Sermon: Faith in the midst of not knowing (Jan 28, 2018)

Epiphany 4 (NL4)

January 28, 2018

John 3:1-21

INTRODUCTION

            A word about interpreting John’s Gospel: We should understand that each of the Gospel accounts shows Jesus fulfilling his mission in different ways. For example, in Matthew, we have the sense that we are “marching toward Zion,” but we’re not yet there – that’s in the future. In John, however, we get the sense that Jesus’ very presence among us has brought the kingdom of God to earth. Jesus sort of pulls a kingdom of God canopy over the earth. The result is that, down here is flesh and darkness, and up here is light and spirit. There’s no way to get from down here to up here except through Jesus (remember, I am the Way, the truth and the life?). We can catch glimpses of it through Jesus’ signs, but we cannot fully grasp it until Jesus is lifted up and brings all of humanity with him.

            Because of this, John’s Gospel is wrought with misunderstanding. Frequently when Jesus talks to people, it looks like this: someone asks a question of earthly significance, Jesus answers from up here in the kingdom, and the person responds with something stupid. Question, answer, stupid response – which then prompts Jesus to explain further. We see it with Nicodemus: he observes something about Jesus, Jesus says something about being born again, and Nicodemus says, “Uh, can I crawl back in my mother’s womb?” No, Nic. You missed it.

            Still, it’s not so bad for the reader, because it shows us how very different our earthly understanding is from a heavenly understanding, and urges us to think differently than the world would have us do. So, watch for that in our reading, and see what you can pick up about the reality of the kingdom of God that Jesus is describing. Please rise for the Gospel acclamation. [READ]

Study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            “St. Augustine is walking along the beach when he sees a little boy digging a hole in the sand and running back and forth from the ocean to fill the hole with water. Curious, Augustine asks the boy, ‘What are you doing?’ The little boy replies, ‘I’m putting the ocean in this hole.’ Augustine says, ‘Little boy, you can’t do that. The ocean is too big to put in that little hole.’ The boy, who is really an angel, responds, ‘And so, Augustine, is your mind too small to contain the vastness of God.’”

            That’s how I feel when I read John’s Gospel, and today’s story is no exception. How desperately we want real, concrete, understandable answers, just like Nicodemus! We want to understand God and God’s ways. We want to be certain about the questions of faith – like, why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people, who is going to heaven and who isn’t, and what the purpose of being here even is. All good questions – to which only God knows the answers. And the smallness of our minds compared to the vastness of God’s makes it impossible for us to know or understand.

            Today’s story about Jesus and Nicodemus shows us just how much we don’t, and can’t, know. There is so much going on here, and much of it is so cryptic, and a lot of it sounds really judgmental. And yet in the midst of it all is probably the most famous verse in the Bible, a word of immense love, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him would not perish but have eternal life.” The Gospel in a nutshell, as Martin Luther called it, and it’s true: it says succinctly the whole purpose of this faith: God loves us so much God didn’t want us to die, but to live forever in God’s care.

            And yet this verse of love – as well as several other verses in this passage – have been used over the years not to include people in God’s embrace, but to exclude them. The “born again” imagery has been used by evangelicals to say that unless you have had a believer’s baptism – one in which the one being baptized is able to confess his or her own faith, as opposed the infant baptism – then it doesn’t count. The verses that follow John 3:16 are also judgmental ones: “those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” It’s enough to make us all squirm a little – because even if you yourself do believe in Jesus, you probably have someone close to you who doesn’t, and we all want our loved ones to be with us in heaven. The fear that it could be otherwise is sad and unsettling.

            So what do we do with all this? We come back to those tough questions of faith – who is saved, why do things happen as they do – and the fact that we simply cannot know. Our minds are the small hole in the sand, and we are that little boy, trying to fit the ocean in there.

            But that doesn’t stop us from digging into God’s word and trying to understand. So first, let’s look at that word, “world.” The Greek word John uses there is kosmos, and throughout John’s Gospel, this word refers to “that which is hostile to God.” It is the “down here,” not “up here,” the thing that Jesus entered to ultimately bring it to himself when he is lifted up. So we could translate John 3:16-17 this way: “God so loved the God-hating world, that he gave his only Son…” and, “God did not send the Son ‘down here’ to condemn even this world that despises God, but instead so that the world that rejects God might still be saved through him.” It is hard for our small-hole-in-the-sand minds to grasp such audacious and unexpected love as that!

