A Question of Authority

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

The word of the Lord came to me: What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” As I live, says the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine; it is only the person who sins that shall die.  Yet you say, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? When the righteous turn away from the their righteousness and commit iniquity, they shall die for it; for the iniquity that they have committed they shall die. Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die. Yet the house of Israel says, “The way of the Lord is unfair.” O house of Israel, are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair? Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

Philippians 2:1-13

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any  sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Matthew 12:23-32

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and they said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to him, “I will also ask you one question ; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things.” Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say ‘from heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘then why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd; for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things. What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “the first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

***

A man had two sons… usually a beginning like this means a clear either/or between how we should be and how we should not be, what to do and what to avoid. Like the older brother and the younger in the story of the Prodigal Son - although by the time that story’s over we may not know who we are in it. We don’t tend to be entirely one character or another. At least not all of the time. Sometimes we lean in one direction, sometimes in another, sometimes we find ourselves in a strange mix of the two.

So today, a man had two sons. Which one are you? Is it that simple? Remembering that this story was told over and over again long before it was written down, and that it was told over and over again after Jesus had been crucified and risen, I wonder who might be having fingers points at them in the first community of Jesus here? It’s a question which might be more easily answered by looking at the original language, as the English translations vary so widely and the Greek language holds some additional baggage we might not notice in the English. Take the word ‘repentance’ for example. It shows up here in today’s parable - sort of. The son changed his mind, right? He said he wouldn’t go, and then he changed direction and went to work in the vineyard anyhow. Except it’s not quite that. It’s another word than what usually translates as ‘repent,’ and that other word has more of a sense of regret about it. It would more properly be said that the first son had a change of heart.

Changes of heart are a completely different matter, aren’t they? Changes of heart are a lot more difficult to come by, and often more complicated to explain. They rely on emotion and empathy, and they aren’t always rational. My parents and I watched “Frozen” again this weekend, and it’s made pretty obvious there that, while ‘the mind can be persuaded,’ a change of heart requires an act of true love. Of course, for Disney it’s a true love’s kiss that is assumed - I don’t want to spoil the movie for you if you haven’t yet seen it.

Yes, the first son has a change of heart. And that weird Greek word which is different from ‘repentance’ is only used in one other place in the Gospel of Matthew. Only one other character is said to have a change of heart. Can you guess who? Who might have had something to regret? Something they wanted to take back? Something they asked forgiveness for? Even though it’s nowhere near Holy Week, we’re going to talk about him. It’s Judas. Judas had a change of heart after he betrayed Jesus. Judas took those 30 silver coins that he traded for his friend, and tried to return them to the chief priests. Judas confessed to betraying innocent blood and he asked for forgiveness. Judas was the son who did as he should have done after he made that terrible mistake.

What do you think? A man had two sons…

Which leaves us the second son to find. Somewhere in the Gospel there is another character. A character who said he was going to do good by Jesus and then dropped the ball. A guy who promised he would die before betraying Jesus, or, as the author of Matthew has him say it: “Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you!” The second son, in hindsight, is Peter.

Making the story go like this: A man had two sons. He said to the first, “son, follow me and trust me.” And that son said “I will not,” but later he had a change of heart and repented, going to the chief priests for forgiveness as required by the law of their shared faith. The man said to his second son, “son, follow me and trust me.” And that son said, “Absolutely! All the way! I’m right there with you!” But he fell asleep when he was on lookout and then denied, not once, not twice, but three times, that he even knew the man. Which of the two did the will of his father?

Granted, this is all in hindsight. It makes sense in the way any good story makes sense, with the parallels and the character types. But there’s more to a story than the characters. The characters are involved in something: a conflict, an adventure, a journey of self-discovery. What’s been happening in their lives, what’s the plot line and where’s it headed?

When this story is told, it’s in the context of Jesus’ last days before the crucifixion. So far Jesus has entered the Temple to the songs of “Hosanna!” He turned over the money-changers’ tables, healed the blind and the lame, and on top of it all, he told the parish leaders it was well and good - and foretold in scripture - that children will be noisy in their worship. Where did Jesus get this authority?

That’s what’s happening. Jesus tells this story that could be about Peter and Judas in the light of that question. Where does Jesus get his authority? He heals. Teaches. Feeds the hungry. Casts out demons. Calls the religious leaders to consider again what’s really behind these laws they keep. Declares the kingdom of God like he knows a thing or two about it! Where does he get the authority, the right, to even go so far as to forgive sins? 

