Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text is Matthew 28. And you may follow along in the handouts provided in the order of worship. Matthew 28:

“Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb. Behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing is white as snow.

And the guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who is crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come see the place where the Lord lay and go quickly and tell the disciples that he is risen from the dead and indeed he is going before you into Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you.’ So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to bring his disciples word.

And as they went to tell his disciples, behold Jesus met them saying, ‘Rejoice.’ So they came and held him by the feet and worshiped him. And then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.’ Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all the things that had happened.

When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, ‘Tell them his disciples came at night and stole him away while we slept. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.’ So they took the money and did as they were instructed. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews unto this day.

Then the 11 disciples went away into Galilee to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and spake to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’” Amen. Amen.

Let us pray. Lord God, we give you thanks for your word. We give you thanks for this great culminating conclusion of this first of the gospels found in Matthew. We thank you, Father, for the wondrous things we behold here. Give us a sense of wonder as we consider this text. Help us, Father, to be transformed by it. May Jesus speak to us.

May your Spirit transform us, Lord God. Give us courage. Give us hope. Give us confidence, Lord God. And give us obedience from the Savior. In his name we ask it. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated. Very common text, well known, understood. Usually, of course, many more sermons are preached on the second half of this text than the first. The second half is what we’ll start with, the Great Commission in summary form.

This is the one we’re all familiar with. It is, of course, the great climax of this first gospel, which is itself, of course, the culmination of the whole Old Testament. All of those things spoke of Jesus and then we read of his life in the words of Matthew, the gospel of Matthew and then the great climax to Matthew’s gospel at the first day of resurrection. We have this wondrous scene of these women and warriors as it were and then we have this great culminating conclusion, the Great Commission so to speak.

The 11 gathered together and they gathered together in the obedience of Christ being told by women to go to Galilee. Galilee was kind of a code word I think. Knew what was happening. The gospel was bursting the bounds again. The ministry was shifting north up to the desire of the nations. A new phase of ministry had begun with the risen Savior. And they gather on a mountain. They gather to worship. And it’s in the context of that worshiping of the Lord Jesus Christ that he speaks to them.

Yeah. And he tells them, you know, what can be thought of, I suppose, as three specific things. He tells them to go. He tells them to make disciples and he promises them that he is going to be with them always even unto the end of the age. He prefaces this of course with the statement that you know all power and authority has been given unto him. And so this is a commission, this Great Commission that will be fulfilled.

Now go—the church is a gathered community. It’s gathered to be sent out. Jesus in the first recorded words here of the worship service when they worship him and he speaks to them right, he tells them to go. He gathers his people together. We’re gathered together tonight to be sent on mission to go out from this place. Jesus restores mankind. Psalm 8: “What is man? You think of him? God gives man dominion over the earth.

And here we have the dominion mandate restated. Man is told to go into all of that earth. He is restored to mission. His sin has deprived him of the glory. Right? “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” And God restores the glory of mission. What do we have in the context of the Old Testament pattern of the heavenly realities? We have Aaron’s rod in the Holy of Holies. We have the lampstand in the Holy Place.

We have man given task, mission, authority to do things in the world. Jesus, the first words he tells them is that they are on a mission for him. They’re to go forth with mission. They’re to make disciples. And how do they do that? Well, they do it in two steps he says: by baptizing people and by teaching them everything that I’ve commanded you. Both of those I believe are subsets of the general command to make disciples. So as we go, as we have mission from God, we are in the kind that mission is specifically defined as bringing the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to mankind again and we contrast this with the conspiracy theory we just saw hatched. And here is the true knowledge to teach men to obey all things that God has commanded.

But that teaching is secondary. It happens second in the second description. The first description is to baptize people, to bring them under the administrative jurisdiction of Christ the King, to bring them in union with the Lord Jesus Christ and his community. He comprises his body. And so he takes people and places them into the community. And that is the context for discipleship. And so we have restored glory.

