Tag Archives: Christian Unity

What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown

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As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

“What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown”

St. James Armenian Orthodox Church, Mt Auburn St. Watertown MA

Sunday April 21, 2013 Memorial of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs

”Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” ~John 5:28-29

It was years after his body was in the grave before she wrote the words down. Marie Howe’s brother died in 1989, but it took years to write the words. It wasn’t far from here, just over the town line into Cambridge that Marie Howe had to wake up, brush her hair, and walk out the door of the apartment into that bright, clear New England sun after her brother died of AIDS. When she finally wrote down her experience, she wrote a poem in the form of a letter to her brother:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.

It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.

Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

Her poem goes on…this is what the living do.

Many among us have been entombed this week: shut in our houses in Watertown and beyond, encased in grief and fear. Many are bound in their sleeplessness. Many were held fast by their work at a critical time- those who patrolled our streets, tended the wounded, guarded our safety, cared for our children, stayed up for 26 hours straight to report the news. We have been bound up, locked down, sheltered-in-place, held by this strange, harrowing series of events. We have been wrapped tight in our burial shrouds.

In the days after the Easter Resurrection of Christ, the disciples finally left that stuffy apartment in Jerusalem where they’ve been bound by fear and dread, where they had run out of milk and toilet paper. They venture outside, into a world utterly changed. The sun seems brighter, but harsher. The roads seem busier, but scarier. And they did what the living do. They walk along the road to Emmaus. They go fishing. They sit down for breakfast and try to comprehend their new reality.

This is what we Christians do. We are a people of the Resurrection. We are a people of Christ’s resurrection, and we cling to the promise that we will be resurrected too. We know that no grave can hold our bodies down. We’ve been here before. We know that story of a week that begins with a parade and ends with death. We know that buried Hallelujahs will eventually rise. We know that the curtain will open again to reveal to us the altar and the bread of heaven. We are the people who say death does not have the final say. You heard it in the gospel lesson this morning from St. John. Jesus says to them, “Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” We, who have been waiting in our houses watching the clocks tick away, are waiting to hear His voice. We are straining our ears that are burned with the sounds of sirens to hear the voice of God declare for us release.

We are the disciples who leave our apartments in Jerusalem after the shelter-in-place order is lifted. This is the practice of our resurrection. And even if you don’t feel it now, even if you don’t believe it now, this is what the living do. In the hours we were bound to stay inside, huddled around the television or the computer screen, strict New England gave way to early spring. While we were in doors, the early leaves came out on the trees. We step outside with the sky “a deep, headstrong blue,” to go to church, to drive to the grocery store, to go to school or work. This is what the living do.

And this is what your church did. In the midst of chaos of Friday, Fr. Arakel came to the church. He unlocked the thick wooden doors. He escorted the police in to inspect the church, to ensure that this sanctuary was still a place of peace. Your church. Your strong Armenian coffee powered the police who rested in your parish hall chairs. Your electrical outlets powered the phones of the first responders who texted back home to worried families. This place was a sanctuary not just to you who worship here today but to those who patrolled our streets just 48 hours ago. This is the practice of resurrection.

This is what the living do- the mundane, the ordinary acts of living that defy that which would entomb us. This is what the Armenian Genocide survivors did. They crawled from their tombs and rebuilt lives, alive but utterly changed. Their faith was an act of defiance. The raising of children, the singing of the liturgy, the baking of choreg, this is what the living do. This is what the living do to stay living after facing so much death. This is why we remember their names and their faith so that we might be alive too.

