Bearing the Cross in a Riptide

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” Jesus calls out to us. Really, Jesus? These words have been the source of a great deal of misunderstanding and unnecessary suffering among Christians. How tempting it would be to snip this difficult sentence right out of our Bibles.

Before you get the scissors out, though, let’s think about what we’re doing. We follow the Crucified and Risen One. We’re not going to be able to follow in his Way without death and a cross. Let’s make sure that we understand what Jesus is calling us to do here. 

First, there’s Jesus’s call to deny ourselves. As a woman, I know the harm that can be inflicted by telling someone that God wants them to give and give until she has nothing left. Women, people of color, and others without power in our world are often told by our culture that their job is to serve, to give, to stay invisible. They are told by those in power who they can and cannot be. In that way, they are shoved into a box, a box that tries to hide who they truly are: beloved children of God. As some of us have been reading in Bishop Curry’s book, we are each made in the image of God, each deserving of love. Curry talks about a time in his youth when he felt ashamed of his blackness. He later learned how oppressed people internalize their own oppression. Instead of hating the oppression, they come to hate the self.^[1] Before they can be free from oppression, they must come to love themselves through God’s eyes, through the eyes of a God who calls each of us to become our true and beautiful selves.^[2] Clearly then, Jesus is not calling us in this Gospel to submit to abusive people or circumstances.

 What, then, must we deny? I had a call to the priesthood when I was sixteen-years-old, yet I didn’t start the ordination process until I was forty-five. For thirty years, I told myself that women couldn’t be good priests, and that I especially was too nerdy and shy to break through the stereotypes.  Before I could become who I was created to be, I had to set aside the self that my society had molded in me. I had to deny the messages that had boxed me in. Before I could follow Jesus, I had to renounce and disown the powerful voices that dictated who I could be. It sure took me long enough, but by God’s grace I was given lots of “second chances.” Sometimes, to free our God-given selves, we have to deny the false priorities in which we are imprisoned.

The other mistake we make is to think of Christian self-denial in terms of a call to live empty and barren lives. Some people imagine the Christian life like a perpetual Lent, full of false piety and void of joy and celebration. When you watch Babette’s Feast for our movie discussion on Wednesday, notice how people are living on that desolate coast in Denmark. Theirs is a faith that preaches salvation through self-denial—even to the point of refusing to enjoy the taste of delicious food and drink. Before the arrival of the mysterious Babette, theirs is a sad existence indeed. Jesus is not asking us to live without joy and beauty. He is not telling us in this Gospel that we must renounce all earthly pleasure.

Make no mistake, though. The call to deny ourselves is still difficult, even if it doesn’t mean self-abasement and austerity. When Jesus calls out, “Deny yourselves,” Jesus is asking us to put the Way of Love ahead of our own priorities; to put Jesus’ purposes ahead of those assigned to us by the power structures of our world.  “Let go!” Jesus is calling. “Follow me into vulnerability, into a life in which you are no longer in control, into a journey for which only God holds the map.” Why? Because our vulnerability is what opens us up to relationship. Vulnerability is the path to joy and fulness of life.

And then there’s that looming Cross, the one that he says to carry on our backs to the place of execution. Here, too, we often misunderstand.  What are the crosses that we are asked to carry? Are they made of life’s misfortunes that God expects us to haul glumly around on our backs? My father suffered paralysis from a stroke at a fairly young age, and I still remember hearing my mother tell her friends with a sigh, “Well, I guess his illness is just the cross that I have to bear …” When the school counselor told me that my mother was wrong in her assessment, that God did not place that cross on her, I remember being confused. I could see the weight on her slumping back just as plain as day. The counselor was right, though.

When Jesus asks us to carry our cross, he is not referring to the various burdens that we human beings carry throughout our mortal lives: sickness, loneliness … or even global pandemic. God does not wish any of these things for us. A cross is more than a heavy load—it was a shameful instrument of execution meant for criminals. To carry my cross is to carry all that condemns me: it’s to carry all of the unpleasantness of my humanity, including my mortality. It’s to carry all the things that I normally try to avoid seeing or touching. To carry my cross is to take up my sin, my failures, my shame, my mortality—all those things that I can’t bear to see within myself—and follow Jesus on the Way of Love. To carry my cross is to be vulnerable to the consequences of faithful living.^[3] It’s to put all that I am, entirely in God’s hands.

