The Truth Will Make You Friends

A Sermon on John 8:31.

Here’s a test:  finish this sentence:

The Truth will….

Set you free, right?

See, that’s a sign that you’re good Christians and you know your Scripture and just maybe that you were paying attention just now.

But is that really how you would finish the sentence… if you were being truthful?

Here’s how I would finish it:

The Truth will…probably get me in trouble.

The Truth will…usually hurt someone’s feelings.

The Truth will… definitely complicate things.

The truth will…likely cost me money or time or inconvenience.

The truth will…hurt me.

You see, we don’t really like the truth in our culture.  We prefer the brief, innocuous, harmless white-lie.  You can tell because there are four billion words in the English language for lie and we always have more words for something we value than something we do not. Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow.  We have dozens of words for “lie.”

 Obfuscation

Prevarication

Fiction

Falsehood

Untruth

Invention

Story

Fib

But there is only one word for truth. Truth.

We tell so many of these little fibs every day.

“Did you like the play?...I loved it, you’re a great playwrite.”

“Do you want to see this movie?... Sorry, I have plans.”

“Do the kids like their Christmas fruit cake?... You betcha.”

“Whadda ya think of  the new Rector?...” Well, we’ll take that one on faith.

How about this one, “Buddy, can you spare a dime?”

You know, I have a friend who is an incredibly brave man and I did not know that about him until a couple of weeks ago. 

He set for himself a Lenten discipline that is telling the truth.  For the duration of Lent, he is trying not to deceive the people around him.  Like this:

“Good morning, How are you? “

“I’m having a tense week.”

“Hey, how’s the family?”

“Not so hot.”

The truth.  Just like that, not sugar coated with “But I know we’ll be fine” or “I just need some rest” because then its not the truth.  You don’t know it will be fine. You hope it will, you have faith that it will.  But to say it will, that is not the truth.

It’s pretty frightening, right? 

There are two ways for a person to respond to this honesty, too.  One is to back away, palms out mumbling something about “Too Much Information.”  But you know what?  The person who asks “How are you” and cant stand to hear the answer, they are the one that’s lying.

The other response might be to stop, look right into the face of the honest person and say, “I’m sorry.”  Or  “I wish I could help you.” 

Now, I don’t know exactly how this is all playing out for my courageous friend, but I like to think I can imagine it. You come to work one morning determined to be genuine with the people around you.  Committed to being truthful.

“Hi, Boss, how are you?”

“Not so hot.”

“I’m sorry.  Is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you. I’m under a lot of stress and I haven’t slept well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

Then maybe, in my little fantasy workplace, 3PM rolls around, the deadly hour when that Sleepy Scion of Satan sneaks into your office and makes your eyelids heavy and your head nod. But today at three, the colleague brings you a cup of coffee and a piece of fruit.  Or today, the colleague sticks her head in and says, “I’ll close your door and take your calls for half an hour.” 

Then the next day, she comes in and you say, “How are you?” and she says, “I’m worried about my son is Afghanistan.”  Did you know her son was there?  Did you know how preoccupied she is with it?  And later, when she hands you a document with a formatting issue in it, you’ll be a little less critical, a little more graceful when you point it out.  Because why? Because you feel closer to her.

You shared the truth, you responded to one another kindly.

You’re building a relationship.

Now, its not an easy thing to be honest in this way. Remember I said this friend of mine was one of the bravest men I know. You have to make yourself vulnerable. You have to trust your truth in the hands of the people around you and in turn be trustworthy with their truths.

But if you can do it, you can create deeper, more emotionally real, more supportive, healthier and stronger relationships with the people around you.  In every context of your life.  The truth will make you friends.

There is another way to to approach the truth, of course.  A way that does not create relationships but destroys them.  A way that that exploits vulnerability. A way that neither departs from nor arrives at love.