So this is what we do. We come to church. We walk outside. We practice normalcy knowing that it is not. You may not feel ready to venture far from home. Everything is not as it was. This week has utterly changed us. We are not going back to lives that are the same. Or normalcy has been interrupted. On Friday, synagogues stayed closed despite Shabbat prayers. On Friday, mosques stayed closed despite Friday prayers. Local Muslims here in Massachusetts have already been harassed, threatened and even beaten. Everything is not as it should be. Trinity Episcopal Church in Copley Plaza is still part of the crime scene. They will worship at Temple Israel this morning, a Jewish synagogue that graciously opened their doors to a displaced people. Old South Church, United Church of Christ is still part of the crime scene. They will worship this morning at Church of the Covenant. The pastor, Rev. Nancy Taylor told the Boston Globe, “The last time Old South Church in Boston was closed for this long was in 1775, during the British siege of Boston.” This is not our life as usual. Our colleagues from the American Red Cross of Massachusetts gave me cards to share with you, with suggestions for how to cope after a time of disaster. They are in the back of the church. Take one as you leave. We have all experienced trauma this week. To be “Watertown Strong” or “Boston Strong” is to recognize when you need someone else to walk with you. To be among the living is to know that we need help to stay alive. Recognize that we do not run this race alone.

This week all began at the marathon, which now seems so long ago. This week, one of the hymns from the African American tradition has been playing in my mind. The songs of our faith has a way of tracing pathways in our minds, to follow well worn paths in times of uncertainty. For the enslaved, spirituals were a way to pass on the faith and defy the death around them.  And so you sang, even as you were running from those who would hold you captive.

I’m not the strongest singer in the world, that’s not why we sing. If you know it, join me. If you don’t know it, you are welcome to join me too. I’ll sing it twice. I know singing and clapping are not standard in an Armenian Orthodox Church, but consider it a gift from the wider body of Christ.

“Guide my feet, while I run this race. Guide my feet, Lord, while I run this race. Guide my feet, while I run this race, for I don’t to run this race in vain.”

In this time of uncertainty and fear, we cling to the sure promises of our God that we do not go on in vain. We tune our ear” for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.” Even as we grieve, we will remain steadfast in charity, defiant in hope, practiced in forgiveness, and constant in prayer. This is what the living do. May it be so for you in the days ahead. Amen.

What if God is a sucker?

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St. Jonh’s Episcopal Church, Beverly Farms

Lent 4, Sunday March 10, 2013

Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3So he told them this parable

11Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ 20So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 25“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

It was a war waged by Post-it notes. Three inch squares of pastel paper, with names scratched by blue ball point pens, each script a slight variation on Mrs. Hoffman’s third grade penmanship class. The pink Post-its were from Liz, the Yellow from James, the Green from Robert. There were Post-it notes on the backs of dining room chairs, on the box of silverware and the good china, on a painting of horses that no one much liked anyway. A house covered in grief and Post-it notes. Equally divided. But the problem with the cheap Post-its is that they don’t stick very well after that ½ inch of adhesive dries up. After a while, as the air grew stale and the casseroles stopped arriving, the names began to drop off and flutter to the ground. It’s nothing really, but when the pain is thick and tension high it’s much easier to accuse your sister of removing your name from the chandelier. A war of inheritance waged by Post-It Notes. “Give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” Let us pray…

 

This story is so familiar that it risks losing meaning, like a dish sponge wrung too many times; the grit to effect any change in us is almost gone. We know this text from Luke as “the Prodigal Son.” By naming the story that way, we make the younger son the central character. When this scripture lesson comes up for the Eastern Orthodox Church, people sign this hymn:

I have recklessly forgotten Your glory, O Father;
 And among sinners I have scattered the riches which You gave to me.
 And now I cry to You as the Prodigal: 
I have sinned before You, O merciful Father;
 Receive me as a penitent and make me as one of Your hired servants.

When the Orthodox Church hears this story, the people sing in the voice of the Prodigal. We are the ones that squander the treasure. We are the Prodigal Sons and Daughters. When Rembrandt paints “The Prodigal Son in the Tavern/Brothel” in 1637, it’s Rembrandt himself as the wayward son and his wife Saskia as the mistress. It’s an audacious claim that we are the prodigals.  Do we really sin that boldly? Prone to wander, yes, but to travel all the way to that distant country? And are we good people ever that tactless? The young son is so bold as to go to his father to ask for his inheritance, before the father has died. Not just a post-it note on an armchair, but a for-sale sign on the front lawn. It’s public. As a parcel of land is sold off, the whole town can see. And what of the mother? In this patriarchal society, this unseen mother would depend on her sons to care for her after her husband dies. The young son is embarrassing his father, making vulnerable his mother, and sticking his older brother with all the responsibility.

