Sermon: Death that bears much fruit (Mar. 21, 2021)

 Lent 5B

March 21, 2021

John 12:20-33

 

INTRODUCTION

         Today we hear the final covenant of this Lenten season, and it comes from Jeremiah, a prophet normally known for his doom and gloom. And yet here, he gives us beautiful words of hope – which is a real surprise, because his situation is anything but hopeful! The Israelites have just endured a disaster: military defeat, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the exile of the Israelites to Babylon. And yet, into this, Jeremiah offers this covenant: that although they have lost everything from their lives, everything they thought made them who they were, God has not left them. Indeed, God has given them what they need the most and written it on their hearts, where it can never be taken from them or destroyed.

         The passage we hear today from John is on the other side of disaster, as Jesus foretells his death. Yet John does not see this as a disastrous event. Rather, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified!” In other words, “This is it, folks! My whole purpose is about to come about, and it’s gonna be awesome!” This exchange comes at the hinge point between the Book of Signs (Jesus ministry and teaching), and the Book of Glory (the passion, resurrection and ascension). At this point in the narrative, Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead, the Judeans are out to kill him, he has already entered triumphantly into Jerusalem (a la Palm Sunday – we’re a little out of order here!), and the next event is the foot-washing. What we’ll hear today is Jesus’ last public discourse; the next time the public will hear from him will be at his trial. So you can imagine: tensions are pretty high!

         Hebrews and the Psalm also address the pain of suffering and unmet expectations, so these are all texts and themes that ought to resonate with us today. As you listen, look for signs of new life. Look for the ways God enters into the fearful, painful places, and does a new, life-filled thing. Let’s listen.

[READ]

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

We have been doing confirmation class this year over Zoom with several other congregations in the conference. While this isn’t always ideal (Zoom seldom is), one cool thing is that we all get the benefit of hearing from several different pastors, who have been alternating teaching duties. All the pastors attend each week, leading small breakout groups as needed, but 1 or 2 take the lead for each lesson. Last week in class, we talked about the question, “Why did Jesus have to die, and why does this matter to us today?” After the leader talked a bit about some different ways of understanding the purpose of Jesus’ death, he asked the other pastors to offer some words about why this central story of our faith matters to us personally. 

         Before I tell you what anyone said, I want to stop here for a second, and ask you to think about it. If you had to give an elevator speech answering that question, “why does the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection matter to you?” what would you say? Does it matter to you? Does it make a difference to you in your day-to-day life? Does it matter to you in the big moments of your life? Why does it matter?

         It’s a difficult question – Christian thinkers have spilled much ink in trying to answer it, and there are numerous angles from which to understand it. Each of them carries some truth, but none of them can seem to capture the whole story. But honestly, I don’t think offering the “right” answer is the point – at least it is not the point of my posing the question to you now. The point is just to think about it: what does this story that is central to our faith really mean to you? Why does it matter to your life – not just cosmically or eternally, but today, and in your regular, ordinary life?

         As I’ve thought about this question, I find myself drawn to this image from our Gospel reading today, of a grain of wheat dying, which Jesus uses to foretell his death. Jesus says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” It strikes me as a really important image during this time when we have lost so much – even as we are also getting to the point where we can start to look for fruit, for signs of life emerging. I have been so drawn to this image, in fact, that I used it for our opening Bible study at our council retreat last weekend. We talked together about how sometimes things have to die in order for them to bear fruit – like the way you prune a rose bush or an apple tree in order for it to flourish. We recalled some things that have died this year - not so much people, but ways of life, activities, our previously held perceptions of the world. Council members discussed which of those things we are honestly glad to have seen die, because we realized they were not bringing life to us or the world, and we may not have even realized that if they hadn’t been taken from us – but when we no longer had them in our lives, we could see more clearly why they had to die. And then we shared some ways we have seen new life start to emerge, some even out of that same death and loss. Then, with this hope and image in mind, we continued the work of being the church council: dreaming together about who and how the Church is called to be right now, and how we at St. Paul’s are uniquely suited to fulfill God’s mission for the world in our particular setting.