            Well that sounds good, you say, but what about all the stuff that comes afterward about condemnation for those who don’t believe? Ah yes, that is difficult. But take a look at it – nowhere does it say that God is the one doing the condemning. It says simply that their lives are in darkness, that they must endure all the things that darkness brings. In other words, life is better when you are living it with Jesus, and if you aren’t living it with Jesus, you are already suffering the negative impact of that. The consequence of not believing isn’t necessarily an eternal one – Jesus says later in John that he came to draw all people to himself, up into the “up here” – but rather, the consequence is right now.

            (How’s that small hole in the sand doing? Is the ocean fitting? Mine is already overflowing!)

            Maybe you’re thinking about now, “So, then what’s the point? Why believe if just anyone can get into heaven?” To that, I have two answers. One is: my mind is just as much hole in the sand as yours is. Who knows if anything I just said is true. I hope it is, but I don’t know! This is all way beyond me. It was way beyond Nicodemus. It is way beyond anyone who isn’t God, so don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God and God’s ways cannot be understood. The fact is: we don’t know what happens in the final judgment, but one thing we do know is that it is up to God, not us. And if God welcomes someone into heaven that I wouldn’t have let in if it were up to me, that doesn’t in any way diminish my own experience of heaven. It’s just not worth worrying about – all we can do is the best we can, living into this life in the way Jesus teaches us how, by loving God and neighbor with all that we are and all that we have.

            But my other answer is a testimony. If your question is, “What’s the point?” then let me tell you what is true for me. Here is why I believe in Jesus Christ: I believe in Christ because it makes my life better. I feel full. It gives me hope when I am in despair. It gives me strength when I am weak. As much as I cannot and will not ever understand about God, my faith still helps me to make sense of the joys and the challenges of this life. I believe in Jesus because that relationship makes me want to be better. It moves me every day toward living more and more authentically into life as a baptized child of God, a life of looking to the needs of others, a life of self-sacrificial love, a life of speaking out for the needs of the oppressed and vulnerable. I believe in Jesus because the story of death and life that God tells through Christ is one that I have seen to be true in my own life. It is a story that, because I know it is true, I am compelled to search for it. I am moved always to search for life, even in the darkest of deaths. And this keeps my head above water, and makes my life worth living. It gets me up in the morning and puts me down at night. And I tell other people about this, I share the good news, not because I want them to go to heaven (though I do!), but because I want them to experience the life right now that I experience by having a relationship with Christ. I want other people to feel the fullness and love that I experience by my belief in Jesus. For me, that’s the point.

            We cannot know about things to come. Our minds are small holes in the sand, and we can only fit so much ocean into them. What we can know is this: that God loves us. God loves us so much, that God sent God’s only Son so that we could have a glimpse of that love, a glimpse of what is yet to come. God loves us so much that God doesn’t want us to live alone in the darkness of this world – with all its sin, death, loneliness, hunger, and want – but rather, to live in the light of knowing that God dwells among us. God loves us enough to provide us a Way into a life of fullness and light and love. That’s the point.

            Let us pray… Lord of light, we thank you for your self-giving love. Help us to live with unanswered questions. Help us always to pursue your light. And help us to share your love and your light with all whom we meet. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Flipping over our securities (Jan. 18, 2018)

Epiphany 3 (NL4)

January 21, 2018

John 2:13-25

Introduction to the Story:

            To understand today’s text, we need a bit of background on 1^st century Jewish worship practices. In 1^st century Judaism, it was understood that God dwelt in the Temple in Jerusalem. And so around certain feasts (such as Passover), faithful Jews would travel to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple. An important part of worship was animal sacrifice. And so the scene that we are about to see with people changing money and selling animals was a necessary one. They are selling worship supplies, just like today we buy communion wafers, or oil for candles or hymnals. Travelers from Galilee, for instance, couldn’t haul with them a goat or a dove to sacrifice. They also couldn’t use coins with Caesar’s face on it to pay Temple tax, so they had to change the money when they got there. So while the system may not have been perfect, those tables that were set up were there to enable people to worship God in the way they understood to be correct. All of which makes Jesus’ response to the scene all the more surprising.

