Community Of Truth: Abide- Ian Graham

Pastor Ian Graham looks at God's mission to create a people in order to bear witness to the world. 

Transcript

Community Of Truth Framed

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey I see you, Pastor Ian Graham coming to you from my office during the week to recapture the sermon that was missed due to some technical problems as we finish up our series we call the Community of Truth. And early on in the life of our church, it was not uncommon for people to ask me, is your church focused on creating new believers or a church to help Christians grow deeper? And inevitably, these questions all came from other Christians who tend to create these false categorical distinctions, and inevitably I was sort of annoyed by this supposed polarity of two things that, in my mind, are easily held together. The church is a community of truth. We gather around the truth and we are sent out carrying the truth as ambassadors with these treasures, and to use Paul's beautiful phrase, in jars of clay. We are both a community of coming together to the feast, but then we take the abundance and the goodness of what God has done, and we infuse that into every inch of our lives to share with our neighbors in word and in deed. So this means, as we come together, sure, we invite people that don't know Jesus and we hope they encounter him there, but more so we are sent people. Ecclesia means the called out ones, that we gather together and we are sent out. And so people would ask me what the focus of our church was, and I really just wanted to reframe the whole of that discussion. And if you look at church websites, you find that there are always a section for vision and often a section for values and beliefs. And the vision statements tend to run within a fairly narrow band of vocabulary. This is a really good thing. These vision statements tend to be drawn from the vision that Jesus gave to the church. Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them. And so there's so many areas that churches tend to modulate and tend to improvise, but vision statements tend to be fairly narrow in their expressions. So for me, I knew it was important that we had a vision statement, some sort of slogan to just encapsulate our life together. And eventually we as a church settled on deep life with God and deep love for the world. Again, capturing that dynamic where we're both a people who are being cultivated by the goodness of God to grow and dwell deeper in the love of Christ, but also that as we glimpse his heart, we actually move with the beat of his heart towards the world that he loves, the world that the scriptures tell us that he is so loved and he gave his only son. And I would also talk to people about the values that were inherent in our church. And I tended to focus much more on the values. Because I find that whereas a church vision tends to fall within a fairly narrow band of vocabulary and expression, and thus become sort of redundant, they're kind of banal. The values, the way the church goes about accomplishing its supposed ambitions, have everything to say about the vision itself. We talk often here that Jesus is the truth and the life, yes, and amen, but he is also the way. And that we cannot hope to attain the Jesus truth and the Jesus life without the Jesus way. The way that Jesus brings about the kingdom ultimately has everything to say about the kingdom and the God who rules over that kingdom. And so we focus much more on the value. And I would also tell people that we hope that Ecclesia will be a community that is both contemplative and charismatic. Contemplative, in that we are allowing the scriptures and the great Protestant tradition to form us, that we are encountering God through his word, that we are dwelling deeply in it, that we're also drawing from the rich traditions of church history and acknowledging that we received the baton of faith, it is not something that we invent. And the charismatic. I hope to develop something that was drawing us towards God's heart for mission. And obstensibly, this is a talk about mission. But first and foremost, it's about the kind of people that God has endeavored to create. His primary mission in cultivating us as a people where he would dwell and that we would mutually indwell him. And so we want to look at God's initial mission as we receive it, and then look at the mission that we have been called to as a people, as witnesses of this great love. I want to invite you, if you are listening, to turn over in your Bible to John chapter 15. This is one of the foundational texts of our life together as Ecclesia, one of the foundational texts of my life, John 13 through 17, just trying to indwell these words that Jesus offers to us. Let's look in John 15. Jesus, in John 15, is with his disciples during the last full night of his earthly life. Soon he will face the trials that await him in all their horror and fullness. But there is this calm before the storm. Jesus unanxiously resting in fellowship with his friends, as he reveals to them the incredible fellowship that he is inviting them into by what he will do in the cross and in the resurrection. He tells them in John 15, verse 1, I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit, every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because, apart from me, you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch in withers. Such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burnt. