Not Me!

Luke 19:1-10

Why do we like Zaccheaus but never want to identify ourselves with him and his ilk?

 

As kids growing up on a farm post WWII we loved to play war games. Near our house was a hillock full of granite boulders and broken craggy trees providing an ideal spot to build forts from which to recreate great imaginative battles. The problem was no-one wanted to be the baddy. Everyone wanted to be the goody. So we often ended up defended ourselves from imaginary enemies who threatened the safety of the world!

 

Nobody wanted to be or identified as the baddies then, and no one wants to do so when they grow up. We can easily recognise the failure and faults of others and easily draw a line between ourselves and “them”, because we always find a way to be seen to be a goody. We exaggerate our perception of ourselves as being good people and are often blind to our baser nature and our real selves. Rarely do we see the sin of others in our own actions, thoughts and words. We are always in the right.

 

When we read the gospel stories, such as Luke’s story about Zaccheaus, we are appalled at the elitist position of the Pharisees and take a stand next Zaccheaus, defending him from the nasty Pharisees. Yet Zacchaeus was a thief, a robber, a person who did indeed spend much of his time taking money from the poor to feed the rich – that is himself. He was no angel. He was indeed a villain.

 

I would suggest he would be someone we would rather not be seen with, let alone share a meal with. If he moved in next door we wouldn’t invite him over for a welcome drink. Zaccheaus was no good. Yet we defend him and not the Pharisees. We fail to see ourselves in the Pharisees or in the bad guy.

 

Jesus not just says hello but goes home with Zaccheaus. Zaccaheus makes a big statement about returning what he had taken, rather grandiosely, and Jesus pronounces salvation has been witnessed. Those standing by condemn both of them. They stand with neither Jesus nor the chief tax collector.

 

And this is too easily the default position we can take for ourselves, the place of immunity, untouched by faults exhibited by others unable to place ourselves among them. In an individualistic worldview, the fault always occur elsewhere. It is not I but you who does these things I abhor.

 

Along with this goes the act of accepting inappropriate behaviour from those who are apart of our inner circle or those we spend time with. We are blind to the fact that some around me, if not me, are behaving badly. We make excuses, allow things to go on unchecked and refuse to call out bad behaviour because they are ‘nice people’, ‘well intentioned’, ‘mean no harm’.

 

The church has found itself caught in this trap. Abuse of all kinds have been tolerated, ignored, excused with statements like these. We have found it difficult to recognise sin in ourselves and in others because we want to see all those around us as good people. Therefore we tolerate behaviour that would elsewhere be called out and dealt with as inappropriate.

 

Much of such behaviour is entrenched and requires deep and honest self reflection by individuals and by communities to change. It is painful, costly and lengthy. The tax collector makes a start in the euphoria of the moment but will have to actually put his words into costly and embarrassing action. He will have to admit to the extent of his inappropriate behaviour. There are no shortcuts.  He will have to confront people who are understandably angry, upset and very unforgiving yet that what it means to be saved in an ongoing manner. Salvation is a process and he will find the process difficult.

 

The church and us here at St Oswald’s are on a similar path. Due to the types of behaviours which have been allowed to occur in the past and continue to day, not just child abuse but the more subtle, and sometimes not so subtle manipulation of others to get our way, we are faced with making changes which protect and support all.

 

The Diocese has developed a comprehensive process for dealing with such issues and we will explore this more fully in January with a seminar on such. Until that time there will be several changes occurring around the parish to ensure the safety of all. For example, the parish centre will become the hub of parish life. All staff will work out of the parish centre to ensure people are supported. All appointments to discuss any issue with staff (vicar, secretary, organist or choir director) will be scheduled and held within the parish centre when the centre is open and staffed. A new approach to governance is being adapted for the parish to ensure we comply with best practice and the changes to the new Diocesan governance act.

 

These may seem cumbersome but are necessary because, whether we like it or not, not everyone we encounter is perfect, like we are. Like Jesus we recognise that the tax collector has to start somewhere on his process of redemption. Simply by recognising the tasks he needs to carry out he has taken the first steps towards salvation. Those around Jesus and the Zachheaus are yet to do so. They are still transferring their failures onto the baddy and holding fast to their righteousness.