            Another interesting point about this account is that, while the cleansing of the Temple is a story that appears in all four Gospels, the other three all place it at the end, right before Jesus’ passion – in fact as the event that precipitates his arrest. John places it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as if setting something up for us as we continue to witness his ministry. What is he setting up?

Some things to think about as we hear this story! Now, please rise for the Gospel acclamation.

[READ STORY]

            I gotta say… I like this Jesus. I like him because I can’t relate very well to a Jesus who is meek and mild and always keeps his cool, who’s never riled up. That just can’t be true about someone who is fully human. I like him because he shows us that righteous anger is okay, that God gets angry about injustice and that this can be holy if it drives you toward working for justice. Most of all, I like this Jesus because as he is whipping around those cords and turning over tables, he is fighting his way out of the box that we so want to keep him in: the box in which Jesus is always gentle and kind, in which Jesus – and with him, God – is domesticated, palatable, understandable, and easy to take. God is not those things, and so neither is God-made-flesh, and this text shows us so in no uncertain terms.

            And I think that is what John is trying to show us by putting this story right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus is making an important statement about who he is, and what is different now that he is around. And namely, in this encounter, what has completely changed is the way people meet and interact with God. Until now, it was understood that the Temple was the one and only dwelling place of God. Synagogues were all over as places to pray and to hear scripture read and interpreted, but God wasn’t there – God could be found only in the Temple in Jerusalem. That’s why people took such pains to get there, and why this whole system of selling animals and changing money had developed, to accommodate that practice. But now that Jesus is here, where does God dwell? What did we hear on Christmas about that?… God dwells “among us.” Among us, in the person of Jesus Christ. So that is why Jesus is making such a fuss at the Temple: it is to tell people, “All this mess is unnecessary! Why are you making this a marketplace? You don’t need this Temple. I am the Temple! You don’t need to come here and buy sacrifices and change your money to meet God: God is standing right here in front of you!!”

            How unnerving that must have been! For someone to stand there and tell you (with whip in hand!), “This thing that you’ve always done, this way you have always known to interact with God, this thing that you’ve been telling yourself is right and good – it’s not! It’s way off!” I can imagine Jesus wasn’t the only one who was mad at that moment! Even today, we have a hard time accepting change to things that we have done a certain way for a long time. Even here – we started doing worship a little differently, using a different set of readings and presenting them differently, and I know that a lot of people have had some trouble with that. I get it! I also love to be comfortable and know what to expect. I also wouldn’t appreciate someone coming in the door with a whip, turning over tables and saying, “Nope! You’re doing this wrong!” We like to stay in our comfortable boxes.

            And not just in worship. We don’t like disruption in any of the things that bring us a sense of security, whether that is change in our families, or change in our town, or change in our country. I listened to a piece this week on “This American Life” about the town of Albertville, AL, which has experienced a dramatic increase of Latino immigrants over the past few decades. For 8 months, the show interviewed locals, immigrants, business owners… and the response from the locals was just what you would expect. The underlying current was, “It’s not like it used to be, and I don’t like it,” (with, of course, a healthy dose of blaming!). Despite their perception, however, the influx of immigrants, many of them undocumented, had actually improved the economy in the town, providing more and better jobs for longtime locals, not fewer. In fact, the town is thriving today. So they were right – it wasn’t like it used to be – but in this case, that wasn’t a bad thing. It was different, and that takes getting used to. No one likes to have their applecart, or their tables, overturned.

            But perhaps our desire for keeping things the same, even if “the same” is ultimately an unhelpful system, like that of the Temple, is putting our faith and trust in powers offering false security. As one pastor writes, “I read the cleansing of the temple as a stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumption, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and in ours.” Ouch – I definitely see some of myself in that list! Maybe we need Jesus to take his whip and his words right into our hearts!

