Sacrifice and Salvation

 Preached at Silverton Friends Church

April 28, 2024

William Blake wrote a poem: “To God / If you have form’d a circle to go into / Go into it yourself and see how you would do.” This is exactly what God did in the Son, Jesus. Jesus came into the world, our circle, and we can see how God did and what God did in that circle.

Central to Christian belief is that God loved the world in this way: Jesus came as God’s only begotten Son to seek for and save the lost so that they might not perish. Jesus said that he came not to condemn the world, but so that the world through him could be saved. He was killed for his message of inclusive grace and and for teaching the need to align one’s heart and words and deeds and for his insistence that he would not play the game of power so dear to human beings.

Jesus’s choice to embrace sacrifice and the result that we now are at one with God have been preached around the world.  The way we explain to ourselves why Jesus died at the hands of human beings has enormous significance for how we view God and ourselves and our mutual relationship. I think that each explanation can cite passages from the Bible in support. The discussion, and even enmity, around these explanations underlines the centrality of sacrifice for Christians. Some Christians are uncomfortable and perhaps even queasy about the idea of such a sacrifice being necessary. So I want to think with you about the distinction between being a sacrifice and being a victim, and spoiler alert, the distinction centers on agency.

Probably most obvious is that a victim suffers without having chosen it.  I think about the near death of Isaac in the Old Testament.  The story goes like this: after decades of waiting for a son with his wife Sarah, God sent her a son.  Now, what often goes unsaid is that Abraham had an older son with Sarah’s slave, Hagar, which was apparently an acceptable version of surrogacy in those times.  Ishmael could have inherited, but he would have been known to be the son of the slave. But God showed up to Abraham and promised that Sarah, in her 90s, would have a baby, too.  And she did, recognizing the joke on her by calling him Isaac, which means laughter.  She forced Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael so Isaac would be the only son, and he did. In this case, both Hagar and Ishmael were victims of Sarah’s jealousy and Abraham’s spinelessness.  But God stepped in and met Hagar and led her and Ishmael to water and safety. You can read this whole story in Genesis 12-23.

Then, when Isaac was old enough to help carry firewood, God told Abraham to take him up on a mountain and offer him up to God at that place. I have wondered whether this took place in a culture that practiced human sacrifice, but I don’t know. Abraham followed God’s instructions, even proceeding to the point of tying Isaac on top of the firewood, lifting his hand with the knife in it. God halted the proceedings at that point, saying, “Now I know that you are in awe of God—you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” And God provided a ram for the sacrifice instead of the boy.  

If Abraham had gone through with the offering, he would have sacrificed, but Isaac would have been the victim, having had no choice in the matter. However, like his banished brother Ishmael, Isaac got to witness God taking care of him when God provided the ram in his place. This is God’s repeated posture in the scripture—identifying with the victim, caring for the victim.

I’ve speculated about this story more than once, wondering why an omniscient God had to find out whether Abraham would be obedient, wondering if instead Abraham had to find out whether he would be obedient. God only knows what lessons God wanted Abraham to draw from that incident, but it’s likely Isaac did not draw the same ones. I’ve wondered how Isaac viewed his father after this event, and how Isaac viewed his father’s God. I’ve thought about how it connects up with Jesus saying that anyone who loves father and mother and wife and children more than they love Jesus is not worthy of him (Matthew 10:37-39). Or even more shockingly, Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.(Luke 14:26, NRSV). These passages, particularly the reference to hatred, make me so uncomfortable. I had to try to soften them, and the word itself does not actually permit softening.  So we have to look at how Jesus behaved as he followed the Spirit of God to help us understand. What does it look like to live putting everything second to God’s Spirit?

Jesus had no wife or children, though people like to speculate, and the possibility is that because his conception was irregular, he was in something of a marginalized position in Jewish society. He did have a mother, and we can look at how he treated her in order to understand what he said.  At the age of 12, which is the Jewish age of manhood, he let her know he would put God’s business first. He listened to her and granted her request at the marriage in Cana, turning the water into wine, but he pushed back, rebuking her a little.  When she came to see him, worried he was in danger of losing mind and life, he refused to go out to see her, saying, “My mother and family are those who hear the word of God and do it.” But when he was dying, he committed her welfare to the disciple he loved, John, who from that day took her into his family. He let her know that obedience to God was top priority, making Mom happy was second at most, but he cared for her.

