Public prayer
20/04/15 05:11
As a pastor the worship element about which I receive the most feedback from worshipers is the sermon. It has become common and accepted for church members to give brief comments about the sermon in their conversations with me. I appreciate the feedback. It is frequently the case that I am not able to judge the effectiveness of my own preaching. Sometimes a well-honed sermon that is the result of hours and hours of work somehow misses the mark, or fails to connect with the lives of those who are worshiping. Other times a sermon that didn’t have quite enough time for preparation and that seemed to me to be less than my best, will be deeply meaningful to someone in worship. The congregation is never static, always changing and preaching is an art that requires study, patience, practice, and a little luck.
It is less common for me to hear from my congregation about the words of prayers. Occasionally, however, people will tell me that a prayer or a few sentences of a prayer has special meaning. Prayer is one of those things that often contains repeated words and phrases. Words that have come from my own creativity blend with words I have read. Our prayer books contain specific prayers that can be read on many different occasions, but it is common for me to offer prayers in hospital rooms, homes and sometimes in public worship that are customized to the situation. Because I use prayers over and over, many of the words of prayers written by others are in my memory and their lines are used in different places and on different occasions.
I write prayers for use in worship every week. But even when I am sitting at my computer with no open reference books, the words in the prayers I write come from my mind, which has many memories of words that others have said. If I address God as “Eternal God,” I’m not the first one to have said those words. In fact, they remind me of a minister of my youth, Franklin Elliot, who often began prayers with that address. But the words didn’t start with Frank. They had been around for centuries before he was born.
An often-cited prayer fragment that is used in a wide variety of settings is known as the serenity prayer. One form is:
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.
The concepts of the prayer have circulated in oral tradition for many years, but the prayer is most often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was a great theologian of the 20th century. He wrote many books of theology and examined the relationship between our faith and the wider culture. Various versions of the prayer were published under Niebuhr’s name. The prayer was used in worship led by Niebuhr in the ’30’s and ’40’s. It gained its widest circulation as a longer prayer that was attributed to Niebuhr and published in the 1944 edition of the Federal Council of Churches’ book for military chaplains.
The form of the prayer that I have is probably a revised and refined version from the early 1950’s after Niebuhr had used various versions for decades:
God, give me 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.
This prayer has been deeply meaningful to many people over the decades and has become deeply engrained in our culture. The distribution of the prayer by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs has allowed the prayer to circulate in populations and places where documents of the church might not be as easily accepted.
So when people refer to the serenity prayer, which occurs often to me, I know the general concept of what they mean, but I might not know the exact words they have in mind. Sometimes I simply say that I know the prayer, which is true. Sometimes, especially when it is requested that I pray it on a particular occasion, I ask them if they have a copy of the version that they like the best. For example, Niebuhr’s prayer makes a direct reference to Jesus, but there are versions that do not mention Jesus by name, only use the pronoun “he” and allow the worshipers to make whatever connections they choose.
All of which is to say that like my sermons, my prayers are not completely original. I draw from the thoughts and ideas of others, often from the particular thoughts and ideas that have become engrained in my memory rather than from getting out books and finding specific quotes. My prayers don’t contain footnotes acknowledging the source of the concepts they contain. Rather they grow out of a tradition that has been developing for millennia. I hope and pray that I have been a wise student of that tradition and am representing it authentically. I’m sure, however, that like other preachers before me, I take a few ideas out of context and add different meanings to the ideas that i use. In that way the words of the ancients acquire new meanings as they are used in generation after generation.
With all of that, some of the most significant prayers of my life have been moments of silence when no words are spoken. One of the powerful moments of prayer, which has deep impact and to which I was treated just yesterday is when I invite quiet prayer and the congregation is still and the gentle sounds of a happy child rise from some place in the room. We don’t need words to be connected to God. And the connection isn’t dependent upon the preacher choosing the right words. Knowing that allows me to pray with my congregation in stead of praying at them.
It is less common for me to hear from my congregation about the words of prayers. Occasionally, however, people will tell me that a prayer or a few sentences of a prayer has special meaning. Prayer is one of those things that often contains repeated words and phrases. Words that have come from my own creativity blend with words I have read. Our prayer books contain specific prayers that can be read on many different occasions, but it is common for me to offer prayers in hospital rooms, homes and sometimes in public worship that are customized to the situation. Because I use prayers over and over, many of the words of prayers written by others are in my memory and their lines are used in different places and on different occasions.
I write prayers for use in worship every week. But even when I am sitting at my computer with no open reference books, the words in the prayers I write come from my mind, which has many memories of words that others have said. If I address God as “Eternal God,” I’m not the first one to have said those words. In fact, they remind me of a minister of my youth, Franklin Elliot, who often began prayers with that address. But the words didn’t start with Frank. They had been around for centuries before he was born.
An often-cited prayer fragment that is used in a wide variety of settings is known as the serenity prayer. One form is:
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.
The concepts of the prayer have circulated in oral tradition for many years, but the prayer is most often attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr was a great theologian of the 20th century. He wrote many books of theology and examined the relationship between our faith and the wider culture. Various versions of the prayer were published under Niebuhr’s name. The prayer was used in worship led by Niebuhr in the ’30’s and ’40’s. It gained its widest circulation as a longer prayer that was attributed to Niebuhr and published in the 1944 edition of the Federal Council of Churches’ book for military chaplains.
The form of the prayer that I have is probably a revised and refined version from the early 1950’s after Niebuhr had used various versions for decades:
God, give me 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.
This prayer has been deeply meaningful to many people over the decades and has become deeply engrained in our culture. The distribution of the prayer by Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs has allowed the prayer to circulate in populations and places where documents of the church might not be as easily accepted.
So when people refer to the serenity prayer, which occurs often to me, I know the general concept of what they mean, but I might not know the exact words they have in mind. Sometimes I simply say that I know the prayer, which is true. Sometimes, especially when it is requested that I pray it on a particular occasion, I ask them if they have a copy of the version that they like the best. For example, Niebuhr’s prayer makes a direct reference to Jesus, but there are versions that do not mention Jesus by name, only use the pronoun “he” and allow the worshipers to make whatever connections they choose.
All of which is to say that like my sermons, my prayers are not completely original. I draw from the thoughts and ideas of others, often from the particular thoughts and ideas that have become engrained in my memory rather than from getting out books and finding specific quotes. My prayers don’t contain footnotes acknowledging the source of the concepts they contain. Rather they grow out of a tradition that has been developing for millennia. I hope and pray that I have been a wise student of that tradition and am representing it authentically. I’m sure, however, that like other preachers before me, I take a few ideas out of context and add different meanings to the ideas that i use. In that way the words of the ancients acquire new meanings as they are used in generation after generation.
With all of that, some of the most significant prayers of my life have been moments of silence when no words are spoken. One of the powerful moments of prayer, which has deep impact and to which I was treated just yesterday is when I invite quiet prayer and the congregation is still and the gentle sounds of a happy child rise from some place in the room. We don’t need words to be connected to God. And the connection isn’t dependent upon the preacher choosing the right words. Knowing that allows me to pray with my congregation in stead of praying at them.