SPEAKER_00: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and blessed be God's family now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, do you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_00: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: Almighty God, the foundation of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking.
SPEAKER_00: Have compassion on our weakness and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask.
SPEAKER_00: Through the worthiness of your Son Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: A reading from Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran.
SPEAKER_01: He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night because the sun had set.
SPEAKER_01: And taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.
SPEAKER_01: And he dreamed that there was a ladder set upon the earth, at the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord stood beside him and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac, and the land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring.
SPEAKER_01: And your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, and to the north, and to the south, and all the families of earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.
SPEAKER_01: Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.
SPEAKER_01: And he was afraid and said, How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil onto the top of it, and he called the place.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_03: Lord, you have searched me out and known me.
SPEAKER_03: You know my sitting down and my rising up.
SPEAKER_03: You discern my thoughts from afar.
SPEAKER_03: You trace my journeys and my resting places, and are acquainted with all my ways.
SPEAKER_03: Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
SPEAKER_03: You press upon me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
SPEAKER_03: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
SPEAKER_03: It is so high that I cannot attain it.
SPEAKER_03: Where can I go, O then, from your spirit?
SPEAKER_03: Where can I flee from your presence?
SPEAKER_03: If I climb up to heaven, you are there.
SPEAKER_03: If I make a grave, my bed, you are there also.
SPEAKER_03: If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand hold me fast.
SPEAKER_03: If I say, surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night, darkness is not dark to you.
SPEAKER_03: The night is as bright as the day, darkness and light to you are both alike.
SPEAKER_03: Search me out, O God, and know my heart.
SPEAKER_03: Try me and know my restless thoughts.
SPEAKER_03: Look well whether there be any wickedness in me, and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
SPEAKER_02: A reading from Romans.
SPEAKER_02: Brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
SPEAKER_02: But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
SPEAKER_02: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
SPEAKER_02: For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.
SPEAKER_02: When we cry, Abba, Father, it is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
SPEAKER_02: And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if, in fact, we suffer with him, so that we might may also be glorified with him.
SPEAKER_02: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.
SPEAKER_02: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility not of its own, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
SPEAKER_02: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.
SPEAKER_02: And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
SPEAKER_02: For in hope we are saved.
SPEAKER_02: Now, hope that is seen is not hope.
SPEAKER_02: For who hopes for what is seen?
SPEAKER_02: But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
SPEAKER_02: The word of the Lord, thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Another parable Jesus put before the crowds.
SPEAKER_00: So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.
SPEAKER_00: And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, Master, did you not know good did you not sow good seed in your field?
SPEAKER_00: Where then did these weeds come from?
SPEAKER_00: The householder answered, An enemy has done this.
SPEAKER_00: The slaves said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them?
SPEAKER_00: But the householder replied, No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.
SPEAKER_00: Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.
SPEAKER_00: And then he left the crowds and went into the house, and his disciples approached him, saying, Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus answered, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.
SPEAKER_00: The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
SPEAKER_00: Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all the causes all the causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_00: Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.
SPEAKER_00: Let anyone with ears listen.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of the Lord, praise to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This week we get to hear a second parable from Matthew, and just like last week, it has to do with seeds, with wheat, um, and sowing.
SPEAKER_00: And uh particularly this week, the new edition is with weeds and where they came from.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I think it's probably best to start out before we look at the parable, uh, to look at this incredible story about Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: And we've been following uh the cycle through, beginning with Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: We got to hear how Jacob had stolen the birthright from his brother, although, of course, you can really never supplant your birth order.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing you can do to be the firstborn if you weren't.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's this sort of Faustian tale about Jacob spending his whole life trying to be somebody he never can be.
SPEAKER_00: Well, right before this, he's put on the goat skins.
SPEAKER_00: He's tricked his father, who blatantly favored his brother Esau, out of the blessing.
SPEAKER_00: And his brother Esau got so mad he said, I'm going to kill you.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jacob is on the lamb and literally on the run.
SPEAKER_00: Uh particularly because the stories say that Esau is sort of like uh a hulking man beast, uh, similar to the He-Man character, Beast Man.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, he is born covered in red hair, says the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he's a hunter, and Jacob is well a smooth operator.
SPEAKER_00: So uh he runs and runs and runs and runs, and he's left the boundaries of his father's house.
SPEAKER_00: He's traveled further than he's ever been, uh, and he hasn't done it in in a scenic way.
SPEAKER_00: He's done it uh huffing and puffing, and now he finds himself exhausted, and he puts a rock down in the middle of the desert and he goes to sleep.
