Grace Serenity

Grace, Serenity, Courage and Wisdom January 17, 2010 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. This familiar prayer was written by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1943. It became famous when it was distributed to GIs in Europe during World War II, and after the war, it became the unofficial prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now it is found everywhere. It is sometimes attributed to someone other than Niebuhr, such as the prolific “anonymous” or St Francis of Assisi. Scholar have found that earlier theologians wrote something similar before Niebuhr, but the consensus keeps coming back to him as the source of the prayer as we know it. Although it is known as “The Serenity Prayer,” it is really a three-part prayer for grace, also asking God for acceptance, courage and wisdom. The Niebuhr prayer for grace has made its way into popular culture in a wide variety of forms. I bought this plate for a dollar at St Vinny’s a few weeks ago. You also find it on plaques, mugs, shirts and little cards, and of course needle-work samplers. A favorite variation of the prayer appeared in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip a few years ago. Calvin is the mischievous boy whom you know, even if you never read the comic strip. He is seen on the back window of too many pick-up trucks, rather crudely showing his preference for Chevy, Ford or Dodge by relieving himself on the competing brand. In the comic, Calvin’s sidekick is a stuffed tiger name Hobbes, who becomes real in Calvin’s imagination. Calvin asks Hobbes, “Know what I pray for?” The tiger answers, “No, what?” Calvin says, “The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.” Hobbes observes, “You should lead an interesting life.” Calvin replies, “Oh, I already do.” Another silly version of the prayer goes this way: “God, give me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.” (This is known as “The Senility Prayer.”) The version of the prayer that is printed in your bulletin may not be quite the way you remember it. The common version, the one AA adopted, goes like this: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 1

courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to tell the difference. The differences in these two versions are subtle but significant. God grant me and God, give us are two entirely different ways to begin a prayer. There is an old African proverb that says, “If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together.” Niebuhr wrote the prayer for a worship service he was conducting one summer in a little rural church in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Corporate worship demands “us”, “we” and “ours” rather than “me”, “I” and “mine.” Of course the adapted prayer for “me” makes sense for people in recovery, where the individual must take responsibility for his or her addiction. But, in general, I think we all need more “we” prayers for “us” rather than “I” prayers for “me, myself and mine” in our self-absorbed culture. It is a modest corrective to the individualism that teaches us that it is all about me, and to the impatience that insists it is all about speed. We travel farther together. The original version of the prayer is also to be preferred because it begins with grace. It is not a prayer for serenity. It is a prayer for grace. The word “grace” does not even appear in the adapted version. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change is not the same as God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed…. We pray for grace to accept with serenity the unchangeable, the things that cannot be changed. Grace is always a good place to begin a prayer or a spiritual reflection. Grace is God’s love that comes to us whether we think we have it coming or not. Grace is like grits in the South. You don’t order them in a restaurant. They just come. When we forget grace, we run the risk of coming back to that ego-centric conclusion that it is all about me and that it is all up to me. If these things are true, why bother praying at all? When we forget grace, we make the mistake of overreaching and taking full responsibility for things that may well be beyond our control. In twelve-step programs, recovery can begin only after I admit that I am powerless. We cannot change ourselves without God’s grace. Grace sometimes means doing nothing but letting go, relinquishing all illusions of control over everything in our lives, the hardest nothing most of us will never do. God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed. In the adapted version, it is about the things I cannot change. Big difference. No grace here. We need the serenity to accept things that just cannot be changed, not just not by me, but not by anybody else either. Things that just 2