 

The world outside the church is looking at us for the signs of accountability and repentance and until we are honest with ourselves and face up to our sins they will remain critical and sceptical of us.

 

So where do we start? Well, we could begin by:

 

• Being aware of why we do and say things to others;
• Being mindful of the impact our words and actions may have on others;
• Being mindful of personal space and boundaries;
• Thinking before we speak and ensuring what we say is appropriate for the person, time and place;
• Being prepared to honestly reflect on our motivations  - what is behind what we want to do?;
• Being mindful of the big picture and not just what we want to achieve?
• Being aware that we are to be concerned with our behaviour and not pointing the finger at another, the sin here of the bystanders.

 

Zaccheaus encounters Jesus and begins the long road back to redemption in his society. Whether he ever made that journey, we will never know. But Jesus endorsed his commitment to do so and his willingness to begin the process of deep personal assessment necessary. In AA, an important part of the process to sobriety is to write an inventory of all whom you have hurt and then to look at how you can set things right. It takes honesty, humility and great courage to do so. Zaccheaus had that ahead of him.

  

As we the church begins to put right what we have made wrong, as we as individuals in the church reflect on the role we have played and may continue to play in continuing inappropriate behaviours, we too have a long road ahead of us. Like Zaccheaus we can commit ourselves today to the necessary self awareness to make that possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Who is The Villain?

Luke 18:9-14

 

One of the criticisms the teenagers in my chapel would make is that all Christians are hypocrites; that is they say one thing and do another; that they make demands on others they are unable to keep themselves. They got a shock when I agreed with them and stated very clearly that I too was a hypocrite.

 

At my peak I am very ordinary, and I am not at my peak at the moment. This is something I remind myself of daily. I am a work in progress and like all works in progress I am not complete and I am working toward that day when I will be as close as possible to average as I can be.

 

In todays Gospel we are given another insight into prayer which is too easily trivialised as the distinction between the righteous and the sinner here represented by the Pharisee and the tax collector. We always seem to come down on the side of the tax collector and disparage the Pharisee as the villain of the story.

 

The Pharisees are always the villains, not necessarily in the parables as Jesus tells them but in the retelling of the parables by Christians after the birth of the church. We always need villains, some one to blame and in our modern society this has become an art form. We have replaced Pharisees with “them” who ever we wish them to be. They are always the reason everything is going to custard. It is never our fault.

 

John Meier suggests an interesting insight:  “Jesus would have interacted more with them than with any other Jewish movement or party (because) both Jesus and the Pharisees shared a consuming desire to bring all Israel, not just an esoteric sect or a privileged elite, to the complete doing of God's will as laid out in the Law and the prophets. Jesus and the Pharisees agreed on many basic points: God's free election of Israel, his gift of the Law, the need to respond wholeheartedly to the Law's demands in one's everyday life, God's faithful guidance of Israel through history to a future consummation involving the restoration of Israel, a final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and perhaps some sort of eschatological or messianic figure as God's agent in the end time. At the same time, disagreements were inevitable”. They were not the villains but became so because of how the stereotype of the Pharisee (and the adjective, "Pharisaic") has played out in Christian history. This can be seen in the way that Jewish faith has been represented by Christians as legalistic and hypocritical, in contrast to the heartfelt and authentic faith of Christians."

 

 

What is the Pharisees sin as portrayed in this story? William Loader suggests "The message of Jesus is quite sharp: bolstering one’s sense of identity by disparaging others (even when they are terrible sinners) so easily leads to illusions of grandeur and a failure to see ourselves as we really are." Are the Pharisees alone in this or is there a sense that the story, as retold by the Gospel writer or editors joins in such a sin? Are they not disparaging the Pharisees to make a point? That point being that one should see oneself for who one is – a sinner, a hypocrite as my students would say, for we are all in the same leaky boat.

 

The difference here is that the real villain in the story is the tax collector. According to Kathleen Corley, “ tax collectors are connected in Greco-Roman literature with those who trafficked in prostitution and slavery, particularly to brothel keepers and pimps, those responsible for supplying women and slaves for banquets”. This particular tax collector is self aware and honest, at this point any way, about his situation. The challenge for him and his cohort is what happens next. Do they remain part of the problem or become part of the solution to the systemic injustice they are a key part of? Our eagerness to condemn the Pharisees gets in the way of a realistic response to the entrenched behaviour of the tax collector and his acquaintances.

