The Journey of Here and Now

[This was shared during worship this morning with the members and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 9:51-62

Christian journalist and thinker Philip Yancey has advice for Christians. “We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey [through this life] than about the ultimate destination [beyond this life].”

That’s good advice. Jesus sets those who believe in Him free from sin and death not so that they can wait smugly for the days they die and get to be with Him. He sets us free so that, having the assurance that we belong to God forever, we can live this life differently and so that, through our lives and witness, we can invite others to join us in our journey with Jesus through this life.

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus tells us that the destination of an eternity with God only belongs to those who start living in that eternity through faith in Him today. “[T]he one who stands firm to the end [that means to the end of this life] will be saved [for the next].”

And the apostle Peter makes it clear that we are saved by Jesus not just for eternity and not just for ourselves, but for now and for others. “[Y]ou are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,” Peter tells disciples of Jesus, “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” [1 Peter 2:9] Our call in this life, today, right now, is to be and to make disciples out of gratitude for the grace through which God has saved us from ourselves. That’s our path, the journey Christ has marked out for us.

Our gospel lesson for today finds Jesus beginning the decisive final leg on the path, the journey that God the Father has marked for Him. Take a look at it, please, Luke 9:51-62. It begins: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”

In the Greek in which Luke composed his gospel, that verse more literally says: “Then it came to pass, in the fulfillment of His ascension, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” Ascension here doesn’t refer here to the day forty days after Jesus’ resurrection that He ascended to heaven. It refers instead to His overall mission of going to Jerusalem to suffer, be crucified, to rise, and then to ascend to heaven. 

Jesus has set His face to complete the journey that began with His birth at Christmas, to buy sinners out of our slavery to sin, death, and the devil through His death, resurrection, and ascension. 

Yesterday, we saw a re-run of an old Law and Order in which Detective Green, always a straight-shooter, faces a murder rap he doesn't deserve in order to spare someone else prison time. He turns to the prosecuting attorney who has unraveled what was going on and asks, “Why are you doing this?” “Because,” the prosecutor answers, “we thought you were worth saving.” 

You know, sometimes, on rare occasions, God graces us with clear pictures of ourselves. We see, when all self-justification and rationalization are cast aside, how we have marred ourselves and our characters with our sin and selfishness. We may see that we are, in many ways, damaged goods. 

But listen: The God Who made you and all that exists thinks you, along with every other human being without exception, are worth saving. You are worth saving. 

That’s why Jesus set His face to journey to Jerusalem. 

That’s why He calls us to journey with Him today.

But not everyone thinks they need saving. Or if they do think they need saving, they believe that they, or the gods of their choosing, or a particular way of life will save them. Verse 52: “And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.”

The Samaritan villagers didn’t welcome Jesus any more than had Jesus' fellow Jews in Jerusalem had at His birth or would in Holy Week, any more than the Romans would, any more than most people in the world today welcome Him for Who He is--God and King and Savior. Isaiah prophesied well of Jesus in the eighth-century BC: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” [Isaiah 53:3]

But the Samaritan villagers who spurned Jesus weren’t the only ones who didn’t understand Who Jesus is or what the journey of Christian discipleship is about. Verse 54: “When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’ But Jesus turned and rebuked them.”

Luke says much more than that Jesus rebuked James and John. In the original Greek, he quotes Jesus as telling the two that they’re spiritually confused: “Οὐκ οἴδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς”: “You don’t know of what spirit you are!” In other words, Jesus was saying, “If you guys want to torch people I came to save, you’re following the spirits of hell rather than the Holy Spirit.” 

For the person who journeys with Jesus, hatred for or indifference to those who may disagree with us are not options. 

If we insist on hating Muslims or atheists, or those who disagree with the Bible’s teaching on things like sexuality, how can we possibly introduce them to Jesus Christ? How can a Christian being hateful introduce others to the loving God we know in Jesus? 

Our call isn’t to torch others, literally or figuratively, but to touch them with the gospel of Christ, through our prayers, our faithfulness, our love, our witness. 

Though by this time James and John have been with Jesus for some time, they still don’t understand what it means to journey with Him in this life.

They weren’t alone in their lack of understanding about being disciples of Jesus. 

Verse 57: “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” To follow Jesus means accepting uncertainty. It means accepting that He may be calling us to venture outside our comfort zones so that we may learn to rely on Him alone.