I heard about an image this week that might help us to understand our difficult Gospel. This image also speaks powerfully to our lives as we continue to deal with the effects of Covid-19 in our world. Think of the pandemic as a riptide.^[4] Have you ever been caught in one of those mighty currents in the ocean? A riptide pulls your feet out right out from under you, doesn’t it? You’re doing your thing, swimming along just fine, and then all of a sudden, the current is carrying you out into the depths, where drowning is a real possibility. You lose control over your movements, overcome by the power of the waves. Do you remember what to do if you are caught in a riptide? What you don’t want to do is to try to swim back to the spot on the shore where you first started. In fighting the current, you’ll exhaust yourself, and will likely die. But if you give yourself over to the current, if you relax and try to get your bearings, you can let the tide carry you to a new place further down the shoreline, to a place of safety.

This image is a warning to us as we respond to the effects of Covid on our church and our lives. If we exhaust ourselves in a futile effort to “get things back to the way they were,” we just might drown. But if we stop trying to control the tide, trusting God to bring us along to a new place, we just might find the fulness of life for which we are longing. This image also can help us to understand today’s Gospel. Jesus and his disciples are also caught in a riptide, a riptide more deadly even than the Covid-19 pandemic. They are caught in a riptide of Evil, of powers and principalities that seek to destroy the beloved children of God. If Jesus had fought evil with evil, worldly power with worldly power, as Peter implored him, he would have been caught in the undertow of war and empire. Only by responding with the power of divine Love--the Love that no cross of shame can dim, the Love that no death can defeat—can Jesus bring us life. If we are to follow him on this Way of Love, we too must renounce our false selves and purposes. We too must make ourselves vulnerable to one another. We must stand up to evil by “being true to who [we] are and what [we] believe, and what [we] stand for,” come what may.^[5] We too must travel on the divine current to unknown destinations, both dangerous and life-giving.^[6] And there, on that new shore, where God plants us, we will find life, love, and the gift of beloved community.

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[1] Michael Curry, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times (New York: Avery Press, 2020), 106.

[2] Ibid, 95.

[3] Dawn O. Wilhelm, quoted in Phyllis Kersten, “Lectionary Column for Sunday” in The Christian Century, March 4, 2012.  Found at Lectionary column for Sunday, March 4, 2012 (christiancentury.org).

[4] This image comes from Helen Svoboda-Barber, “The Pandemic as a Riptide,” video found at https://www.facebook.com/stlukesdurham/videos/332831514784945.

[5] Barbara Harris, quoted by Michael Curry, 109.

[6] Kersten.

The Blessings of Dust and Burned Fibers

 

         

Ash Wednesday invites us to begin the Lenten season of repentance by looking our mortality and our imperfection squarely in the face. We repent of our sin. We remember the brevity of our lives. This year, however, I’m not so sure that we need a cross of ash on our foreheads in order to think about death. With almost half-a-million Covid deaths in our country, with contagion chasing us everywhere we go, I think that we are already well aware of death. I’m also not so sure that we need to be reminded only of our sin. The traumatic events of 2020 have left us deeply aware of the systemic evil in which we are all implicated: the racism and injustice that rule our lives; the disunity; the hatred; the lies; our continuing destruction of the natural world; the way in which we have turned our backs on the children at our borders. I have never arrived at Ash Wednesday more aware of my need to repent.

          Life in God is about more than sin and death. Tonight, even as we repent, let’s concentrate on two other truths that our ashes today bring to us.

