jokingly said that if I did my job correctly – empowering and equipping people to live out a life of communion, compassion, and connection – that I’d work myself right out of a job. The ultimate success for me would be an empowered laity that really didn’t need me anymore.
 
And in some ways that’s the mainline church these days. Since our inception 85 years ago The United Church of Canada’s primary focus has been on social justice and transforming society. Our churches were the staging grounds for our benevolent insurgency. So how have we done? What have we accomplished? – We’ve transformed society!
 
Education and healthcare are universal here – thanks to Christians. Women have equal standing in our society – thanks to Christians. Marriage is available to everyone equally thanks to “liberal” Christians. Multiculturalism is a huge success due largely to mainline liberal Christians who aren’t threatened by pluralism. There is a wide and generous social safety net for those who’ve fallen on hard times – again, thank the Christians for that.
 
So yeah, gee, we’re certainly abject failures the way our churches have transformed health, education, equal rights, multiculturalism and a caring, just society. We’ve actually lived out Niebuhr’s challenge to have courage to change the things that should be changed. Society isn’t perfect, and we’re by no means close to being done, but we’ve clearly moved mountains.
 
But because for the most part that’s been our singular focus and we’ve done such a good job on it we’ve sort of worked ourselves out of a job. We need a course correction. I believe we’ve focused on Compassion and Connection (outreach and fellowship) for so long that we’ve lost our groundedness of why we were doing those things in the first place and we’re missing the fuel that feeds them.
 
I believe the 21st century mainline church will thrive – but we need to be aware of what’s going on around us and allow the pendulum to swing in a new direction. The Spirit is blowing us into a time of focusing on Communion with God – our inner journey – our spirituality. Another great 20th century theologian, Karl Rahner said, “the Christians of the future will be mystics or there will be no Christians at all.”
 
Now, being a mystic may sound alien to you – but don’t worry! It doesn’t mean a whole new religion – but clearly it’s not business as usual either. We’re not abandoning the clock; we’re just experiencing a huge swing of the pendulum. It’s been swinging toward “don’t worry – get busy” for a couple hundred years, maybe longer. Right now it’s at that point where it’s stopped moving in that direction and it’s like we’re frozen in time – unsure of what’s coming next.
 
I know what you’re thinking: “But it’s always moved that way! - Through our lifetime and our parents’ lifetimes and their parents’ lifetimes. Surely it’ll continue to swing as it’s always swung.” Umm, how do I say this nicely? – Nope! Niebuhr’s serenity prayer perfectly captured the 20th century mainline understanding of Christianity. And it resonates deeply for us because that’s what we’ve always known. But the times they are a-changing. 
 
When the pendulum shifts (as it has many times over the centuries) – when the paradigm shifts it unsettles us. The wind will blow us into unfamiliar waters, but it’s still God’s Spirit blowing us and it’s still God’s ocean we’re sailing. We’re not chucking the clock; we’re just riding the pendulum. We’re shifting from “don’t worry – get busy” to something new. What will it be? 
 
It won’t be “don’t worry – be happy” like you get from TV preachers. That kind of nonchalant-floating-through-life-obliviousness is not the future. To see the future we need to go back to verse 31 and listen to Jesus. It all turns on the word instead. “Instead, strive for God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” Don’t be a worrier, INSTEAD, strive for the Kingdom of God. 
 
Ok, great, but now we have to decide what it means to “strive for God’s Kingdom.”  Again, we’ve spent the last couple hundred years with the idea that striving meant “Don’t worry – get busy”. We’ve worked hard at transforming the world to reflect the values of God’s Kingdom, but have we created God’s Kingdom here on earth? Can we?
 
I think this is one of those things that no matter how much courage we can muster we simply can’t make it happen. God’s Kingdom is beyond us. And yet, actually that’s not true. Later, in Luke 17:21 Jesus tells us something potentially life changing. He doesn’t say we ought to go out and strive to build the kingdom, he says something that ought to make your pendulum stop cold and swing the other way. He says, “the kingdom of God is within you!”
 
Think about that for a minute. The Kingdom of God is within you. How can you strive for something that’s already within you? The answer certainly isn’t by getting busy! Jesus wants them – us – to do nothing less than fundamentally shift what we think it’s all about. What is it all about? The Kingdom! The Kingdom isn’t a place, or a thing, it’s a state of being. It’s that state where God’s presence is experienced as an Omni-present reality – where every breath is of God – where every heartbeat resonates with God. Well, that’s not some far off distant land, or some social justice utopia – it’s right here right now. But generally we’re not tuned in to it. 
 
So the point I think Jesus is making – the absolute key and centre to what we’re supposed to be all about as followers of his Way – is that our job, our task, our calling, is to strive for the Kingdom that’s within us – to practice the Presence of God. Shalom happens and God is experienced and known when I grace God’s Presence with mine – when I carve out “me and God” time – when I commune with God – when I know oneness with God.  It’s presence meeting Presence – being present to Presence. Or, to say it funny – when I’m present to Presence God presents presents of Presence!
 
That kind of language is light years from “don’t worry – get busy” or “don’t worry – be happy”, it’s more like “Don’t worry – be Holy!” I think the future for mainline Christians will be all about “Don’t worry – be Holy!” And so I would dare to rewrite the Serenity Prayer for the 21st Century.
 
It would be a prayer that was rooted and grounded in Communion – loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind. It would be a prayer that challenged us to love out our faith in Compassion – loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. And it would be a prayer that acknowledged that we need the supportive, caring, empowering Connection we have with our fellow journeyers – loving one another as Jesus loves us. It would go like this:
 
21st Century Serenity Prayer
God grant me the Serenity to practice your Presence
Courage to live out what you call me to do
And Wisdom to know I can’t do it alone.
 
This is 21st Century serenity. This is what a life of Faith is all about – practicing the presence of God – being present to Presence – and living out that transformed life. Friends, the times may be changing, and the seas might be a little rough as our pendulum shifts and the Spirit blows us in new directions, but we are not alone. So don’t worry – be Holy. Amen.