 

Neither of the protagonists get off easy. Both have some work to do. Both have to have a realistic look at their behaviour towards others and neither can claim the moral or spiritual high ground.  

 

Yes, the Pharisees and those of us who see ourselves as privileged and entitled need to get it into perspective – at our peak we are very ordinary and we are rarely at our peak and therefore can not claim to be better than others. The tax collector reminds us that we have indeed behaved badly, more than we often wish to see, in ways that have diminished others and need to admit such before both God and others.

 

• Prayer is about honesty – about being honest with ourselves and with God – but with ourselves first. Then and only then can we take the steps to put right what we put wrong and continue to strive for the best.

• Prayer is about enough – in this case about the fact that our ordinary efforts to live out the way of Christ is enough. We do not have to disparage others to bolster our own standing. We are enough, even with all our faults we have many positive moments where we do get it right.

• Prayer is about being ok – I’m  O.K – You’re O.K. despite the fact we are conflicted with passions and wounds, loss and  grief and a history that speaks into our life today. The Pharisee was O.K. and didn’t need to disparage another; the tax collector was O.K. but he had some more work to do.

• Prayer is about humility, but it must be an honest humility. The Pharisee and those like him are challenged to be humble and the tax collector is challenged to prove his humility is real. It is not enough to say I am a sinner, one must take steps to conversion, the complete change in behaviour required as part of such humility. 

• Prayer is about God’s grace – God knows and understands us, and although God seeks us to be the best we can be, is able to work with our humanity. That is the great truth of the incarnation. God so trusted the human form that God became one with it in the form of Jesus of Nazareth.

 

This parable is another difficult story and is as relevant to the church today as it was to the religious of Jesus time. The church, you and I, is being asked to stand where the tax collector stood, moving away from the position of the privileged and the powerful as we were in the past, and to admit that our arrogance has been responsible for great sin.

 

Like the tax collector we are to recognise this and be transformed into the body of Christ, the disciples of the way. Amen.

The Way of Kindness

Luke 18:1-8

 

Over the last few months I have noticed the power of  moral outrage to distract humanity from the larger questions facing society. Footy grand finals hype, Pauline Hanson’s outrageous statements, the Buddgy 9’s outrageous behaviour in Malaysia, the theft of Kim Kardashians ring and the outrageous words of Donald Trump, have all been effective in shifting the focus of humanity, you and I, from the big issues needing to be seriously addressed. We are entranced by the stupidity we hear and fail to focus on what really matters – the big issues.

 

The problem may be the size of the big issues. They seem intractable, out of the scope of our responsibility, beyond our personal experience. These are questions we know exist – the genocide of the relentless bombing of Alleppo by all sides including Australia, the limitless killing of citizens in the Phillipines, the continuing imbalance in wealth and opportunity that favours certain classes in society and the unnecessary detaining of children and others in refugees camps and detention centres. And that’s not all. Here at home we have the question of how we engage with the sovereign nations who were here before western occupation, marriage equality, unemployment, homelessness and more.

 

Our reading of the gospel story today often stays firmly in one place. We read it as teaching us about persistence in prayer, how we are to be faithful and continuing to pray for what we need until we are heard by God. 

 

William Loader  observes:

“... it is missing the mark if we treat the passage as a general teaching about intercessory prayer. It is primarily about the yearning for change. It was very appropriate that the story told of a poor widow. She represents a behaviour, but she also represents the poverty and vulnerability which is the point of the parable’s message. The story has been shaped in the cruelty of exploitation and the arbitrary abuse of power. It belongs in the world which Jesus is addressing. Jesus is reading the signs in the wounds of the people. The contours of their devastation shape the structures of his thought, because this is where he belongs and these are the people whose cries he hears.”

 

Reading this as a treatise on prayer ignores the social context in which Jesus sets this story. Here we have a marginalised woman, a widow who has no man to look after her and still needs to find accommodation and sustenance. She knocks on her neighbours door. If she is marginalised she probably has no home and is living rough. It is hardly likely that she has a house and lives next door to a wealthy and titled person such as a judge. In our terms she is a beggar knocking on doors looking for help.