Jesus talks about that here when he talks about enslavement to sin.  He’s not talking about lying.  The truth that sets you free is not the opposite of lying.  The truth that sets you free is the opposite of the truth that enslaves you. It is a truth based not on love but on fear, not on trust but on suspicion. The truth that sets you free creates a safe space for vulnerability, for giving, for forgiveness.  The truth that exploits vulnerability, shouts down empathy and ends in barriers and destruction.

My father was a Counter Intelligence Agent with the Central Intelligence Agency.  He used to say, “The best soldier is the one who is most intimate with his enemy, the best liar is the one who knows the truth.”

Once, I went on a tour of the headquarters in Virginia and you know what I saw? “The Truth Will Set You Free” is engraved in marble over the door of CIA Headquarters. Its ironic, right?  Here is an organization created for the specific purpose of obscuring certain critical truths.  Here is an institution that intentionally, consistently and effectively “spins” facts, manipulates truth. How much mischief has come out of that building with that maxim engraved over the door? And its stated mission is “to protect” our freedom.

But you see, that’s what is different about it.  The CIA is charged with protecting your freedoms, not with granting them.  They don’t guarantee you safety from foreign adversaries, they only police it.  They don’t promise you international security, they only enforce it. This is because they are charged not with revealing the truth, but with concealing it, not with transparency but with secrecy.  That’s not freedom, that’s drawing a line around something, fencing it in.  And what government body more aptly describes the truth that enslaves us than the CIA. A necessary evil.  A white lie to protect.  A policy of privacy that builds walls between people.

Now, I’m not saying the CIA isn’t necessary.  I am grateful for the good work those men and women do every day.  But I don’t think that particular institution embodies the message Christ was trying to get across in this text.

Because here is what Christ says:  The truth that sets you free puts you in community with your fellow man and woman.  The truth that builds a wall between us enslaves us to sin.

So, what about that sentence. The truth will…

The truth will…test our courage,

The truth will… challenge society’s norms

The truth will…. test the mettle of the people in our lives.

The truth will set you free… to love and be loved unburdened by fear and falsehood.

Christ offered us that kind of love, unburdened by fear or falsehood.  And he offered us a roadmap to its source:

“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples and you know the truth and the truth will make you free… So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

The Kingdom of God has Come Near You

The Kingdom of God has Come Near You

Psalm 102:15-22

Isaiah 52:7-10

Philippians 2:1-5

Luke 10:1-9

In our text today (Philippians 2:1-5) Paul tells us to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”… “having the same love, being in full accord … do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves… look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

Luke (10:8-9) tells us:

“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, … cure the sick who are there and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near you.”

What do you suppose the kingdom of God is?

We hear elsewhere in Scripture that it is “like”

A mustard seed

A treasure

A pearl

A farmer

And so on…

But what is it really?

Do you remember the What Would Jesus Do craze?  People wore wrist-bands and tee shirts that said WWWJD – and encouraged us all to think about what Jesus would do.  It was a good idea that ended up being kind of patronizing and a little silly.

There is a cartoon going around the internet lately that parodies the What Would Jesus Do campaign.  The cartoon depicts Jesus on a hillside and lists things Jesus would NOT do.  The list includes:

            Harass a single mother

            Shoot a doctor – shoot anyone- own a weapon

Hate his enemies

Attack the poor

And my personal favorite…Run for President

It’s not too hard to define the kingdom of God in the negative.  We know what it isn’t.

But how can we know what it is?

At our Women’s Retreat this past weekend, a member joking declared that the manna- that mysterious and miraculous sustenance which was offered to the Israelites as they crossed the desert in Exodus- that the manna was actually Diet Coke.  We discussed this idea at some length and decided that manna would taste different to each individual, for some it would be crème Brule and for others guacamole and chips. This being a women’s retreat the consensus was that manna would likely taste like chocolate.

Accepting this unorthodox but not entirely theologically unsound premise, the kingdom of God might look like different things to different people.