          First: the dust. “Remember that you are dust,” we say. This phrase comes from Genesis. These are the words spoken to Adam and Eve after their sin had forced them from the Garden. These words do recall our sinfulness and our mortality, yet they also carry a hidden blessing and a responsibility. The dust into which God breathed life was not the useless fluff that collects under the bed. A study of the Genesis story reminds us that God created Adam from the “apar adamah.”  Apar adamah is “fine garden soil.” In this creation story, the first human was made from the “humus,” from the loose dirt, from the good, arable soil.[1] God didn’t create us from heavy, sticky clay to be fired in an oven and shattered. God didn’t chisel us from hard, self-sufficient rock. God didn’t form us from rotting peat or from shifting desert sand. God created us from rich garden soil, from the soil that grows things, from the soil that brings forth life when planted with seed and watered. As people of the ground, we are one with the same soil that we work, the same soil that nourishes us with food. And it is to that same fine garden soil that we will all return. Our common life as “dust” ties us to the earth, to our job as caretakers of the earth, as caretakers of one another. When Cain killed his brother Abel, it was the dust of the ground that cried out in pain and indignation to God.

          No wonder that Isaiah, in his vision of a restored Israel, calls us to be “a watered garden.” We’re not created “to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes.” Instead, we’re tied together in responsibility to one another and to our world: “to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin,” says Isaiah. Like the farmer who continues to work the soil, to fertilize, to weed, to bring forth growth by the sweat of his brow, we are expected to work the ground of our world, feeding, clothing, and caring for one another, as if our lives depended on it—for they do. The ash on our foreheads tonight reminds us of this blessing and this responsibility.

          The second thing that I’d like to point to tonight are the burnt palms. At St. Ambrose, as in many parishes, our ashes are made by burning the previous year’s palms—the leftovers from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday. If you’ve never participated in palm burning, it can be quite an ordeal. After the flames, you’re left with charred fibers, strong filaments that must be tediously ground before you can use them. I thought about those burnt fibers as I contemplated our jar of ashes this year. I remembered the words of poet Jan Richardson: “This is the hour we are marked/ by what has made it/ through the burning.”[2] We, too, have made it through this past year’s burning. We have been tried, tested, sometimes scorched. But we are the stuff of God’s creation. We are woven together of strong fibers, filled with the breath of God, and re-formed in Christ for a new creation. Hear the rest of Richardson’s words, and go forth, blessed and strengthened by a cross of dust, for the life of the world.

This is the moment

we ask for the blessing

that lives within

the ancient ashes,

that makes its home

inside the soil of

this sacred earth.

So let us be marked

not for sorrow.

And let us be marked

not for shame.

Let us be marked

not for false humility

or for thinking

we are less

than we are

but for claiming

what God can do

within the dust,

within the dirt,

within the stuff

of which the world

is made

and the stars that blaze

in our bones

and the galaxies that spiral

inside the smudge

we bear.

---

[1]  See William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Eerdmans, 1999), 137-140.

[2] Jan Richardson, “A Blessing for Ash Wednesday,” found at Blessing the Dust - A Blessing for Ash Wednesday (Jan Richardson) (billjohnsononline.com).

God is my Glory, the Lifter of my Head

 

Now that I live in the foothills of great mountains, I need to make a confession. When I go hiking, I don’t mind struggling up a mountain, testing the strength of my legs against the grade. Going up, I might have to stop and catch my breath, but I feel in control of my movements. I can feel in charge of my ascent. Going back down the slopes, though, is another thing entirely. And going down especially steep ones scares me to death. As soon as the gravel starts to slide around under my feet, I cry out in panic: “Somebody’s going to have to hold my hand!” I grasp for trees or shrubs to cling to. I’ll grab anything to keep me upright—even thorn bushes! I’ve even been known to sit down, bottom in the dirt, dignity abandoned, and scoot my way down a steep slope like a baby. It’s not a pretty sight.

Now that you probably don’t ever want to go hiking with me, let’s all admit one thing: It’s scary when we start to slip, isn’t it? When we lose control of our lives? When the world around us is so full of change that there's nothing to hold onto? When our leaders and time-tested principles fail? When the truth no longer holds us steady? Most of us don't like that at all, do we? At times like that, we might even ask God to step in and get things under control for us. We often long for a God who will hold us upright when life gets topsy-turvy. We pray for God to keep us from falling on our metaphorical bottoms. But sometimes it's God who challenges us to change. Sometimes it's a glimpse of God that turns us upside down and sends us careening into unfamiliar places.