So how would you answer those questions? (I’m all about making you do some of the mental work, today, huh? All these questions to think about!) What has died this year that really needed to die? And what has that death allowed to, as Jesus says, “bear much fruit”? In other words, where do you see new life and opportunity emerging where previously you saw loss and death?

Here’s one thing. This past year, the need for a racial reckoning in our country has been brought to the fore. I know that even though I thought I was fairly knowledgeable about racism, I have over the past year learned so much about the form that racism takes today, some explicit, and some quite unconscious, often in the form of micro-aggressions. I have, consequently, lost some of the rosy view I had about us all living happily together and about what progress has been made, as the veil has been pulled back on what our siblings of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds experience in this country. This week, we saw another horrific shooting, this time seeming to targeting people in the Asian American community in Atlanta. Reports on the incident have pointed out that hate crimes against people of Asian descent have increased 150% this past year, largely because some believe China is to blame for Covid-19, and this apparently warrants attack on anyone who looks like they may be from China. I have close family members who are Chinese American, and so all this hits me somewhat more personally, though not nearly so personally as those who are recipients of this verbal and physical violence. From where I sit, the death I experience is not physical, but a death of my assumption that people I love are physically and emotionally safe here, and that no work needs to be done in this area. The loss of this assumption is painful and scary, but certainly important.

So if that’s the death – what fruit may come from this? Such a recognition may drive me to educate my own children more thoughtfully, or to learn more myself, or to donate time or money to an organization that seeks to make progress in this area, or to preach about it in a sermon. It may simply open up important conversations in my family. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. So what fruit will be borne from this death?

All of this reflection leads me finally to offering the answer I offered in our confirmation class, in response to the question: why does the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection matter to you? This story matters to me not because it happened one morning 2000 years ago in Palestine. That matters, of course, and matters tremendously for my and for your eternal salvation. But in my daily life, it matters to me because I see this story of life emerging out of death continue to play out in my own life, in big and small ways. With this story of death and resurrection as the lens through which I view my life, I find myself always searching for the new life that can or will spring out from whatever loss I experience or burden I bear – whether I’m living through a pandemic, or finding my view of the world changing, or experiencing a rocky spot in an important relationship, or a difficult decision about a job or a move or some other life change. I find myself continually asking, “What life will come, what fruit will be borne, from this death, this loss?” To be clear, that’s not to minimize or overlook the sadness and grief that comes with loss – those are important feelings, too. Lament is also a part of faith. Rather, it is an orientation, a way always to have an eye not toward longing for getting something back that is gone, but toward whatever new thing God might be doing in us and through us. We can hold both things.

In this way, Jesus’ passion and resurrection it not only something that happens one weekend each spring, but rather, something that we live out all throughout our lives. Next Sunday, we will begin the journey through Holy Week, the time each year when we reflect on this central story of our faith. As we encounter once again this story of death and life, and all the grueling emotions along the way, I hope that you will see it not only as an event that took place in first century Palestine that has eternal implications for our faith but nothing more. I hope that you will also hear and experience it as a story that can help us to understand and tell the story of our lives today, and to help us make sense of them. Because there is always loss. There is always pain. There is always grief. And, there is always the promise that when things die, God uses that death to bring forth much fruit.

Let us pray… Loving, life-giving God, when we lose things that had been familiar to us, we often long to have them back. Orient our attention instead toward seeing what fruit you may bring from that death, so that the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection might become the story of our own lives. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon: Look at what's killing you to find life (Mar 14, 2021)

 Full service HERE (one full year of worshiping online!). Sermon at 31:00.

Lent 4B

March 14, 2021

Numbers 21:4-9

John 3:14-21

 

INTRODUCTION

         Today, halfway through Lent, we get a brief respite, in which all of our texts are about life and grace. We get this by way of one of the most Lutheran passages in all of scripture (Ephesians); one of the most quoted verses in all of scripture (John 3:16); and one of the weirdest stories in all of scripture (Numbers).

