Preaching and Teaching

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
July 26, 2009

Text: II Samuel 11:1-15

Every leader should read I and II Samuel as well as I and II Kings. The books contain potent case studies on leadership. They also display how woefully short of God’s leadership standards even the best leaders can fall.

Of all the stories in the succession narratives, none is more troubling than the one we read this morning. King David’s troops are on the battlefield. While the soldiers put their lives at risk for their nation, back in Jerusalem, David preys on Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of his courageous soldiers.

Given the power of a king, I do not consider this sexual act consensual, as it is sometimes portrayed. It was rape. If Bathsheba had not responded to David’s lust, she would have put her own and her husband’s life at risk. She had little choice but to submit.

If we stop the story right there, we can say, “David did a horrific thing.” And if, right there, he had done the faithful thing, he would have confessed his crime and tried to make right that which he had made wrong.

“How could David have done that,” you might ask. That was David’s problem to figure out, not ours. But, with the power of a nation at his fingertips, he could have done something to make things, if not right, then better.

However, like so many people, David didn’t confess his sin. He did what we see people do all the time. He attempted to cover up his sins. In the process, he elevated his criminal acts from rape to murder.

The author of II Samuel makes no mistake where his loyalties lie in his telling of the tale. The author portrays Uriah as pure and self-sacrificing; everything David isn’t. He sees David as a criminal, Bathsheba and Uriah as victims.

After using his royal position to force himself on Bathsheba, David had a face-to-face encounter with Uriah, who had just returned from battle. He ordered the young officer to go to his home and enjoy a rest. Ignoring David’s orders, Uriah left David’s presence and slept at the entrance of the king’s house with other people in David’s service.

Hearing this, David called Uriah to him and asked him why he hadn’t gone home to Bathsheba. Uriah responded that while his fellow soldiers were camped in the fields, he could not indulge himself by eating, drinking and sleeping with his wife. Again, the author draws a stark, damning contrast between David’s and Uriah’s approach to responsibility.

David did some despicable things. But he also recognized goodness and truth when he saw it. He surely must have recognized the contrast between his own and Uriah’s behavior: one a man of honor; one a man of dishonor. Looking at Uriah noble approach to life, David’s soul must have been filled with shame.

One of the reasons Jesus was so insistent that we confess our sins was his awareness of the power of shame. Shame can cause us to do things that are worse than the original sin. Unrepentant sin begets guilt which, in turn, breeds shame.

Not being able to live with his shame and guilt, David decided to eradicate it by eliminating its source: Uriah. To do so, he turned to Joab, the quintessential hatchet man who did a lot of David’s dirty work. On David’s orders, Joab pulled back his troops in the heat of a battle, leaving Uriah unprotected, alone to fend for himself. The source of David’s guilt died as he lived: with courage and honor.

Did this act eliminate David’s guilt? I doubt it. Despite his king-size capacity for sin, David also had a powerful relationship with God. My guess is that David took his guilt with him to the grave.

In my lifetime, I have seen variations of this story played out over and again on our national stage. Lyndon Baines Johnson couldn’t admit he made a mistake by dramatically expanding the Vietnam War. And so he continued to expand it. Richard Nixon couldn’t admit he made a mistake by authorizing a minor burglary and so he tried to cover it up. George Bush couldn’t admit he made a mistake by invading Iraq and so he followed LBJ’s example and poured gasoline on a raging fire.

I fear our leaders are compounding our national mistakes again. When the current economic crisis broke last fall, there were daily stories about massive layoffs. It was not unusual to read of tens of thousands of jobs being terminated. The Bush administration seemingly ignored the job losses, focusing its attention instead on the crisis in the financial industry.

Make no mistake about it, the financial system is incredibly important. But if people don’t have jobs, they can’t pay off loans, can’t buy things to stimulate the economy, can’t save and invest money. All of these are devastating to the health of the financial system.

As a result of our lack of attention to creating jobs, the number of homeless families nationwide has skyrocketed. Foreclosures have become commonplace, even in wealthiest of neighborhoods. The ability of people losing jobs to find new jobs, even much lower paying jobs, has become close to impossible. People graduating from our universities and grad schools find themselves in limbo, unable to employ their talents in the marketplace.