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you, so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. The word of the Lord. Now within these Jesus' words here in John 15, there are an indescribable array of promises. The promise of our inheritance. First, look at these promises. I am the vine. My father is the gardener. When we remain in Jesus and his love, he also remains or abides in us. Jesus is the one who cultivates the garden. He doesn't say to us, make your lives presentable, clean up the weeds in them. No, he says, remain in me. I will do the work. And when we remain in Jesus and his love, he also remains or abides in us. It's not just that we dwell under the shadow of his wings. Somehow, some way, he takes up residence in our hearts and in our lives. He builds our lives into a temple, to use Paul's phrase, of the Holy Spirit. And remaining in him, as the Spirit takes up dwelling in us, we bear much fruit. This is both the fruit that flowers in our lives, the fruit of the Spirit Paul describes elsewhere as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, but it's also the fruit of the harvest. The longing that God would bring the entire world home, restored from the fall and the curse, as the promise that was given to Abraham in Genesis 12, that through his family line that all the nations on the earth would be blessed. This fruitfulness in our lives, Jesus tells us in John 15, glorifies the Father. It brings glory to God as we follow Jesus. And remaining in the healing safety of our Savior means not only are we secure in his hands, but that we are inspired. Inspired to ask, inspired to dare as a child dares with their parents. Ask, ask, ask. If you've ever spent any amount of time with a young child, a toddler, or a little kid, you know one of the hallmarks of their lives is asking and asking. And so often we presume to answer for God without asking. We think that it's our job to somehow figure out what are the right things to ask for, but Jesus doesn't tell us that. He says, I'm the vine, you are the branches, remain in me, ask me for whatever you want. And it's within that process, the relational dynamic of asking, that yes, Jesus will prune our desires. Yes, he will cultivate good intentions out of us, but we only find that by asking. And so often we sort of go to the end and we answer the question for God. We do God's part. And we answer the question when Jesus doesn't say to do God's part. He says, no, ask the question. Remaining in Jesus' love, we are loved by Jesus. And Jesus says, You are loved by me, not just in some perfunctory way, but in the same way that the eternal God the Father loves Jesus. This is an incredible statement. And all of this is marked by an eternal delight, the joy of the King. This is our inheritance that is sure and certain because of the work of Father, Son, and Spirit. So we see this array of promises that open up even into even more beauty, right? And within this text in John 15 that we read, there's also a warning. Jesus says, Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers. Which I don't know about you, but brings forth a very obvious question in my own life. What does it mean to remain in the love of Jesus? And how do I avoid being one of the ones he describes as those who don't bear any fruit? We see here there is both a guarantee and an expectation of fruitfulness, because apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. But from within the love of Jesus, we can do anything that is prescribed by the kingdom of God. But this can create an anxiousness within us. Anytime there are expectations placed upon us, we feel both the anxiety to meet those expectations and the shame when we deem that we have not met those expectations. But I assure you, friends, that is not the equation that Jesus is presenting here. Jesus tells his disciples, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. This doesn't mean that merely hearing Jesus or his words causes us to remain in him. Many people throughout Jesus' earthly life hear him without actually listening to him. Many people in our world today hear Jesus' words, but don't heed them. But those who listen to him are those who receive his invitation to become his disciples. Every step, a step by faith. Our faith is a relational faith. And so often we think that we have to have God solved, that we have to have our understanding of God unlocked in every way so that we can follow him. But that's not what we were called to. And will not be possible because God is beyond our comprehension. We were called to walk with Jesus, to become his disciples. And every step is a step by faith. The first call that we respond to is his call to all to turn from ourselves, from our sins, and to find rest in him. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11. I'm using Eugene Peterson's translation and transposition really of Matthew 11, and found in the version called the Message. Jesus says this the Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique father-son operation coming out of father and son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the son the way the father does, nor the father the way the son does. But here's the good news. But I'm not keeping it to myself. I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. This is the invitation that's put forth to us to stop striving, to stop seeing how we might achieve and build a life for ourselves and to receive the life that God has for us. It is not a life of low expectations or a life of meaninglessness, far from it. Jesus has work for us to do, a yoke that He will lay on us. But it is not the yoke of self-actualization, building a resume for ourselves, scraping together a meager existence. No. It is the yoke that is easy, the burden that is light. He won't lay anything heavy or ill-fill fitting on us. He invites us to receive this invitation. And as we receive his invitation, we begin to walk with him, not by sight, but by faith, listening to Jesus. He has called the entire world to become his disciples, but we are not left alone in this endeavor. Jesus did not ascend to heaven