         Let’s start there, with the Israelites in the wilderness. Remember that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and this time is a sort of Faithfulness Boot Camp, in which they learn what it means to be God’s faithful people. The 10 Commandments we heard about last week gave a good foundation, but there is yet much to learn. Throughout this boot camp, the Israelites famously complain. Today their complaints are followed by the arrival of deadly, poisonous snakes (it’s no wonder this is the final complaint story – lesson learned!), and God will suggest a strange, but effective, treatment plan.

         Moving to the Gospel reading, this is actually just a part of a much larger story, in which the Pharisee Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night (presumably because he doesn’t want his colleagues to know he is interested in Jesus’s teachings), and Jesus tells him he must be born again, born of the Spirit. What we hear today is a part of Jesus’ explanation about what that means. Today’s gospel text begins with a reference to the poisonous snake story from Numbers, which will set up the verse you all know and love, John 3:16.

         As I mentioned, all of today’s texts are about life – finding help in the midst of struggle, finding light in the darkness, finding grace instead of punishment. They will raise very contemporary questions such as, “Does God punish? What do I have to do to get what I crave? Why am I suffering?” and the answer will be unequivocal: God is a God of love and grace. So as you listen, listen for that promise of grace. Let’s listen.

[READ]

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

          “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God.”

         This quote from 16^th century reformer John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is partly what inspired my Lenten discipline this year. With the hope in mind of gaining more self-knowledge, and so also deeper knowledge of God, I decided to revisit the enneagram, which I first learned about in seminary. In case you are not familiar with this tool, it is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people interpret the world and manage their emotions. It is a tool for personal growth, but is also a profound tool for spiritual growth, and there are gobs of books and blogs and podcasts by Christian thinkers (including Fr. Richard Rohr, if you’re familiar with him) about how to use the wisdom of the enneagram to find the path back “home,” back to God’s own loving embrace and our True Self. The basic gist is this – we are born with this inherent belief about the world: that we are whole and perfect as we are, that our needs are met, that we belong and are loved… good, life-giving things like that. But sometime in our childhood, that belief is disrupted, and we develop mechanisms to create the illusion of those desires for ourselves – like, always correcting and reforming in pursuit of perfection, or tending to everyone’s needs except our own, or constantly striving to succeed in bigger and better ways to prove our worthiness for love. We came to see these things as goods, even, perhaps, as godly, yet in reality, they set us down a different path toward a False Self, a path that leads us away from a fully trusting relationship with God our Creator. Remember that evil often presents itself as a good, even as it chips away at our faith. We started telling ourselves lies about where our worthiness comes from, like I am what I do, or, I am what I have, or, I am what other people say about me.[1] We become motivated by these lies, rather than by the knowledge that we are God’s beloved, that we are worthy of love because God made us so, and that there is nothing that can take away that belovedness or worth – the sort of stuff Paul talks about in Ephesians. In other words, with the help of these lies, we strayed from God, from home.

When we are able to recognize our own patterns and motivations, we begin also to see how they keep us from placing ourselves fully in God’s embrace, where we know that we are loved and worthy and safe because we are with God. To Calvin’s point, when we know ourselves, and can discern between our False Self and our True Self, the one God created us to be, then we can indeed draw closer to God. Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. But that self-knowledge can only be attained if we make the intentional effort to recognize the ways our patterns, and the scaffolding we have put up to protect ourselves, keep us from God. When we look at all that head on, come to terms with it, and work to overcome it, we can indeed grow closer to God.

All of which brings me to our texts for today. As strange as it is, I really love this story from Numbers, because it rings so true for me, even in my enneagram journey. Here we have the Israelites wandering through the wilderness and complaining, as they usually do. Until now, God has generally provided for them each time they complained. Thirsty? Here’s water from a rock. Hungry? Here’s some bread from heaven and some quail. But now? Maybe it’s just gone too far. This time when they complain, God doesn’t just fix the problem. Instead, God sends… poisonous snakes?! Well that was an unexpected turn! And when they complain about the snakes, because you know, people are dying, God doesn’t just take them away. Instead, God tells them, “Put the likeness of a snake on a pole, lift it up, and look at it, and you shall live.” And they do, and they live! 