Are Barack Obama and Congress repeating, even compounding the mistakes of the Bush Administration? Certainly, they are dealing with many major issues: two wars, health care, the financial and auto industries, and rebuilding America’s image abroad. However, as they do so, a growing number of Americans are unable to find work.

As Calvinists, we have a theological reason to place job creation at the top of the national agenda. We view work not just as a paycheck but as redemptive. Work is a primary way in which we serve God and neighbor. Work creates meaning and purpose in our lives.

There is a devastating, crippling ripple effect of large numbers of unemployed people—economically, socially, spiritually. Therefore, we cannot accept the idea that jobs are coming somewhere down the line. People need work now.

Creating jobs doesn’t require a lot of imagination. Create an Art Corps and put artists to work. Expand a program such as Teach America and put more people to work teaching children. Create a Forestation Program and employ people planting trees.

Frankly, how it gets done isn’t as important as getting it done. We need to create jobs now, not six, nine or twelve months from now.

We made a mistake in enabling this crisis to develop. We made another mistake in not immediately addressing the loss of jobs it created. Let us not now compound the mess by allowing it to draw us away from the obvious need to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

But, of course, politicians are not the only people who can make a bad situation worse. At some point or another, you and I have certainly proven that we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. Each of us has made a bad situation worse.

I can’t count the number of people I have known who have ended one unfulfilling, unhealthy romantic relationship only to enter another even worse relationship. Having followed their hormones rather than their heads and hearts, they quickly find themselves wanting out of the new relationship. Never having taken the time to reflect on the mistakes they made that caused the other relationship to fail, they change partners but don’t change the quality of their lives.

I can’t count the number of people I have known who have jumped out of one bad work situation into another even worse one. Rushing to get away from a bad job, we rush right into a new form of negativity.

Too often in problematic situations, focused on what others have done to us, we don’t take the time required to figure out what we have done wrong. It is a cliche but also true that both parties bear some responsibility for a relationship dissolving—whether it be a work, personal or other type of relationship. This is why Jesus stressed the need for confession and accepting God’s forgiveness.

To right his wrong, at a minimum, David needed to ask Bathsheba for forgiveness. He needed to acknowledge to her and God that he had abused his power to force himself upon her. If she was unwilling to forgive him, as is probably likely, he needed to accept God’s forgiveness. If he had done so, my guess is that Uriah would have lived a long and full life. A sin would have ended as a sin rather than leading to a series of events in which a person needlessly died.

Confession and forgiveness break the chain of events in which one sinful or mistaken act leads inevitably and inexorably to another worse act. President Obama realized this fact Friday when he stepped to the podium and acknowledged that his comments regarding Professor Gates’ unjust arrest were making the situation worse. It was the kind of humble act of leadership that has been woefully missing for many, many years in the White House.

I can’t close without addressing a problem many of us have: we don’t believe that we can be forgiven. We believe God is forgiving. We just don’t believe God will forgive you and me. We have a theoretical versus an experiential understanding of the reality of God’s forgiveness.

Why are we so insistent that we can’t be forgiven? Perhaps we fear the forgiven life. Having grown used to living in the darkness of our own self-damnation, we can’t imagine what it would be like to live in the light as a forgiven person. Perhaps we think our sins are so unique, so horrible that no one, not even God, will forgive us.

In fact, I think we are simply projecting onto God our own unwillingness to forgive ourselves. We won’t forgive ourselves so we figure God won’t forgive us either. Amazing.

In today’s story, David forced himself upon a woman and killed her husband. If God can forgive him, God can’t forgive you and me? Please. We may be great sinners. But David was a world class sinner. This guy’s sins are still being studied thousands of years later.

There is a certain arrogance or hubris in our refusal to believe God will forgive us. On the cross, Jesus forgave the people who killed him. God forgave the disciples who abandoned Jesus and put them in charge of the early church. God called Paul, who had persecuted/tortured the early church, to be an evangelist. Given these and millions of other examples, it is simply crazy to think God can’t or won’t forgive us.

What have we done? Have we raped and murdered someone? If yes, God will forgive us if we ask for it. Have we spent too little time with our families? God and our families will forgive us if we ask them for it. Have we mismanaged our financial resources? If we confess it, we can start over again.