Further, I want to point out that Jesus also called to account those religious people who let their parents suffer while they designated big sums for the temple, and he condemned those who made it hard for children to approach and trust him and his Father. He said that what people do to the little ones they do to him, so all that has to be carried in the mind while meditating on the absoluteness of the call of God on our lives. Following God first does not mean carelessness about those we love or cruelty to our neighbors.

Jesus made his all or nothing statements in reference to the decision to follow him, so we need to observe closely and intelligently what Jesus did with his life.  Crucially, he depended always on God to tell him what to do and how to do it.  “I do only what I see the Father doing,” he said.

One way Jesus resembled his Father is in looking beyond surfaces to see what another human being is prioritizing. He looked at the rich young ruler and saw that, despite his goodness, what he held as a priority was riches. So he said, “Give them away and come follow me.” He looked at Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and saw that they prioritized their family business and heritage as fishermen. So he said, “Come follow me and I’ll make you fishers for human beings.” He looked at Nicodemus and saw he prioritized his age and intelligence and knowledge of the law. So he said, “You must start over as a new baby in order to follow me.” He looked at Judas and saw he prioritized political expediency and personal advantage. So he said, “Make your choice about what to do and choose quickly.” He looked at the woman caught in the act of adultery and saw she prioritized being desired and desiring. So he said, “Go and sin no more.” He looked at Pharisees and saw them basking in superiority about their knowledge and observance of the law. So he said, “You exempt yourselves from the spirit of the law by following your interpretation of the letter, and you make it impossible for others to measure up. Unless you change direction, you are the children of the devil.” He looked at Zacchaeus and saw that he prioritized getting to see Jesus at the cost of personal dignity. So he said, “Come down and I’ll eat with you.” And Zacchaeus said, “I’ll repay everyone I’ve defrauded and pay damages as well.” 

Some of these people indeed set aside what they had made central to their lives and identities, choosing to follow Jesus. Occasionally they expressed the feeling that they hoped this would pay off tangibly somehow, and occasionally Jesus pointed out that how people treated him was a good indication of how they would treat those who follow him.

When Jesus chose to allow himself to be arrested and crucified, he sacrificed himself despite all his human fear of pain, his ordinary desire for life and happiness. In the garden he sweated drops of blood as he contemplated his near future of torture and death, and on the cross he cried out his sense of abandonment by God. He protested against pain and death and aloneness, but he held fast to his intention because it brought and brings good for us. His ultimate act of agency was choosing to forgive his torturers. Forgiveness reclaims agency and is so good for our souls when we come to a place where we find it possible.

Jesus said that there is no greater love than this, that a person will lay down their life for a friend.  Paul said that some might be brave enough to die for a good person. but we know God really loves us all, because Christ died for, as Paul puts it, the ungodly (Romans 5).  Jesus said that he himself is the good shepherd, and what makes him good is that he lays down his life for the sheep, unlike the hired hand, who runs for his life (John 10). We are the sheep of God’s pasture (Ps. 121). What we learn by observing and listening to Jesus is that God has acted and eternally acts sacrificially for our good. 

Jesus was clear that there is a cost to discipleship, and that top priority would always have to be listening to what God’s Spirit says and doing what God’s Spirit says to do. And Jesus warns us not to judge others for how well they’re doing this hard work, noting that the severity of our judgment will rebound onto us. 

God always knew that the only way to make clear how much God loves us is to show us God’s Son entering into our world to be a willing sacrifice, enduring the results of human choices. It’s as if God was willing to go through the experience Abraham was spared in order to cement our understanding of how much God is committed to loving us. This kind of sacrifice was and is chosen by the one who will be sacrificed. Because of what Jesus chose, we see that we can trust God with our whole selves and lives. 

Approval vs. Obedience

John 15:18-27

Preached at North Valley Friends Church

March 31, 2019

I was out walking the other day, thinking semi-random thoughts, and this one came to me: “Give us this day our daily bread” does not refer to my daily need for approval. In point of fact, needing approval has been a weakness of mine that has given others the opening to manipulate me, even into doing things I disapprove of.  I would give examples but they are too embarrassing. 