There are lots of things not to love about this story, I admit. You could not love that God sends the snakes in the first place, thus creating the problem that causes people to die. You could not love that God doesn’t provide what they asked for. You could not love that God doesn’t take away the problem. But here’s why I do love this story: I love it because the way it plays out is a lot more like real life. The Israelites are struggling. Indeed, they are losing their life. And God’s response is not to take away the struggle, but rather, to give them tools for dealing with it. That’s life, right? God never promised that our lives would be free of pain and struggle, but God did promise to be present in it, and God equips us not only to come through what we’re facing, but even to grow and find new life out of death. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of the wandering in the wilderness part of the Israelite saga: as I said, it’s like Faithfulness Boot Camp. Every challenge they face becomes an opportunity to learn and grow deeper in faith, to learn better how to trust God and look to God in times of trouble.

And that is what they are learning here, too, and what we learn through the Israelites: that we cannot ignore our troubles, or run from them. Instead, we look at them head on, trusting that by doing so, God will bring life out of that death. And here’s where it comes back to the enneagram for me. The enneagram is a tool for looking at those harmful patterns we develop, to look at them straight on, to recognize that what we had convinced ourselves was good is actually damaging to our relationships with God and our neighbor. When we look at them, rather than ignore or run from them, we are able to find healing from them, even to find life.

This has of course long been a faith practice: it is why we do confession. We name our sin. We look at it. We recognize the ways we have strayed from God. We acknowledge that our ways of living are not of God and that in fact they lead us away from whole-hearted trust in the God who gives us life. And then, by looking at the thing that was killing us, at that crafty serpent in the garden or the poisonous snake on a pole, we are able to move away from it, and find life.

That’s also what is happening in today’s text from John. In the Numbers story, snakes brought death upon the people because of their sin, and the snake, the instrument of death, lifted up becomes the pathway to life. In John, Jesus gives a similar dual meaning in the cross. The cross was an instrument of death, which was brought upon Jesus because of the rebellion of the people – a sinful rebellion in which we all still participate in our own way. So when we look at the cross, it becomes a way for us to acknowledge, “We did this. We are responsible for this expression of death.” It’s a theme we see so strongly throughout Lent, and especially in Holy Week. A one beloved hymn plaintively asks, “Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?” and the agonized answer: “‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee. I crucified thee.” You see, Lent is a season when we take responsibility for our participation in the brokenness of the world – and this ultimately brings not more death, but healing and life! That’s the work I’ve been doing this Lent using the enneagram, but we also may do it in counseling, or spiritual direction, in a 12 step program, in prayer and confession – we learn to recognize and look straight on at what we are doing to contribute to the brokenness of this world, so that we might move away from that behavior, away from that brokenness.

But then, paradoxically, the same cross on which Jesus was lifted up, that instrument of death, becomes for us a source of life. When we lift it up and look with faith upon the one who hung there, his resurrection becomes ours as well. Just like the Israelites looking at the fruits of their sin, and finding healing in the looking, we find healing from our own sins when we look upon what Jesus has accomplished through the cross. What had previously brought death, now brings life.

It’s the story of death and resurrection, the centerpiece of our faith, and it plays out not just in the first century, or in ancient Israel, but continually through our lives. A life of faith is always being willing to look at what brings death and brokenness, both in ourselves and in the world around us, in order than we might instead receive life, and be saved. For by grace we are saved, and this is a gift from God, that we would be raised up and made alive together with Christ. Thanks be to God!

Let us pray… God of grace and life, we would rather ignore those things that bring pain, or even convince ourselves that they are good. Help us to look at them straight on, to reckon with them, and to do the work of seeking you, so that we might be ready to receive your gift of life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

---

[1] Henri Nouwen describes these in three talks he gave in the mid-1990s.

Sermon: The Temple dwelling with us (Mar 7, 2021)

 Lent 3B

March 7, 2021

John 2:13-22

 

INTRODUCTION

         I mentioned several weeks ago that during this year we would be switching back and forth between the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John. Today we move back to John for a few weeks. Since John and Mark have very different approaches to telling this Jesus story, I want to be sure we’re on the same page about it. So, some key points to remember about John: for John, the most important thing in a life of faith is that we abide in Jesus and he in us. Sin equals separation from God (aka Jesus), and faith is relationship with Jesus. And so, a lot of his Gospel, right from chapter one, is hitting home that point that Jesus is God, dwelling among us, in order that we might have access to that life-giving relationship.