are. How much anguish have you wasted so far in your life fighting to change the unchangeable? How much bitterness have you nurtured by grumbling that your life would be better if other people were different? How many marriages start off with the completely erroneous premise that while I am not entirely happy with my partner, our love will change him or her, and then we will be happy? How many hours on a therapist’s couch does it take to learn the number one rule of psychology? I have no control over the character and feelings of others; I barely have any control over my own. I cannot change others. I can only change myself, and that project is no pushover. Serenity comes from the “grace to accept” and not the other way around. We cannot conjure serenity, no matter how much we withdraw or meditate. Serenity comes from the acceptance that comes from the grace of God. Grace happens. Serenity is a by-product of the primary spiritual gift of grace. When we accept that God already has accepted us, warts and all, serenity follows. It is the “peace of Christ” that we so casually offer to one another during worship. The second petition of the prayer is about the courage to change. This was the title of the first biography written about Reinhold Nieubhr, who was a pastor and professor and political activist, in the Evangelical Synod, then the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and finally in the United Church of Christ. He is our most famous theologian. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1948. Martin Luther King, Jr. credited Niebuhr and Gandhi as his two most important influences. President Obama has been influenced by this agent of the courage to change as well. In a moment we will sing the hymn, God of Grace and God of Glory, once regarded as the theme song of our denomination. In it we sing about wisdom and courage to roll up our sleeves and put our faith to work in changing the world, changing the things that should be changed. We pray for the courage to make the necessary changes in life. This is not about everything that we might change, as the adapted prayer says, but everything that should be changed. Not everything than can be changed should be. Our faith is a balance of reliable tradition and bold new ideas. When Paul wrote of faith sufficient to remove mountains, he did not mean that we pray and then do nothing ourselves. Paul was the kind of disciple of Jesus who prayed to move mountains with a shovel in his dirty and calloused hands. We pray as though everything is up to God, and then we go to work 3

as though everything depends on us. We get down on our knees, utterly dependent on God’s all-sufficient grace, where we know our limits. But, then we get up on our feet and take our place as partners with God in creation, partners with great responsibility. We do not pray for God to do everything for us. We pray to God for courage to do what must be done as partners of the Creator and stewards of creation. We don’t just pray for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. We at least send some money or do so something to help. Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, wrote a memoir about the history of her father’s prayer and the legacy of his work. Sifton notes that she learned from a friend working in South Africa in the 1970s that her father’s prayer was found on the kitchen and living room walls of black South Africans suffering under apartheid. She writes, “Now if ever there were circumstances that required great courage to change and great serenity to endure, they were certainly those in which South Africa’s blacks lived in the apartheid years.” After long years in solitary confinement in a South African prison, Nelson Mandela sent out a message that combine the prophet’s gifts of serenity and courage: “I abound in hope. Our cause is just, and the people will be free.” Mandela had the courage to change the things that should be changed, even after a long imprisonment that could not be changed, one that restricted what he could do about anything at all. With great courage he resisted the one thing that would have made his captor the winners and him the loser: for him to give up, give in to despair and abandon hope. Each of us faces difficulties of one kind of imprisonment or another, and from time to time we find the courage to crawl from our trenches and to challenge head on those things that should be changed, within us and around us. Without God’s grace, it is only natural for us to seek comfort and avoid pain, even when we know that these things may not be best for us in the long run. With God’s grace, we find the courage to do what must be done. The final petition of the prayer asks for the wisdom to tell the difference between acceptance and courage. Wisdom is also a gift of God’s grace. It is not something we can manufacture for ourselves. Wisdom is that spiritual gift that enlightens the eyes of our hearts, so that we may know the hope to which we are called. (Ephesians 1:17-18) Wisdom is not to be confused with knowledge. Bright, clever, powerful people make foolish decisions. In John Milton’s verse, it is the Old Testament’s strong man Sampson who asks, 4

“What is knowledge without an equal share of wisdom? Vast. Unwieldly. Burdensome.” Wisdom makes knowledge good. We all know smart people who are fools; and simple people who are wise beyond their intelligence. When I left the farm and went off to college, I thought I knew everything and that my folks were hicks. I thought there was nothing more I could learn from them. By the time I finished college and went to seminary four years later, I was surprised how wise my parents had become. One of the toughest teachers is experience. The wisdom that comes of it sometimes comes too late. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of experience comes from bad judgment. Genuine wisdom gets better with age. Knowledge without wisdom never gets any better. Captain Smith of the White Star Line once said, “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder… Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” The year was 1906. A couple of years later, Smith went down with HMS Titanic. Then there is the charming naivete of Alfred Nobel and Jules Verne who believed that the inventions of dynamite and submarines would make war obsolete in the modern world. The “Great War” came as quite a shock to such idealists. Also known as the “War to make the world safe for democracy” and the “War to end all wars” would become known as only World War I, only the beginning of history’s most violent century. Biblical wisdom, by contrast, comes as a gift of God’s grace and does get better with age. We can get knowledge anywhere, but wisdom is something else again. Wisdom helps us discern what may be the will of God. Wisdom helps us to tell the difference between when to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, and when courage to change what should be changed is in order. The quest for this wisdom begins with this humble prayer… 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. Amen.

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