Forty years ago, the last thing I wanted to be was a pastor. I remember telling my boss at the United Way, at a time I was furtively beginning my journey out of atheism to life with Christ, “I have no use for pastors.” That’s what I’d been taught by my grandfather and it was what I still believed. Within three years, I was in seminary, no longer able to resist the path that God seemed to have in mind for me. 

Thank God, not everyone is called to be a pastor, but He calls every Christian to journey away from what makes them comfortable to do what points others to Christ. 

To what uncomfortable place is Jesus calling you today?

Verse 59: “[Jesus] said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But [the man] replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ [In Jewish custom, there was no higher responsibility than taking care of a parent’s burial...preferably after they died.] Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” The call to follow Jesus is to set our faces toward whatever He may call us to be and do. Sometimes families will understand. But only sometimes. 

Verse 61: “Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.’ Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’” 

All farmers knew in the centuries before air conditioned tractor cabs outfitted with GPS guidance, that if you looked back while sowing or plowing, you’d either have crooked rows or torn up crops. To journey with Jesus is to look to where He’s leading us and not to torment ourselves over the sins and mistakes of our past and not to look back nostalgically on a lost past. 

When we turn to Jesus, we realize again, damaged or goods or not according to the world or our own dark imaginings, that we are children of the King. We belong to the One leading us through our individual journeys of discipleship, now and forever. 

Following Jesus can be uncomfortable and it would be impossible to do if following Jesus didn’t also mean journeying with Jesus by our sides, here and now, every day. 

To Christians on their journey of discipleship, the apostle Paul wrote, “...he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” [Philippians 4:6] Through all the days of this life, with their challenges and joys, tragedies and triumphs, may this be our one certainty as Jesus’ disciples: As we set our faces toward Jesus, He will bring the completion and fulfillment that He has in mind for us. 

And though I sometimes forget it, that’s all we really need to know. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Prayer (Part 4: Unanswered Prayer?)

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio on February 2, 2014.]

Luke 11:9-10
Mark 14:34-36
As followers of Jesus Christ, we Christians confess faith in a God of promises.

The Bible, the book we hold to be the perfect Word of God, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit, is filled with God’s promises, many already fulfilled, many yet to be.

Some of the promises God makes are wonderful.

Some aren’t pleasant.

And some can cause us confusion, even challenging our faith in God.

One promise that may sometimes comfort us, but other times confuse us, an be found in Luke 11:9-10. Jesus makes this promise about prayer: "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.”

These words of promise seem to come by way of amplifying what Jesus teaches us to pray in the seventh petition of what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In the sixth, you'll remember from last Sunday, Jesus says to pray: “...lead us not into temptation.” And while the New International Version which makes up our pew Bibles, omits it, many of the most reputable translations have decided that the ancient manuscripts are right when they quote Jesus as teaching us the seventh petition: “...but deliver us from the evil one.”

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes: “We pray in this petition...that our heavenly Father would deliver us from every type of evil--whether it affects our bodies or souls, property or reputation...”

But, this is where it gets confusing.

Generations of faithful believers in Jesus have prayed this prayer, yet evils of all kinds have befallen them and the people for whom they’ve prayed.

In the Name of Jesus, people beg for blessings, but loved ones die, jobs are lost, reputations are subjected to destructive gossip, wars rage.

In telling us to “ask...seek...knock,” has God made a promise He cannot keep or is unwilling to keep?

What are we to think and believe when the things for which we devoutly pray don’t come to pass?

I’ve called this sermon “the mystery of unanswered prayer.” But, in a way, this is a misnomer. Before I preached on this same topic in one of my previous parishes, a man asked me, “Is this the Sunday you’re going to talk about unanswered prayer?” I said it was. He smiled and asked, “Is there such a thing?”

It was a rhetorical question because, of course, for the believer in Jesus who brings her or his petitions to Jesus, there are no unanswered prayers.

But there are answers to prayers we don’t like, that bring pain to us or to those we care about. There are many things that I hope God will make clear to us when we stand before Him after those of us who have believed in Jesus are resurrected from the dead. In the meantime, we have our questions.

One thing that should comfort us when we confront prayers not being answered as we hope they will be is the experience of Jesus Himself. Look please, at Mark 14:34 (page 711 in the pew Bibles). Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, where He’s gone to pray. He tells the disciples: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death...”

Jesus, in a sense, always stood in two worlds. As a human being, Jesus voluntarily experienced all the difficulties that we human beings experience--physical pain, relational rejection, death.

