Hidden Promise: A Sermon on Luke 21:25-36

A few months ago, I met my family for a family vacation at Disneyland. Growing up in California, Disneyland was and is a regular family vacation spot for us. My parents both grew up in southern California, and have memories of going to the park with their families as children. So even though my brother and I are both adults now, every few years or so the four, now five of us counting my soon-to-be sister-in-law, make the trek down to the House of Mouse.

One of my favorite things about Disneyland is the attention to detail. This trip we spent the whole time on a search for hidden Mickeys. Of course, Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters are all over the park, but scattered throughout the park are what are known as “Hidden Mickeys,” references to Mickey and other characters sprinkled in places they don’t necessarily belong. If you don’t know what to look for, you can walk by these and never notice them. But as you start to train your eyes, these secret surprises pop out everywhere, a gift for those who’ve learned to pay attention. I’ve brought pictures of a couple of my favorite examples in to show you. Here’s one from the floor of the parking garage. Most of the garage is swept semi-circles, like you would expect in a cement garage floor. But in one spot, the pattern changes to form the characteristic head with two ears.

This one is the car from Space Mountain, with Mickey formed out of the speakers in the center console.

The interesting thing about training your eyes to see these Mickeys is you start to pick them out everywhere, even after you’ve left the park. This last picture is not from Disneyland at all, it’s a picture of my breakfast a couple weekends ago after my brother and I started texting each other pictures of Mickeys we made out of pancakes.

I got to thinking about these hidden Mickeys as I was pondering this text that might at first seem like such a strange choice for the beginning of this Advent season. This morning we pick up where we left off a few weeks ago, with Jesus’ strange apocalyptic warning to his disciples in the days before his crucifixion. Even though it’s the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of this new church year, it’s important to remember how we got here. Remember all throughout the summer as we were journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem as he taught his disciples about what it meant to follow him. Remember the miraculous healings, the wonder of fish and bread for thousands, the casting out of demons. Remember the lessons taught on the road about how the last will be first and the first will be last. Remember the welcoming of children, the blessing of widows, the raising up of the lowly. All throughout that long journey, Jesus was teaching his disciples to see the kingdom of God in unexpected places, to see abundance in scarcity, and hope in despair. When the disciples saw a person in need, Jesus taught them to see a brother or sister in Christ. When the disciples saw not enough to go around, Jesus taught them to see how sharing what they had meant everyone had enough. This passage we read this morning is one of Jesus’ very last opportunities to drill this message into their heads, that life and hope and love and promise can be found anywhere, everywhere, even in the midst of the most dire situations, if your eyes are only trained to see it. So when you see wars and rumors of war, signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, when you feel foreboding in the world and the powers of heaven are shaken, you do not have to be afraid. You can stand up and raise up your heads, because in there, if you know what to look for, you will see God.

Jesus did this because he knew what was coming. He knew that soon, the disciples would see him die. They would see him handed over to the authorities. They would see him mocked, beaten, and hung on a cross. They would watch him die and would see him buried. And it would not look like life, it would not look like hope, it would not look like promise, it would not look like the kingdom of God come near. Remember, we read this text after the crucifixion, this text is not a prediction of our future, it is a proof of our past. Remember what came next for the disciples. There were signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars on Good Friday at noon when darkness came over the land until three in the afternoon. There was foreboding in the world, as they stood at the cross and watched their Lord and teacher take his last breath. And in that final breath the powers of heaven were shaken as the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and in that moment, just as Jesus said it would, our redemption had drawn near. The greatest wonder the world has ever known was hidden in an innocent man’s death on a wooden cross. For those who didn’t know what to look for, it looked like foolishness. But for those of us whose eyes have been training to see, it is the wonder and the power and the glory of God.

