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Good morning. My name is Stephanie DeGraff, and I'm part of the North Berkeley Thursday Night Community Group.
Today's scripture reading is from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61, verses 1 through 11.
A reading from the prophet Isaiah.
The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives,
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion,
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated.
They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.
Strangers will shepherd your flocks.
Foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.
And you will be called priests of the Lord.
You will be named ministers of our God.
You will feed on the wealth of nations,
and in their riches you will boast.
Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion.
And instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance.
And so you will inherit a double portion in your land.
And everlasting joy will be yours.
For I, the Lord, love justice.
I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness, I will reward my people
and make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their descendants will be known among the nations
and their offspring among the peoples.
All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.
I delight greatly in the Lord.
My soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness.
As a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise
spring up before all nations.
The grass withers and the flowers fade,
but the word of our God stands for her.
Can you get out of here?
Well, I wonder how many of us know the first song
that was broadcast from outer space.
First song that was broadcast from outer space
was a song called One Horse Open Sleigh,
which is a song that we call today Jingle Bells.
Jingle Bells.
Jingle Bells was written by James Pierpont,
whose nephew was John Pierpont Morgan, J.P. Morgan.
And I don't know why,
but that song was first performed in a church
on a Thanksgiving service in Boston in 1857,
and it was never intended as a Christmas song.
I think I just saw a few minds just explode right there.
And while I'm shattering some of your Christmas paradigms,
do you know the most popular Christmas carol?
It's Silent Night.
The second most popular Christmas carol is,
we sang it this morning, Joy to the World.
But this was also not written as a Christmas song.
If you notice in the lyrics,
there's no mention of Christmas,
there's nothing about the birth of Christ.
It was written as a reflection on Psalm 98,
and at some point somebody said,
we should sing this at Christmastime.
And what's the focus of this joyful song?
The focus is actually about judgment.
The focus of this joyful song is about the Lord coming to judge the world in righteousness.
And we might say, well, that's strange for a Christmas song,
but actually it's perfect.
If you just think about the lyrics,
no more let sins or sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make his blessings known,
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found.
The message of that song is that when God's King is ruling over us as Savior,
even the land itself, the environment will be restored.
It will be productive.
And people in society will live together in grace and peace without sin and without sorrows
because the Messiah is going to come,
and he's going to reverse all the effects of our fallen condition
as far as the curse is found.
And I bring up this non-Christmas Christmas carol this morning
because it has this great theme of reversal,
this great theme of exchange and substitution and total transformation
of sins being exchanged for righteousness
and thorns for roses and sorrows for joys and curses for blessings.
And we see that not only in the poetry of songs like Joy to the World,
but we also see it in the poetry of the prophet Isaiah,
and that's what we're looking at today.
If you want to take the Pew Bible in front of you and open it up,
I encourage you to open it to page 607.
These worship handouts we give you are great,
but they're limited in space,
and so we have to turn poetry into prose to fit it all on there,
but that's not how it's meant to be read.
So much of the Bible is poetic prophecy and prophetic poetry,
and I want to teach you how to read it as such today.
We know that this book of the Bible, the prophet Isaiah,
is one of Jesus' favorite books in the Bible.
He quotes it along with Deuteronomy and Psalms more than any other book.
We know that this text, Isaiah 61,
is one of his favorite texts in all the Bible.
In his first sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth,
he preached on this very, Jesus preached on this very passage.
And so the question today is, what does it mean,
and what does it mean for us at the end of 2022?
And what I want to say about this text is that
Christ comes to reverse our curse,
give us grace, and make us priests.
Christ comes to reverse our curse,
give us grace, and make us priests.
And first of all, Christ comes to reverse our curse.
Let me just read verse 1 again.
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives,
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
That word, anointed, he has anointed me.
In Hebrew is Mashiach, or Messiah,
and in Greek is Christos, or Christ.
And how is this one anointed?
He's anointed with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
that same Spirit of power that ordered the chaos of creation,
that same Spirit that divided the Red Sea
to lead God's people into freedom.