I remember when I had just gone through an involuntary detox from approval seeking, and found myself in contention for the job of yearly meeting superintendent, and getting that job required the APPROVAL of the YM.  Quakers call for “approval” in our non-voting decision-making. It sets some of us up for pathology.

So it comes as an unpleasant shock to hear Jesus say as reported in Luke in the anti-beatitudes: “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that’s how their ancestors spoke of false prophets” (Luke 6:36). 

And here, in this passage from John, Jesus says, “I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it; that is why the world hates you.” That’s even worse than having a few detractors, even worse than failing to win universal approval.

So I have some questions. Who is this “world” character, anyway? The Gospel of John has at least 58 verses with Kosmos (the Greek for “world”) in it, sometimes twice, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined have around 16. The world is a constant presence in John’s Gospel, and it is almost always what we might term the human world—the world of crowds, of politics, of religion, of nations, of money, of education, of culture. It is the world humans always build around them—all the ways humans find to organize themselves and set up expectations with rewards and punishments. We can hardly move in a day without encountering systems, and we violate their norms at our peril.

And this world is hostile to Jesus and to Jesus’s followers.

Why?

When Jesus came into his calling and mission, he was not the first Messenger from God, the first wonder-worker his people had seen. He was not the first charismatic leader that crowds followed around. But he was the first one to do so with the public designation from God, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”

It isn’t clear how much of the crowd heard this as Jesus came up out of the water of the Jordan. His cousin John, who was baptizing, witnessed it. “I have seen it,” he said, “and I tell you that he is the Son of God.” Taken up in his spirit by God’s Spirit, John said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” But some time later, from a jail cell, John sent messengers to Jesus and asked, “Are you the one? I thought you were, but now, you’re not what I was looking for.”

Jesus answered, “The blind can see, the lame can walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf can hear, the dead are raised to life, and the good news is preached to the poor. Happy are those who have no doubts about me!” (Luke 7:22-23, Good News Bible)

We think from our vantage point, how sad that John couldn’t continue believing in Jesus as the chosen and sent one, the Son of God. If we saw a guy with these abilities, we think, we wouldn’t doubt that God had sent him. But just like then, today Jesus would act or refuse to act in ways that raised questions. I think we too would wonder.

In this gospel of John, Jesus frequently confronts expectations from his followers and pours cold water on the fire of their enthusiasms.

His mother asks him to do a little miracle regarding wine at a wedding to spare the hosts embarrassment. (This reminds me of a lot of my own prayers for Jesus to intervene in my life.) Jesus tells her, “You must not tell me what to do. It isn’t the right time.” The most baffling part of this story is that Jesus does do the miracle, and his mother appears never to doubt that he would do what she said. But even in the doing of the miracle, Jesus upends religious practice by using water containers set aside for ritual washings, which were so important to observant Jews. Suddenly, these are full of great wine (John 2). Christianity as it could be is, to quote Jacques Ellul, “an explosive ferment calling everything into question in the name of the truth that is in Jesus Christ, in the name of the incarnation.” (39) Note that phrase, “calling everything into question in the name of the truth that is in Jesus Christ.” Might that make anyone you know uncomfortable?

Jesus visits Jerusalem at Passover. When he comes to the outer courts of the Temple, he drives out the animals brought there to sell for sacrifices, and he turns over the tables of those who exchange money so that worshipers had the right coinage for religious purposes.  The marriage here of commerce and religion is one we can recognize when we look around our Christian subculture. Jesus said, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace” (John 2). The authorities said, “What miracle are you going to do to show you have the authority to reorganize the Temple?” And Jesus was right back at them, “Tear down this Temple and I will raise it up in three days.” He baffled the authorities rather than complying with their demand. Later, his followers realized he was talking about his body and the resurrection, but at the time, how preposterous! And notice how in identifying his body with the Temple of God, Jesus overturns the tables of religion as well.