Jesus did not begin training our eyes to see wonder in unexpected places during his ministry, it started at his very birth. Remember the incredible unexpectedness of the event that is about to take place. An elderly woman, barren and past child-bearing age, will conceive and bear a son. She will name the boy John, and he will grow to be a wild man who will preach in the wilderness and invite us to prepare the way of the Lord. But before he is born, he will leap in the womb at the approach of another unexpected mother, an unmarried teenager from small town, backwoods Nazareth who bears within her Christ the Lord. The Christ child will be born not in a palace of gold, but in a stable of animals, wrapped in clothes and laid in a manger. His attendants will be sheep and cattle and wayward shepherds. If you did not know what you were looking for, this is not where you would see glory, this is not where you would see life, this is not where you would see hope. If you did not know what you were looking for, you would see in this scene poverty and weakness, if you even saw this scene at all. If you did not know what you were looking for, it is more than likely that this scene would be invisible to you completely; for who pays attention to poor, unwed mothers who sleep in stables or wild men eating locusts and spouting nonsense when the fate of the world is at stake.

But we do not miss the holy in this scene because we have been taught to pay attention. Our eyes have been opened to the wonder of the Word made flesh. Our ears have been cleared to hear the angels sing hosanna to the Son of David. Our hearts have been formed for the Christ child whose birth we anticipate. We see these things because we know what we are looking for. Because throughout the years, God has been forming us, molding us, shaping us, teaching us to see the beautiful scene that is unfolding before us. The glory of God is not hidden to us, because we have been taught how to see.

The clarity God has shown us does not just shape how we see the Christmas story, it shapes how we see the world. Because God has taught us how to see, Christ is made visible in unexpected places in our world today. Just like Jesus showed the disciples, we see brothers and sisters in Christ in the poor and hurting and broken in our own communities. Where the world sees scarcity and not enough to go around, we see the amazing abundance of God in sharing what we have so that all have enough. In bread and wine, we see Christ present in our midst. In the dark, cold of winter, we see the promise of spring waiting under the snow. This Advent we enter into a time of practice. We practice seeing God’s surprising mystery unfolding around us. We practice looking for the subtle signs of Christ in our midst. We practice looking for the Word made flesh who still dwells among us. We practice, because God has shaped our eyes to see, and we can never see things the same again. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conversation Points for Luke 21:25-36

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• This passage from Luke picks up right after the last one we read in Mark (Mark 13:1-8). But Luke was written a couple of decades after Mark, so the devastation of the fall of the temple has passed some. Luke is less focused on linking Jesus words to an event as he is to pointing out how to live in the in-between time of “Christ has come” and “Christ will come again.”
• Like we talked about when we read Mark 13:1-8, apocalyptic literature is not about instilling fear but in demonstrating God’s presence in the midst of chaos. Theologian Jurgen Multmann calls it a “theology of hope,” saying, “the Christian hope [is not] an ‘opium of the beyond’ but rather the divine power that makes us alive in the world.”
• I’m struck that in the midst of the terror he describes, Jesus calls us to “stand up and raise [our] heads, because [our] redemption is drawing near.”

"What is Truth?": An Interactive Sermon for Christ the King based on John 18:33-38a

“What is truth?” Every week at Bible study we start with the question, “what word or phrase caught your attention in this passage?” For me this week it was this question of Pilate’s that caught my attention, “What is truth?”

The irony in this question, of course, is that Truth is standing right in front of Pilate. As Jesus said earlier in John’s Gospel, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” and in the sentence that prompted Pilate’s question, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” By asking this question to Jesus, to Truth personified, Pilate proves that he does not understand truth.

Pilate doesn’t understand because Pilate has a one-sided understanding of truth. Pilate has an intellectual understanding of truth. He sees truth like an elementary-school true/false test, something is either truth or it is not. But Pilate’s understanding is too shallow, because Jesus’ Truth is deeper, grander, and more wonderful than Pilate’s understanding. Jesus’ Truth is not intellectual assent to a series of doctrine; Jesus’ Truth is action. It is the lived experience of being a follower of Christ. We see this played out in the disciples. Thomas needed to see Jesus himself in order to believe after the resurrection, yet it was Thomas in John chapter eleven, who was willing to follow Jesus to Jerusalem, even though he knew it probably meant their death. Peter denied Jesus in the courtyard, and then is welcomed back by the resurrected Jesus who sets him to the task of feeding Jesus’ sheep. Over and over, the disciples misunderstand the work ahead, and yet Jesus continually draws them back into following him, and through following, into relationship with the Truth which Jesus is.