SPEAKER_00: And he has a dream, and dream might not be the right word.
SPEAKER_00: I have all kinds of crazy dreams.
SPEAKER_00: He has one of those visions uh after which he wakes up.
SPEAKER_00: The vision felt more real to him, I would put to you, than what he was seeing and experiencing with his eyes.
SPEAKER_00: This is like he opened his third eye and saw the depth of reality that our physical eyes don't always see.
SPEAKER_00: And in that reality, there's a stairway to heaven, as then Led Zeppelin would say, a ziggurat, which is really just a step pyramid that goes from earth to outside the atmosphere, and up and down the steps travel the word says angels, which really just means in Hebrew messengers.
SPEAKER_00: So God is in constant communion with the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And here Jacob says, look, this is where the messengers are touching down.
SPEAKER_00: This place, a place I've never been, a place that is wild and unkempt and probably pretty dusty and dirty and undeveloped.
SPEAKER_00: This place where the messengers touch, this wild, dusty place, Jacob calls Bethel, which means the house of God.
SPEAKER_00: And he says this incredible phrase, surely God was in this place, and I never knew it.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you already, this has to be for me the punchline for what Jesus has to say about weeds and wheat.
SPEAKER_00: You heard me say last week, and I'm going to stick to this, to stick to my story, that my dad, who has a botany degree and spent a lot of time developing a commercial nursery, and I spent a lot of time with him doing it in high school at really pretty low wages, would often say that a weed is just any plant you don't want.
SPEAKER_00: And so in the middle of a grain field, a rose is a weed.
SPEAKER_00: In the middle of a rose garden, a pear tree is a weed.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you don't want is a weed.
SPEAKER_00: In the story, um, the seeds are all good.
SPEAKER_00: You know, seeds are not ordered from Seed Saver's Exchange, they're not bought from Monsanto.
SPEAKER_00: What's happened is the grain from last year produced enough to sell, and there were some seeds left over.
SPEAKER_00: It's proven it's good grain.
SPEAKER_00: They sow it.
SPEAKER_00: And then there are plants they don't want.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what kind of plants they are.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're thistles and brambles, maybe it's mint.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But there are the workers can tell that there are things in the wheat field that are not wheat, and that can make a problem.
SPEAKER_00: It could undermine root systems, they could grow faster and create unideal shade conditions.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they take up property and resources when uh on arable land when there are limited resources of water and property on arable land.
SPEAKER_00: So they say, look, there's stuff we don't want.
SPEAKER_00: We know you sowed good seed.
SPEAKER_00: So how'd that happen?
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I don't know that any farmer knows how that happens, except quite honestly, uh the winds carry seeds.
SPEAKER_00: The birds carry seeds.
SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes things can lay dormant on the ground and and and they come up.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's funny because very rarely, I think, in agriculture would a farmer say an evil person came and put those weeds in there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh instead, it sort of just happens and you deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Here Jesus is undermining what people would expect by saying, an enemy has sown seeds.
SPEAKER_00: Well, since the enemy did it, shouldn't we go gather the seeds of the enemy out?
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't we try to uproot and plant, uh supplant and be outraged and yank out everything we don't want from the grain field?
SPEAKER_00: And the master says, no, because with all that outrage and uprooting, you might in fact uproot some of the plants we do want.
SPEAKER_00: So instead, let everything grow together and we'll decide at the end which things should be bundled and burned and which should be brought into the barn.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a really interesting response because what would happen if some of those quote-unquote weeds, plants you don't want, end up producing fruit that's valuable even if it isn't grain.
SPEAKER_00: Surely the master wouldn't burn that up, but would bring it into the barn.
SPEAKER_00: This is where it's really interesting to kind of think through these parables and how they might have been heard and how we might continue to hear them.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Jesus is really concerned if he is the master about uh how we deal with things we don't want.
SPEAKER_00: And whether or not I put to you things we don't want might still be able to offer nutrition for the things that we do and for the world that we've been called to serve.
SPEAKER_00: He promises in the explanation.
SPEAKER_00: He sort of unpacks this and says, the weeds are children of the evil one, and the one who saws them is the devil.
SPEAKER_00: And I put to you, remember that this is the Greek word diabolos.
SPEAKER_00: Diabolos means libeler or slanderer.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who says something about another person in order to diminish or impugn or to hurt their dignity and character.
SPEAKER_00: So the things we don't want in the field are accusation and removal of dignity.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you that it by doing that move, Jesus has totally reversed the way that we normally hear this parable traditionally.