It might look like clothing to an impoverished mother

It might look like food to a starving Somali

It might look like enfranchisement to a Chinese dissident

It might look like reunion to the spouse of a deployed soldier

It might look like health to a person in pain

It would without a doubt look like arms outstretched and hands open

Today we celebrate the life and work of Thomas Bray, an 18^th Century priest and missionary to the American Colonies. Here are some of the things he did:

He radically reorganized and renewed the Church in Maryland.

He arranged for the instruction of children there

He re-organized the process of discernment and training of priests and pastors

He opened 31 libraries and a number of schools

He defended – from the pulpit both in England and the U.S. – the rights of enslaved Africans and displaced Native Americans

He persuaded Governor Oglethorpe to found the colony of Georgia as a as an alternative to debtors prison

He founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, both of which survive two hundred and fifty years later.

(He was in America exactly 10 weeks)

Here are things he didn’t do:

He didn’t force the Gospel on anyone – he offered them a chance to hear and learn it themselves.

He increased the presence of the Church – not by building buildings, but by propagating servants

He didn’t seek to punish those who had fallen on hard times, he sought to alleviate their suffering

He didn’t turn the other way when he saw the oppression of marginalized, enslaved, exiled people – he spoke from the pulpit at considerable personal risk – in their defense

Thomas Bray had a list of things he wanted to accomplish in this life.

We all have a list of things we want to accomplish in this life. 

What makes Thomas Bray exceptional is not what he accomplished, but how:

He did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility

He looked not to his own interests but to the interests of others

He clearly tried to let the same mind be in him that was in Christ Jesus.

Oh, on the list of things Thomas Bray DID do, I forgot to mention:

He brought the Kingdom of God closer to us.

Now, only Christ, when he returns, can bring the Kingdom of God finally and completely to us all. 

But in the mean time, while we are waiting, we are asked in our texts today to bring the Kingdom of God “closer.”  It almost doesn’t matter what you do. If you are in the same mind as Christ, if you let yourself be motivated by a desire to be of like mind to Christ… you are bringing the Kingdom closer to us.

How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

Who brings good news,

Who announces salvation

Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Amen.

There But For the Grace of God

There but for the Grace of God

(Jan 2, 2012)

John 9:1-7 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. ²His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ³Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴Wemust work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ ⁶When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes,⁷saying to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see. 

You know, there is just not that much difference between people in the first century and people in the 21^st century.

In the first century, people commonly believed that your sins would be visited on you and on your children and their children for generations. They believed that if something ill befell you, it was a sign of your sin. They even had certain sins assigned to certain illnesses, impure thoughts might manifest themselves as insanity,   gossip resulted in throat cancer,   anger might emerge as bile in the gut.     Envy is commonly associated with blindness.

And so in this text, our 1^st Century characters see a blind man and wonder what he did to deserve to be blind.

To our 21^st Century ears, that sounds inhumane, completely lacking in empathy, unthinkable.

Or does it? How often do we hear of the misfortune of others and immediately look for a way to distinguish ourselves from them. Our first instinct is to erect a wall between what happened to them and what is possible for us.     “I don’t live where there are tidal waves”      “We never go to Brown’s Chicken”      “We never leave candles burning.”

The implication is that there is something about me or my circumstances that will keep that misfortune from happening to me.The implication is that there is something about her or her circumstances, that resulted in his misfortune.

You see, people in the 1^st Century and in the 21^st Century are not that different at all.

But that misses the whole point of this Scripture and indeed of the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels as a whole. In our Gospel today, Jesus is not concerned with the reason that the blind man is blind. Jesus is concerned with the opportunity it offers him, the opportunity it offers all of us, to be the vehicle for transformation in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves.

The Scripture says:

“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;…. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 

·         Bad things do happen to good people.    Accidents, illness, misfortune, they are indiscriminate.        No one deserves to have their entire community swept away by a tornado.   Nobody deserves to be blind. But the answer is not to make a distinction; The answer is not to define an “us” and a “them.” The answer is never a wall between people.

(Here’s a tip: when you are wondering if your actions are following in the footsteps of Christ… if you’re building a wall between people, they’re not.)