So this week I thought instead of talking about Truth, we would live into it. You might have noticed the sanctuary seems a bit cluttered today. Set up around us are a series of stations. Around the pulpit are some Bibles, you can reflect on this week’s texts or any scripture you’d like. Over here is a space to make cards for people on our prayer list. Following the current trend of coloring prayer, at this table you are invited to decorate your bulletin cover. Here is the board of reformation posts we made on Reformation Sunday. You can reflect on the things that were said or add some of your own. Here’s a series of chairs set around a labyrinth. You can kneel at the altar rail, you can touch the baptismal font, you can stay in your seat and pray. I invite you to interact with these stations in any way you like, and after about ten minutes we will come back together to sing the hymn of the day. Truth is known in following Jesus, may your actions guide your prayers this morning. Amen.

Red Starbucks Cups and Other Signs of the Coming Apocalypse: A Sermon on Mark 13:1-8

This morning’s text was always going to be a tough one to preach. So I was pretty pleased when, totally against my normal sermon writing pattern, the Holy Spirit delivered up a witty and light-hearted sermon in about ninety minutes on Monday afternoon. And then I watched the news on Friday night, and wars and rumors of wars were once again not theoretical concepts, and I knew something different had to be said. And let me first say before we begin that the attacks on Paris are no more representative of Islam than the Charleston shooting was representative of Christianity. The Parisan attackers and the Charleston shooter, and anyone else who claims to commit acts of violence in the name of religion are followers not of the God of Abraham, but the gods of violence, greed, and power. Fundamentalism is not faith, it is a corruption of faith, and those who practice it are the people Jesus tells his disciples to beware. Our Muslim sisters and brothers around the world have condemned the Paris attacks and as fellow children of the God of Abraham, we too must join our voices with in condemning fundamentalism in all its forms.

We’re going to talk about fundamentalism today. We’re going to talk about how we read texts like this in the midst of war and rumors of war. But first, I’m going to open with the same goofy and light-hearted introduction that I wrote on Monday. Because I think in the face of the week’s events, maybe the Holy Spirit gave me this opener so that we could start this sermon with a good chuckle.

So, perhaps you’ve heard about the latest threat to Christmas, Jesus, and the world as we know it. Actually, I’m going to hope you haven’t and that I am the only one lucky enough to have this most recent controversy blowing up my Facebook news feed, but anyway, here it is.

That’s right friends. In case you haven’t heard, this seemingly innocuous cup is in fact a vicious attack on all we hold sacred. Why is this cup a problem, you might wonder? Notice the lack of snowflakes. Last year’s cups had snowflakes on them, and the removal of the snowflakes is clearly an attempt by Starbucks to do away with Christmas.

Now I don’t get this argument at all. It is advent after all, and as a good Lutheran liturgist I think the cups should be blue for most of December, and should then switch to white and gold from Christmas Eve until after Baptism of our Lord Sunday. Red is the color of Pentecost, Starbucks, get it together! And as for the snowflake pattern, well, as a Californian the snowflake never made much sense. Who’s ever heard of snow on Christmas? That’s just weird.

So clearly I’m being overly judgmental and snarky about people’s response to this cup. And if I’m honest with myself, my snarky response is really an example of the exact same fear that is driving the cup people. Because of course this fight isn’t really about cups at all. Or Christmas. This fight is really about relevance, about continuity, about whether the things we base our trust in are secure enough to hold us in the midst of a world that feels increasingly out of control. And that, snowflake or no snowflake, I totally get. The world is big and scary and chaotic. This week especially, one only has to turn on one’s television to see a world that looks out of control. And in the midst of all this uncertainty, we search, we yearn, for something to hold onto, something to make sense of senselessness. In this search for meaning, it is so tempting to fix our trust or our blame on anything that feels solid, even if that thing is small. So snowflakes on Starbucks cups aren’t an important symbol for me. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have equally inconsequential things that I think need to stand in order for the world to make sense. We all do. And this isn’t a modern development; longing for consistency is part of the story of being human.