            Well. It is easy to focus on the table-turning. This is the dramatic, and the difficult part of the passage. But you see, Jesus doesn’t turn over those tables of false security and then drop the mic and walk out. No, he shares with them a new reality, a deeper sense of security. No longer do they need this system in place, because he was offering them something new: he was offering them the presence of God dwelling among them, full of grace and truth. He was offering them direct access to God, wherever they might be, wherever they might need God’s presence. He was offering himself to them as the Temple, a Temple which could not be destroyed, but would always be there to give them access to the God of love and grace.

            Change is never easy, that’s for sure – perhaps especially when it is presented to us so dramatically. But Jesus’ radical reaction shows us that while seeking and finding our security in God, rather than any number of false sources, can be at first unnerving, shocking, and uncomfortable… it can also bring light and life to our darkness. That Jesus could be the presence of God dwelling among the people required a complete shift in thinking for a people who only knew God to dwell in the Temple, and this new reality was utterly astonishing… just like it might be uncomfortably different and utterly astonishing for us to find God at work among us, in our day-to-day life, not only in our best and most admirable moments, but also in our difficult decisions, our most embarrassing failures, our lowest points. But the good news is that God sees us in all those places, the good and the bad, and loves us still. God sees and knows what we do and say, and still forgives us for our shortcomings. And a God who dwells among us, dispelling our darkness with God’s light, is life-giving news indeed.

            Let us pray… Present God, we often seek our security in false promises and beliefs. Help us to see you dwelling among us, and to place our trust in only you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: God fills our emptiness (January 14, 2018)

Epiphany 2 NL4

January 15, 2018

John 2:1-11

Introduction to the story:

            Today we continue our journey through John’s Gospel. Until now there has been a lot of set-up: on Christmas Eve, we heard the prologue of the Gospel, where John identifies Jesus as “the word made flesh,” God incarnate, God here, concrete, among us. Then John the Baptist points him out, and people start following, and inviting others to “come and see” God among them. Today we will hear about Jesus’ first public act of ministry, which John will call his first “sign.” So before we get to that, let me ask you: why does John call it a “sign”? What is a sign? … Just like a sign on the road directs you or points you toward something, Jesus’ “signs” in John point us toward something. What is that something? … God! Today’s is the first of seven such signs. Some of the signs are miracles, like today’s, but the most important thing is that they point us toward some truth about God. They help us to see and understand something about God – which makes them perfect to think about during Epiphany, during a season when we talk about “God made visible.”

            We’ll read the story now. As you listen, think about what this story has to show us about who God is for us. Please rise now for the Gospel reading.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            I learned this week about a book called, Let’s Kill Sunday School Before it Kills the Church. Dramatic title, certainly catches the attention! (Learn about a free webinar on the topic here.) In it, the author talks about how to put faith instruction back into the home, how to help families talk about faith around the dinner table, or before bed. The core of this effort is called FAITH5 – five steps to guide a multi-generational, faith-forming conversation. It’s pretty simple and straightforward: you begin by sharing your highs and lows from the day, the best and worst parts of your day. Then you read together a Bible story. Then you talk together about where God’s story, the Bible story you just read, might speak to your highs and lows. In other words, where was God during the course of your day? Then you pray together, thanking God for the highs, and asking God to be with you in the lows. And you finish with a blessing, even something as simple as, “God be with you.”

            I’m pretty excited about this way of engaging with scripture – and I warn you, this will not be the last you hear of it! And I think it is a really cool way to read scripture during the season of Epiphany, because Epiphany is a season during which we are always looking for ways that God is made visible, and this is a really down-to-earth way to watch for that. I was so taken with it, in fact, that I found myself applying it to my own week, which was a week with some very high highs, and some very low lows. And so this morning, I hoped you might come along with me, as we see together how you can apply this earthy way of engaging with God’s story to the story of your daily life. Wanna come? Okay, let’s go.