You know, we want glory. We want that hidden knowledge, but we don’t want it mediated through Christ. Glory, or we want that knowledge rather, but we want it unmediated from Christ. And so we seek after knowledge, true knowledge in secret ways, in ways that make us go and seek for things that aren’t proper. But Jesus restores us to true knowledge here. Yeah, he gives us knowledge. But the knowledge is found in the context of submission.

Submission to baptism. We come into the King’s household. And it’s in the context of that household that we have what we normally think of as the discipling process. The discipling process is twofold. It has this administrative component of bringing us under the rule and authority of Christ through baptism. And then it has this knowledge component—I should say of being taught to observe all things whatsoever he has commanded us.

So go—a restoration to mission. Make disciples—a restoration in discipleship of true knowledge, this gift of knowledge to us. And then he promises us community. He says that as you go and as you go about doing this task, you’re restored to life, rejoicing life together. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” The presence of the Lord Jesus Christ is part of that Great Commission. Central to it we have this third gift.

Then, this gift of rejoicing life in community promised to us as we go forth on mission with the restored glory that he gives us. And as we bring people into true knowledge, submissive knowledge, baptized knowledge to the Lord Jesus Christ, he promises us community. So there’s a restoration here of what we have lost. A restoration of glory, knowledge, and life represented by mission, discipleship, and community.

I’ve attached in your notes the strategy map for Reformation Covenant Church. Always a little embarrassed to say that. We went through a process, a good process. I’m trying to figure out what it is we’re doing as a church and you know we went through a process that businesses use quite effectively for what they do and we went through that same process and in the providence of God and we finished that process it looked very much like the Great Commission. We ended up saying that what’s important about the church is it is a worshiping community but as we worship God he restores us to mission, he sends us on mission, he creates discipleship and he binds us together in community.

So, worship, mission, discipleship, and community. And I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but we had—I had read I think it’s called Visionary Ecclesiology by Rich Lusk, who’s with us this week, and it turned out our strategy map looked an awful lot like his article. So which looks an awful lot like this Great Commission. And so we have that and I think it’s a useful way to think about the Great Commission.

And I’ve got it on your notes here that there is this mission going on, this discipleship, this community that’s promised and I think it does relate to Aaron’s rod, the Ten Words and manna—rejoicing life found in that Holy of Holies. So there is that. We worship the triune God at Reformation Covenant Church and that worship, if it is biblical worship, works itself out in the context of mission into the world.

We go, discipleship—we baptize people bring them into the body of Jesus Christ and it’s there that we find the knowledge of obeying his word and Jesus says that he is with us when we go. Community is created as we go and fulfill this mission. So we worship the triune God and these gifts could be thought of as a reflection of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We worship this triune God and as a result of that the world, the fallen world is transformed in the context of worship.

Beautiful ways to look at this—you know, it reminds us again sometimes we forget this great mission. As they meet together they meet on a mountain and as they meet that is in the context of worshiping Jesus. As they worshiped Jesus he spoke to them. So they worship him and in the context of worship that’s when they hear Jesus clearly telling them what they’re going to do. He tells them to go out, sending them out on a mission on a mission. He told them to make disciples, this is what he speaks to them in worship, by baptizing and teaching others.

And he told them that they would have community together, true community. Wonderful. Excellent way to remind pastors who were gathered this week in the context of the CRC, you know, an overview, one of many I’m sure, but an overview of what it is our churches are to be all about. What is this worshiping community and what is, how does it relate to the rest of the week? And this Great Commission tells us about that.

You know, we read these stories, we read these texts, these narratives and we wonder where are we in the story and usually when we talk about Matthew 28 most of the people who are gathered together—this is not really where they’re at in the story. You know, when you read stories, you watch movies, you sort of always want to identify with the really good guy but usually in good stories and in good movies there’s a really good guy, there’s a really bad guy and then there’s a guy in the middle who doesn’t quite know what he’s supposed to be doing. Well, that’s us in the story. We tend to think of ourselves identifying with the good guy, but it isn’t that, you know?