And who is it that's doing the anointing here?
It's the Lord.
It's Yahweh.
And we learned a few weeks back that that name of God
means the self-existent one.
I am who I am, the living God who comes down
to redeem his people from their bondage.
And we're told that this Lord, he's the Sovereign Lord,
meaning he rules and he reigns supreme
above all authorities and powers.
This Lord is the one to whom all peoples,
all presidents, all potentates must bow
before his eternal transcendent kingdom
and power and glory.
And this Lord is anointing this king
with chaos-ordering, life-giving power in the Holy Spirit
to work on the Sovereign Lord's behalf
so that this one who's anointed comes
as the Sovereign Lord's ambassador,
as his representative.
And what are the tasks that this anointed one
has been given to do?
Well, we're told three times that he's been sent
to proclaim, to proclaim the good news,
to proclaim freedom for the captives,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
So the first and highest priority and task
of this anointed one is to come proclaiming
and to come preaching.
He comes with this spirit-empowered word
of the Sovereign Lord
so that whatever this anointed king speaks
is accomplished and whatever he says
is what happens.
And what is it that he's proclaiming
and that he's come preaching?
Well, what's interesting is he doesn't come
proclaiming good ideas or good advice,
but he comes proclaiming good news, right?
He doesn't come proclaiming good ideas
like the philosophers of the West, right?
He doesn't come proclaiming good advice
like the mystics of the East.
He comes proclaiming breaking good news
about historical events.
And who is this news for?
Well, this is what's amazing
is that he's come with news
not for heads of state.
He's come with news not for the captains of business.
He's come with news not for the experts
in the arts and the sciences.
Who is he come with news for?
He's come with news for the poor.
But of course, we know that poverty
is more than,
it's more profound than material want, right?
In Hebrew poetry,
you look at the parallel words
that come in the next lines
to define the words that have come above.
And so, when you just look at this text,
who are the poor?
Well, they're the brokenhearted.
They're the afflicted who need binding up.
The poor are the captives
and the oppressed who need freeing.
The poor are the prisoners in darkness
who need releasing so they can see the light.
They're blind and they need recovery of their sight.
And this text is telling us
that the sovereign Lord and His anointed King,
He's not ignoring material poverty.
It's just that material poverty
is always a signpost to something deeper,
something more profound.
Material poverty is a signpost
to spiritual poverty.
So, who are the poor?
Well, obviously, they're the socially poor.
Those of low status,
whose honor has been diminished
and whose dignity has been destroyed.
But more than that,
and deeper than that,
the poor are those who stand before
the riches of God's holy love.
And they realize the poverty
of their own spirit.
They realize that they are, in fact,
spiritually bankrupt
and that they have nothing to bring to God.
They have nothing to offer up to God.
Well, who then are the brokenhearted?
Obviously, these are people
who are grieving the misery of life
in this world.
But more than that,
and deeper than that,
these are people who are feeling
the spiritual pain
of their relationship with God
having been ruined by sin and death.
Right?
And because they know themselves
to be poor in spirit,
they mourn.
You see, Jesus loved this text.
Blessed are the poor in spirit
and blessed are those
who realize they're poor in spirit
and so they mourn.
This is the opening
of his greatest sermon.
Well, who then are the captives
and the oppressed?
Well, obviously, in this context,
these are the Jews
who are suffering
under the thumb of the Gentiles,
whether they're in Egypt
or Babylon
or whichever empire
happens to reign over them.
But more than that,
and deeper than that,
the captives are those
who are spiritually captive
to their own selfish desires.
It's people who are imprisoned
in their own pride and vanity.
It's those who are trapped
in their own independence from God,
those who find themselves
stuck as moral slaves
to their own self-sovereignty,
bruised, as it were,
by the shackles of the self.
And who then in this text
are the blind?
Well, obviously,
it's those who are physically
unable to see,
those who were considered
useless to society
and had to beg at the city gate.
But more than that
and deeper than that,
it's those who are suffering
from spiritual blindness,
those who are in the dark
about God,
those who need to be given
a new optic nerve
so that they can see God
and see the glory of God again.