It’s March in Massachusetts, so I’m contractually obliged to make some reference to the Irish. Even the Irish folk song, “The Wild Rover” picks up this story with lyrics in the voice of the younger son:

I’ll have none of your whiskeys nor fine Spanish wines,
For your words show you clearly as no friend of mine.
 There’s others most willing to open a door,
To a man coming home from a far distant shore.

I’ll go home to me parents, confess what I’ve done,
 and I’ll ask them to pardon their prodigal son.
 And if they forgive me as oft times before,
 I never will play the wild rover no more.

In Luke, verse 17 begins “ But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18I will get up and go to my father. “ We don’t know why he turns and heads home. Does he realize that he is wrong? Is he remorseful? Or there in the slop among the pigs and the corn cobs and the whiskeys and fine Spanish wines, has he hit his bottom. Is it utter desperation? Or does he realize he’d be better off at home. Is he scheming or has he hit bottom? In the end it doesn’t matter why he goes, which utterly violates the sense of order of those of us responsible ones.

It used to be that this story of the Prodigal Son came up in Ordinary Time.  But in 1992, the Revised Common Lectionary, which serves as a collaboration among divided Christian denominations to read the same Scripture texts together, placed this lesson in Lent. Our Sundays in Lent are little rests from the rigors of our Lenten fast. Placing the story here in Lent 4, shift the focus away from the penance of the younger son and towards the joyous celebration of the Father.

I don’t know about you good people, but I more often feel like the older brother. I stand with my arms crossed, brown furrowed as the older son, constantly silently judging and increasingly judging out loud. I believe in duty and responsibility as point of personal pride to be worn like Girl Scout merit badges.  I understand the older brother’s distress, the way this younger child violates my sense of order. I know of a young woman who sat with her arms crossed in a tiny kitchen. Every time, every time her heroin-addicted brother would return home, her mother would make him macaroni and cheese from a box. He would have stolen from the mother’s purse that very day, already pawned their dead father’s watch, and still: macaroni and cheese.  The cheese would barely be dried on the edge of pot before he would leave again. And still, she kept making it, perhaps with the vain hope that he would stay long enough for breakfast, stay safe and secure long enough to avoid the dread and dark of the night. Stay long enough to see the dawn. I know that cross-armed glare of a weary sister who wouldn’t mind someone cooking macaroni and cheese for her one of these days.

The older brother is right. He’s right! This extravagant feast for the wayward son messes with our sense of how we think justice works in the world. We believe that if you work faithfully and diligently, you get rewarded. You should get rewarded in proportion to your good works. You serve on the various committees, you garner praise.  Attend town meeting, get lauded as a model citizen. Recycle. Shoot, you even separate out your recycling! Donate every week and even something extra to the capitol campaign.  Shovel your sidewalk. Do what you are supposed to do. There is a simple formula. Work hard and responsibly, get what you deserve. We want someone to notice! That older brother is tired of being obedient; weary of being dutiful. Perhaps we are the dutiful ones.  Yet, the Prodigal Son and the extravagant father up-end our smug math.

This story fails our sense of order.  We expect acts of repentances first and then forgiveness.  The younger brother does none of that. We don’t even know if he’s sorry or just choosing the last road back from a desperate situation. The reformer Martin Luther believed that forgiveness comes before repentance, not after it. Luther insisted that pastors are required to give absolution without requiring acts of penance. We want the equation to work left to right, and it works right to left. We want an order for our operations. But in the economy of God’s grace, we dutiful humans cannot proscribe how and to whom God offers forgiveness. Underneath it all, we want to be rewarded for our good behavior and we want others to repent for their sins before they get to come to the party.

This whole family is a mess. One commentator renamed this “The parable of the dysfunctional family.” This father is a mess. To the younger son’s offensive request, he says “sure.” I once sat on an airplane with a mother and a young son. The young boy asked to have his kazoo back, the mother said sure.  The prodigal father hardly seems like a healthy model for parenting. If we said yes to every one of our children’s wishes, we’d be having cupcakes for breakfast everyday. The Prodigal Father lets is foolish kid run roughshod all over him, treat him like he was dead. He then rewards bad behavior with a party. He runs through the fields (not something a dignified landowning man would do at that time) to greet his son who may or may not be remorseful, but certainly is hungry. Undignified. At best this father is gracious, at worst, he’s a sucker.