Isaiah 53:3, written at least six centuries before Jesus’ birth had foretold of Jesus that He would be, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” It was essential for our salvation for Jesus to be acquainted with the grief that comes to every human being. It was essential because only the death of a perfect unblemished Savior could be a sacrifice pure enough to free us from the death sentence you and I deserve.

So, one of the worlds in which Jesus lived was this world, the one in which you and I live, the world in which every baby who has ever been born has eventually, died. That’s why, as He faced suffering and death, Jesus was “exceedingly sorrowful.”

After asking His disciples to wait and watch while He went to pray, verse 35 says that Jesus “fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him.” “Father,” Jesus is begging, “deliver Me from evil. Deliver me from the cruel intentions of Satan, the evil one.”

Jesus, truly God, truly human, had led a sinless life. He had done everything God the Father had asked Him to do. Certainly, if anyone deserved to have their prayer request to be delivered from evil answered with a Yes, it was Jesus.

But look at what Jesus prays next, in verse 36: "Abba", Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

You see, Jesus lived in another world as well as in this one. He lived also in the kingdom of God.

It’s the kingdom in which, if Jesus would be faithful to His call to die for us, He would rise into and live in for all eternity.

It’s the kingdom He came to bring to all who will turn from sin, submitting daily to the crucifixion of their old sinful selves, and placing themselves in the hands of Jesus--believing in Him--as trustingly as Jesus placed Himself in the hands of God the Father on the night He prayed in the garden.

And so, in the garden, from the perspective of this world, Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.” But at the same time, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, He prayed, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

You and I are people of this world who live in the kingdom of God by faith in Christ. But we only vaguely understand the grand purposes of God, especially God’s purposes for our own lives. We see, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.” Other translations say "in a mirror dimly" or "through a glass darkly."

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve prayed that friends and family be delivered from the evils accosting them--marital discord, cancer, job loss, bullying, whatever it might have been--only to see their suffering continue.

It’s only after own resurrections, beyond the gates of death, safely removed from the stranglehold that sin and death have over this world, that we will know God and God’s purposes completely, just as God already knows us completely.

It turns out that God the Father had an answer for Jesus’ prayer for deliverance from the immediate evils He faced that night in the garden. The answer was, “No.”

The reason for this NO is apparent now. Had Jesus been delivered from the threats of the Romans, Herod, Pilate, and the other conspirators that night, the moment God had long ago planned as the precise moment when the Savior would die and rise to give new and everlasting to those who repent for sin and believe in Jesus might have passed.

And having been allowed to cave into His understandable fears of suffering, rejection, and death and moved out of the will of God, Jesus Himself and all of us who depend on His death and resurrection to give us life, would have been delivered not from, but into, the hands of the evil one for all eternity.

In other words, the Father said, "No" to Jesus' prayer for protection from the immediate evils Jesus faced in order to say, "YES!" to protecting Jesus and us from the ultimate evil of eternal separation from God, literally from the fragmentation of God as God the Son separated from the God the Father and God the Spirit.

The people who were around Jesus at the time of His suffering and execution never would have guessed that God would bring good from His suffering and death. And I believe that God often says no to our prayers for protection from the immediate evils we perceive in order to say to yes to giving us protection from eternal evil.

I can’t pretend to know God’s will for our individual lives.

I don’t know why some people seem to suffer more than others.

Or why faithful people die at young ages.

Or others go through undeserved horrors in their personal lives.

But I do take great comfort and encouragement from the God of promise.

I’m strengthened by the promise of the risen Jesus when He says in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.”

So, even now, as I try to live in this world and in eternity, too, I know that God is by my side, empowering my choices and decisions, affirming me when I take the hard and narrow path rather than the easy, wide path, helping me to love God and love others, giving me strength and hope!

And I look forward with great anticipation to that moment in eternity when Revelation 21:4 tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

By the way, earlier I didn’t share all of what Martin Luther said about the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer, "but deliver us from evil."

He says that we’re to ask in this prayer not only for deliverance from the effects of evil on our bodies, souls, property, and reputations in this life, but also pray that “at last, when our hour of death comes, [our heavenly Father] would grant us a blessed end to our earthly lives, and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to Himself in heaven.” Luther is pointing to the ultimate deliverance from evil we all should crave.

And knowing that, through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, our residence in that world is guaranteed can give us a new passion for fearless living in this world. Unafraid about our ultimate destination, we can be generous in loving and giving and spreading the good news of Jesus and fighting for justice the poor and despised.