The Good News in this Gospel is that Jesus takes people where he finds them. No looking back with regret, no “what if.” Jesus teaches us to start where we are and move forward. There is an opportunity for God’s grace here, the potential for the presence of the Lord.

“he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ⁴We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;…. ⁵As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ 

In this Scripture we are called to work the works of mercy and kindness…to be the light when there appears to be only darkness. We are called to be the instruments of consolation, the conduits of God’s healing love.

And how are we expected to achieve such an awesome task?Th ese are scenes of tragedy and trauma and suffering, how can we possibly be expected to make the love of God present in situations such as these? 

Well, Jesus spit on the ground.

He spit and made a mud ball and smeared it on the poor blind man’s face...

This is one of those cases where it helps to know the context. Galilee is a pretty arid place. The soil is fertile, but it takes some work to grow things. What Jesus does, then, is take dry, arid dirt and add water to make it fertile. And not just any water, water from his own mouth. His own essence is part of what makes the dirt into soil and releases its potential for growth. Jesus’ saliva represents something essential to him, something unique and priceless.

He took a little bit of himself, some of his DNA and added that to the soil to make the poultice. 

And that is what this text calls us to do. When we are confronted with tragedy, with suffering and with misfortune… we are called to be instruments of God’s grace. And not just with some soil and some water from our water bottle.

Now, you may be thinking, “Oh no. I have no more time in my day to cook for the soup kitchen. I work full time, I cannot train with the Red Cross.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to. There are times when all we can do and in fact the best thing we can do, is write a check.

In that case, by all means write that check. 

But when you do, add a little of your own essence to it. Enclose a note to the relief worker – there are places on the Episcopal Relief website to do that. Or just stop before you press send and say a little prayer over your gift.

Join your energy with God’s to transform the lives of the less fortunate.

That is all this Scripture is asking us to do…

to add a little of ourselves,

become invested,

draw on our own resources,

So that the healing and the mitigation and the resolution are part of us and we are part of them.

No longer is the suffering person “other” or distinct from us,

now we are blended,

blind man and healer,

sufferer and comforter,

friend and friend.

That is all we are asked to do. To give of ourselves, as we are able, and with the grace of guidance of God, to heal what is broken in Creation.

In the first Century and in the 21^st Century, When we witness human tragedy, we are tempted to have the same initial response of fear. We whisper, “There, but for the grace of God go, I”

But we are called by this Scripture to respond differently. We are called to say, not in a whisper but in a loud and very clear voice,

“Here, by the grace of God, are we…all in it together.”

Amen.

Doubting Thomas: The Essential Twin

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

St. Thomas

Doubting Thomas, at last something I feel qualified to preach about.  Thomas the Apostle was also called Didymus, which means “the twin” in Greek.  Interesting, isn’t it, that in the first community of faith there was one among them who was called to articulate doubt and he was a twin. Doubt is the twin the faith, the brother of believing. It is not the opposite of believing, not the nemesis of believing. Doubt is essential to belief, incorporated into belief.  It requires doubt, as well as its counterpart, belief, to create the whole, complete  and dynamic entity that is the life of faith.

Are you familiar with the T’ai Chi? We sometimes hear it called the Yin-Yang symbol. It is a Taoist symbol, a circle made up of two identical halves, one black and one white, each stretching into the other a little, like two comets dancing around one another. Within each half there is a dot of the other.  So, in the white half, there is a distinct circle of black and within the black there is a matching circle of white.   The two halves, then create a perfect circle, a whole, which is where its name comes from: T’ai Chi translates to “Great Ultimate.”

I think it is a useful image to use when we encounter doubt and belief.  Belief is that brilliant white side, where we are full of confidence and consolation.  But within that brilliant white space there is a small but not insignificant measure of black doubt. And, on the other hand, doubt is that dark place that seems bottomless and engulfs us in despair, but within that darkness is one small but essential circle of light, of belief, present even in the domain of darkness. The whole thing together, the dark and the light, wrapped around one another and also incorporating one another, creates a whole, a complete circle, an entity we call Faith.