If Jesus is telling this parable to show us something of the love of God, even for the least worthy, then the logical conclusion is this: What if God is a sucker? There is no good reason for the father to do what he does. He reward bad behavior. God so foolishly in love with us, so excited to welcome us home that God would do illogical things to welcome us to the feast.

This father invested in a son who put Post-It notes on his inheritance before his father had even died. This kid’s a bad bet. Either God is the world’s worst investor, or it’s an entirely different calculus. Not about winners and losers. Not about making a good bet. What was spent is utterly unimportant. Our sense of scarcity and duty reigns supreme. But God’s math is different. The audience for the parable are the religious skeptics anxious about the economy of grace: if grace abounds for sinners, then why would people behave well? Jesus isn’t interested in this, he’s telling the story of God’s crazy, stupid love.

That’s the invitation. We can walk through the door and join the feast. A ridiculous, illogical feast of fatted calf and macaroni & cheese, of cupcakes for breakfast. Maybe even the bread of heaven. The father said “All that I have is yours.” We can stand outside the party with our arms crossed, or we can walk in. That’s the invitation. May it be so for you this day. Amen.

Desire to Gather

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Desire to Gather: A Sermon on Luke 13

First Parish Church, Weston Sunday Feb 24, 2013

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ 32He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me,* “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 34Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when* you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’ ~ Luke 13:31-35

The name is misleading: Sempervivum. Sempervivum, “always living.” Except they die. These plants that we often know by the name “Hens & Chicks” really only live for three seasons. Eternal life that’s not quite. The main succulent plant, the “hen” sends off ‘chicks’ loosely attached to the mother plant. Do you have these in your yard? But after three seasons, the ‘hen’ plant sends up a center stalk that blooms, and the plant dies. It can’t be stopped. Blooms and dies. And the baby chick plant lives on: Sempervivum. “How I have desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood.” Let us pray….

Jerusalem is not very far from here. Each week we creep closer. The arch of Lent, from quiet darkness of Ash Wednesday to the glaring parade of Palm Sunday moves us closer. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city feels like almost every time it is in the news there is conflict and strife. But it’s magnetic. It’s contested. It’s a draw to pilgrims and prophets.  It’s the center of the universe for the writer of Luke and Acts. Luke’s Gospel begins in Jerusalem, with Zechariah at the temple praying for descendants.  The boy child Jesus returns to Jerusalem to preach in the temple.  Later in Acts, Stephen and James will be martyred in Jerusalem. “All told, Luke mentions Jerusalem 90 times in his Gospel, while all the other New Testament writers combined mention it only 49 times. “ Jerusalem, the start of Jesus’ prophetic ministry; Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets who have come before, and this one too… Back through the history of the Jewish people we learn in Deuteronomy 12:5, Jerusalem, after all, is “the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes as his habitation to put his name there” Jerusalem is thick with meaning, but fickle and unfaithful.  Attractive, magnetic, infuriating Jerusalem.

And there, in Jerusalem, before his time has come, Jesus is warned off by some of the Pharisees: Herod Antipas is gunning for you. But Jesus will have none of it. He knows his death is coming. He does not treat it as a separate event, but part and parcel of his ministry: today, tomorrow and the next day. He’s still got work to do, healing to accomplish.  He tells Herod the fox to buzz off.  Suddenly, Jesus’ defiant tone turns to mourning. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often have I desired to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you are not willing.”

Maybe it’s anger. More likely it’s lament as Jesus sighs, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.” How I have desired to gather you, says our God.