After all, death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian!

But knowing about our ultimate deliverance--resurrection life with God--can also give us a new sense of understanding when our prayers aren’t answered as we want them to be. We know that God has a plan, even though we’re not in on its details.*

This is what Paul is getting at in Romans 8:18: “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us.”

This side of the resurrection, God’s answers to our prayers will often baffle us.

They may even make us angry. And that's okay because you don't get angry with a God in Who you don't believe. Even our anger with God is, in a real sense, an expression of faith in God. And God is big enough to take our anger.

But we know that on whatever path God may call us to take in this life, He will be beside us always and that, as the cross and empty tomb of Jesus attest, He is committed to loving us into His kingdom, where, finally...the questions will be answered, the suffering will be ended, the tears will be no more, and we will be delivered from all evil. Amen


*By the way,  I have learned that this fact is a lot easier said than lived. But I pray one day, I will trust God enough to truly and daily submit to His will to such an extent that I really do accept that He has a plan and that I don't need to know the details. As a Christian, I confess, that I'm only a recovering control freak. And my addiction to control--the impulse, the Bible tells us, to "be like God"--rears its ugly head all the time. God help me!

Living with the Mystery of Unanswered Prayer

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship service with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 14:35-36
As followers of Jesus Christ, we Christians confess faith in a God of promises. The Bible, the book we hold to be the perfect Word of God, uniquely inspired by the Holy Spirit, is filled with God’s promises, many already fulfilled, many yet to be.

Some of the promises God makes aren’t pleasant. And some can cause us confusion, even challenge our faith in God.

One that falls in this latter category can be found in Luke 11:9-10. Jesus makes this promise about prayer: “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he [or she] who seeks finds, and to him [or her] who knocks it will be opened.”

These words of promise come by way of amplifying what Jesus teaches us to pray in the seventh petition of what we call the Lord’s Prayer in the last line of Luke 11:4: “But deliver us from the evil one.”

In an explanation of this petition of the Lord’s Prayer in The Small Catechism, Martin Luther writes: “We pray in this petition...that our heavenly Father would deliver us from every type of evil--whether it affects our bodies or souls, property or reputation...”

But you may have noticed something: Generations of faithful believers in Jesus have prayed this prayer, yet evils of all kinds have befallen them and the people for whom they’ve prayed.

In the Name of Jesus, people beg for blessings, but loved ones die, jobs are lost, reputations are subjected to destructive gossip, wars rage.

In telling us to “ask...seek...knock,” has God made a promise He cannot keep or is unwilling to keep?

What are we to think and believe when the things for which we pray don’t come to us?

I’ve called this “the mystery of unanswered prayer.” In a way, this is a misnomer.

A member of the congregation approached me this past week and asked, “Is this the Sunday you’re going to talk about unanswered prayer?” I said it was. He smiled and asked, “Is there such a thing?”

It was a rhetorical question because, of course, for the believer in Jesus who brings her or his petitions to Jesus, there are no unanswered prayers.

But there are answers to prayers we don’t like, that bring pain to us or to those we care about.

And there are many things that I hope God will make clear to us when we stand before Him after those of us who have believed in Jesus are resurrected from the dead.

In the meantime, we have our questions.

One thing that should comfort us when we confront prayers not being answered as we ardently hope they will be is the experience of Jesus Himself.

Look to the verse just before our gospel lesson, Mark 14:34. Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, where He’s gone to pray. He tells the disciples: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to death...”

Jesus, in a sense, always stood in two worlds. As a human being,  Jesus voluntarily experienced all the difficulties that we human beings experience--physical pain, relational rejection, death. Isaiah 53:3, written at least six centuries before Jesus’ birth had foretold of Jesus that He would be, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

It was necessary for our salvation for Jesus to be acquainted with the grief that comes to every human being. It was necessary because only the death of a perfect unblemished Savior could be a sacrifice pure enough to free us from the death sentence you and I deserve.

So, one of the worlds in which Jesus lived was this world, the one in which you and I live, the world in which every baby who has ever been born has eventually, died.

That’s why, as He faced suffering and death, Jesus was “exceedingly sorrowful.”

After asking His disciples to wait and watch while He went to pray, verse 35 says that Jesus “fell on the ground, and prayed if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him.”

“Father,” Jesus is begging, “deliver Me from evil. Deliver me from the cruel intentions of Satan, the evil one.”