 

Jesus has the judge first ignore the pleas for help and only out of this persons annoying behaviour does he finally throw a loaf or two her way. There was no compassion, no sense of duty, no understanding of the plight of the widow. It was simply throwing crumbs to the dogs to shut them up.

 

This passage of scripture shows how we ignore the real issues and deal only with the presenting problem – annoying woman who needs justice. Much of our responses to the pressing needs in society take this form. Charity hand outs, welfare doled out as if we are being used, unfair restrictions on the provision of employment support or accommodation for refugees or assistance for the disabled or the granting of recognition for the first nations people in our constitution instead of negotiating a treaty with the sovereign nations we live amongst.

 

The judge is confronted by the social ills of society. He is confronted in this story as one who is part of the problem but one who has the capacity to solve the problem. Poverty is not, and still is not, a private issue. It is systemic and finds its source in the ego self who sees entitlement and aloofness as a right. The much vaunted failure of Donald Trump to pay taxes and others assertion that we all should strive to pay as little tax as possible are only possible because we have a system which encourages and allows such actions.

 

Jesus is challenging those listening to address the plight of the poorest of the poor, to do more than the paltry efforts of the judge. The image of the judge brings to the front of mind one who is responsible for dispensing justice, yet the best he can do isa response out desperation to get her off his back. Perhaps this raises the question: can the system actually reform itself or are those within the system so entangled that they are unable to step back and see what is needed?

  

Is the widow the only source of hope in this story? The actions of the poor are needed to wake up those in power. The voice of the poor must be heard and to do so one must never give up proclaiming God’s preference for the poor. We have no choice but join with those on the outside to find a way to reform what is broken. It is the mission Jesus took for himself at the beginning of his ministry from Isaiah and it is the foundation of the great commission -  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28)

 

This is not about personal salvation but about the institution of the Way of Jesus and the way of Jesus is the way of kindness – justice – compassion.  We as disciples of the Way are to join hands and voices with the poor and advocate for change. We are to reflect on how complicit we are in this system and what we can do to live more justly the way of Christ in our daily living. We are challenged to avoid the sensational distractions and return again and again to the issues needing resolution. We are to ask why this is so and to avoid the easy answers of those who want to maintain the status quo. We are to join hands with those of different faiths, ideologies and political allegiances who are working to institute kindness – justice – compassion (or the Way of Christ) in the world. The Spirit of Christ is already at work in places and people, philosophies and ideologies , faiths and practices different from ours yet committed to the way of Christ in word and deed.

 

This is a troublesome parable, no wonder the authorities finally got sick of Jesus and dispensed with him. Drawing people away from the bread and circuses and reorienting them on the real issues is disturbing, to say the least.

 

The Way of Christ remains a troubling practice but one we have no option but to follow. Amen. 

9 to 1

Luke 17:11-19

 

Standing in the old section of the Burwood Cemetery we were surrounded by the graves of young children, many of whom were under the age of 12. The two teenagers with us were intrigued as to why this was the case. We explained that 3 or more generations ago people died young of diseases we no longer see as fatal – measles, chicken pox, colds, appendicitis and more. Also those who lived didn’t enjoy the same preferred position in families as they do to day. Education above primary school was rare and the idea of a career of their choice simply not on the agenda.

 

For these two young men, this story was both foreign and outside of their experience. What they took for granted simply wasn’t available to those young people whose headstones dotted the immediate surrounds. It was for them, and possibly is for some of us, almost impossible to imagine a world different to theirs/our experience. As a result we can fall into the trap of taking what we have now as always being the way it was.

 

We take life, our life for granted and when something happens contrary we become anxious and angry that our expectations are not met. Our life has become narcissistic to the point that we cannot imagine it being any other way than it is now. If it is out of balance we seek to regain the life we are used to without being grateful when we do.

 

This little pericope of Jesus is not so much about gratitude but about the expectation of entitlement, taking life for granted. 10 people encounter Jesus. All 10 are sick and have an illness described here as leprosy. It may not have been leprosy in the strict definition, but because of a skin ailment their lives were out of balance. The normal life function of relationships, work and religious practice was not available to them. They were outcasts, marginalised by their illnesses and seeking to find a way to become participants, once again, in the normal activities of life.

