Grant us Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure….

This was the opening collect for our service today and it is intended to relate to the lessons of this day. To recognize what it calls earthly things and heavenly things, to have the desire and commitment to hold fast to the one that endures, and to have God’s help in managing the anxiousness we may well feel as we attempt to do this.

I have the privilege to do a little work with individuals who are in treatment for addiction. They teach me again and again that we are all in treatment for addiction because all of life is about deciding what we will relinquish our life to and what will give us life and what will take from us our ability to live. The prayer which under girds what are known as 12 step programs in called the Serenity prayer, attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It is a simple but powerful prayer – 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.

To my way of thinking this is a prayer for all time and one that stands along side some of the other great prayers over the centuries.

It is relevant for us through the course of our lives; we grow up and go off to college, the military, or a job or whatever path we choose. It is relevant whether we marry, are in committed relationships, stay single, have children; whether we have one or more careers; when we retire, whatever the experiences, life will present us with many opportunities. Some will be wonderful experiences, some as the song says, “will glitter, but will not be gold.” Life will present us with experiences which will hurt us and make us aware of how vulnerable and unprepared we are. We will learn that we have control over some things and no control over others. We will learn that we are capable of doing good and of doing evil, and we are like all others in so many respects. Living will constantly present us the opportunities to decide - to what will we commit ourselves, what will we value and hold sacred, what will we attach our sense of identity to that will therefore lead us toward what we will honor and cherish; and whether in the words of the Epistle of James, we will discover the spirit that God has planted in us.

Looking today at the second two readings, we see these issues in a particular context. James holds before us the image of the struggle in life between whether we will be friends with God or consumed with the world which automatically sets up a resistance. The epistle of James gives us a little psychology lesson on the dangers of selfishness ( our desires at conflict within us ) – “You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” The Gospel reading gives this a more specific context. The disciples, people like you and me, hear Jesus telling them about the path that lays ahead for him. It is not an appealing path for him and by implication for them, that he will be arrested and killed. The idea of resurrection is probably not a clear idea that they can readily grasp, so arrest and death take center stage in their hearing. This is not what they want so they, as you and I do, can’t understand that which they don’t want to understand. Perhaps they needed to say that portion of the Serenity Prayer: God help me to accept the things I cannot change.

As long as we are in this world we will have to make choices between things earthly and things heavenly. The context is always one in which we will feel the tension. We can protest as Peter did with Jesus, Lord this cannot be true, and we might say Lord why me, this is not fair. Indeed many things are not fair, many people suffer unjustly, and many seem rewarded when they do not deserve it. Life is not about fairness, but it is for those of us who seek to follow Christ, about being transformed so we can receive the wisdom from above which is peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity, so that the harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” These are powerful invitations for us personally, as a church, as a community, and as a nation, as a world - to be about Peace.

As Jesus talks to his disciples, the Gospel writer allows us to over hear. “And he sat down and called the twelve ( and all of us ) and he said … If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. ( An odd thing to think about – If you want to be first then you cannot think about being first – because being first is what God gives not what we attain. ) And he took a child and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, (hugging him) he said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”

Dr. Paul Brand in his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, tells the following story about Mother Teresa. She is one who gets Jesus’ call to live in love and trust, in gentleness and peace, to bear good fruits, in our own place and time.

A newsman in New York – properly outfitted in a three-piece suit, taking cues from an off-camera teleprompter – confronted Mother Teresa with a …line of questioning. He seemed pleased with his acerbic probing. Why indeed should she expend her limited resources on people for whom there is no hope? Why not attend to people worthy of rehabilitation? What kind of success rate could her hospital boast of when most of its patients died in a matter of days or weeks. Mother Teresa stared at him in silence, absorbing the questions, trying to pierce through the façade to discern what kind of man would ask them. She had no answers that would make sense to him, so she said softly, “ These people have been treated all their lives like dogs. Their greatest disease is a sense that they are unwanted. Don’t they have the right to die like angels?” Brand goes on to say, “ Although we cannot change the whole world individually, together we can fulfill God’s command to fill the earth with His presence and love. When we reach out our hand to help, we stretch out the hand of Christ’s body. “

To be Christ’s body we have to step away from all that we want to control. To be able to do that we have to pray –

Grant us the serenity to accept what we cannot change, courage to change the things we can and wisdom to know the difference

Grant us not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly, and even now while we are place among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.

From St. Anselm, in the 11th Century, another prayer which is fitting for this day –

“… O Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you … Amen!.