From May to September 2012, two Boston Globe reporters Meghan E. Irons and Akilah Johnson lived on Mount Ida Street in the Bowdoin-Geneva section of Dorchester. With other reporters, photographers, videographers and data visualization specialists, they attempted to understand this 68 block neighborhood with a murder rate four times the city average. Nate and Trina Davis have already had their youngest, their 14 year old son Nicholas shot dead a block from their house, when their eldest son was arrested for gun possession. Big Nate is tall, large. He’s lived in Bowdoin-Geneva for 40 years. Little Nate is reduced to a voice on the end of the phone line calling from jail. Little Nate was bound for college.  Unseen by their child, Big Nate and Trina stand in their dining room talking to a cordless phone, Trina still in her pink hospital scrubs. They stand with their arms open. How I desire to gather you.

Sometimes the streets of Jerusalem run through Bowdoin-Geneva. Sometimes they run through Weston as we long to gather. The invitation of Lent is to return to God’s open arms, to allow the Holy Comforter to gather up the broken bits of our lives. Jesus grieves not his impending death but the broken relationship with Jerusalem. The Jesus who wearily opens his arms to Jerusalem is the same Jesus who knows our grief as we try to gather up the scattered parts of our lives- a child led astray, a loved one who drinks, an unfaithful spouse, a broken relationship, bodies that will not do as we command. Jesus knows our love for the ones we can’t protect. How I have desired to gather you, says our God.

This is the story of our lives as people guided by Scripture. The story of Scripture is the story of God’s opening arms to a scattered people who are unwilling to be gathered. It’s not just others, we too resist being gathered in. We have many good excuses for staying separated from our God and one another: Our American exceptionalism. Our Yankee independence. Our town lines. Our sports rivalries. Our class divide. Our perceived self-sufficiency. Our denominational particularity. Our very full schedules. How often God desires to gather us and we scatter like chickens. Jesus prays that his followers may all be one, and we’ve created thousands of denominations. We can tell the story of the Church as a story of scattering chickens. But Scripture gives us our story of God’s steady desire and our tendency, generation after generation, to scatter. Lent is the season to examine the scattered bits of our life and place them before God.

Amid his grief over temperamental Jerusalem, Jesus chooses as delicious image to express his love: a chicken, or more accurately a hen. I fear I can’t say anything especially wise about chickens. I live in the city. The closest experience I have to chickens is when one of the neighbors seemed to have some illegal roosters for cock-fighting that started crowing before the hum of the MBTA busses and my alarm. We need our farmers to lead us here. But, we do not need to know much of anything about chickens to notice Jesus’ odd choice for this analogy.  To Herod’s coercive power like a fox, Jesus counters with the gender-bending, open winged image of a hen.

There was in fact a woman named ‘Mother Hen;” not of a fairy tale but on the path to sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church.  Venerable Mother Henriette DeLille was born in 1813 in New Orleans to a French father Jean-Baptiste Lille Sarpy and her mother, Marie-Josèphe “Pouponne” Díaz, who would have been called at the time “a free quadroon” or a ‘Creole of color.’ Mother Henriette was the child of their common-law marriage or ‘left-handed marriage,’ typical between wealthy white men and Creole women. Henriette grew up well educated, speaking French, attending quadroon balls, being groomed for the same arrangement. Yet, her faith was stronger than the social & familial expectations. When there was no religious life possible for women from her background, she founded the Roman Catholic order of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, inviting in free women of color. When the Church would not gather these women, Mother Henriette took on the open armed posture of Christ, the mother hen.

Today, on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem, there is a small church named “Dominus Flevit,” or translated from the Latin, “the Lord wept.” The 1950’s architect of the church shaped it like a teardrop. But beneath the contemporary church, the patch of earth where Jesus wept was also a Canaanite burial site and Byzantine monastery, and later on a 16th c mosque. Behind the contemporary altar, a window shows not some stained glass image of the New Jerusalem to come, but clear glass allows the worshippers to look upon that very same Jerusalem for whom Jesus wept.

In front of the altar stands a mosaic of a hen with wings outstretched. The words from Luke ring the top of the Mosaic, “How I desired to gather you….” And even tucked under the feet of the hen and her chicks remain the words “et noluistis” (“and you would not”) in the pool of red under the chicks. Even still, the wings of the outstretched hen embrace the promise to gather even those who would scatter. That is the promise of Lent. May it you receive the invitation this day from Our God to gather again. Amen.