Confession is a prerequisite to New Life. But confession isn’t enough. New Life begins when we embrace God’s forgiveness. To use Paul Tillich’s language, New Life begins when we accept God’s acceptance of us.

This is where David is a positive role model. As one who sinned boldly, David also believed in his heart of hearts that God loved him. As a result, at critical moments in his life, he confessed his sins and accepted God’s forgiveness.

Most of us understand and accept Jesus’ ethical teachings. We understand and accept his worldview. But too few of us understand and accept his proclamation that God will forgive our sins—right here, right now.

Looking at my sermon title, someone this week told me that my vacation obviously had not helped me to lighten up! Fair enough. But this I know. Jesus’ message was called Good News not because of his ethics, parables or theological reflections.

It was called Good News because, embracing his message, people whose lives were filled with the bad news of their own sinfulness were able to change the direction of their lives—totally and completely. People who were icons of sinfulness became paradigms of virtue. People who were stuck in self and other destructive ruts found a constructive Way to live. People who felt damned suddenly felt loved and redeemed.

So it can be for you and me. Let us accept the Good News: in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.News:

Let us pray: Gracious God, you offer us a New Life. The door through which we enter is confession of our sins and acceptance of your forgiveness. Help us to follow Jesus through that door to the New Life of which we all dream. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church

Washington, D.C.

July 19, 2009

Text: Ephesians 2:11-22

As many of you know, I grew up Southern Baptist. I used to think that there was only one sort of Baptist, but there’s a whole spectrum of them. I was just at a fundamentalist church, one that was part of the fire-and-brimstone variety of Baptist. Which means that as a child, I often had pastors who would paint terrible, frightening pictures of hell. Then they would tell us that if we did not accept Jesus Christ into our hearts, then we would be thrown into a fiery pit, for an eternity of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

This happened on a regular basis. I would stand alone in the second pew, while my parents would be in the choir loft. The pastor would fire up a verse of “Just As I Am,” and if we got through all the verses without anyone coming up, he would have us sing it again.

He would remind me that if I did not ask Jesus into my life, I could be the best sort of person on earth, but I would still be sent into eternal burning. It did not matter, if our parents were Christians. It did not matter if we were raised in a Christian family. God did not have any grandchildren. We were to make the decision for ourselves, or we would go to hell.

I would stand, with my best dress, my lacy socks, and my shiny leather shoes, and I believed every word of it.

It was frightening to hear, as a small child. The threats worked. I invited Jesus into my heart. And then I did it again. Again and again. In fact, on a pretty regular basis, I would ask Jesus into my heart. I didn’t go up to the altar each time; I figured that would be an embarrassment to my parents. But I would pray in the pew. Just in case it didn’t stick. Just in case I wasn’t sincere enough. Just in case I lost my entry ticket into heaven. Just in case I had done something that did not merit God’s love that week. Just in case God was angry at me for some reason… I just kept asking.

This experience taught me a lot. For the most part, it taught me that God was angry, jealous, and petty. And even though God was all-powerful, God would let a small child to burn in hell. For all of eternity.

I began to question this vivid idea of God when I started traveling around the world. I went to China and Hong Kong, and I came face-to-face with crowds of people who, according to my view) were going to hell.

I was deeply concerned about my view of God when my closest friends began to confide that they were gay or lesbian. A couple of them grew up the same black-and-white religious world that I did, and I can’t imagine the courage that it took for them to come out of the closet.  

This view became even more problematic when a close friend committed suicide. I knew the torment that he lived through. I had great compassion for his suffering, and yet, according to my religious system at the time, he was in hell.

I began to wrestle with the notion, when I loved certain people in my family deeply, and I knew that they were not “Christians” in the same way that I claimed. I knew that, according to my beliefs, they were going to hell, but I also knew that I would do anything that I could to save them.

So why wouldn’t God? Why would God allow so many people suffer for eternity?  And for what reason? Because they didn’t say a prayer, inviting Jesus into their hearts? Why was that formula so important? 

There seemed to be one conclusion. It was because God was cruel and vengeful. Full of wrath. I was in the hands of an angry God. Just like a tiny spider who was held over an open flame, God was holding me over the fire, and I would be singed unless I loved God.