Nicodemus visits Jesus at night to ask some questions quite respectfully. But Jesus says to him, “You have to start over, you have to be born all over spiritually. You can’t bring all this religion and whatnot with you if you want to follow me.  Just like the wind blows without your input or expertise, God’s Spirit moves me, and will move you too if you are reborn in your spirit” (John 3).

So we can see some reasons why following Jesus might be dangerous. First, Jesus undermines the power of religion. He violates the norms, he disrespects the system, and he asserts that he is as holy as the center of worship itself, and that God’s spirit tells him what to do and when. He is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and righteous.  People who are reborn and free from the rules of morality, religion, and hierarchy, but instead are obeying the whimsical Spirit of God rip the fabric of the human Kosmos. They are new wine in old bottles and the bottles burst. They are new cloth on old clothing and they tear holes rather than mend them.  The systems of the Kosmos, of the world, see them rightly as destroyers, and they hate, persecute, and kill them.

And it isn’t just religious leaders who recognize the threat that God’s Holy Spirit poses to the systems in place. The masses have their own systems that they want Jesus to fit himself into. They want a wonder-worker, and when Jesus makes wine out of water and feeds crowds of more than 5000 using some kid’s lunch, they know they’ve found their man. They like the healings and the resurrections. But Jesus refuses to let their desires be his guide. He calls them petulant children in the marketplace, complaining because they piped and he didn’t dance.

He tells them that he knows why they are following him—bread and miracles—and that unless they eat his body and drink his blood they have no part in him. He offers them springs of living water in themselves, the Spirit of God. He says he is the bread of life, he says he is the light that God sends into the world, and he says he is their only help and hope for freedom.

They shocked and appalled—they deny needing help—we have never been slaves—this saying is too hard—God is our father, too—come on, just tell us if you are the Messiah.

Jesus does not offend for his own ego reasons, his need to look special and chosen. He’s not speaking truth to power because he likes to annoy people. He says, and we can believe him, that everything he does and says is in obedience to what his Father tells him to do and say. His radical obedience to God is what is so upsetting to the systems he finds himself in conflict with.

And this passage we have before us from John 15 tells us that Jesus is sending the Spirit to fill us, the Spirit who reveals the truth about God and comes from God. This is the Spirit who moved Jesus through his days, from whom Jesus heard what to say and do and when to say and do it. No system in the world is going to welcome a person or group that bases their lives not on what the powers-that-be want or expect but on a relationship with the living and present God. 

I want us to keep two verses in mind as we listen today. “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls.”

And, from the same Jesus: “You who want to be my disciples will take up your cross daily and follow me.”

Jesus says, Put down your heavy loads and all the expectations of your country, your religion, your family, your followers, and just follow me. Listen to and obey God’s Spirit. This is your freedom and your daily cross.

I was pushed to read portions of Jacques Ellul’s The Subversion of Christianity as I thought about this passage in John 15. Ellul challenges us with the idea that the death and resurrection of Jesus has set us absolutely free. Both Jesus and Paul teach that those led by the Spirit are free in every respect. As Ellul phrases it, “a risk with no cover, a joyful and perilous acrobatic feat with no net!” (43)

He goes on to say that this radical freedom is not what humans are looking for. Freedom from hunger, freedom from fear, freedom from war, freedom from conflict, sure, but radical freedom? Not so much. Here’s how Ellul describes it:

[Radical freedom] carries frightening social risks and is politically insulting to every form of power. …On every social level and in every culture, people have found it impossible to take up this freedom and accept its implications. (43)

The freedom acquired in Christ presupposes perfect self-control, wisdom, communion with God, and love. It is an absolutely superhuman risk. It devastates us by demanding the utmost in consecration. Free, we are totally responsible. We constantly have to choose. (42)

For there is freedom only in permanent self-control and in love of neighbor. (167)

I agree with Ellul that absolute freedom is hard to embrace. I want habits, norms, guardrails, laws, insurance, peace treaties, and so on. But it is clear that Jesus was working without a net, living each act in obedience to God, finding himself not satisfying anyone and not being understood or approved of by anyone, even his mom. Now who wants to follow Jesus?