Toaists use the image of T’ai Chi to represent the dynamic nature of the Universe.  The Yin signifies rest and the Yang represents movement.  Stasis and progress. Being and becoming. Belief and doubt. As described by Dr. K. K. Yeo, the T-ai Chi embodies the natural state of Creation:  “change, even chaos, is not to be disliked manipulated or feared.  Change produces a life of pilgrimage. It is in that change and pilgrimage that one finds his being, the meaning of existence.”  (Yeo, What has Jerusalem to do with Beijing? 1998, p.98)

Belief and doubt exist in relationship to one another and it is that relationship that keeps them alive. It is the give and take of doubt and belief, the constant movement between one and the other that creates the living and growing and changing whole that is faith.  Believing is part of faith, but it is not all.  If faith and belief were the same thing, we could just rest on our laurels all the time, saying, “I believe and that is all there is.”

But that isn’t what we find in the Scripture.  Thomas questions Jesus. Thomas has doubts.  Not just in our text today but also in John 14 in which Jesus says:

³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ ⁵Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’⁶Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Doubt opens the door to belief. Doubt articulates what isn’t and in so doing creates an opportunity for belief to articulate what is.  Doubt enlivens belief.  Doubt forces us to confront what we don’t believe, where we can’t go emotionally, intellectually or spiritually. Doubt is a dark place that we try, as a rule to avoid.  But the fact that there is such a dark place means that, within the whole of the Great Ultimate, there is also a light place.  We know there is because in the depths of the darkest place, there is a hint of light. It looks like a dot but it might also be a beam. A beam of light that can draw us back into the light side of belief.  And when we get there we are on firmer footing because we have been in the darkness of doubt, we know it is there and we are never permitted to forget.  There’s a spot of it right here in the light all the time.

This, I think is the most important point to be made.  Because we know even when we are perfectly secure in what we believe, there is always the possibility of doubt. Therefore we also know, just as surely and with just as much resolve, that when we are in the abyss of doubt and it all seems impenetrable darkness, that there is there, as well, the possibility of Belief, the hope of renewal, the essential element that can bring us back to balance.

That is the Great Ultimate, the whole life of faith. And because these two elements are constantly in relationship with one another, a life of faith is never static.  The life of faith is always growing, always changing.  We know well that over the course of our lives we come and go from believing, we come and go from doubt.  And that coming and going is natural, it is essential. It means the life of faith is never stagnant, it is never still, it is never dead.  

Doubting Thomas was a member of the community of faith around Christ.  His words were important enough to be recorded many times over, his legacy of skepticism is preserved thousands of years after other disciples words and actions have been lost to history.  I think this is because even in the community of Jesus, in the presence of the most brilliant, bright and absolute belief, in order for it to be complete, there must be one small but unrelenting dot of doubt. 

I’ll leave you with a little piece of poetry- and it is trite, I apologize - from the Christian Reformed Church from a poem about St. Thomas.:

May we, O God, by grace believe
  and, in believing, still receive
the Christ who held His raw palms out
  and beckoned Thomas from his doubt.

(Thomas Troeger, 1984, Psalter/Hymnal of the Christian Reformed Church)

St. Margaret of Scotland: Why, not How.

 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ 

Over the course of the entire history of the Christian church, there has been a fascination with the elemental questions about Christ. 

Obviously, the central question is “Who is Christ”?  Son of God, Descendant of David, Son of Joseph…

Throughout the history of the church there have been searches for the historical Jesus, leading to the helpful of sometimes confusing distinction between the “pre-Easter Jesus” and the “post-Easter Jesus.”

Immediately after his death the second most nagging question arose, “What is Christ”?  All man?  All God?  God and Man?

And “How does that work?”

But of all the questions we ask ourselves about Christ, one that is almost never under discussion is “Why?”

Why was the Word made flesh to dwell among us?