That's what happens in today's Gospel lesson. Look at this icon of the Transfiguration. Here’s Jesus standing glorious and powerful in his white robes, shining like the sun. So far, so good.  Here’s Moses, the mighty lawgiver, and Elijah, the brave prophet, standing proudly on either side of him. How wonderful! But where are Jesus's disciples, James, Peter, and John? They aren't standing with Jesus on the heights in this image. They didn't get to build a cozy dwelling up there on the mountain. They weren’t permitted to huddle safely with Jesus, like Peter wanted to do. Look at them lying sprawled out on the ground quite a way back down the mountain. They look as if they have been physically thrown down from the higher slopes. Talk about slipping and sliding!

What is it about seeing Jesus filled with light that sends the disciples sliding down the mountain, dignity and control clearly abandoned? If the light surrounding Jesus is just a sign that Jesus is the Son of God, what's the big surprise? They've already seen him cure the sick and drive out demons. Why would a bit of light have pushed them over the edge?

What Jesus' early Jewish followers knew that we don't, is that this scene on the mountain is revolutionary. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses and Elijah never died. Instead, they were both taken straight up to heaven by God. If Moses and Elijah are standing with Jesus on this mountain, then that means that the disciples must be witnessing a vision of heaven itself. For a brief moment, heaven and earth are one. God’s Dream for the world has come true in this moment. The disciples realize that they are glimpsing the New Creation, the longed-for Reign of God.

But that's not all. The white clothes that appear on Jesus are a symbol for the Glory of God. God's Glory is the powerful, awe-inspiring manifestation of God’s presence that goes before God into the world. In the Hebrew Bible, God’s Glory is too dangerously powerful for humans to see it and live. Remember the Exodus story, when God covers Moses’ face with God’s hand as God’s Glory passes by. Even Moses, as faithful as he is, can only dare to look at God’s backside. But now, on this mountain, Jesus is radiating God's Glory for everyone to see. Here, we see the Glory of Almighty God shining in all of its fullness through a human body. Eternity is appearing in human flesh. Divine love and grace are pouring forth into the world through Jesus.

What does this sight mean for us today? I like the way our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters put it. They believe that the light that poured through Jesus at the Transfiguration still pours into us today. They describe God’s Glory as a kind of Energy, a kind of Light that constantly streams forth from God’s hidden Essence. This Light is a gift of the Spirit. It's found everywhere but can only be seen through matter, the "stuff" of this world. Think of the way in which music pours through musicians while they are performing. In making music, musicians are carried on the tide of an energy. They are lifted by a great current of music that is becoming present and immediate in their actions.^[1] When God’s energy fills us, it doesn’t change who we are, but it fills us with a power that allows who we truly are to shine forth—it’s our “beloved-ness” that beams.

Eastern Orthodox Christians call the process of being filled with God's light “deification,” becoming God. Such language might make us uncomfortable. “Becoming God” is just for Jesus, we think. This deification isn't something that we get from being perfect, though. It's not even something that we can earn for ourselves by our good deeds. It's something that we open ourselves up to in prayer.

I was excited to hear today’s opening song, which I had never heard before I put it in our slide presentation. The choir sings: “Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me. You're my glory. You're the lifter of my head.” I will bet you that this song comes from a Pentecostal tradition, rather than from our Anglican one. That’s because the Pentecostals, like the Orthodox, understand Glory. They know that it is God’s Glory shining in us that takes away our shame, that “lifts our heads." When Jesus is transfigured on that mountain, beloved community becomes possible here on earth. Beloved community becomes possible because the shame that causes us to hide from one another, the shame that pushes us to judge and condemn one another, the shame that deforms all of our relationships, melts in God’s burning love. We can lift our heads. We can see God’s Glory. We can see Christ in one another.

When I was in college, buried in grades and ambition and papers to write, I had my own transfiguration experience. One day, I wandered from my fancy liberal arts college through the Tennessee woods into an Appalachian Headstart Center. And there the innocent blue eyes of a three-year-old pierced my heart. Those eyes were so clear, so imploring, so wise, that I saw God's Light in them. I saw the truth in them. I saw that children matter. All children. And my world shook, and I slid down the mountain, never again free from the responsibility that that light laid upon my heart.