And what this text is telling us
is that this sovereign Lord
is determined to come
and to intervene
and to come and meet the needs
of His fallen creatures.
And He's sending His Spirit,
He's sending His Spirit
to anoint this appointed king
to come and deal with
and to undo
and to rectify
and to reverse the condition
of the poor,
the brokenhearted,
the captive,
and the blind.
And we notice that
God did not choose
one of us in this room
as mere human beings
to reverse the curse
of this world.
And I'm a little disappointed
about that.
You know,
why didn't He choose me
to do this job?
Why didn't He put you
on the short list
of His candidates
to fulfill this mission?
Well, how in the world
would that have worked?
I mean,
how can someone like me
or how could someone like you
who is spiritually poor
and relationally brokenhearted
and morally captive
and theologically blind
do anything remotely helpful
to address the curses
of this world?
But you see,
this is the message
and the meaning
of Advent and Christmas
that our sovereign Lord
sent His Son,
His own Son,
to become poor.
That though He Himself
was not spiritually poor,
Jesus left behind
all of the riches
and all the splendor
of heaven.
He left behind
those golden thrones
and the sapphire-paved courts
in His Father's
holy presence.
And He came down
into that lowly manger,
that lowliest
of stable floors,
and He took our poverty,
and He took our bankruptcy
upon Himself.
This is what causes
the Apostle Paul
to say that we know
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though He was rich,
yet for our sake He became poor
so that you,
through His poverty,
might become rich.
this is the message
of Christmas,
that the sovereign Lord
has sent His own Son
to become brokenhearted.
That though He Himself
had a perfect
and an unbroken
relationship with God,
He emptied Himself
of heaven's glory
and of heaven's peace.
Right?
And He stooped so low.
He stooped as low
as conception.
He stooped as low
as birth
to come and participate
in the misery
of our broken relationship
with God.
He became,
as we call Him,
the man of sorrows
to take upon Himself
the burdens of our sins
and our sufferings.
Why did He do that?
In order to reconcile us
to God
and to bind up our hearts
with His holy
and His healing love.
This is the message
of Christmas,
that the sovereign Lord
sent His own Son
to become captive.
That though He was
the most spiritually
and morally free
being in the universe,
He laid aside
all of His rights.
He laid aside
all of His prerogatives.
He laid aside
all of His privileges
and all of His freedoms.
And He was born
to come and take
upon Himself
our slavery.
He was laid
in that cradle
that from day one
was under the shadow
of His cross.
Knowing that
that newborn King
would one day
be bound
as a captive.
He would one day
be nailed
as a condemned criminal.
Why did He do that?
So that our chains
might fall off
and that our hearts
might be free.
This is the message
of Christmas,
that the sovereign Lord
sent His own Son
to become blind.
He left the light
of God's glory
in heaven
for the darkness
of Mary's womb,
for the darkness
of that cave
in Bethlehem,
for the darkness
of this sad
and weary world
in which we live.
He left all the light
of God's glory
for the darkness
of the Roman Empire
whose soldiers
would one day
blind Him.
They'd put a blindfold
on Him
and they'd spit on Him
and they'd curse Him
and they'd beat Him
and they'd mock Him
and they'd crucify Him
as if they could
snuff out the light
of the world.
And He, my friends,
became a prisoner
of the darkness.
Why did He do it?
So that we could sing
together,
I once was lost
but now I'm found.
I was blind
but now I can see.
See, He comes
to make His blessings
flow
far as the curse
is found,
far as the curse
is found,
far as the curse
is found.
And friends,
don't you long
for this anointed one
to come and
reverse every curse
in your life?
Aren't you longing
with me this morning
that God would come
and turn all the places
of cursing
in your life
into sources of blessing?
I want to remind you
today that He can do it
and that indeed
He has done it.
That's the good news
of the Spirit
anointed Son
of the Sovereign Lord
that we in Him
are no longer poor,
we're in fact rich.