            First, highs and lows. I had a lot of highs – got to see a lot of people, had a lot of laughs – but by the end of the week, the lows were more heavily on my mind. The week started off with a funeral that was difficult because I really loved the woman, and ended with a funeral for someone I did not know but who died quite young and tragically. Both were emotionally draining, for different reasons. In between, I had several late nights out in a row, I barely saw my family, I had several things I had looked forward to doing that I couldn’t even start, and on top of that, 1-year-old Isaac decided it would be a good week to cut some new teeth, which caused loss of sleep for all of us. Although there were many moments of joy and laughter during the week, the overwhelming feeling when I got to the end of it was fatigue. I was exhausted. My heart and my body ached, I was irritable, impatient, sad and discouraged. Anyone else ever felt like that when you get to the end of a long week? Exhausted, irritable, and impatient? Yeah, I thought you might relate.

            Enter: the story of the wedding of Cana. To recap, Jesus goes to a wedding, and by the third day of the celebration, the wine has run out. At an event that

by Decani
accessed at WikiMedia

should be the picture of celebration and hospitality, the very symbol of those things has run dry. At the urging of his mother, Jesus has some folks fill up some empty jugs with water, 150 gallons, and miraculously this water turns into the finest wine!

            So there, you’ve heard the two stories – my story, and God’s story. Now: where do you see my story in God’s story, or God’s story in mine?  Any ideas?

            This is where I saw my story: in those empty jugs. I saw it in the lack of wine, the lack of blessing and celebration and grace. I saw it in the “not enough” where the story begins. I asked before if you’d ever felt at the end of the week like I did – exhausted, irritable, and impatient. Maybe you’re feeling that way today. Do you look at those empty jugs and think, “Yup, that’s about right”?

            Yes, that is where I see myself in God’s story.

But it isn’t where I see God.

Where I see God, is in the fact that those jugs didn’t stay empty. The wine situation did not remain. The jugs get filled up, and by Jesus’ power, what once was empty, what once was lack, suddenly becomes full of grace and blessing. God took the emptiness and filled it up with blessing.

Having recognized this, let’s look back over my story, through the lens of recognizing that God takes emptiness and lack, and fills it with grace and blessing. Here’s my week: I had the opportunity to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to aching people, to speak a word of love and grace into brokenness. I was blessed to visit with several other people going through various trials, and offer them the hope that is in Christ. I taught some teenagers about praying with the Psalms, and not only did we laugh a lot, but I also caught a glimpse of some of their hearts that I had not seen before. I heard people’s raw and real stories, and prayed with them. And in the middle of the night, I felt the soft breath of my son on my chest, and smelled his hair, while my daughter asked me to hold her – what gifts!

At the wedding at Cana, we usually say Jesus turned water into wine. But the story that I read this week, is that Jesus turned emptiness and lack into blessing and grace – just like I now see God turned my emptiness and fatigue into blessing and grace. God turned my exhaustion into opportunity. God turned my lack into abundance.

I asked you before you heard the reading to think about what this sign is pointing to, what it tells us about God. Well, this is it, at least part of it: It points to the abiding truth that God fills us up, taking our emptiness, our brokenness, our lack, even our endings and deaths, and turns them into fullness, wholeness, blessing, beginnings and life. Sometimes we don’t see that come to its full fruition in the course of a few days like I did this week. Sometimes we don’t even see it come to fruition in the course of a few years, maybe not even until we are at the gates of heaven. But eventually, it does happen, because that is the business of God: to fill up the emptiness with love, grace, and blessing.

You see how transformative this “FAITH5” process can be! I hope you will take it home and give it a try. Share highs and lows, read a Bible verse or story, talk about how God’s story can speak to your story, and then pray together and offer one another a blessing. See how God might be working to transform your life, as families, and as brothers and sisters in Christ. And now, let us pray together…

God of abundance, we give you thanks for being with us during the highest points of our days, and ask that you would be with us also in our lows. Help us to see how you are present and visible to us, and in all things, grant that our emptiness and lack would be filled up by your love and grace. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Sermon: Star Gifts 2018 (January 8, 2018)

Baptism of our Lord/Epiphany

January 7, 2018

John 1:35-51

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

This first Sunday of the year, we always have to decide whether to recognize the Baptism of our Lord (and with it, the gifts of our own baptism), or Epiphany (and with it, the gift of God being made known to us and to all). Either festival draws us to think about gifts of God – the gift of new life, and the gift of God-with-us. In both, we have the gift of seeing and experiencing how God works among us, bringing light, life and salvation.