Indeed. The trouble with seeing the world lit up by the Energy of God is that it means that we are not the ones in control of the world. God’s Energy shifts the boundaries. It makes us vulnerable. It charges our environment with possibilities we don’t even know about.^[2] For Jesus and the disciples, those possibilities include crucifixion and death. For us, those possibilities mean lives uprooted, beliefs overturned. They mean sliding backwards down the mountain, arms held up in surrender. Transfiguration does indeed rob us of our balance and destroy our sense of control.

Today, it is my prayer that we can welcome God’s painfully powerful Energy in us, in our world, and in our parish, even when it opens doors that we would prefer to close. Even when it breaks down walls that we would prefer to maintain. It is my prayer that God’s Energy will open us, not merely to change, but to divine transfiguration.   

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[1] Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light, 3.

[2] Ibid., 6.

Walking Through the Stuff that Makes Us Weary

 

As we approach the one-year-mark for the Covid-19 pandemic, I am struck by the cloud of weariness that hangs over our heads. A friend’s Facebook post says it all. There’s a little person walking along and wondering why he feels so tired lately. On his shoulders sits a huge gray rock with the words: “The cold of winter … plus lockdown, plus the uncertain future, plus the whole of last year generally, plus the unrelenting news cycle, plus that email you’ve been putting off, plus the lack of human contact, plus some other [stuff] you can’t quite put your finger on.” (slide) We are tired because we are weary. This pandemic is exhausting our patience and our tolerance for our situation. As Bilbo Baggins says in The Lord of the Rings, “I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something.”^[1]

Therapists point to “Covid-19 fatigue,” which results in depression and anxiety. In 2020, both of these illnesses increased from 8 percent of the general population to as much as 34 percent.^[2] Mental health experts talk about a “disruption in our nervous system.” Our brains are simply reacting to all of the uncertainty around us.^[3] Psychologists suggest combatting our weariness with intentional focus on relaxation, with daily exercise, with socializing in safe ways, with seeking professional help when we need it, with taking control of the things in our lives that we can control.^[4] These are all good suggestions.

Even without clinical anxiety or depression, however, there is a spiritual dimension to our common weariness. We can suffer from a “wearied heart,” a tiredness so deep that it prevents us from caring. It can lay us too low to feel as if our efforts matter. When faced with yet another problem in the world, we curl up deep in the sofa cushions and sigh, unable to take action. The prophet Isaiah knew something about this kind of weariness. Exiled for decades in Babylon, the ancient Israelites were also shrugging wearily: “What is the use of following the Torah now? It won’t do us any good. We might as well just live like the Babylonians. God can’t do anything to help us, or we would be out of here by now. If God is powerless, then we might as well give up. What’s the use? Why does any of it matter, anyway?”

For our spiritual weariness, Isaiah suggests another helpful strategy:   

waiting prayerfully for the breath of God. In the last five verses of Isaiah’s ringing call to the truth of God’s creative power, the prophet mentions some kind of “weariness” ten times. God, who does not faint and grow weary, is the One who can deliver us from our own weariness, Isaiah says. If we “wait for the Lord,” we shall mount up with wings like eagles; we shall run and not be weary, we shall walk and not faint. Hebrew poetry is full of parallel phrases, instead of rhymes. Here, we have three parallels, three images that build on each other, culminating in the last line. Did you ever notice, though, that people always choose the “mounting up with wings like eagles” line to preach on, and not the final “walking and not fainting” line? But for Isaiah, it is neither the flying nor the running that is the strongest image. It is the walking, taking one step in front of another, sustained by God just enough to keep going. Preacher John Claypool writes about how God sustains us in our walking. Claypool, whose young daughter died of leukemia, understands what it means to be truly weary. He writes: “’Who wants to be slowed to a walk, to creep along inch by inch, just barely above the threshold of consciousness and not fainting? That may not sound like much of a religious experience, but believe me, in the kind of darkness where I have been, it is the only form of the promise that fits the situation.’”^[5]

 Kathleen Norris tells the story of a monk who was given the task of watering a piece of dry wood until it bore fruit^.[6] That can be how Pandemic life feels, can’t it? Staying home day after day; putting on mask after mask; keeping things going when every day looks an awful lot like the last; making small, insignificant efforts to spread God’s love. A virtuous Pandemic life can feel like watering a piece of dead wood. But we know that, with God, even dead wood will someday bear fruit. Our patient waiting, as we put one foot in front of the other, recommitting ourselves to each new day, is the only way through.