and say to us, Good luck to you. I really hope that I see you at the finish line. I love you, and I wish you the best of luck to figure out life and to find me at the end of all things. Rather, he says, I'm going to send you my abiding presence. I'm going to send you my spirit that will be no less as if I am in the room with you, because it is the very presence of God. John calls this presence of God the Paraclete, which we translate at different times the advocate or the comforter. Thomas Torrance, a theologian and biblical scholar, writes of what it means to walk by faith and step with this paraclete, with this advocate, with this comforter. He writes, Many years ago I recall thinking of the marvelous way in which our human faith is implicated in the faith of Jesus Christ and grasped by his faithfulness. When I was teaching my little daughter to walk, I can still feel her tiny fingers gripping my hand as tightly as she could. She did not rely upon her feeble grasp of my hand, but upon my strong grasp of her hand, which enfolded her grasp of mine within it. That is surely how God's faithfulness in Jesus Christ has hold of our weak and faltering faith, and it holds it securely in his hand. You see, Ecclesia, walking by faith is not about our ability to walk. God is a good father, and he is teaching us to walk. It is not even about our ability to lay hold and grasp his hand as much as we can. It's about his hand holding ours. Look at the end of John 15. Jesus says, When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. The Spirit glorifies the Son. He testifies on behalf of Jesus, which means, as we've been talking throughout this series, he testifies to the truth. And Jesus tells the disciples plainly, you also are to testify. That we have a story to tell. We have something to share with the world. You see, Jesus' call to remain in him is not simply a call to cloister ourselves off from the world. That would seem like a safe harbor, that would seem like something that would keep us safe. But no, Jesus' call is rather to the world. Witnesses are those who have experienced something and then try to relay the fullness of what they have experienced to others. The truth, taking up resonance in our lives, will confront the anti-truths that are so cherished and easily held to, and held to be self-evident by our world. Jesus goes on. He says, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the advocate will not come to you. But if I do go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, you will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment, about sin because they do not believe in me, about righteousness because I'm going to the Father and you will see me no longer. About judgment because the ruler of this world has been condemned. This confrontation is a conflict with self-righteousness in all of its forms. Sure, there is a religious form of self-righteousness that Jesus confronts throughout John. His religious opponents missed Jesus because they had misplaced expectations about what God should be up to in the world. They wanted a liberating king who would meet their political aspirations for freedom from pagan rule by conquering and by glory. What they got instead was a liberating king who was proclaiming a kingdom with a new politic that brings glory through suffering, powering, power through weakness. In our own day, this self-righteousness often takes the form of self-sufficiency. I don't often find that people are struggling with almost thinking that they're. I don't know about you, but I encounter people often who both think that they're left on their own to be a good person. Whether there's a God or not, their conception of God is largely deistic. In that God maybe made the world, maybe made them. But ultimately he's mostly unconcerned with the content, the happenings of their lives. Their job is to be a good person, and that most people I meet are pretty, they presume that they're pretty successful at that endeavor. And regardless, they're certainly not as bad as some other people that they see. Now, there are old evangelistic strategies that would tell us that we would have to convince these, call them self-satisfied, self-sufficient folks, of how bad they are. How they actually are quite unsuccessful at being good, and they should see for themselves from the miserable wretch that they are. That the point of telling them about Jesus was to actually convince them that all their attempts at being good were futile. Now, this may all be true, but I don't know about you, but I often encounter people in my life, as I spend time in my neighborhood and in my town, that really are quite amazing, apart from God. They don't acknowledge God as the source of the goodness they put forth into the world. They don't try to worship Him with their actions, they're just trying their best to be the most selfless person that they can be, and from what I see, largely succeed at that endeavor. And so is it our job as Christian evangelists to then convince those people that no, really you're terrible? And really all your attempts at goodness are just half-hearted and self-serving. Oftentimes people are like, well, I was feeling pretty good about myself until we start talking about Jesus. I don't really think that's what God is up to. And so rather than trying to break those people down into nothing so that I can somehow insert some hope into the situation, my endeavor is to try to show people the beauty of God, the joy of living with Him, the reality that I don't have it altogether, and that they probably don't either, and that they might somewhat be kind, caring, and selfless, but that God is the ultimate source of any goodness that is in them, and that He loves them, He knows them, He wants to welcome them home. This is not to deny the