And this strikes me as a good thing to talk about as a new year dawns. Even if you’re not one for making New Years resolutions, it is hard not to feel, at the turning of the year, a sense of potential. A new year, a new opportunity. What will this new year will bring, and what changes would you like to make in your life in order to see those new things come about?

Perhaps that is why, when I read our Gospel text for today, the question I was drawn to was Jesus’ question to the disciples who are following him: “What are you looking for?” he asks. For what are you searching? What longing fills your heart that you are trying to fulfill? It strikes me as a good question to ask at the beginning of a new year. What are you looking for in your life this year, and in particular, what are you looking for in your of life following Jesus? What in that relationship do you seek? What do you crave?

The disciples’ answer is just as telling: “Rabbi,” they say. “Teacher. Where are you staying?” Or better translated, where do you abide or dwell? Abiding, you see, is a really important theme in John’s Gospel – to abide with someone indicates a deep and intimate relationship, like Jesus’ relationship with his Father, and like the relationship Jesus wants to have with us. So for the disciples to ask, “Where do you abide?” is to say, “What we are looking for, is you. What we are looking for, is to be in a deep and meaningful relationship with you. What we are looking for, is to see you and know you.”

And just as Jesus issues his invitation to the disciples, he issues it to us: “Come and see.” Come and see what a relationship with Jesus looks like. Come into this year and this life of discipleship with your eyes and hearts open, ready to see God at work. And here I can’t help but think about our star gifts, because the whole point of that exercise is to help us keep our eyes open to how God is made visible in whatever one particular aspect of life we happened to draw last year. And the hope, is that in noticing God there, we might also be drawn into a deeper abiding relationship with God.

So I’d like to move now to sharing star gift stories, sharing how we have seen God made visible in the past year. To get the ball rolling, I’ll share with you about my own star gift. I drew perseverance, and boy was it a year where I had my eye out for that! It was a year that delivered no slow-news days, where every week or every day seemed to be yet another outrageous something or other, where every day we were reminded of our divisiveness as a world, a country, and a community. It was a year where I dreaded checking the news each morning, fearing, “What now?” But in the midst of all of that, I also saw emerge people who actively sought peace. Whether in one-on-one ways in their local communities, or on a larger scale by community organizing, some worked very hard to bridge divides: to help create space for conversation, to learn about people who are “other,” to create space where people are heard and valued and where restoration, not division is sought. We believe in a God whose very being is relationship – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and so when I see people persevering against the dominant culture of divisiveness in their effort to build and restore relationships, I see God, beautifully manifest.

How about you? Where did you witness God at work this year? Where was God made manifest?

[Leave space for others to share…]

“Come and see,” Jesus says. He calls his disciples by name, just as he calls us by name in our baptism, and invites them and us to come and see. And they do. And they invite their friends to do the same. “Come and see.” Come and see how God has been made manifest in my life. Come and see how God is made manifest in my worshipping community. Come and hear the story of faith, my story, our stories, and see how God is working among us.

Thank you for thinking of your stories from last year. I hope you will share them also outside of this place, with others who might be looking for what Jesus has to offer. I’d like now for us to draw star gifts for next year. [Ushers…] As you pick your star – don’t look! – trust the Holy Spirit that this is indeed where God has in mind for you to see him this year. Hang our star on the fridge, or put it on your dashboard, or somewhere else where you will be reminded regularly to watch for God through that gift.

[Once everyone has one…] Hold onto your star, and let us pray…

God, we acknowledge that we are not always ready to receive your best gifts for us. You have given us an epiphany word in order that our searching will bring us to you. It is often our habit to turn aside, stumble over, or even reject experiences and encounters that we later understand to have been precious gifts. Help us to be open to the gift that you offer us now through our star words. We acknowledge that we do not fully understand what this word might mean for our faith, but we receive it from you with gratitude and pray that your Spirit will enable us to live into our word with intention and faithfulness. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.