And we are no longer
broken hearted
and broken
in our relationship
with God.
We've been made whole
and we are no longer
captives to sin
and to ourselves,
we've been set free.
And that we are
no longer blind,
but we can see God
in the glory
of God's Spirit
anointed Son,
Jesus.
Joy to the world.
The Lord has come.
Joy to all the earth.
The Savior reigns.
So Christ comes
to reverse our curse.
But He also comes
to give us His grace.
Christ comes
to give us grace.
What is it that we're
celebrating at the first
and the second coming
of this Messiah?
Well, it says that He came
in verse 2
to proclaim the year
of Yahweh's favor,
the year of Yahweh's grace,
the year of Yahweh's pleasure.
And what in the world
is this?
Well, this anointed King
is proclaiming
and He's preaching
from His favorite book
of the Bible,
our favorite book
of the Bible,
the book of Leviticus.
Right?
Because every Jewish kid
would have heard
this phrase,
the year of Yahweh's favor,
the year of Yahweh's grace,
and they would have
thought to themselves,
Leviticus 25
and the year of Jubilee.
And you're thinking,
well, what in the world
is that?
Well, when you turn
to the Torah,
the first five books
of the Bible,
Jesus' Bible,
and you look at page 1,
it says that God
blessed the seventh day
and He made it
a holy day of rest.
And that means
that the Sabbath day,
it's not the year
of the Lord's favor,
but it is the day
of the Lord's favor.
It's the day
of the Lord's grace,
the day of His pleasure.
And the Ten Commandments
tell us that one day
in seven,
not one day in 14,
not one day in 28,
that we are to worship
the Lord of grace together.
And then if you read
on the Torah,
it says one year
out of every seven years
is to be a Sabbath year.
That is when you're
to let the land
lie fallow
and the earth
build up its nutrients
and all the land
and the animals
and the workers
that have rested
during that year
will find themselves
flourishing and fruitful again
because they've had rest.
That's where we get
our idea of a sabbatical year.
But then if you keep
reading on,
you eventually get
to Leviticus 25,
which has one of the
most radical ideas
in all the Old Testament.
And it says this,
that one year
out of every seven
Sabbath years,
so that's one year
out of every 49 years,
you're to have
a Sabbath of the Sabbaths.
You're to have
the year of Jubilee,
the year of the Lord's favor,
the year of the Lord's grace,
the year of the Lord's pleasure.
And what in the world
is this?
Well, if you had
poor crops
or if you had
poor fortune
or if you had
poor judgment,
you might find yourself
in a situation
where you are
in really big debt.
You're in a debt
that you cannot
pay off yourself.
And so to deal
with that debt,
you might become
an indentured servant
to the one
to whom you owed
your debt.
Or you might sell off
some of your land
and lose your family
inheritance
in the promised land.
And so you can imagine
that over 49 years,
some people would come
to be very prosperous
and some people
would come to be
very poor.
And the question
as God was building
this new counterculture
in the promised land
is how do we make sure
that people get
a second chance?
How do we make sure
that no one gets stuck
in their poverty?
How do we guard
against monopolies
and dynasties?
How do we guard
against and protect
against this great
disparity of wealth
and freedom
and opportunity
in the promised land?
And how do we level
the playing field
among human beings?
Well, it said
the 49th year,
the year of Jubilee,
this once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity,
this once-in-a-lifetime
event was to be
the year of the Lord's
favor,
the year of the Lord's
grace,
where three things
would happen.
First of all,
every debt
would be remitted.
That if anybody owed
any money
to their creditors,
your debts,
no matter how large,
they were canceled,
the books were cleared,
all debtors
were declared free.
The second thing
that happened
in the year of Jubilee
is that every slave
was to be set free.
That if anyone
had become poor
and had sold themselves
as a slave
to someone else,
that they would be set
at liberty.
And the third thing
that would happen
in the year of Jubilee
is that every land
that had been lost
would be restored.
That everyone
would get back
that portion
of their family
possession
and their family
property
in the promised land.
And this ideal
of the Jubilee,
it was to make
the people of God
unique among
all the nations.