Because, really, that’s where these questions started. When Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic, that was when the religious leaders started accusing him. There had been times before when people were amazed at his authority. Times when he calmed the storm; when he taught like he had authority; when the centurion understood the authority he had to make something so with just a word - and Jesus healed that soldier’s servant from far away. 

Jesus does and says a lot of things with authority. Then he does this thing, says this word of forgiveness, and suddenly now he’s usurping God’s authority. Now he’s being accused of blasphemy, of ‘counting equality with God as something to be exploited.’

Which is exactly the opposite of what he’s doing, isn’t it? At least according to the ancient hymn that’s recorded about him in this letter to the Philippians, it’s the very thing he doesn’t do. He doesn’t count equality with God as something to be exploited. He’s really the only man alive who ever could make the most of such a claim, such a power and authority, seeing as how he actually is God among us. But he doesn’t lord it over us. Doesn’t make us bow and scrape and beg. Jesus, as Philippians puts it, “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And being found in human likeness, he humbled himself to the point of death - even death on a cross.” 

This is why we worship him. The religious leaders - and yes, I know I am one now - we have used our authority in all sorts of wrong ways. We’ve exploited people’s good will, we’ve stolen, we’ve lied, we’ve used our position to get out of speeding tickets and jury duty. What’s worse, we’ve used our pulpits to tell people they are too fallen for God to save them. We’ve frightened people into paying for a ticket to heaven which we cannot grant. We’ve used our little authority to keep the doors open and our pensions secure.  And we’ve taught many others that this is the purpose of our institution.

But Jesus - Jesus actually has the authority to divide the sheep from the goats, the wisdom to know the difference, the right to that power. Jesus is the one and only human being with the right to condemn anyone, because he is also God - and what does he do with that authority? What does he do? He lays it down. He lives in the dirt with us. He heals. He feeds. He forgives. Again and again, he forgives. When we are very lucky to get things right, we, too, living by the Spirit, also may find ourselves healing and feeding, welcoming the stranger and forgiving debts. 

Remember, when we confess together as a community at the start of worship, “We confess that we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves,” the word of forgiveness that comes is not mine. It is by Christ’s authority that I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins. It is by Christ’s authority that the word of forgiveness is spoken to you and for you, just as by Christ’s free gift his own Body and Blood are given and shed for you.  

So when we work the work of Christ - God’s work, our hands - it is by his authority that we feed the hungry, visit the homebound, love the lost and the least. And when we find ourselves facing backwards, full of regret for what we did or did not find the courage and wisdom to do, it is by Christ’a authority that we are forgiven.

I believe that, had Judas not lost all hope and died by his own hand, Christ would have received him still as one of the twelve when he returned from the dead. I’m not sure about how the eleven would have treated him, but if Jesus could forgive those who nailed his hands and feet to that cross, could forgive the criminals hanging beside him who mocked him, he could forgive even Judas, even me, even you. Peter became enshrined by the church as the first Pope even after what he had done. There is no place too far gone for the love and forgiveness of Jesus to reach you, nor anyone else, neither.

Does it matter which of the two sons you are in the story? Or does it matter more that the One who tells the story knows your heart and has come to feed, heal, and forgive you?

Of prophets and parables

Jonah 3:10—4:11

Matthew 20:1–16

The story of Jonah is one we tell to our kids over and over again, mostly because it contains this great miracle of being swallowed by a whale and living to tell about it. Like the way we tell kids about all the adorable animals on Noah’s ark and the beautiful rainbow but we leave out the mess of dead who were drowned in that 40 days of rain.

So today we get a bit of the messy part of Jonah’s story - we get the spite. Jonah would rather die than watch his nation’s enemies be forgiven and offered grace. He is infuriated by God. He knew God would relent from punishing the Ninevites, once they came to their senses and repented. It’s why Jonah fled in the first place - he wanted to see Nineveh punished for all of the pain and destruction they had rained down on Israel. He wanted those infidels to burn for their sin, and knowing that God is forgiving and merciful, he fought against telling them that they had the chance to repent.

But as much as Jonah wanted them to die, God wanted more for them to live.

So Jonah had to have some time of his own to repent, even while the people of Nineveh were sitting in sackcloth and ashes. He had to fume and fuss and kick the dust and sit and wait to die. Then this comfortable little shrubbery grew up as a shade on his hot head, and he found some comfort in it. This shrubbery he neither planted nor watered. This little plant which only a day later withered and shriveled and died as a divinely appointed worm ate its heart out. Since this disturbed Jonah’s small comfort, he threw a tantrum. Nothing was going his way. First he had to bring God’s mercy to the infidel, then the only shade he had on a hot day had been taken away. It’s as if God shook him by the shoulders: “Why are you so upset about a shrub, when an entire city was just saved! Oh, for crying out loud, at least have pity on the livestock, then, if you can’t muster any compassion for the people!”