Well, a small determined part of many people does in fact want to follow Jesus, to be set free by the his life, death, and resurrection. For instance, I want to live in contact with God, I want to do what God tells me, I want this relationship to be alive, not static. Maybe you want that, too. 

My good dead friend, George MacDonald, challenges me every day with his insistence on charismatic obedience.

“Do you ask, “What is faith in [God]?” I answer, The leaving of your way, your objects, your self, and the taking of [God’s way and God’s self]; the leaving of your trust in [humans], in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as [God] tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this obedience.” 

“Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because [God] said, Do it, or once abstained because [God] said, Do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in [God], if you do not do anything [God’s Spirit] tells you.” 

So let me end by asking myself and you as well to consider that Jesus wants to partner with us in our daily lives and to lift from us the burden laid on us by human systems. Jesus wants us to be free. And as we learn to live in freedom, we ask God’s Spirit for help, we listen, and when we hear, we obey.

God’s Commitment to Us

Preached at Netarts Friends Church

Jan. 4, 2015

When I was a child, I believed God would abandon me at a moment’s notice despite my desire to be God’s child.  I’m pretty sure now that this idea came about from confusion about my relationship with my parents, who as missionaries did what was expected of them and took me off to boarding school at age 7.  I felt abandoned by them, despite the fact that we loved each other.  So why would I expect that God would be more committed to being with me than my own parents?

I am happy to report that God took steps to meet my small efforts at seeking relationship with God, steps that made clear to me that God loves me. Eventually, it became clear to me that God’s commitment to me was deep and wide and thorough, and that it did not come and go based on my behavior or attitude.  My hope today is that by reviewing two examples of God’s commitment to human beings in Scripture, you too will be convinced of God’s commitment to you, both as individuals and as a congregation.

When God made humans, God made space for human choice.  What that means is that we are separate from God, and that separation makes choice possible. But the separation is not hostile from God’s point of view. God did not make space for us in order to reject us but so that we can choose to love. A novel called Almighty Me had in it the problem for the central character of having for a short time the omnipotence of God and facing the fact that his wife was leaving him. He was sorely tempted to simply make her love him by means of his power, but it became clear to him that it would not be actual love. 

So love requires separate persons. God cares so much about a relationship of mutual love with humans that God makes space for them to be separate. 

We can see this separateness in the development of children. Birth separates them from their mothers. They move toward greater awareness of their separation as they acquire competencies like crawling, walking, feeding themselves, and speaking. Often each achievement is accompanied by some distress, perhaps on both the parents’ and the children’s part. Parents who see their children as extensions of themselves can damage their relationships with those children when the children discover they are not allowed to be separate individuals and hinder their children growing into maturity.

So my own testimony is that though I wanted to be God’s child from as far back as I remember, I mistrusted God’s love and underestimated God’s commitment to relationship with me, and thus spent a lot of my younger life afraid and angry.  However, as I became more open to God, to whatever God wanted for me, I discovered more and more that God wanted to love me, that God is committed to me, even when I fail or fall, and that part of God’s commitment is to help me grow up into maturity.

We can see an example of this commitment of God to a human being in the covenant God made with David.  David is one of the main characters in the Old Testament, and some of the best-known stories of the Bible are part of David’s story.  Here is God’s summary and covenant with David as he has become king and is planning to build God a house, a temple.

2 Samuel 7:8-15

Thus says the Lord of Hosts, I took you from the pasture from following the flock, to be ruler of My people Israel, and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut down all your enemies before you. Moreover, I will give you great renown like that of the greatest men on earth. I will establish a home for My people Israel, and I will plant them firm, so that they shall dwell secure and shall tremble no more… I will give you safety from all your enemies. The Lord declares to you that the Lord will establish a house for you. When your days are done and you lie with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your own issue, and I will establish his kingship. …I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to Me.  When he does wrong, I will chastise him with the rod of men and the affliction of mortals, but I will never withdraw My favor from him…

Some things to notice about what God says:  God will do this because God wants to do this. There is no mention of a contingency here based on David’s behavior or faithfulness to God.  A no-conditions covenant.  And God was faithful to this covenant with David. As a result, David found he could be generous to Saul’s surviving family, rather than eliminating all the competition. God was his guarantee of permanency.  However, David also committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and then engineered his death in battle, essentially murdering him to cover his crime.  As God promised, God disciplined David for this. God said, “because you have put Uriah to the sword, the sword shall never depart from your house.” The child of that adultery died in infancy despite David’s passionate prayers. And later, one of David’s sons Amnon manipulated David to gain access to a half-sister, Tamar, and raped her. Her full brother Absalom engineered the murder of  Amnon and then later attempted to usurp the throne from David.