This search for stability is really the point of our Gospel reading for this morning. This morning the journey is over. Jesus and his disciples have arrived in Jerusalem, and things are increasingly spinning out of control. The religious authorities who have been pursuing Jesus looking for a chance to destroy him are getting closer and closer. The end is near. The disciples couldn’t see it yet, but they could feel it. They could feel that sense of anxiety and unease, that queasy feeling deep within you that tells you something is wrong. And though they did not know what chaos was in front of them, they were subconsciously searching for something stable, something lasting, something to assure them that nothing would change. They found that promise in the temple.

“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings,” they marveled, gazing up at the huge stone edifice that dominated the Jerusalem skyline. The temple, remember, was the center of the Jewish world. It was the location of the holiest of holies; it was the place where God dwelt. It was a massive and magnificent structure, the sheer scale of which dwarfed everything around it. Looking upon it, its weight, its girth, the disciples were able to push down the fear that was churning inside of them. Certainly a faith based on a building that solid could never be toppled.

Except, that it was. Not forty years after these words were spoken the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. If you go to Jerusalem today, you will see it now just as Jesus told the disciples. Not one stone is left upon another, all has been thrown down.

For the disciples, the destruction of the temple represented nothing less than the end of the world. So when Jesus told them it was going to be destroyed they begged Jesus to tell them when this would take place, and how they would know it was happening. Please Jesus, if the world and everything we know and hold on to is going to be gone, please at least let us know, what are the signs of the destruction, how will we know that the end has come near?

But Jesus doesn’t answer their question. He doesn’t tell them what to look for; he doesn’t tell them how to escape. Instead he tells them not to be afraid. Instead he assures them that what looks like the end is not the end, it is merely the beginning. “Many will come in my name,” Jesus said, do not follow them. When you hear wars and rumors of war, do not be alarmed. Nation will rise against nation, there will be earthquakes and famines, but even this is not the end, even this is just the beginning.

Wars and rumors of war, nations rising against nation, earthquakes and famines, this passage seems like it war written for the events of November 13, 2015. But the sad truth is this passage was not written for us. Or at least, it was not written only for us. Wars and rumors of war, nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines, these things are sadly not unique to our time. We said in Bible study, only half joking, that when we look around the world, we sometimes wonder if maybe free will wasn’t God’s best idea. For all our vast intellect, we humans are a very violent species.

Mark’s Gospel was written around the late 60s/early 70s CE, during the Roman/Jewish War. This was an incredibly brutal experience for those who lived through it. Blood ran in the streets, the temple, that seemingly indestructible building of large stones; was destroyed. These words from Jesus brought those first readers of Mark’s Gospel, people living through what seemed like the end of the world, incredible comfort. These words from Jesus revealed to them that their hope was not from a building, but from the living God. A God whose central truth is that resurrection always follows death, hope always rises over despair, and the worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen, because God has no end.

Scary, evil, terrifying things will happen, Jesus told the disciples, and none of those things have any bearing on the coming kingdom of God. God’s presence is grander than the grandest of temples, stronger than the strongest army, more stable than the earth itself. Scary, uncertain, even evil times are not end times, because God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. God is the stability that holds us, the center in which we can place our trust.

These words from Jesus can bring us comfort too. When we are faced with earthquakes and terror, when we feel like the world is shaking, these words from Jesus can remind us that no matter what happens, the end is still to come. So we can stand strong against violence, we can stand firm against those false prophets who tell us that this is the end and tempt us to evil. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” And because Jesus told us it is not the end, we can stand up against evil. We can join with our Muslim sisters and brothers in denouncing fundamentalism in all its forms. We can work for peace, we can work for justice, we can believe that a different world is possible, because the temple was destroyed in wars and rumors of war, just like Jesus said it would, and it was only the beginning.