SPEAKER_00: Traditionally, weeds are bad people and grain are good people, and I put to you, I don't know anybody that is entirely in one camp or the other.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest that if I ever had to identify that, what I leave out is God's eye room for surprise, because God is able to see potential in each and every human being, even though I sometimes can't.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're like me, there are people who have surprised you.
SPEAKER_00: That is, you thought there was no good in them, and maybe it was accidental, maybe it was something that they calculated.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe just your judgment was wrong, but they showed up and surprised you.
SPEAKER_00: And if it had been up to you to just uproot and be done with them, you would have missed uh the holiest kinds of surprises.
SPEAKER_00: The opportunity for reconciliation in new life, and your life would have been impoverished by your uprooting a plant you didn't want.
SPEAKER_00: After all, a weed is just a plant you don't want.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus goes on to say, hey, seeds of accusation, children of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to think of children of the devil, uh, children of the slanderer, as not people, but as the seeds that we sow that are about accusation and disminishment.
SPEAKER_00: Seeds like gossip, seeds like flattening people down to say, like, well, if that congressperson says this, they must be evil.
SPEAKER_00: As if human beings are entirely evil.
SPEAKER_00: When I was living in Germany, there was a film called Der Untergang, which in English is the downfall, and it chronicled the last few days of Hitler's life.
SPEAKER_00: And it came out, and uh the German public was in was incensed over it because it showed Adolf Hitler being nice to his secretary.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the German outcry was that this man was evil incarnate.
SPEAKER_00: And so they they they sought to try to ban the film or to um to boycott it.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in the film, uh Hitler is not painted as a saint because he's kind to his secretary.
SPEAKER_00: He's painted as a human being that makes some dreadful choices and along the way is nice to his secretary.
SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't suggest to you this parable might be about that.
SPEAKER_00: And there's really something interesting about not just having a revisionist history, but revising history so that we remember the full humanity of persons.
SPEAKER_00: And I say this every year on All Saints Day.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's easier to call somebody a saint after they're dead because we don't know how annoying their other habits were.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have to live with them.
SPEAKER_00: We were just able to see big developments that came out of their lives when in fact they might have driven their spouses and their children crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I don't think it's putting people down to lift that side of history up.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what I think is it's saying is God's grace is in the middle of fields that have plants we don't want.
SPEAKER_00: And if we go around just uprooting things and uprooting people, we miss a the opportunity to be surprised.
SPEAKER_00: We diminish our own humanity by uprooting things in other people that uh we can't possibly uproot out of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we heard the Apostle Paul say that a few weeks ago in his letter to the Romans when he said, Wretched man am I, the good I want to do, I don't do, and the bad I don't want to do, I end up doing.
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a really good description for the kind of fields we are in which we have seeds planted in us that we may not have asked for and are really hard, hard to uproot.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes uprooting them would be a loss for the entire field.
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, I think uh being so worried about that takes us out of the harvest for the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the truth is uh I think we're asked as imperfect beings to still offer the nourishment we can for the world and be willing for nourishment to come out of people and places that we decided are weeds.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if next time we're incensed uh with a politician, with somebody in our neighborhood, we couldn't try ask God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, to give us a vision like Jacob, so that we're able to say at the end of it, surely God was in that person and I didn't know it.
SPEAKER_00: Surely God was in that place and I didn't know it.
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we get so caught up in identifying grain in plants we want that we forget that God is not confined to our wants, that God's will is greater than ours, and that every week when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we say, Your will be done, not ours.
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting in the story is God wants a lot of plants that we don't want.
SPEAKER_00: And I suggest to you our call this week is to slow down our tendency to uproot or diminish.
SPEAKER_00: And that maybe, just maybe, God is Jesus is describing this week in this parable that the children of the accuser, of the devil, of the slanderer are those words and deeds that come from our own mouths that would uproot people because they don't look like us, talk like us, present like us, vote like us, worship like us, age like us, have abilities like us, or sexual preference that we have.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the story is saying in the middle of your cognitive dissonance and your conflict and your challenge, be less hasty.
SPEAKER_00: Be less hasty to go around pulling up plants you don't want that God has essentially engineered the planting and developing of.
SPEAKER_00: This happens in the book of Acts, uh, and we don't get to read it for some time.
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's a crisis in the Jewish community.
SPEAKER_00: What do they do with these people who follow Jesus as the way?