 

They meet Jesus, and are healed. Jesus sends them on their way, 9 keep going, only one stops, turns around and says thanks. It is here that Jesus pronounces, ““Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Now this raises some interesting questions. We are told that all are healed, but only this one is made well, what does that mean? Is gratitude evidence of something more than healng the physical illness? Is wellness different or deeper than the physical cleansing? Is faith more than simply wanting something good to happen, is it about depth, deep speaking unto deep, where we glean the truth that something more is at work here than physical healing?

 

Many years ago, when I attended AA, I used to notice that there were at least two groups of people at meetings, those for whom the joy of life had returned in soberiety and those who, while sober, still moaned about how difficult it was each day. The latter would stand at every meeting they attended and go on and on about how hard it was to be sober, the temptations, the difficulties and then lapse into a protracted sense of martyrdom for continuing to remain sober. Somehow we were to applaud their stoicism in the face of great strife.

 

An old AA man would say, “Any one can get sober, only a few master sobriety.” A very wise statement reflected in our story today. Any one can get healed, only a few master the art of living well. The Samaritan begins the journey by stopping, turning around and recognising the hope he has received.

 

The other 9 took it all for granted. Life went on with their ego self at the centre of all things; the only difference was they no longer had the skin disease. Had anything really changed for them? Were they convinced that this was their right and finally all had returned to the way it always was before they got sick?

 

The Samaritan’s faith made him well. Jesus distinguishes between the 9 and the 1 by recognising the 1’s faith, a faith that was only activated when he stopped, took stock, turned around and recognised the source of his healing. Faith here refers to a conviction that results in reflection and metanoia, a complete about face or change in direction. The 9 were healed by God’s grace; the 1 was made well by his awareness of the mystery lying at the centre of his experience of Jesus.

 

Wellness is more than healing, and sometimes, is present when there is no healing. People are well when they recognise the joy and hope of life in the midst of illness, tragedy and loss. People are well when they retain their balance and embrace challenges, opportunities and possibilities despite the lack of healing or closure. People are well when they are able to grasp the mystery of creation in all things they encounter.

 

This is a story about great hope hidden in the everyday we take for granted. Like the 9, we are so busy going on, we miss the gems staring us in the face. As my father would say if we couldn’t see or find something; “If it had been a snake it would have bitten you”. In other words we miss the bleeding obvious in search of the more we not ready to receive. The 9 were excited to be normal that they forget to receive fully what they had been given.

 

How easy it is for us to do this in our lives. Materially we live in a world full of extraordinary experiences we take for granted. We have possessions, experiences, opportunities people of past generations could never have imagined, yet we act as if that is the way it has always been. We expect the stuff we have without a thought of gratitude. We take for granted stuff people in 2/3’rds of the world have never had – fresh water, accommodation, regular meals, work and access to health services. We get upset when the Internet is down, winds blow over power poles and the freeway is blocked because we take it for granted we can get our way with life. We become one of the 9 and fail to recognise just how blessed we are.

 

Spiritually human beings have made themselves the centre of the Good News, more so, we as individuals have made ourselves the unique project of the incarnation and the resurrection. Somehow that story is all about us and we take it for granted that we have God on speed dial, that God only has eyes for us. Modern individualism makes us sure of our place in God’s plan that we get upset when things don’t go our way. Why has this happened? Why me? What have I done? We walk away with the 9 unaware that there is more at work here than meets the cursory glance. Spiritually we are challenged to stop, reflect and turn around, embracing the unknown just below the surface.

 

Until we do we will continue to walk in the footsteps of the 9. Amen. 

A Flawed Text

Luke 17:5-10

 

Last week we explored the importance of language and names, and the power inherent in both to embed ideas, common practices and standardised responses to situations and experiences.

 

Todays Gospel reading continues this idea, not so much in the reading itself, but in how we read it. Moreover, it challenges how we read the Bible itself and the impact we think it has on society and our lives. A close reading of the Bible may lead us to conclude what we thought we read, what we think it says, what we believe it gives us is in error.

 

As Christians we tend to read the Bible as Christians, moreover as post-enlightenment western rational Christians. This means we run the risk of reading back into the passages we open, the ideas and societal practices of a modern world into what is a localised, time specific ancient text replete with the ideas and practices of that age and place.