God’s presence is stable when all the world is shaking. God’s promise is true when nothing else will hold. God is the one who casts down walls of oppression and persecution and lifts up those who tremble and fear. Whether you are longing for the powers that hold you captive to be toppled, or desperate for something to catch your own fall, God is there. No matter what happens, no matter what you face, you can hold fast to this promise: God is eternal, God will not falter, and this is only the beginning. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Conversation Points for Mark 13:1-8

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Most scholars believe Mark’s Gospel was written around the end of the 60s/beginning of the 70s C.E. The temple was destroyed during the Roman/Jewish War in 66-70 C.E. For the first readers of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ words about the destruction of the temple have just come true. These words are not predicting the future, they are telling the truth of what has happened.
• In the Bible prophets are not fortune-tellers, they are truth-tellers. They diagnose current conditions not to cast judgment but to prompt reform.
• In verse three, the disciples ask Jesus to tell them when the temple will be destroyed, but Jesus doesn’t tell them when, he tells them how to live and to not be afraid.
• This section of Mark’s Gospel is known as the “little apocalypse.” Hollywood tends to portray apocalypse as disaster, but the word literally translates to “uncovering.” It means to reveal or expose truth that is hidden.

Conversation Points for Mark 12:38-44

I'm trying an experiment this week in virtual Bible study. Every Wednesday at Trinity we have a conversation about the texts for the upcoming Sunday. In an effort to connect with folk who cannot make the Wednesday conversations, I'm posting the notes here to see if this could be a forum for virtual conversation. If you like it, let me know or join in the conversation by posting in the comments. If you have a suggestion for a better format, I'd love to hear that too.

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Our bibles tend to break this section up into two sections, but Jesus following the warning to beware the scribes who “devour widows houses” with a story about a widow indicates they are meant to be read as one. Some commentaries wonder if this is less about praising the widow then it is about critiquing a system that asks the last penny of a widow to support the wealthy elite.
• Verse 44 is better translated as “her whole living.” Some scholars suggest the widow’s selfless giving is a foreshadowing of Jesus death, where he will give his life.
• The Old Testament reading for this week is 1 Kings 17:8-16. How are the experiences of the two widows similar? How are they different?
• The word sacrifice comes from the Latin for “to make sacred.” Does thinking about the word in that definition change how you think about sacrifice?

For All the Saints: An All Saints Day Sermon on Mark 12:28-34

This morning we celebrate the festival of All Saints Day, the day in the church year we set aside to remember all those who have died in the faith, especially those who have died in the last year. This year we remember Jean, Alvina, Ed, and Dorcas, all of whom are fitting examples of what a life of faith looks like in practice. Though certainly they lived their faith in different ways, and some of those ways were gentler than others, all of them were people who showed their faith through action. Jean was a passionate and strong-willed voice for community activism through her work with Creating Change, Alvina loved to feed people through her family garden, Ed was a handyman, always fixing what needed fixing, and Dorcas demonstrated hospitality through a table that was open to anyone in need of a hot meal. Were they perfect? No, but they were saints. People who lived lives of faithful witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is a saint, anyway? As Protestants, we have a complicated relationship with the word “saints.” It seems very Catholic, and tends to conjure up images of strange, holier than thou, long-dead figures who perform miracles and reveal themselves through fuzzy images on burnt toast. Or maybe we think of more modern saints, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., maybe even Mahatma Gandhi, people who lived holy, sacred, set-apart lives, people who accomplished tasks we could never see ourselves possibly living up to. There is a temptation to place our saints on pedestals, as figures to revere rather than models to follow. It is easy to do this with saints, especially after they are gone, to remember only the good things and forget the times they drove us crazy. Mother Theresa was strong-willed and difficult, Martin Luther King, Jr. made some questionable decisions, and certainly we can all think of a time when we did not see eye to eye with someone represented by one of these candles. And it’s important we remember those truths of our saints as well. Because placing our saints on pedestals really does them and us a disservice. To see them as greater than they are, as holier than us, is to diminish their humanity and release us from the expectation that we ourselves could be capable of doing great deeds. If they are saints and we are not, then they can go on doing great work for the world and we can go on being grateful for their sainthood and content with our lack thereof.