         The particular story we will hear today is an example of that, though I won’t get into that just yet. It is the story of the cleansing of the temple, in which Jesus literally overturns the practices of the temple cult, implying instead that he is the temple, which will be destroyed and risen again in three days (that passion prediction is why we hear this story during Lent). But John’s version of this famous story is quite a bit different from Matthew, Mark or Luke’s, which again, I’ll get into later.

         The covenant we’ll hear about in the first reading is one that will be very familiar to you: the 10 commandments. What you may not remember is where this occurs in the narrative and why: Moses has just led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and they are in the wilderness, finding their way to the Promised Land. These are God’s people, the so-called nation of Israel, but they have a lot to learn about what that should look like. So, God calls Moses to a mountaintop and gives him these 10 commandments as guidelines about what it means to live as God’s faithful people. They seem simple and straightforward enough – yet God’s people have struggled to keep them even to today, as we strive to live according to God’s wisdom, not our foolishness.

         Which is really the point of all our readings. As you listen today, consider how what we humans think of as wisdom differs from God’s wisdom. What does each look like, and how do they play out? Let’s listen.

[READ]

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our Rock and our redeemer. Amen.

         Last week we talked about how the principle “location is everything” applies not only to real estate, but also to biblical interpretation, and today is another example of that. I alluded to this in the introduction, but here again is a little Bible lesson for you: we have four Gospels in the canon, what we call the Bible, and of those four, Matthew, Mark and Luke have a lot of common material. Likely Mark was written first, and then Matthew and Luke drew from Mark, and also added their own material and wrote with their own particular style and audience in mind. Those three are known as the synoptic Gospels, because they are so similar in many ways. John, on the other hand, is kind of his own thing. In fact, 90% of the material in his Gospel is unique to John. Today’s story, the cleansing of the temple, appears in the other three Gospels, but there are a couple important differences that totally change how we understand this story. So let’s go through those differences, and find what they mean for our understanding of Jesus.

         First, as I said, is the location – in this case, the narrative location. In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), this event of the cleansing of the temple occurs toward the end of story, after Palm Sunday, when Jesus has come into Jerusalem for the Passover and finally, we come to find out, his death. In fact, this incident serves as the impetus for his arrest. John, however, places this incident at the beginning of his story, in chapter 2, right after the wedding at Cana where Jesus famously turned water into wine. Hmm, pretty big detail to change. Why would John do that? Hmmm… stay tuned!

         The second major difference is what Jesus says to those gathered. You may recall that in this story, Jesus usually says, “You’ve made my father’s house a den of robbers!” But in John (did you notice?), he says, “Stop making my father’s house a marketplace!” Very different! To understand the different meanings, it’s important to know something about how the Temple worked. Bear with me a moment, for some ancient history: first of all, the Jerusalem Temple was both a place of worship, and a whole economic system. As a place of worship, it was where Jews believed God dwelt, and the way they could encounter God was through worship which generally included a sacrifice. So every now and then, around major festivals like Passover, pilgrims would travel to Jerusalem to be able to worship God in the Temple. But the journey was so long, they were unable to bring along the appropriate sacrifice, because a goat, for example, couldn’t make such a journey. That’s where the economic system comes in. Upon arrival, pilgrims had an opportunity to purchase their sacrifice when they got there. This sort of marketplace system was actually meant to make worship and sacrifice simpler, and conversely the Temple was dependent on this economic system to function. And of course, people probably abused it, perhaps over charging for the necessary sacrifices. People, even people of faith, have always been sinful and greedy. And according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, that was the main issue here. “You have made my Father’s house a den of robbers,” he says, implying some economic abuse.