Sometimes God has to reorient our compassion. We get a bit stuck on what works best for ourselves only, and miss the bigger picture.

Like the parable Jesus tells us today: A landowner hires workers for his vineyard, adding laborers every hour, and pays them all a living day’s wage for their work. The ones who worked all day get the pay they first expected, and the ones who waited in the market most of the day until they were hired at the eleventh hour also get a day’s pay. The first workers were not cheated, but they did get upset that those latecomers got the same compensation as they received.

It doesn’t add up very well in our society, does it? Didn’t add up in Jesus’ day, either. The earliest hired got the pay they agreed to, but then expected that they deserved more when they compared themselves to those bums who just came in off the street.

But as much as we operate this way, God’s kingdom is far more generous when we are undeserving.

Because it’s not about deserving. I can’t ignore this reality after all I’ve seen just in complaints about people who flip burgers wanting to be paid a living wage.  We rank people according to so many variables - but it comes down to keeping ourselves powerful and in the right, making sure we’re getting what we deserve before we bother noticing our neighbors. 

Well, it may not seem like it, from our current position, or maybe it does: we’re not the ones who got hired first. Or second. Or third. Anyone who believes we’re in the end times ought to be able to tell us that. Anyone who has any idea of history, that we didn’t just show up here this instant without ancestors, will be able to tell us that. Anyone who has ever been taught by a teacher ought to be able to say they didn’t show up first on the scene. We’ve a whole history of generations of workers in the vineyard who got to work before we were even born. A whole legacy of laborers in the vineyard who have been passing on their knowledge and skill, sharing their witness and struggle, so that we could get to where we are.

Jesus and Jonah both reveal the patience and the mercy of our God today, in that God will relent from punishing even the worst of offenders, and God will bless even the latecomers whose work can only build on the labor of those who were present first. God will take care of us just like God took care of them. If God can forgive Nineveh after all they did to destroy and scatter God’s own chosen people, if God can choose and use and teach a prophet like Jonah to bring that word of forgiveness even when that prophet would rather die than know God’s mercy more deeply, imagine what God can give and do here. If God can be like a landowner who searches the marketplace every hour for laborers to work in the vineyard, how might God come to us, again and again, to make us part of that kingdom work?

Forgiveness. Grace. Mercy. Again and again, God pours out upon the world an abundance of these gifts, whether or not we feel worthy, because we certainly can not earn these gifts. Nothing we do can make us deserve the forgiveness, grace, and love of God, just like nothing we do can make us lose these abundant blessings. For our God is a generous God.

Of serpents and crosses

Readings

Numbers 21:4b-9    Moses lifts up a bronze serpent in the wilderness
Psalm 98:1-4    The LORD has done marvelous things. (Ps. 98:1)
1 Corinthians 1:18-24    The cross is the power of God to those who are being saved
John 3:13-17    The Son of Man will be lifted up

I’ve thought about bringing in a toy snake and winding it around the cross as a visual aid. It would certainly be an interesting thought experiment, wouldn’t it? What is this snake doing there, when the first time we see a snake in scripture is as the accuser in the Garden, the one who asks Eve if God really told them all they needed to know and could be trusted. The one snake who was then cursed to travel on its belly because it had brought people so low.

So what would such an animal have to do with the “life-saving cross, on which was hung the salvation of the world”? In the reading from Numbers, the people are being killed by snakebite because they’ve been complaining about life in the wilderness since their rescue from Egypt. It’s a long, difficult road to the Promised Land, and they are starting to think the mess they were in before has got to be better than where they’re headed. More of them start questioning God’s goodness, more telling God they know better, more looking back like Lot’s wife, though it doesn’t turn any of them into pillars of salt. It’s back to those questions from the garden again: Does God really want what’s best for us?

Today is celebrated as Holy Cross day, the festival set way back when the place of the crucifixion of Jesus was found, and they dedicated a church building there. Not an easy task, since there were so many crucifixions back then, it would be like finding the one Dunkin’ Donuts or the one Stewarts where Jesus might have gotten coffee that one time. We Christians tend to make a big deal about this one particular cross, or, I should say, the one particular man who died on this one cross among thousands. It’s almost like the rest of Jesus’ life and ministry comes second to this one moment in time when God and death met head-on and for a dark and terrifying moment God seemed to have lost the wager. 