 

If we read the Bible as the literal word of God may interpret these difficult passages in such a way as they become normative, requiring obedience and acceptance as to such issues, placing us at odds with the modern sensibilities in areas as the place of women in the world and church, interfaith dialogue, gender equality and more.

 

If we read the Bible as a moral text designed to give rules for ethical and moral practice we will look for universal standards hidden within these difficult texts written for a particular time and place. They are not there.

 

If we read the Bible as a resource to empower our experience we may be challenge to compare our experience with what is written and come to an accommodation based on reason and practice, aware that this collection of texts speaks into our lives, not literally or morally, but as a flickering light in the dimness of our experience. As Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

 

Today’s reading raises questions for modern Christians. The temptation with the lectionary reading is to talk about the question of faith in verses 5-6. This is a comfortable and relatively safe place to go. Rarely do you hear a sermon on the problematic passage that follows.

 

“The story assumes not only the acceptance of slavery, but an honour/shame social system in which honour is presumed to lie with the powerful while the subservient have no inherent dignity. This mindset now stands in stark contrast to the values expressed in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], which asserts the dignity and worth of each and every human person.

 

These are the liberal values of contemporary secular Western societies, although they are often attacked by both Western Neo-Conservatives as well as by Two-Thirds World leaders who resent Western cultural and political domination. They are not biblical values, even if many people see them as vaguely Christian in character. They have more to do with the spirit of the Enlightenment than with traditional religious views of humanity and society.”[1]

 

We are challenged by Luke to understand Jesus as a Jewish man of his time, drawing on the accepted moral and ethical practices that normalised society and, in this case, accepting these for what they were. Jesus does not challenge slavery and neither does Paul, but appeals to the relationship between master and slave as demonstrated in this story as being commendable and appropriate.

 

There is no reward for doing your duty, for doing what is expected of you within a master slave relationship. Now we could spend time reading back into this passage the idea of God as master and human beings as slaves who are simple required to obey God their master without any sense of reward or an option to do otherwise. If we did what does this say about the character of God and the value of human beings? Are we worthless slaves under oath to a master, if so what’s the point? None of this sits well with our modern understanding of the inherent dignity of each person deserving respect and right relations?

 

As we have seen on many occasions, passages from the Old and New Testament seem to sit contrary to what we perceive to be the message of love we are told sits beneath each. The truth is that the Bible is a flawed text insofar as it assumes and promotes such things as slavery, demon possession, ethnic cleansing, racial superiority, a three-tiered universe, and the subordination of women. The Bible does not fit neatly with our cultural assumptions, as this week's Gospel reminds us. The immense spiritual value of the Bible may lie more in its capacity to empower our human quest than its ability to (re)solve our immediate challenges.[2]

 

Here is the importance of the Bible. It is to be read as a light into the dimness of our experience, not as the definitive word of God, a moral or ethical text or a historical text. It is a text written in a particular time and place which if read mystically, that is read in conjunction with our spiritual and life experience, speaks truth into our lives. To reduce the Bible by reading any other way reduces both its worth and its impact. Just as when it was written and spoke clearly to the experience of those who read it, when it is read today without the pre-condition that it fits our ideas it enlightens our way in mysterious and often counterintuitive ways.

 

The Bible is a spiritual or mystical text, to be explored with open hearts and minds so that it speaks its truth to each of us in ways we can hear, see and feel.

 

The fact that the Bible is flawed and seems to advocate values at odds with modern sensibilities, for me, speaks to its authenticity as a mystical text. It reflects its time and place, the people who wrote it were modern people of their time and Jesus was indeed an ordinary Palestinian Jew caught up in the ethos of his time.  The fact that this text is at odds with the enlightened understanding of human dignity we live with today speaks of the movement of the resurrected Christ, the Spirit who has continued the project Jesus began. We are not to be people of a static reading of the Bible, but engaged human beings we progress that project through the broadening of the thought and teachings of Jesus.

 

The challenge maybe, for us today, to revisit how we listen and hear the Bible as it is read in church or at home, and to look for the mystical leading of the spirit, uncovering the truth to lighten our way in the dimness of our faith. Amen

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[1] Jenks

[2] Jenks