This was the God I grew up with. And this idea of the divine fostered a great deal of anxiety and fear within me, and a couple of things happened in the midst of it.

First, I had a terrible time feeling peace within. I felt as if I was never doing enough to earn God’s love, and I was deeply interested in making sure that I earned it in some way.

Second, I did not feel peace with my neighbors, because I always assumed that fundamentally, I was right and they were wrong. And you just can’t have peace with your neighbors if that is always the basis of your relationship.

I knew that something had to change. And at the heart of all of this was my view of God. It was this God who withheld love except if people came asking for it. It was a view of God who would allow a person to suffer, unless he or she loved and worshiped God in a certain way. It was a view of God that gave me the sense that I was never worthy of love or acceptance, and therefore in turn, no one else was either. It was a view of God that enflamed intolerance toward people from other religions, and for gays and lesbians.

It was an ideal of God that ran contrary to the very nature of what the Scripture say. That “God is love.” That Jesus Christ is our peace. That we are to love God, love our neighbors, and love ourselves, and all of that is very difficult to do when the source of that love is jealous, vengeful, angry, and intolerant.

And so if I was going to have peace, I needed to re-imagine God. All of this, I did intuitively. When I became a Presbyterian, when I went to seminary, and when I began an intellectual pursuit of reading theology.

I tell you all of this, not really because I want to. It’s actually kind of embarrassing to admit all of this. But I bring it up because I realize that often times we have had religious experiences, or we have views of religion that go against the peace of Christ that we read about, the peace that breaks down the walls separating us.

In the midst of all of this, I often had seasons of doubt, and I wondered if religion was more damaging that healing. Yet, I persisted with my religious studies, because I knew that even though fundamentalist religion could be destructive, there was something there that was a source of peace.

Andrew Newberg is a neuroscientist who wrote a book with Mark Robert Waldman, entitled How God Changes Your Brain. Their research shows that contemplating God will change your brain. Even though our brains begin to lose abilities and begin to slow down at the age of 30, meditating, praying, and contemplating God slows the aging process. They help the brain to grow. Contemplating God actually changes the neural circuits that enhance our cognitive health. Furthermore, it makes us socially aware and makes us more empathetic. It promotes peace.

Newberg and Waldman explain how the anger and prejudice that is generated by extreme beliefs can damage your brain, but imagining a God who is loving, rather than vengeful, can reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. Their studies show that contemplating God can increase feelings of security, compassion, and love.

They explain three parts to finding serenity. All of them have been a part of historic religions: intention, relaxation, and awareness.

Intention is the goal that you want to happen in your life. It can be a career goal. It can be peace, insight, or connection with God. Sometimes it’s hard to identify our intention. I often ask people, “Where do you want to be in five years?” Write down a detailed scene. Or draw it. What are we longing for? In the technical language of the Newburg, he says, “When you clearly articulate your intention or goal in writing and speech, your frontal lobes can more efficiently direct your motor cortex to carry out your desire as you actively engage with others and the world.”

This message is difficult, because there has been some of religious abuse with the prosperity gospel, “name it and claim it” messages of our modern televangelists. Yet, there is a basic truth here, in the language of Jesus, the idea is summed up with “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The second thing is relaxation. We sit down in a comfortable chair where nothing will disturb us. Rest our hands in our laps, uncross our legs, place our feet flat on the floor. The authors encourage yawning which increases alertness and relaxation. Then, try not to think about anything but your breath.

In the language of the Psalmist, we are told to “Be still and know that God is God.”

Third, we can become aware. We become attentive to our body in the world. 

While eating, we can chew slowly, and think about the food, the taste, the texture. Think about the weight of our fork, the motions that we use.

These are the sorts of exercises that our religious traditions have been teaching for centuries. They teach us to put aside those primal urgings to conquer and to hate, and it points us to a different place. It inspires us to look beyond ourselves and encourage peace with ourselves and with one another.  

There is a Cherokee legend about a little boy who received a drum as a gift. It was a beautiful drum, and he loved it. Son after he received it, he was playing with it, and his closest friend came up and wanted to play with it.

The little boy was torn, and he ended up grasping the drum and running away.