We were speaking at dinner about the Odyssey and the Iliad, and I guess if it’s okay to talk about those and see what God is doing through them, I can talk about The Shawshank Redemption, right? Sure. Sure, I can. That’s a movie based on a work by Stephen King. And there’s a prison movie. There’s a breakout movie in it. There’s a fella named Andy and we watch Andy in the movie and he’s kind of the one we want to identify with. He’s not really guilty of anything. He’s falsely convicted. He’s not guilty. And then there’s a guy named Red, played by Morgan Freeman. He’s guilty as can be. He says he didn’t do it, but they all say that.

We want to identify with Andy, but we’re Red. See, and the point of the movie is that we’re not Andy. We’re Red. We’re the one in the middle in the story. Identifying yourself with the story is pretty important. And for most of our parishioners, most of the people here at RCC, it’s not really the 11. That’s the 11 who are met. The Great Commission is given to them. I think a lot of false guilt in terms of evangelism—the Great Commission is, you know, inadvertently, I’m sure, but I’ve contributed to it myself.

When we don’t take careful notice of the details of the text, it’s the 11 that are gathered. It’s the apostles. That’s the ones who are given this task somehow of formulating the worship that drives mission, discipleship, and community. Now, we all have a part in that. We’re all restored in Christ to glory, knowledge, and life. So it has implications. It has application, sure, but that’s not where most of our parishioners and the people here at RCC are.

And usually that wouldn’t be where most of the people sitting in the pews here are. They’re someplace else in the story. They’re in the first half of the story. And the first half of the story we have something that isn’t normally looked at all that commonly as the Great Commission is. In the first half of the story we have this great back and forth about these women and these warriors. You know, they’ve gone to Pilate, “Well, make the tomb secure.

These guys are going to break in.” And so Pilate sends what probably surely is a Roman guard to secure the tomb. These are warrior guys, right? They’re big guys. They’re armed. They’re, you know, very powerful guys. And in contrast to that, the characters that we have are two women, you know? So we have women and we have warriors. And if you look at the text, I’ve got it in the handouts. I’ve got it laid out the structure of the text for you.

Sort of see, you know, they have these kind of three stories that happen before we get to the Great Commission. You know, first we have the women going to the tomb and then leaving the tomb. So they’re place indicators in that first little section. And then we have the women going about the task to tell the disciples and in the context of that they meet Jesus. So first they have interaction with the angel.

Then they meet Jesus. And the third little section of it are these guards. And so you have women, you know, and angels and then guards and these people down here. And they’re both brought together. I tried to read it dramatically. I suppose Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, they come to see the tomb. They leave from the tomb. So on the handout there, you can see that and you know, we’re supposed to notice things that you know there’s this great angelic mighty power from above as the tomb is opened and this happens.

And verse 4, the guards, these mighty warriors shake for fear and they become like dead men. Well, you know, kind of a neat text for pastors to read. Boy, I can preach that. They shake for fear and they’re dead men. Well, they are dead men. The old world is passing away and they really are dead in that sense. So they’re shaking for fear. They became like dead men. But the angel answered and said to the guards—”No, he doesn’t say to the guards.” He says to the women, “Don’t be afraid.” So you see the text is brought together these warriors and these women right in the first little story there.

It wants us to think about them together. The warriors are frightened, but the angel says to the women, “Don’t be afraid.” And we could say, “Well, He goes on to say, ‘I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.’ Those are the ones who will go away from this encounter, you know, with power and strength for obedience. Those that are seeking Jesus, and the guards aren’t doing that. So then we notice they’re told this by the angel.

They’re sent on a mission getting us ready for the Great Commission. What happens? The angel, you know, tells them, “Don’t be afraid.” And then in verse 7, he says, “Go quickly.” Tell his disciples he’s risen from the dead. So there, what happens? They’re told not to be fearful. And they’re sent on mission immediately. They’re to go. They’re to go quickly. Tell his disciples this. Well, verse 8, we have the picture.