Nobody else
was practicing this.
Nobody else
was living like this.
But the biblical
scholars tell us
and the historians
tell us that
we don't think
this ideal
was ever realized
in Israel.
It was never practiced
and observed
in Israel.
So do we see
how the Old Testament
might be preparing us
for the New Testament?
Do we have a sense
of how God
might be giving us
an idea
of what His Messiah
will come to do?
This year of Jubilee,
it was to be proclaimed
on the Day of Atonement.
And they would,
on that day
of bloody sacrifice
where all the sins
of the people
would be wiped out
and forgiven,
they would sound
the trumpet.
Everybody would hear
the blast of this trumpet.
And all who found
themselves in poverty,
all who identified
as debtors
and slaves
and dispossessed,
they would listen out
for the sound
of that trumpet
and they would listen out
for the sound
of the glorious year
of the Lord's favor,
the glorious year
of the Lord's grace
and His pleasure.
And friends,
I wonder if today
even you can hear
the trumpet blast
of Jubilee.
If you can hear
the trumpet blast
of the grace
of God
that the sovereign Lord
sent His Son
at Christmas
to begin
the year
of the Lord's grace.
He emptied Himself.
He disguised Himself.
He came
undercover
as a vulnerable child.
And though He was rich,
He became a debtor.
Though He was free,
He became a slave.
Though He was the maker
of heaven and earth,
He became dispossessed
of everything He owned.
And why did He do that?
Well, this baby
grew up to be a boy
and this boy grew up
to be a preacher.
And one day He walked
into a synagogue
on the Sabbath day
and He preached
His first sermon,
His inaugural address,
His messianic manifesto.
And what was His text?
His text was Isaiah 61.
And when He preached
that sermon,
He was sounding the trumpet,
proclaiming the year
of the Lord's grace,
declaring to everyone
that that year of grace
had begun in Him
and reiterating
to all who were gathered
and all who would ever hear
this text again,
that same message
on the night of His birth,
sung by the angels,
Gloria,
in excelsis Deo,
and on earth,
peace to those
on whom God's favor
and on whom God's grace
has come to rest.
And so my friends,
I ask you this morning,
are you a debtor to sin?
Do you find that you owe
to God
and owe to your family
and owe to your neighbors
a deep debt of love?
So the message of Jubilee
is that without doing
anything at all,
your debts can be canceled
and your ledger can be erased
and your past sins
blotted out
and though your sins
be as scarlet,
you can be as white
as snow,
freed from all that it is
you owe to God.
And have you come here today
a slave to your own self-interest,
a slave in bondage
to your own desires?
Well, the good news
is that you can be freed
from those iron bars
of your flesh
and of the world
and of the devil,
all those chains
that are holding you back,
you can be freed
to love God
and to enjoy God
and to serve God
and you can be freed
even to become
like the Spirit-anointed servant,
Christ.
Are you here today
and you find yourself
dispossessed?
Someone who has lost
their precious property.
Jesus said,
what does it profit a man
to gain the whole world
but to lose his very soul?
Our soul is that
which enables us
to have a relationship
with God
and maybe you're here today
and you've lost
this precious possession
of your soul
that gives you life
with God
but the Jubilee,
the message of Christmas
and this year of grace,
this year of Jubilee
is that all of us
who have lost
our character,
all of us who have lost
our integrity,
all of us who have lost
our purity,
all of us who have lost
our soul
and our life with God
can get back
all it is
that we've lost.
Christ's child of Christmas
has come
to make you
a child of God.
He's come to bring you
back into a reconciled
relationship with God
and get you back
into the family,
back into the status
of a son
or a daughter
who has an infinite
and eternal
inheritance in God.
And that's the good news
that if you believe
in Christ
and you've surrendered
yourself to Him,
you're not only going
to get your soul back,
that one day
you're going to be
owners of the whole
universe,
that you're going
to be walking
on the face
of this renovated
earth
and a resurrected
body changed
into the likeness
of Christ
and sharing
in the family property
and the family
possession,
the family inheritance
that belongs to Him
which is everything.