But it was a wager made on our behalf, on our heads, for our sake. Because we don’t have the power to stand up to death once we have entered into a bargain with it. And bargain we did, way back when that first serpent first said, ‘Do you really think God will care one way or the other about you?’ We have been dying ever since, in big and small ways. The cross of Jesus is there to save us from this debt to death that we could never hope to repay - I’d pay off my student loans ten times over - plus interest! - before I’d be able to even start thinking about how to pay off this wager gone bad. 

So God enters into this contract with us, this covenant, where life is spent to save life, where blood is spilled to give new life, and as with most gods, the cost is a sacrifice of one life for another. Unlike any other gods, this God handles the whole thing without demanding any of our blood. We didn’t count on it being the author of life who would enter that sort of arrangement. Leaving us with nothing to do on our own behalf to take care of the debts we have accrued. Nothing to do but look at them, square in the face.

That’s the connection I’ve made this time reading through the story from Numbers, and by Jesus’ reference to it according to John’s Gospel. Those serpents, brought on by the people’s willful and arrogant bad behavior, became the very tool of their healing when they only looked at one bronze serpent held up before them. They could not pretend they hadn’t gotten what was coming to them. They couldn’t pretend they had been either grateful or faithful. They could not look away from their own anguish and from the things which threatened to kill them.

Neither can we look away from Christ lifted up on the cross, from the things we do to him each and every time we ignore, misappropriate, and abuse his name and his people. Every time humanity has splintered community and gone the way of every one for themselves our species has broken creation’s covenant with our creator. But now that we have seen the cross, those sins, no matter how deep, are not anymore a source of despair for us. We know that these things that are so terrible in the light of holiness are ultimately without the power to define us - thanks be to the one who was everything humanity was created to be, and who allowed death to taste him last of all, to give him up first of all.

We center our faith on this cross, on this free gift of God which repairs the breach between us. Not only is the brokenness we see carried up on this cross, but the brokenness we have grown accustomed to is there, also. Our ancient saints, the first followers of the Way, the first to be called ‘Christians,’ knew that something peculiar was happening when it was Jesus of Nazareth up there suffocating to death with nails in his hands and feet. We have tried for generations to make sense of it, to organize some philosophy, wisdom, theories, around a man, who is also God, dying just like any other Jew of bold integrity in those days would have been killed by the powers and principalities… but the cross does not make sense. We have talked about it so long that we may have gotten used to it, certainly, but here is a man, who is also God, who has the authority to bring down fire and plague upon our heads, and instead he is loving the world - the actual, flesh and blood world that we lived in then and that we live in today - up to his very last breath, and then some.

We cannot properly fear and love God without this gift. We cannot properly know God without this mystery. Yet this gift and this mystery are offered freely to us, without any merit on our part, without our even wanting to love God or know God better.

Madison said to me last Spring: “Tell me a story about Jesus. I miss him.” This cross is the central story about Jesus, and from it we tell all of our other stories about Jesus. Feeding the 5,000. Walking on water. Healing the lepers. Welcoming the children. It all comes from the very same Jesus whose life, death, and resurrection bring God and humanity - God and the whole of the cosmos! - back together again in right relationship. The lover and the beloved. And none shall separate us from that love.

God's Work, our life in community

Ezekiel 33:7-9 

Romans 13:8-14 

Matthew 18:15-20

Yesterday I was blessed to represent our congregation at the installation of our new Bishop of the Upstate NY synod. We gathered a whole lot of singers and prayers and musicians, including representatives from our sister synods in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Bishops from the other regional synods of New England and Pennsylvania and Metro New York, ecumenical partners from the Episcopal diocese… it was a sight to behold, and a choir to hear.

It was a long drive there and a long ride back, but to gather with all of those people for such a celebration was well worth the trip. I wish you could have been there! Trumpets and tympanies and french horns and a string trio and more than enough food and drink for all. It was a beautiful liturgy and a joyous occasion. 

The Presiding Bishop - who represents the denomination as a whole nationwide body - had some good words for us in the sermon which were too good not to share. She quoted the Lutheran theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote many letters and delivered many lectures, who lived and died in Germany during the second World War, and is still a man we study and honor and marvel at today. 

She called on Bonhoeffer’s words yesterday to illustrate the sort of work we are all called into by the Spirit. I don’t have the reference directly before me, but the quote went something along the lines of, “nothing kills a community more certainly than service to the ideal of the community, rather than the reality of it.” We can hope and dream that our community is the kingdom of God lived here and now, and we can have a vision of what that looks like, but unless we see who is right before us, who is sitting next to us, who is in reality in this time and place part of the community, we will never have a thriving community.