That’s what they do, right? So they went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy. A different kind of fear, great joy now. And they ran. They ran. And we can preach on this, right? This is what we should be preaching to ourselves. Those women ran in obedience to that word of God. Their joy was so great. And we should run from the teaching that God brings us on Sunday and Wednesday and Monday and Tuesday and Thursday and Friday and run in quick obedience to it. But you know, the text wants us to notice that they went out as soon as they were told. They went out quickly from the tomb. So they’ve been to the tomb. They’re coming out of the tomb, right? So they’ve been united with his death that they might be reunited in his resurrection. They’re coming out in newness of life with hope and confidence and obedience from this tomb.

It’s a wonderful picture. And then in the center, as they’re going to tell his disciples—as they’re obeying, right? As they’re obeying what God has instructed them through the angel, then Jesus meets with them. Jesus meets with us in our obedience. And these women go out obediently. And behold, Jesus met them. And Jesus has a message for them as well. His first thing that he tells them is to rejoice. And at the heart of worship of God is this great call from the Lord Jesus Christ.

The most oft-repeated phrase of Resurrection Sunday is “Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice.” This is the message. And Jesus tells these women to rejoice. And he’s going to tell them something else. But first, at the very center of this little section, what do we have? They came and they held him by the feet and they worshiped him. We’re going to get to the worship of the disciples, the pastoral guys later, and they’re going to be sent in their mission.

But here, you know, the women worship. You know, the bride of Christ is risen from the dead. And she sees her Savior and he tells her rejoice and she worships him at the very center and in the context of that worship then we have this rejoicing message and then we have the repeated refrain again that the angel told them. Jesus says don’t be afraid. So in worship our preaching is always gospel. It’s always telling ourselves as we preach to ourselves and hear others preach the gospel to us that we’re not to be afraid no matter what we run into in the context of our world.

Don’t be afraid. And again, what does he do in the context of their worship of him? He sends them out on mission. Go. So now it’s piling up. Go, go, go, go. Mission is what results from our worship, I should say. So he reinforces to them these messages of have no fear and rejoice in the context of worship. And he tells them to go, tell my brethren to go to Galilee.

Very simple. In a couple of minutes, Jesus is going to say, “Eat some bread and drink some wine.” Very simple, you see. And this is a very simple thing to do. Just go tell them this thing and they go, you know, again, they went out quickly. And here we see it again in verse 11. As they were going, so he told them to go and they immediately go. And now we have a new little section. The contrast of the women are these warriors.

As they’re going, behold some of the guards. So see, we have the juxtaposition of the warriors and the women in the first little section. They are afraid. The angels tell the women not to be afraid. They’re tied together. And here again, we could say this whole section ties off with them and the angels. But we see very dramatically in verse 11, they’re tied together again. The women are going someplace in obedience, and some of the guard are coming some other place. So the women and the warriors are contrasted here.

Again, the guards, they come into the city, they report to the chief priests all the things that had actually happened. They begin with truth. This little section begins with truth. It’ll end with a lie. And something happens in the middle of this to bring this lie to pass. They go and what happens? These men plot this conspiracy. They offer these guards money. They gave them a large sum of money. And then they tell them at the center, “Tell them his disciples came at night.” So lie. Lie is what they want them to do. “If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.”

Well, so what do we have at the center of this hard story here? We have you know, false glory—money is being used to bribe them to speak false knowledge, a lie, and they’re being given assurances of false life. Their lives will be made secure if the governor hears about this. So we see fallen man in these warriors going after the wrong kind of glory, going after the wrong kind of security and going after the lie and repeating the lie to others. And this conspiracy is given to us and you know, so we know who these dead men are. These men who really are part of the world that’s passing away.

It’s men who cling to the wrong glory and try to achieve life through the wrong mechanism and end up serving the lie instead of serving the truth. And so we have this. But what we have of course is a strange story from one perspective because what we have here is an odd thing happening. We’re reading it 2,000 years later. We’re reading it after Christianity has gone around the world once and is going around again.