          Many of you probably know the popular song, “On Eagles’ Wings.” It clearly echoes the eagle image in today’s reading from Isaiah. The chorus goes: “He will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand.” But, wait a minute. All of the verses taken together do not seem to honor the struggles of our very real weariness. “If you are with God,” the song seems to say, “then nothing bad will ever happen to you. You will be ‘raised up,’ riding effortlessly on the wings of God’s giant eagle.

The Hebrew words of the text from Isaiah, however, don’t actually say that we will be raised up on eagles’ wings. Instead, the Hebrew says that those who wait on the Lord will stretch out their wings as the eagles. God isn’t going to plop us down on an eagle so that we can soar into the sky, away from our tasks on this earth. Isaiah is telling us that, if we trust in God, then we will be willing to stand on the edge of the cliff and hold out our wings, waiting to be carried out of our exile by the breath of God. As the Psalmist writes, “For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly my hope is in God.”^[7]

Think for a minute about Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in today’s Gospel. Jesus comes to her on her sickbed and “raises her up.” He cures her of her sickness and makes her whole again. But he doesn’t send her soaring into the sky into a life of ease and luxury. The text says that she gets up and begins to serve the men! Now, no modern woman cares for this passage. It is clearly the product of a time in which the only role of women was to take care of the household and to offer hospitality to visitors. We don’t need to restrict women to this role in order to find meaning in the text, however. The verb, “to serve” is the Greek “diakonia,” the root from which we get the English word “deacon.” Clearly, this woman’s service was the kind of service to which we are all called as followers of Christ. More importantly, though, Jesus is lifting her up from sickness to her own life. She is not transformed into someone totally different than who she was before. She is brought back from death to herself, to wholeness of mind, spirit, and body.^[8] She is restored to who she truly is, without the weariness of disease. Being totally oneself, serving as one was born to serve, is one of the joys of being human.

There is a prayer in our Book of Common Prayer that is made for our weary Pandemic days. Pray with me:

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me more ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the spirit of Jesus. Amen.^[9]

 

This is the prayer of the eagle who stands in exile on the edge of the cliff, waiting for the wind to come. This is a prayer that we can pray as we struggle to care, to walk through the repetitive tasks of life, to persevere in times of trouble. God doesn’t expect us to live our lives on our own power, doing everything ourselves, flapping our wings more and more frantically. But God does expect us to trust God enough to stretch out our wings in readiness daily and to wait, finding our rest in prayer.

 

 

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^[1] JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Found at Quote by J.R.R. Tolkien: “I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am be...” (goodreads.com)

^[2] Susan E.W. Spencer, “Mental Health Concerns Rise as COVID Fatigue Deepens.” UMass Med News, December 10, 2020. Found at As COVID fatigue deepens, mental health concerns rise (umassmed.edu).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Amanda Solliday, “Wellness Advice While Dealing with Cold Weather and Covid Fatigue.” Duke Today, February 4, 2021. Found at Wellness Advice While Dealing with Cold Weather and COVID Fatigue | Duke Today.

^[5] John Claypool, quoted in Peter Jonker, “To Walk and Not Faint,” 2020-02-23-PM-To-Walk-and-Not-Faint-Jonker-Isaiah-40.27-31-2020-email.pdf (lagrave.org).

^[6] Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.)

^[7] Psalm 62:6

^[8] Karoline Lewis, “On Being Restored to Yourself,” Working Preacher, February 1, 2015. Found at On Being Restored to Yourself - Working Preacher from Luther Seminary.

^[9]The Book of Common Prayer 1979, 461.