Frustrated, the boy went to one of his elders and asked him what to do. The elder responded that he often felt like there were two wolves inside of him. One was greedy, angry, and selfish. The other was generous and kind. And the wolves were fighting. The elder turned to the boy and said that he thought that the boy had two wolves inside of him too.

The boy asked, “Which wolf will win?”

And the elder answered, “The one that you feed.”

As I reflect on this legend, it makes me think about the things that we are doing here this morning—praying, singing, listening to the celebrations and concerns of one another. Why do we do it? Why are we here?

I think it is so that we can feed the other wolf. The one that is kind and generous. There are not too many places that can feed it. But this is one of them.

This is the place where we talk about how Jesus is our peace. He has broken down the walls of hostility.

Let us go out, learning the ways of peace,

to the glory of God our Creator,

            God our Liberator,

                        And God our Sustainer. Amen.

a sermon by Kris Thompson

Elder, Western Presbyterian Church

July 5, 2009

Scripture Reading:  Mark 6:1-13

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of each of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, our Strength and Redeemer.  Amen.

We make assumptions about people – people we know, people we don’t, friends, family, strangers.  We think to ourselves, “he’s really not old enough to take on this job.”  “She has always struggled with addiction, I can’t imagine she’s really changed.”  Sometimes, we even share these assumptions with others – we say them out loud.  “He’s not ready to do that yet – look what happened last time.”  “She’s just too set in her ways to make a change.”    

We’re like the people in the pews of that synagogue who made assumptions about Jesus.  The very human picture of Jesus found in this passage from the book of Mark places him in his hometown with those who knew him as a young person.  While the members of this community acknowledge the wisdom and powers that Jesus possessed, they can’t seem to reconcile it with the child and young man they knew from earlier days.  To them, he’s a carpenter, not a healer.  He’s just one of the several children of Mary.  They can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that he’s different than they remember.  How can the kid who lived down the street from me growing up possibly have the power to heal someone’s sickness?   

And so both Jesus and the people of his hometown are left frustrated.  Jesus is “amazed by their unbelief” the story tells us.  I can imagine that he was probably even angry that this opportunity to share his message with these people he cares about has been wasted. 

By making assumptions about him, by being critical of him, and not being open to who Jesus has become, the people are not able to benefit from what Jesus has to offer them.  And, their unbelief has limited Jesus as well.  He can’t fully be the healer and preacher that he is called to be while in that place.  

We do the same thing when we make assumptions about people.  We close ourselves off to the gifts and talents, the relationship that is possible with another.  And, in so doing, we limit that person’s ability to share who they are with us.  We have diminished someone else and have also diminished ourselves. 

When I began my work at Calvary Women’s Shelter several years ago, I was introduced to Shirley by one of my new colleagues.  I found myself face to face with this short, sturdy-looking woman with a loud, gravely voice.  She didn’t seem too certain about me, and I wasn’t sold on her either.  Soon I learned of her aggressive behavior, her jail time, and the problems she was creating with others in the shelter.  We all assumed that Shirley might not make it long in the program.  And then one Halloween night, she put her arm around one of the staff and announced that she was done drinking.  As Shirley stayed sober, her tough exterior started to melt away.  She got a job, began volunteering with her church, and eventually moved into her own home.  She rebuilt her relationship with her son, and reached a better understanding with her sister.  When I saw her recently, Shirley told me about her work caring for an elderly woman who was dying, and how she stayed with her until the very end because the woman had no other family to be with her. 

I had been wrong about Shirley.  I had made assumptions about what she was capable of based on her past behavior.  I had chosen to let those assumptions limit my interactions with her.  Thankfully, Shirley wasn’t someone who let my judgments stand in the way of her reaching out to me for friendship.   

Throughout Mark’s gospel, there are stories of Jesus performing miracles.  There is the story of the woman who has had blood flowing for 12  years who touches his garment.  “Jesus feels the power go out of him” as the woman is healed.  Jesus feeds five thousand with a few loaves of bread, and he heals a blind man.  He casts the demon out of the Syrophoenician woman’s child, and he stills the storm while on a boat with his followers.  And he says to those who have come to him, who grasp at his cloak, who ask for his help, ‘your faith has made you well.’  It seems that Jesus’ powers depend upon the faith that others have in him. 