Sounds like common sense, but how many times do we pine for the good old days or wish for revitalized new programming for a bright future, and in that process miss what and who we do have in the present moment? How often have we looked forward to vacation only to be so disengaged from work we lose track of what we are doing? 

Loving the reality of the lived community among us is not an easy task. But it is the reality of the Incarnation, of God with us. In Christ Jesus, we are saved from the power of sin, death, and the devil, but that does not mean we have an easy escape from life. Bills still need to be paid, votes cast, people cared for, and conflicts resolved.

Which brings us to this morning’s gospel reading. Life in Christian community isn’t always easy, and Jesus knew there would be miscommunications, fighting, insecurities, and that thing we talk about in seminary as the most common struggle: triangulation. It happens when one person hurts another, accidentally or on purpose, and rather than talking directly, a third person is brought in, almost for gossip. Usually because we can’t gather up the courage and trust the possibility of forgiveness shared. So, almost out of habit, we fester in our hurts by talking to everyone else about our pain, but not the person who inflicted us with that pain. 

But that breaks down community, and when we are hurt, we tend to hurt each other. We have these words of Jesus and still we’re not very good always at telling someone directly, and I don’t know if it’s because we’re trying so hard to be nice that we’ve grown afraid of conflict in the church, or because we’ve seen the ways conflict in the church has done such damage in the past that we don’t want to touch it. But we still have those final words of Jesus in today’s Gospel: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.”

Christian community is where we come to lay open our wounds and our failings and to give and receive grace for mutual healing. It is where we confess our sins and receive forgiveness. It is where those confessions and that forgiveness are real and personal, not just some empty ritual that we act out because we ought to. It leaves us vulnerable in front of each other, which is a difficult posture to maintain without some small level of anxiety, especially if we are a guest in someone else’s church. Where we spend so much of our time trying to be our best, hiding what we think are our flaws, making excuses for our failings, church is where we stop pretending we ever were perfect or ever could be, where we let down our guard and let it be known that we are sinners saved by grace. We do this, of course, because we have a God who has known what human life is like from the inside and who has forgiven us, time and again.

So when we get these ‘how to treat the sinner in your midst’ texts, as often as we like to see ourselves as the one who has been right and has to go confront the one who was wrong, let’s look at it from the point of view of the one who has done the wrong. From what seems like the lower position of the two - although Jesus calls the offender ‘your brother’ to make clear there is no distinction between us. 

What grace there is in being told directly of our wrong, to be given the chance to ask forgiveness! This is not the accusing tone of someone ripping us apart for being late with paperwork or having said something offensive in polite company, it’s an open, forgiving, honest statement of pain received. It does give us some power to make things right again, doesn’t it? And to have welcome extended to us again and again, first by one, then by two, then by the whole community, seeking reconciliation.

The tough part is when reconciliation doesn’t seem to work. Or the outcome we want is not the outcome we get. But remember that promise again. Jesus is the great reconciler, the one who has not only shown us how to live, but freed us to do so through the blood of his cross. He says that if the brother who has sinned against you refuses to listen even to the church, that one ought to be treated like a Gentile and a tax collector - and have you heard how he treats those folks? Just as full a welcome as to anybody. Doesn’t mean we’ll behave as Jesus wants us to all of the time, if even some of the time! 

But it does remind us that, no matter what a mess we make of things, Jesus is among us to bless our work of reconciliation, our coming together again and again to offer confession and receive forgiveness, to be the source of our life of faith together. And to do this as we are, not as any book or study or statistics say we ought to be.

Living together in real transformative community can be a struggle, and Jesus knew it. He also knows what it’s like to love a people who are all over the map and tougher to handle than a herd of cats. But he didn’t come to ‘handle’ us, he came to heal us. To welcome the sinner. To embrace the outcast. To bring together a bunch of misfits who might not even be aware of how much he has done for us, so that we might be instruments of his healing one to another.

We’ve got our service project focus today. Tip of the iceberg stuff for how deeply poverty and hunger affect our communities. Awareness raising stuff. Advocacy stuff. Holy community building stuff. Remembering that there are a lot of struggling people in the world, including us, and that living into the kingdom of God takes work. But it is God’s work, the Spirit in and through this mission. Jesus has promised to be with us when we do his work. When he does his work through us. And so he is. And so he will be, on into the ages of ages.

Amen.