You know, they thought they were in the millennium in the 19th century. I mean, that gospel went over the whole world. You know, we know that message from the women is what is effectual for determining the future. And we know that the conspiracy, all the money, all the power, all the mighty warriors, all that stuff fell apart, right? We know who won them. We’re able to read this 2,000 years later and we see something very important for us to see, very important for us to remind ourselves of in the preaching of the gospel.

We meet together to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re told that simple obedience at the end of the day is what changes the world. We’re told that it is the simple obedience of weak women, unarmed women, who worship the truthgiver instead of repeating the lie and who by way of contrast seek glory and knowledge through Jesus and the worship of him rather than falsely as the warriors did. It is these weak women who carry the future.

Praise God. You know, I preached part of this message over in Christ Church this summer and I didn’t really think about it. It was stupid. But you know, they’ve gone through years of mighty men with power and strength and you know different ways and wiles forming conspiracies against them. I mean really conspiracies. We’ve had conspiracies plotted against our church from time to time. You’ve had people conspire against you whether you know it or not.

And you know it’s frightening when you go through it and it’s difficult. But this text, this great culmination of the Gospel of Matthew should come to mind. Yeah. Yeah. Pastors, there’s the Great Commission, that’s fine, that’s good. But where most of us are at in the narrative, all of us from one perspective—we’re all the bride of Christ—is we’re those weak women facing the powers of the world with faith, knowing that it is the truth that sways the future.

That’s what determines it. It’s an unusual future. It’s an odd future because it’s a future that’s determined by obedient but weak, seemingly weak people. Praise God. What a wondrous text. What a sense of wonder we should come away from this text with when we see this contrast and the great assurances that God gives us in the context of this Matthew 28. This unusual future, this wonderful truth.

You know, it’s a story about the new creation. The new world has come. Jesus, you know, they went to the tomb. They’ve come out of the tomb. The world is changed. The world will never be the same again. And that new world, that future is determined by simple, quiet acts of obedience and truthtelling. The disciples end up there getting the Great Commission and worship because the women were obedient in a very small thing that they were told to do.

They were fearful of God, not men. They sought glory from God, not men. They sought their community with the risen Lord Jesus Christ that they worshiped, not ultimately from what this world might have to offer. And they did something so simple that the little children in this congregation tonight can do what these women did. You can get up tomorrow and do the next thing that your parents tell you to do and do it well.

Do it quickly. Do it with joy. Do it with reverence for God ultimately. And you can tell the truth. You know, little children are tempted to lie. We all are. But a simple act of truthtelling, a simple act of joyfully running over and doing the dishes for mom and dad—this text, I think, really does say that’s what makes the world better. That’s what changes the world. That’s what does the mighty deeds. That’s what leads to all of the implications of what Christianity has done for 2,000 years and will do for thousands more.

Where are we in the text? That’s where we’re at. We’re those weak women. But we’re weak women who have been built up in hope, strength, and courage through telling the truth. When we recognize that the Lord Jesus Christ is moving through those very means of simple acts of obedience to obey him, we need hope. You know, Moscow needed hope in the context of what they went through the last few years. They need to remind themselves of simple stories like this that no matter what weapons are formed against us, in the providence of God, they’ll fail.

We need strength. We need simple acts of obedience as we’ll do at this table in a couple of minutes. This country isn’t like that though. We want the super thing, you know, we want to be superheroes and we want to do something great for the kingdom of God and we want to, you know, be Rick Warren and whatever it might be to do wonderful things, you know, and really change things quick because, you know, we live in such a fast modern culture, you know, I made instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went backwards in time.