And isn’t that true of us as well?  While we don’t possess the prophetic powers of Jesus, our faith or lack of faith in someone can have a profound effect on their life.  We express “I believe in you” in lots of different ways.  When we support our child or our partner as they make decisions that might be different than what we would choose for them.  When we do what seems like a simple thing and review a friend’s resume and agree to send it out to our own contacts.  When we hold someone in our prayers.  Sometimes we even say it.  “I have faith in you.”  A good friend of mine, someone I had shared some of my plans with, sent me an email this week that said, “I am as excited as I am confident about the next year for you.”  His belief in me and his ability to express it have had a powerful effect on me.    

Believing in someone doesn’t necessarily require that we like them or even know them well.  But it does require that we truly respect and honor their humanity.  In the Eastern traditions, it is the practice to greet one another using the Sanskrit word, ‘namaste’, which translates as ‘the Sacred within me honors the Sacred within you.’  I love the discipline of this action - in greeting another, one would consciously recognize the spirit, the gifts, the light of that person.    It is a way of saying “I believe in you”.  It is a reminder of our interdependence as human beings.  And, it requires that we recognize our own “light”, our own Sacredness, in order to fully honor it in another.  It is an expression of our faith in God, the one who is the source of the light and in whose eyes we are all Sacred. 

Imagine, for a moment, what a day would be like if you began each interaction with the thought, or even the practice, of “namaste”.  You greet your family at breakfast.  You look at each person attending the morning meeting in your office.  You make eye contact with the person who hands you your carry-out dinner.  You sit in prayer at the end of the day.  Either silently or aloud, you express your ‘belief’ in those around you and in yourself.   

I have the privilege of being present as women who are homeless make enormous life changes.  The beginning of transformation often starts when someone begins to believe in them and they begin to believe in themselves.  And then, they are truly changed.  At times it seems a miracle almost.  Mark Zaineddin, in a publication called “Join the Feast”, writes “when we begin to believe in the individual worth of each and every person, might it just be that miracles – real or perceived – can happen?”    

Francine had spent years in abusive relationships, using drugs and alcohol to mask the pain, trauma and sadness she felt every day.  She lived in a downtown park or in a vacant building for years.  The first time she came to Calvary she stayed for a few weeks.  The enormity of the changes she needed to make in her life were overwhelming to her.  She said, “I don’t like all the rules here” and returned to life on the street.  But then she got beat up by some guy in the park again.  Francine decided that if she didn’t do something different, she was, in her words, going to “end up dead”. 

The second time worked.  When Francine tells her story, she says that change was possible for her that time because Tim, her case manager, always acted as if she could do whatever she needed to do.  Not only did he help her get the resources she needed, but he stood with her as she struggled to get sober.  He was there when she started to address the depression and trauma that she had buried and to work her way through the years of life she felt she had lost.  Tim stood with her when her old friends and family members, even her children, didn’t trust that she could live a different life and be a healthy person.

Today Francine is raising one of her grandchildren.  She is a speaker for a nonprofit organization that provides education and advocacy around homelessness.  Francine is a cancer survivor.  In many ways, Francine’s life change is nothing short of a miracle.  Because of his faith in her, Tim was also changed.  He benefited from a relationship with this caring woman, he learned some things about himself, he developed skills related to his work.

Just like Tim’s faith required him to actively support Francine, our belief in others calls us to action.  The impact of having faith in others, and acting on that faith, extends beyond interpersonal relationships as well.  We have seen the underdog sports team rise to the occasion and work hard to win the game because of the expressed faith of their fans.  We have watched the renewal of schools and school systems as the parents and community have said “I believe in you and your abilities” to the teachers and children and stepped forward to bring about change.  We have witnessed how Nelson Mandela expressed faith in the people of South Africa and worked diligently with others to help bring about the transformation of a nation. 

And so we are challenged to break with the easy pattern of making assumptions, of being the ‘unbelievers’, the cynics.  We are challenged to see people through new eyes, to recognize the Sacredness in them that is also in ourselves, to fully understand what is possible for ourselves and for others if we do.  We are challenged to make ourselves vulnerable – to express our faith in others, to act on that faith – with those know and those we don’t – in order to be a part of the miracles that are possible. 

The Sacred within me honors the Sacred within you.  Amen.