Why did he perform his ministry over the course of his life?

Why did he perform miracles?

Why did he tell parables?

Why did he preach the overthrow of tradition and traditional wisdom?

At the risk of offering an extremely simple answer to an impossibly complex question:

Our text today tells us that he did so “because he was moved by the Spirit.”

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

Now, the Scripture doesn’t say that the Spirit of the Lord told Jesus to go out and perform miracles, it doesn’t say, “Drive the devil out of a man, and then into some pigs and then toss them off a cliff.”  It doesn’t say, “Answer direct questions with obscure cultural references and ambiguous metaphorical aphorisms.”

There are no instructions in this text at all about how to get it done.

Just what needs to be done:

o   Bring those who are distant from it, closer to the love of God

o   Help those who are enslaved by sin in every form

o   Bring light where there is darkness

o   Empower those who have no power

o   Be a beacon of Hope for the future.

Today is the anniversary of the death of Saint Margaret Scotland. She is the only Scottish Queen to be canonized.

She was born in around 1045,  and when she was 20, she and her family fled the Norman invasion of England intending to go to Northumberland.  According to legend, a storm blew up and sent their ship to Scotland.  The place where it is believed to have landed is called St. Margaret’s Hope.

Margaret was a renowned beauty and King Malcom fell in love with her on sight.  After their marriage, she is credited with being a civilizing influence on his court.  Though he could not read, she read stories of the Bible to him.  It is said the he “disliked what she disliked… and loved, for love of her, whatever she loved.”

And what she loved was service.

·         She instigated religious reform, striving to make the worship and practices of the Church in Scotland conform to those of Rome.

·         She was considered an exemplar of the "just ruler", and influenced her husband and children, especially her youngest son, later David I, also to be just and holy rulers.

·         She served orphans and the poor every day before she ate,

·         She washed the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ.

·         She rose at midnight every night to attend church services.

·         She invited the Benedictine order to establish a monastery at Dunfermline in Fife

and her blessings extend even into our congregation - she rebuilt the monastery at Iona – where our own curate went in pilgrimage and heard his call.

Saint Margaret was canonized in the year 1250 by Pope Innocent IV “in recognition of her personal holiness, fidelity to the Church, work for religious reform, and charity.”

Now, just to be clear, Canonization, whether formal or informal, does not make someone a saint: it is only a declaration that the person is a saint and was a saint even before canonization.

The person proposed for canonization “must have lived and died in such an exemplary and holy way that he or she is worthy to be recognized as a saint. The Church's official recognition of sanctity implies that the persons are now in heavenly glory, that they may be publicly invoked and mentioned officially in the liturgy of the Church, most especially in the Litany of the Saints.”

22 miracles are attributed to St. Margaret. After her death, people who were afflicted would have a vision of a beautiful and elegant woman who told them to go to the burial place of St. Margaret and there to be healed. 

Useless hands were made whole, lesions and injuries were healed, insanity, infertility, and dropsy all born away on the prayers of the faithful.  My personal favorite is the man who suffered for years with a bally full of lizards.  God knows that can be uncomfortable. He was set right in prayer at St. Margaret’s resting place.

Now, I don’t think you need to believe in these miracles as such (though you are welcome to if you like, the older I get the less sure I am of the boundaries of reality as I know it.)

What is striking about these miracle stories is what they say about Margaret’s life.

Margaret of Scotland’s biography tells the story of a woman whose life and works were infused with the Holy Spirit.  She was intentional in the use of her talents, powers and privilege as means of serving her fellow man and her Father in Heaven. 

I think when people go to her grave and pray for a miracle they have not been brought by the “how” of her life, but by the “why.”

Why did she do all that she did in the service of the Kingdom of Heaven? 

Because “the Spirit of the Lord was upon her” and when the spirit of the Lord is upon you, all things, all things are possible.

 As long as we don’t lose sight of the “Why”…. The “how” will work itself out.

“and the Scripture will be fulfilled in our hearing.”

Amen