         But in John, Jesus isn’t calling out abuses in the system, or the way they are making these exchanges. He’s calling out the whole system! “Stop making this a marketplace!” he says, before he starts opening cages and driving out animals with a makeshift whip. And yet, the temple marketplace was necessary for the very functioning of the system of worship! It was what allowed people to worship God, to connect with God, to thank and praise God. Why would Jesus tell them to stop doing that?

         Let me just like to stop here for a moment, because that was a lot of biblical and ancient economic history and I want to make sure I didn’t lose you. So if I lost you, come on back. Here’s the situation: the 1^st century system of worship and economics that has been working fine (though probably not without abuse) makes it possible for pilgrims to the Jerusalem Temple to worship God in the way they believe to be faithful. And along comes Jesus, right at the beginning of his ministry, to say, “Stop doing this,” turning over the literal tables and the proverbial apple cart (though actually, John doesn’t say anything about turning over tables – that’s also a synoptic Gospels thing). So why would Jesus stop this system from happening? Didn’t Jesus want people to worship God?

         Here is a problem I often have: when I’m trying to figure something out, I get so stuck in the muck, frustrated with trying to force a square peg fit into a round hole, that I don’t realize I’m trying to figure out this puzzling thing with the assumption that the answer lies in the old system. But when I am able to step back, or perhaps when someone points my attention elsewhere, or maybe when they make a whip and potentially turn over some tables, I realize that the problem is not my methods, but rather, that those methods were built for the old system. In other words: I’m asking the wrong questions.

         Churches do this all the time, right? We want more young people in the church, we say. So we will keep everything exactly the same, except we’ll add a rock band, make worship earlier, or later, or hold a monthly pancake dinner. We won’t change anything else about what we do (it’s always worked before, after all), but we will try to draw new people into this old system. Then we get discouraged and frustrated when it doesn’t work. In the language of leadership, we call that making technical changes, rather than pursuing necessary adaptive change.

         On a much deeper and more profound level, that’s what is happening here, too, and why Jesus is so zealous (not necessarily angry, notice – but passionate!). By saying, “Get rid of the marketplace, the former way of giving people access to God,” what he’s really calling for is not some technical change to the existing system, but rather, to dismantle the whole system. Typical of our God, God is doing a new thing, in Jesus. He is saying, “This Temple, this way of encountering God, is no longer necessary. Because this Temple is no longer where God is found. God is not confined to this building.”

         Where, then, is God found? Well, John told us that in chapter one: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God is found in Jesus. God is found dwelling among us, moving with us, setting up camp with us wherever we may go. God is not located in a building, no matter how glorious, and does not need animal sacrifice to connect with us, for Jesus is himself the sacrificial Lamb.

This was especially life-giving news for the original audience, because when John was writing, the Temple had already been destroyed, and with it, they thought, their means of worshiping or encountering God. But frankly, it is also pretty life-giving news for us, as we recognize today one full liturgical year since we first moved online and out of the building. I know you have missed being in this beautiful space, even as I hope and pray that you have encountered God in new ways in your homes and in other places in your life. That is God’s intention – that in Christ, we have a God who dwells with us wherever we are. That relationship with our God is possible in ways we may never have before imagined, in places we hadn’t thought before to look for God – in our home offices, in our dens and living rooms, on our phones and laptops. That life-giving relationship is not only found at 28 Lincoln Ave on Sunday morning, but is found in the very same places that we work, or watch a movie, or talk over Zoom and Facetime to our friends and family whom we miss, or even mindlessly scroll through social media. God has always been in those places, of course. But maybe this time of tables turning and cages being opened has made us more aware of it.

And that, finally, is why John places this encounter right at the beginning: because for John, the most important thing to know about Jesus, what we need to know right up front, is that he is here with us, for us, dwelling among us so that we would be able to know God through him. We don’t need a building to meet God. Now, I do hope that we will be back in this space together again soon – we are looking at May for that to happen if all goes well. But until then, and more importantly after, I pray that you would know God’s love and presence just exactly where you are, and that you would find in that presence the abundant life that God wants for you.

Let us pray… God before us, behind us, around us and within us, we thank you that you showed us through Jesus your desire to be in relationship with us. Help us to praise, thank, and worship you wherever we are. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.