And so I wonder,
friends,
can you hear
this trumpet blast
of the year of Jubilee,
the trumpet blast
of the year of God's grace
can you hear it?
Can you feel it
in this Christ
that's come among us?
Christ comes to reverse
our curse
and to give us grace
and finally comes
to make us priests.
He comes to make us priests.
Why is it this
sovereign Lord
and His Spirit-anointed Son
and His King
has come to reverse
our curse
and to give us
this grace
of Jubilee?
Is it so that
we can live
for ourselves?
So that we can live
like our neighbors?
So that we can
live out
this expressive
individualism
of the Western world?
So that we can live
as self-actualized people
of the secular age?
No.
He's come
and made us free
for this reason.
Verse 6.
You see,
Isaiah tells us
that the church
is not made up
of one priest
or even two priests.
The church
is made up
of all of you
who are His priests
and ministers
of the Lord.
You've been set free
to serve
the sovereign Lord
and to carry out
the will
and the work
of the Lord
in the world.
And what is that?
I want to encourage you
that it's to do
for one person.
Maybe one person
here today.
Maybe the person
that's sitting
in the pew
beside you
or the pew
in front of you.
It's to do
for one person
this Christmas
what the Lord
has done for you.
And what is that?
Verse 3.
He's come
to bestow
on them
a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment
of praise
instead of a spirit
of despair.
The Christ
of the cradle,
the Christ
who came.
He came to exchange
His love.
He came to exchange
what He has
for what you have.
He came in this
great act
of substitution
and saying,
I'll take what you got
and I'll give you
what I've got.
So I see
that you have
these ashes
of sin
and suffering,
but I'll take that
upon myself
so that you can wear
my royal crown
of beauty.
and I'll take
your mourning
over all the misery
and sin
and brokenness
of this world
so that you can be
anointed with the oil
of my joy
and my gladness.
And He comes to us,
Christ comes to us
and He says,
I'll take your depression
and I'll take your despair
and I'm going to have you
wear my garment
of praise instead.
Do you see this?
what our minister,
Christ,
what our priest,
Christ,
has come to put
upon us?
He's come to give you
a crown of beauty.
He's come to give you
the oil of joy.
He's come to give you
the garment
of praise.
And so the question
for us is that
this is what He's done
for us as our priest
and our minister.
What are we to do
for one another
as priests
and as ministers?
And I would just
encourage you
to think about
one person
here today
who's got ashes
on their head.
Somebody who's got
mourning in their eyes.
Somebody who's got
despair in their heart.
And you don't have to go
across the world
to find that.
You don't have to go
across the city
to find that.
There's plenty
just right here.
And your task
as a priest
and as a minister
is to get to know
this people
and to say
I want to apply
to you the remedy
of Christ
that's been applied
to me.
I want to give
to you
this crown
of beauty.
I want to give
to you this oil
of joy.
I want to give
to you this garment
of praise.
Who is it
that the sovereign
Lord is sending
you to this Christmas
to be a priest
and to be a minister?
Priests are people
who pray.
Ministers are people
who meditate
on the word
of God.
And through
this,
these priests
and ministers
they experience
the power
of God
to begin
living out
the principles
of Jubilee,
the principles
of grace
so that we
become a whole
community
that's proclaiming
good news
for the poor.
A whole community
that's binding
up the broken
hearted.
A whole church
community
that is setting
the captives
free
and a whole
church community
that's releasing
people that are
in the darkness
of their own
blindness to God.
A whole community
living in this year
of grace,
this year of God's
favor,
this year of His
forgiveness
for debtors,
for slaves,
for the dispossessed.
Friends,
I pray
that God would
enable us
to do this
because Christ,
He comes to
reverse our curse
and to give us
grace and ultimately
to make us His
priests in a world
that so desperately
need His love
and His care,
His crown of beauty,
His oil of joy,
His garment of praise.
May He do this
for us in the name
of the Father,
Son,
and Holy Spirit.
Amen.