In His agony, Jesus must have prayed this prayer in different ways repeatedly because, look at what we read in verse 36: “And He said, ‘Abba [the very intimate term Jesus has taught us to use at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer], Father, all things are possible for You. [I know that You can keep this from happening, Lord.] Take this cup away from Me [The cup, in the Old Testament, symbolizes judgment and God the Father expects Jesus to drink the cup of judgment--to undergo death--for us all. Jesus begs that He won’t have to drink this cup of suffering and death. Then He prays...] nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”

You see, Jesus lived in another world as well as in this one. He lived also in the kingdom of God.

It is the kingdom in which, if Jesus would be faithful to His call to die for us, He would rise into and live in for all eternity.

It is the kingdom He came to bring to all who will turn from sin, submitting daily to the crucifixion of their old sinful selves, and place themselves in the hands of Jesus--believing in Him--as trustingly as Jesus placed Himself in the hands of God the Father on the night He prayed in the garden.

And so, in the garden, from the perspective of this world, Jesus prayed, “Deliver us from evil.”

But at the same time, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, He prayed, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Folks, listen: You and I are people of this world who live in the kingdom of God by faith in Christ, but who only vaguely understand the grand purposes of God, especially God’s purposes for our own lives. We see, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “in a mirror, dimly.”

It’s only after own resurrections, beyond the gates of death, safely removed from the stranglehold that sin and death have over this world, that “we will know” God and God’s purposes completely, just as God already knows us completely.

God the Father had an answer for Jesus’ prayer for deliverance from the immediate evils He faced that night in the garden. The answer was, “No.”

The reason for this NO seems apparent to me. Had Jesus been delivered from the threats of the Romans, Herod, Pilate, and other conspirators that night, the moment God had long ago planned as the precise moment--what the Greek of the New Testament calls the kairos moment--when the Savior would die and rise to give new and everlasting to those who repent for sin and believe in Jesus might have passed.

And having been allowed to cave into His understandable fears of suffering, rejection, and death and moved out of the will of God, Jesus Himself and all of us who depend on His death and resurrection to give us life, would have been delivered not from, but into, the hands of the evil one for all eternity.

In other words, the Father said, "No" to Jesus' prayer for protection from the immediate evils Jesus faced in order to say, "YES!" to protecting Jesus and us from the ultimate evil of eternal separation from God. The people who were around Jesus at the time of His suffering and execution never would have guessed that God would bring good from all that bad. And I believe that God often says no to our prayers for protection from the immediate evils we perceive in order to say to yes to His protection from evil for us for eternity.

I can’t pretend to know God’s will for our individual lives.

I don’t know why some people seem to suffer more than others.

Or why faithful people die at young ages.

Or others go through undeserved horrors in their personal lives.

But I do take great comfort and encouragement from the God of promise.

For example, I’m strengthened by the promise of the risen Jesus when He says, “I am with you always, even to the close of the age.” So, even now, as I try to live in this world and in eternity, too, God is by my side, empowering my choices and decisions, helping me to love God and love others, giving me strength and hope!

And I look forward with anticipation to that moment in eternity when Revelation 21:4 tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

By the way, earlier I didn’t share all of what Martin Luther said about the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer--”But deliver us from evil”--earlier.

He says that we’re to ask in this prayer not only for deliverance from the effects of evil on our bodies, souls, property, and reputations, but also that “at last, when our hour of death comes, [our heavenly Father] would grant us a blessed end to our earthly lives, and graciously take us from this world of sorrow to Himself in heaven.”

Luther is pointing to the ultimate deliverance from evil we all should crave.

And knowing that, through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, our residence in that world is guaranteed can give us a new passion for fearless living in this world.

Unafraid about our ultimate destination, we can be generous in loving and giving and spreading the good news of Jesus and fighting for justice the poor and despised.

After all, death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.

But knowing about our ultimate deliverance can also give us a new sense of understanding when our prayers aren’t answered as we want them to be. We know that God has a plan, even when we’re not in on its details.

This is what Paul is getting at in Romans 8:18: “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us.”

This side of the resurrection, God’s answers to our prayers will often baffle us.

But we know that on whatever path God may call us to take in this life, He will be beside us always and that, as the cross and empty tomb of Jesus attest, He is committed to loving us into His kingdom, where, finally...

the questions will be answered,

the suffering will be ended,

the tears will be no more, and

we will be delivered from all evil. Amen