reality of sin that is present in our lives, the reality of sin that we turn from when we turn to Jesus? By no means. For any of us who are honest about our struggles and honest about what it means to follow Jesus, we see that upon receiving his invitation to follow him, that really we were much worse off than we ever would have imagined before we started following God. That though there were behaviors that we might have immediately turned away from, that it was really far worse, and it seeped far deeper down into our hearts than we ever would have realized. But we only realize that by walking with him. But if God starts the story in Genesis 1, he calls people blessed and good, and yes, there is the reality of Genesis 3, then calling them back to that original blessedness, then calling them back to the joyful Creator, does not somehow undermine the reality of sin or brokenness. But what it does is it says there is a deficiency in living out of self-sufficiency. There is more to life and abundance that Jesus has called us into. And when I think of Jesus saying the spirit of truth will prove them wrong about sin, about righteousness, and about judgment, I think of how many impoverished pictures of God passed for truth. That God is ultimately disinterested in us, that he's distant, or that he's vindictive, waiting for people to mess up, or that he has ridiculous standards that only a select few could ever actually hope to attain. And here is Jesus saying, I won't lay anything ill-fitting or heavy on you. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. Remain in me and my love. You will receive love as the Father has loved me, ask me for anything. It's all wrapped up in a joy that purifies and sets us free. That's quite a different story, isn't it? Jesus goes on, I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. In John chapter ten, Jesus gives us insight into this truth. He is the gate and the good shepherd. There isn't an enemy who seeks to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Jesus undoes these ambitions by laying down his very life for the sheep, and ushering in life and life in all of its fullness. John ten, verse seven. So again Jesus said to them, Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, I know my own, and my own know me, just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I laid down my life for the sheep. So we see Jesus first proclaims the reality of his good shepherding. That he, contrary to the designs of the thief, the designs to steal and kill and destroy, lays down his life, gives of himself for the goodness and the abundance of the sheep. And then in John 15, Jesus invites us as ambassadors of his good shepherding to lay down our lives for one another. That same dynamic that Jesus first models, he then empowers us to live out on behalf of our neighbors, to testify to the truth of the Good Shepherd by laying down our lives for each other. John 15, verse 12. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my father. You do not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. I was at chapel at Oral Roberts University during my time as an undergraduate, and because of our the institution's kind of place in the wider world of Christianity, specifically like televangelist Christianity, we would often play host to a rotating cast of famous televangelists. One particular guy had perfect teeth and a cajun draw, and he quoted from the verse that we read above from John 10 about abundant life. And that was his whole motivation for believing that God was about to upgrade the jet that he was flying around in to a better version, a newer version of the jet that he had been flying. And really, the whole sermon was about him seeing some of his friends who had gotten blessings from God and trying to figure out why he hadn't gotten those blessings. It was all nonsense, and as I tried to make sense of all the cognitive dissonance that I encountered often in that chapel service. We had lunch directly after chapel, and then I had a New Testament class led by one of the men that I'm still so incredibly grateful for, who taught me how to read the Bible, which just means he showed me who Jesus is. He started the class, as he often did, with prayer, but before prayer, he read from the words of the New Testament, and he turned over to Luke's Beatitudes. He said, quoting the words of Jesus, Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day, leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven, for that is how the ancestors treated the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. He didn't say anything derogatory about the speaker. He was in chapel just like we were. He didn't even comment further. He simply said, Let's pray. And then prayed and went on with class. But I've never been the same again. There's been much talk about a revival that's stirring in much of Western culture. I always find myself a bit of a hopeful, hopeful skeptic about these things. I long deeply to see a move of God first within my own life. And then from within the fruitfulness of the community that I'm a part of, there's a move of God in Princeton and beyond, I want to be a part of it. And when I read the scriptures, I see that a revival of the kingdom of Jesus would be first noticed by the poor and those pushed to the margins. Because the church is an empath. Of the truth of the kingdom of God. It's Pilate who adversarially and dismissively asks Jesus, what is truth? Not so subtly suggesting to Jesus that, in the vein of the modern philosopher Nietzsche, that truth is power. And in case you haven't noticed, King of the Jews, I've got all the power right now, and Jesus rebutes him and says that you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. That the truth is not power. The truth is abiding in King