That’s us, you know. We want the super thing. But the Bible tells us that it’s not the super thing. What does 1 Timothy 2 say? He says, “I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that in authority.” He’s talking about big things, kings, for what purpose? That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

It’s the simple things that we’re supposed to do. We want the world converted. We want President Bush or whatever his administration to be converted to act Christianly so that we can live a quiet life so that we can do not the super things so that we can do the simple things. And the text goes on to say this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

He says the same thing in these words that Matthew 28 the first half told us—that the simple acts of obedience. Yeah, it’s living the simple lives of honesty and you know, simple acts of the simple things result in the saving of all men, result in the postmillennial future, result in all the blessings of the world that we want to see come to us. It’s the simple things of life that God says we’re to do.

We’re not to think of ourselves as fulfilling the Great Commission in our time. You know, I mean, yeah, that’s there. We can make application, but you get there through the simple deeds of obedience to God. You know, where are you in the text? Are you wanting to do a super thing? Do you want to be the mighty man somehow, trusting in your physical prowess, your money, your associations, and your connections? Or are we humble like the simple women?

Will we be those that sway the future or are those who are part of that old world that’s gone, dying away? We’re tempted by the eyes of sight to apply warrior tactics, I mean, in a false sense, the warrior here, to our lives, but we must remind ourselves that this text tells us that world is passing away. Those men are dead as they speak. They’ve been judged. It’s over. The only thing that remains is the outworking of the singular victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s a time reference at the beginning of this text, right? Working our way kind of backwards and I guess I’m kind of backwards, but the text starts in verse 1. You know that it’s the end of the Sabbaths. You know that from one perspective, okay, it’s Sunday, but it’s the end of the Sabbaths. The world has come to a definitive movement. The Old Testament calendar is gone. The end of the Sabbaths, you see, as the new day begins to dawn, the sun is coming up.

The new world is happening. Will we be part of that new world through the simple humble acts of worshiping Jesus and hearing the words of Jesus Christ to be joyful, not to be fearful and do very simple acts of obedience? Will we be part of that world as the day dawns? Or will we be like those men who are dead even while they think they’re alive?

Wonderful, wonderful text. I mentioned this Shawshank Redemption and that really, you know, what we need in the context of the things that we go through is hope. And there’s this wonderful scene towards the end of that movie. Red, the man that I think we are to identify with, is he going to be able to make it or not? Is he going to, you know, be able to live or is he going to just keep dying as he’s been doing in this prison? And he follows Andy and we could talk about Andy’s escape and resurrection, coming out of the tomb and all that sort of stuff, but he follows him and he’s on a bus.

He’s doing simple obedience to obey the simple words that Andy has given to him in a little note. So a simple act, and as he’s riding this bus you know to see Andy he says this and it’s you know it’s Morgan Freeman doing the voice over. How can you get better than that? And he says this: “I hope Andy is down there. He wants to see Andy. You know, Jesus, I hope Jesus is with us as we go to where we’re supposed to go next.

I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border through the threshold over the limit, little space, right? I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” That’s the end of his talk over.

Well, we hope and we don’t hope in vain. We have stories like this that are true narratives that are designed to instruct us that we have the hope knowing that as those weak women controlled the future and determined it, so we do as well through the simple acts of obedience.

Yes, we have the Great Commission. Yes, we have the importance of forming churches that look like that worship service that produce mission that produce discipleship and community. Yeah, we’ve got all that. But before we get there, we have the church, the bride of Christ, simple acts of obedience. We hope and that hope is fulfilled. We reach our Pacific, we reach our peaceable place.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this wonderful text. We are filled with a sense of wonder, Lord God, at your scriptures every time we look at them and pause and slow down enough in this world of speed to look at them and to think about them and the details of them. And we just give you praise and thanksgiving, Father, for the details of these sorts of texts which your scriptures are full of. And we thank you for this particular text, the great climactic movement of that gospel in that first Resurrection Sunday and we know that this is an important message.

Father, you placed it there because you think it’s so important for us to attend to it when we worship and to be formed by it. And we thank you that you tell us that it is those simple acts of truthfulness and obedience, joyful obedience to you that determine not just our futures but the future of the world. Help us, Lord God, to be faithful with the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ to go from in this place with simple acts of obedience and joy, courage and hope.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.