In my personal life, I am often with people who say The Serenity Prayer: 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. The prayer assumes a certain level of self-awareness, and encourages the people who pray it to deepen their self-understanding. It especially prompts the people who pray it to be aware of the way they use control. I have come to understand that I really can't control other people. I can't make them believe what I believe, and I can't make them behave the way I would like them to behave. I can't stop people I care about from engaging in self-destructive practices. I can help people understand the consequences of their actions, but I can't force them to change.
I'm not talking about parenting, which has its own set of realities. I'm talking about the way adults interact with other adults. It's helpful—or more to the point—it's crucial, to be able to step back and look at one's own behavior patterns. Recently a friend was telling me about losing his job. That's happening to a lot of people these days. But this man said, "I have to face the fact that I set myself up for failure. I've changed jobs more times in five years than other people change in a lifetime. I'm scared to death of accepting responsibility, so I set myself up for failure before I get the kind of job I'm qualified for and capable of." That's self-awareness.
In John's Gospel, we have a picture of a self-aware Jesus. John tells us that when Jesus was at a table with his disciples, he "knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to God. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." He knew "that the Father, the Mother, had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God." That's self-awareness.
In the process of dying, he maintained his clarity of vision. Through all the pain of crucifixion and the agony of feeling abandoned, he was able to declare that he had completed his life's work. "It is finished." It is finished. He knew that he had come to reveal the loving heart of God. Finished. He had come to show that God's power is made perfect in weakness. Finished. He broke down the artificial boundaries that were keeping some people out of the covenant community. Finished. In his first mighty act in Cana, he provided fine wine as a long wedding feast went on. He showed that God often keeps the best things until the end is in sight. Finished.
He called together a group of people to whom he gave his wisdom and to whom he gave his love. He taught them that even though biological families can be important, the families we create can be of greater significance. Finished. He demonstrated the connection between people's minds and bodies, between thoughts and feelings. Finished. He wept when his friend Lazarus died, and showed that feelings like grief and even anger are part of being human and that it's good to feel them deeply and then move on. Finished. He pointed out the seductive allure of money, and he warned against hoarding it instead of using it in the causes of justice and equity. Finished.
Jesus teaches us that even though we can't control other people the way we sometimes want to, there's a lot about ourselves we can control. We can decide how to play the hand we have been dealt. We can determine our priorities. We can make commitments and keep them. We can honor the spiritual yearnings of our hearts. We can work on being vulnerable in safe places and with safe people. We can choose to be loving and caring while taking care of ourselves in a healthy way. We can learn to be self-observant instead of self-absorbed. We can explore the dimensions of our personal power. We can learn about the desperate poverty ravaging the lives of people in other parts of the world, and in our own city. We can take action and get involved.
Other people can exercise certain kinds of power over us at times. There are employers, police officers, judges, legislatures, admissions officers, umpires, bishops, presbyteries, etc., etc. In John's Gospel, we read that the people handed over Jesus to the Roman governor. Mobs can have a certain kind of power in this world of ours. Then we read that the governor, Pontius Pilate, handed over Jesus to the chief priests for crucifixion. The governor had that kind of power, imperial power.
But the governor and the mob were only in charge up to a certain point. Their power was limited, finite. After Jesus said of his life's work, "It is finished," John's Gospel tells us it was Jesus himself who bowed his head and handed over his life—handed it over to God. That's one thing we can control—to what or to whom we give our ultimate trust.
The good news for us is we don't have to wait until we are dying to think about the purpose of our life, the things we have been given to accomplish. And we don't have to wait until our sunset years to hand our life over to the care of God. It's never too late. But then it's never too soon either.