Jesus' love. The truth is his good shepherding that lays down his life for the good of our neighbors and the call to testify to the truth by our call to reciprocate that laying down by laying down our lives for one another. Yes, we want full rooms. We want ease and comfort. Those are natural things to want. But abiding in King Jesus shows us that his mission first and foremost is about the kind of people that he is cultivating, the kind of people that he's trying to bring forth. Pastor Brian Zahn in his book A Farewell to Mars describes the aftermath of one of the greatest revivals in American history a couple centuries ago, the Second Great Awakening. He's a pastor doing history, so I'm sure some liberties are taken in drawing some direct parallels. But I want you to hear as he draws out the terrible consequences of not submitting the whole of our lives to King Jesus. And the reality that revival can often present itself as one thing, and Jesus is up to a different, an utterly wholly different kind of revival. He writes, but in tragic irony, the spiritual revival of the great Second Awakening had swept through America during the decade before the Civil War. Americans flocked to churches and evangelistic meetings. This was especially true in the more religious South, where Christianity was embraced with greater fervency than in the less zealous North. Across the country, revival was on. Churches grew, conversions multiplied, people got saved, praised Jesus, and talked about heaven. Then they went to hell, or at least the same kind of hell that Jesus had warned Jerusalem about during his final days. Despite a great revival, a nation of Christians was thrust into a hell of cannonballs, gatling guns, field hospitals, and amputation saws. Great cities were set aflame and fields were littered with thousands of rotting corpses. The fires were not quenched, and the maggots did not die. What had gone wrong? Millions had accepted Jesus and shouted Hosanna, but they did not know the things that make for peace. They prayed a sinner's prayer, got right with God, and kept their slaves. They had a faith that would justify the slave owner while bringing no justice to the slave. They had faith that gave them a ticket to heaven and a highway to hell. The religious fervor in the conservative churches of the South only served to convince them that they were blessed by heaven. They were quite certain God smiled upon their deep devotion to their southern fried Jesus. If they had to go to war to preserve their freedom, so be it. God was on their side. They were sure of it. But there would be hell to pay. If we remain in Jesus, he will remain in us, and we will bear much fruit. The Spirit of God will lead us into all truth, which means that all of our lives, heart, soul, mind, strength, will be surrendered in testimony to the kingdom of God. It means that we've been called to abide in the truth, which is the truth of a suffering Messiah who conquers the world not by shedding the blood of his enemies, but by laying down his life. We are witnesses, and our life together is an embassy of this kingdom, this community of truth. We declare this truth by our love for one another, by allowing the Spirit of God to unite us as one people who have received this glorious and gracious invitation to be with God, to lift Jesus up, and to see that when Jesus is lifted up, he will draw all people to himself. The theologian Rene Padilla talks about integral mission. And he talks about the outworking, the outgrowth of a people who have cultivated this kind of life of abiding in the love of God. He says, integral mission understands that its goal is not to become large numerically, nor to be rich materially, nor powerful politically. Its purpose is to incarnate the values of the kingdom of God and to witness to the love and justice revealed in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit for the transformation of human life in all of its dimensions. Thank you for listening thus far. I have to be honest, I don't always love recreating the sermon moment in a kind of lecture in the quiet of my study. And so I appreciate you listening. And I hope it had all the power and the energy that I can bring to a Sunday morning that often feels a bit contrived in my office. I pray that wherever you are, you find that God's face is turned towards you, that he wants to cultivate these kinds of life with you, these kinds of values that manifest in these kinds of works of goodness, these kinds of deeds that declare the truth of the kingdom of God. I want to pray just a prayer that Jesus prays over his disciples in his last words in this sort of extended time with his disciples. These words given to us in John 17. As we remember the work of Jesus, the work that is the conspiracy of Father, Son, and Spirit to redeem and restore the entire world and to draw all things to himself under the goodness of the reign of King Jesus. Jesus says as we close in John 17, I've given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I'm not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you've sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they may also be sanctified in truth. I ask not only on behalf of these ones, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory you have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you. And these know that you have sent me. I have made known your name to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. This is God's promise, his mission, that he will cultivate in us this sort of life, so that we can bear witness that we can be those who proclaim the truth to a world that is drowning in illusion and delusion. May the Lord bless you, may He keep you, may He cause His face to shine upon you, and may He give you His peace. Grace and peace, friends.