But if we see our saints for what they are, people just like us, sinners in need of redeeming, just like us, brothers and sisters in Christ who strove and failed, fought and struggled, tried their best, came up short, asked for forgiveness and tried again, just like us, then they become for us real models to follow, and we are set free to live into the glorious sainthood that God sees in us, the beautiful company of the kingdom of God.

Our problem with saints, this temptation to ascribe to them unreachable goodness, comes from our very human fascination with trying to earn our own salvation. And this isn’t a new human trait, something we modern-era folk came up with, this is like the central experience of humanity. Think about the Bible, one way to read it, and many people read it this way, is as a law book, if you follow every single thing written in here perfectly and exactly, then you will be a saint and God will love you. The problem with this? Since the Bible is in fact, not a law book, this is impossible. Some of the things blatantly contradict each other; others are too vague to be clear. Even the most simple like, “do not murder,” can have complicated implications. Premeditated murder is obviously wrong, but what about in cases of self-defense? What if you don’t kill someone yourself, but you neglect to intervene on someone’s behalf? Or if killing not their body, but their hopes and dreams? Is our greed which leaves so much of the world in abject poverty a form of murder? Where do we draw the line?

But this has not stopped us from trying. In fact, trying to figure out exactly how to follow every single law in the Bible perfectly was basically the full-time occupation of the scribes and the Pharisees that Jesus is so regularly struggling with in the Gospels. Questions of how to apply the law is what the scribes were disputing in our Gospel text for this morning. In the passage before this, they were discussing with Jesus tax codes and marriage laws, creating stranger and stranger situations to trick Jesus into saying something that they could hold against him.

Until one of the scribes, in a very un-scribelike move in the Gospels, instead of asking Jesus to define the situation, asked him to frame it. Which commandment is the first, Jesus? If nothing else, which commandment should I follow above all others. When the commandments disagree with one another, and I cannot figure out which way I should go, what do I follow first and foremost, above all others. Make it simpler for me, Jesus.

And Jesus said this: “the first is, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And… you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Love God; love your neighbor. Neither of those, if you flip back to the lists of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testaments, is listed as one of the ten. They are instead summaries of the commandments; they are the heart of what God wanted for us when he ascribed these lists to Moses so many years ago. Love God, love neighbor, and if you do those things, everything else will fall into place. If you do those things, everything else becomes guidance.

Love God; love your neighbor. It is that simple. It is that impossibly hard. It is simple enough that we can give up all our attempts to create rules and find paths and make checklists and spreadsheets and guidelines and just live into the beautiful reality of love. It is hard enough that we can never live up to it; we will always fall short. We will always struggle with setting God above the other gods in our life, gods of comfort, of pride, of technology or success or self-righteousness. We will always struggle to love our neighbor, in no small part because we will always struggle to love ourselves, and when we forget that we ourselves are saints, then it is impossible to see the sainthood in those around us.

But that struggle, brothers and sisters, is the beautiful freedom of sainthood. By God’s grace we are made saints, and not by our actions. We are free to live, to love, to fall short, and to try again. Sainthood is a journey, not a destination. It is living every day, even when we can’t see it, even when we don’t believe it, as beloved children of God because God has said that it is so.

So this morning we give thanks for Jean, Alvina, Ed, and Dorcas, great saints of the church, who stayed the course and finished the race and now rest securely in the arms of God. We give thanks for Chase and Leah, the two newest saints to join our community this year through the sacrament of baptism. We pray on this all saints day that they might find among us and these our departed saints, models of life to strive for. And we give thanks for us all, great saints of God, that we, in our struggles and failures, our cracks and our doubts, that we too are saints, set free by the promise of God’s great love for us to live lives of hope and power and grace and freedom. Do not sell yourselves short, dear brothers and sisters, you, we, are all great saints of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.