SPEAKER_00: And one rabbi says, you don't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: If what they're saying comes from human beings, it won't last.
SPEAKER_00: If it's from God and you try to oppose it, you will be flattened.
SPEAKER_00: So let its nutrition, let its fruit speak for it.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I think that can be really, really hard in the times that we're facing.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to put to you, I think there is some holy wisdom in the idea that uh God asks for these things to be able to grow and that we make decisions based on their fruit when there's been enough time, and that we open ourselves to being surprised, to having our labels and our stereotypes and our prejudice reversed.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, all of this has to be taken with moderation, because I think the truth is sometimes we have the tendency to drift toward an extreme and say, well, everything in the world must be the way God wants it, if that's what you're saying, and we shouldn't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, that's not what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the difference, though, um, between the seeds that we sow that are children of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Those are our words and our attitudes and our recalcitrance and our unwillingness to say that God was in a particular place that we couldn't imagine, and thanks be to God, God's there.
SPEAKER_00: And the other extreme of going around and rooting people up, and in so doing, there's no root left in ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We've created standards we could possibly never live up to, and that frankly God doesn't delight in either.
SPEAKER_00: And so we live in this balance in which a hungry world honestly doesn't need a monoculture.
SPEAKER_00: They don't just need wheat.
SPEAKER_00: They need fruit and they need fiber and they need vegetables.
SPEAKER_00: And our failure sometimes to see it is not God's failure.
SPEAKER_00: It's a failure of our imagination and of our heart to grow bigger.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why I think Paul is trying to say to us this week: look, don't live by what you see alone, because as we know, we've been doing this in the Science Forum, our standard of judgment is skewed.
SPEAKER_00: Our observation point is not all observation.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, work really hard to cultivate that third eye of Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: To allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised by the presence of God in the people and places that your former mind would not allow it to be.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God when it shows up in surprising and wonderful ways.
SPEAKER_00: Be ready for it, and I would dare say, if we can even cultivate the value of expecting God to show up in places and people we don't like, we'll be better off for the journey, and so will the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Let us renew and reconsider our faith in the words of the Iona Creed.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God is present in the darkness before dawn, in the waiting and uncertainty where fear and courage join hands, conflict and caring link arms, and the sun rises over barbed wire.
SPEAKER_00: We believe in a with us God who sits down in our midst to share our humanity.
SPEAKER_00: We affirm a faith that takes us beyond a safe place, into action, into vulnerability, and onto the streets.
SPEAKER_00: We commit ourselves to work for change and put ourselves on the line, to bear responsibility, to take risks, live powerfully and face humiliation, to stand with those on the edge, to choose life and be used by the Spirit for God's new community of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The prayers of the people in peace, let us pray to the Lord, saying, Lord, have compassion for the holy church of God, that it may be filled with truth and love, and be found without fault at the day of your coming.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, that Lord have compassion, for all the holy people of God, for all bishops and other ministers, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops, for Michael, our presiding bishop, for Justin, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the clergy in our community, Mike, Craig, Bill, and Lillian, we pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease, and that all may be one as you and the Father are one, we pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion, for the mission of the Church, that in faithful witness it may preach the gospel to the ends of the earth, we pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion, for the peace of the world, that a spirit of respect and forbearance may grow among nations and peoples, we pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: For those in positions of public trust, especially Donald, our president, and Greg, our governor, that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion, for the poor, for the persecuted, the sick, and all who suffer, for refugees, prisoners, and all who are in danger, that they may be relieved and protected.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion, for this congregation, that we may be delivered from hardness of heart and show forth your glory in all that we do.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion for our enemies, and those who wish us harm, and for all whom we have injured or offended, for ourselves, for the forgiveness of our sins, and for the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: For all those who have committed themselves to our prayers, for our families, friends, and neighbors, especially Chris, Larry, Jerry, John, Jerome, Susie, Ted, Andrea, Kevin, and Ron, and those of the congregation which is to name at this time silently or aloud.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: For all who have died in the communion of your church, especially harlot, and those whose faith is known to you alone, that with all the saints they may have rest in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal.
SPEAKER_00: We pray to you, O Lord, Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another, and all our life to Christ our God, to you, O Lord our God.
SPEAKER_00: For yours is the majesty, O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory now and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The peace of the Lord be always with you, and also with you.
SPEAKER_00: And now, as our Saviour Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
SPEAKER_00: For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: May God, who by the Holy Spirit caused those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.
SPEAKER_00: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Alleluia, Alleluia, go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Alleluia, Alleluia.