We can read David’s prayer of repentance for the adultery and murder in Psalm 51. And we read that David was a man after God’s own heart. But what I want to point out is first that God made a covenant to stay in relationship with David that was unconditional, and that David did bad things and God stayed in the covenant relationship, which included discipline for those bad things.

When David first understood what God had promised, he responded with this prayer (2 Sam 7:18-29):

King David came and sat before the Lord, and he said: What am I, O Lord God, and what is my family that You have brought me thus far? Yet even this, O Lord God, has seemed too little to you; for you have spoken of your servant’s house also for the future. ..What more can David say to You? You know your servant, O Lord God. For Your word’s sake and of your own accord You have wrought this great thing, and made it known to your servant….And now, O Lord God, You are God and Your words will surely come true; and You have made this gracious promise to your servant.

David recognizes that God’s promise to him is unconditional. God is with David for the long haul. It is not the same as a blank check, in that God includes the provision for correction in the commitment, but God will guarantee the promise because God chooses to do so.

I am not King David. God hasn’t promised me that my family will always be superintendents of NWYM. So what has God promised me, or rather us, in the coming of Jesus to do God’s work among us?

In Luke 4, Jesus tells us the terms of this covenant, using the words of Isaiah: I will preach good news to the poor, I will proclaim freedom for the prisoners, I will recover sight for the blind, I will release the oppressed, I will proclaim the era of God’s delight, God’s pleasure, God’s good will.

Jesus said other things to spell out what his coming means to human beings.

I am come to complete the law. (Matt. 5:17)

I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (Matt. 9:13)

I am come to divide families. (Matt 10:34-35)

I am come to send fire on the earth. (Luke 12:49-51)

I am come in my Father’s name, representing God’s interests and character. (John 5:43)

I am come from God, whom you do not know. (John 7:28)

I am come to rule the world, to separate right from wrong, to make things clear to those who have been mystified and to mystify those who thought they knew it all. (John 9:39)

I am come to give life, abundant life, superior, extraordinary, uncommon life. (John 10:10)

I am come to light up the world, so that whoever trusts me shall live in the light, not the darkness. (John 12:46)

I will come again and join you to me, so that you will be wherever I am. (John 14:3)

If we were to put these together into the form of a covenant, it might look like this:

As God’s Son, representing God’s interests and embodying God’s character, I will fill up what is lacking in the law, calling sinners to repent.  I will separate right from wrong, bringing light into dark places, even to dividing families. I will bring justice, not tranquility, pruning away all that is not beneficial. I will light up the world and give abundant life. I will join you to me, so that you will be wherever I am. I will usher in the era of God’s satisfaction with human beings, God’s delight in humanity. Live in this covenant, let it live in you, and trust me to do what I say I will.

The angels announced this, singing, “Glory to God in the highest, Peace on earth, good will to human beings.” This covenant is with all humanity. We know ourselves to be separate from God, and now we know that God is not hostile or rejecting. God wants us to grow up, to be our full selves, not chained to fear or hobbled by our mistakes and sins.

So how do we respond to this statement of God’s intentions toward us?  Do we, like David, sit humbly before God, aware that this is all happening because God wants to do it, not because we earned it or are particularly special? The Spirit of God testifies to our spirits that we are God’s children. God is for us. God justifies us and Jesus intercedes for us. Let us rejoice with St Paul that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Please join me in prayer.

What are we, O Son of God, that you have come to us? And this was not enough for you, but you join us to you so that we may be with you.  What more can we say to you? You know what we are. For your sake and of your own accord you have done this great thing and told us about it.  And now, O Son of God, you are God, and your words will surely come true. You have made this gracious promise to us. May it be so. Amen.