“Use your hands for good hard work, then give generously to others in need.” (Ephesians 4:28)
“Who do you suppose it is?” quickly has become the burning question of our congregation.
Exactly who is the anonymous member challenging all of us to greater generosity in the sharing of our treasure with the Lord?
From now until Sunday, Nov. 12, this member will match your Sunday tithes and offerings dollar for dollar up to $12,500. That means every $1 becomes $2 when you place your gifts in one of the “Double Your Blessing” envelopes enclosed with this newsletter and available in the pews.
This stewardship challenge comes at a much-needed time. Our operating budget has been running in the red for most of this year. Like your household, expenses here in God’s house are up, too, and we need to ensure that our mission and ministry to the community remain as strong as ever.
Earlier this year, the Finance Committee sharpened its pencils and found some cost-savings for some of our bigger-ticket expenses.
For example, the team has shaved several thousand dollars off the cost of our insurance premiums, which total in the neighborhood of $10,000 a year. A new copier recently installed in the church office comes with lower lease payments while not sacrificing the features we need to produce Sunday bulletins and PresbyUpbeats. And for the time being, our part-time office manager position remains unfilled in part to save payroll costs. Volunteers are helping fill in the clerical and administrative gaps.
But candidly, cost-cutting alone won’t be enough — if we want to continue passing on the faith to our children and grandchildren on Wednesday Church Nights. If we want to continue reaching out to the community in loving care of bodies, souls, and spirits. If we want Sunday morning worship to continue being a safe place for friends, neighbors, and strangers to celebrate life’s joys and to find support and encouragement in life’s trials and challenges.
Over nearly 40 years of service in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors, I’ve never seen an organization thrive and grow by cutting back. And I don’t expect that’s changed.
Which perhaps brings the real challenge of our “Double Your Blessing” campaign: How is God through the Spirit calling you to greater financial support of our congregation? How might the Lord take your financial offerings — not just during this campaign but also in the months ahead — and multiply them to the glory of God? How might others, through your generosity, experience the glory of God in their midst?
Those are the real questions that I’d invite you to ask in prayer. They’re far better, more faithful questions to ask than wondering and speculating about the identity of our generous donor.
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If you’d like to “think out loud” and pray withanother about your support of our church — or just want to talk about faith and belief in general or particular, feel free to stop by Aztec Parlor in downtown Waukon on Wednesday afternoons.
Using an open house format that allows you to come and go as your schedule allows, “Wednesday Soul Searching” meets from 3 to 5:30 p.m. The coffee is on me, and I’d love to visit with you about whatever is on your heart and mind.
If you are engaging with the “Faith at Home” encouragements in the Sunday bulletins, these gatherings provide opportunities to “think out loud” and listen for God’s response through the voices of others.
In that same spirit, “Sunday Soul Searching” meets on the first Sunday of each month at 11 a.m. in the Chapel. Recent and interested confirmands, parents, sponsors, and other members of the congregation are welcome.
Like “Wednesday Soul Searching,” the Sunday group will gather around the question, “How is it with your soul?”
Again, that’s a far better and more faith question.
When you do more than scratch its surface, you discover a treasure-trove of faithful living concealed deep under the weight of the Eighth Commandment’s thunderous prohibition against theft.
As I suggested last Sunday, the Spirit through the Eighth Word compels hard questions – pondering and wondering if people richly blessed with lots of money, most of whom mostly spending their money on themselves, are guilty of a form of passive theft, simply by virtue of holding back with a death grip those resources at hand that easily and painlessly could be shared with others in need.
But blessedly so, the Eighth Commandment spurs you and me to generosity, encourages us to share, give, donate, and offer freely and joyously. No. 8 balances the scales of wrong-taking and right-possessing. Which seems to be a big part of the problem for the early church in Ephesus!
In this morning’s Word of the Lord, the apostle Paul writes with a bracing reminder that, even within the Christian community, we regularly need to challenge each other to greater generosity. Paul, of course, is more direct: “Stop your stealing.” Thus there must have been, on account of Paul’s letter, scoundrels in the Ephesian church who were actively stealing!
Paul is light on details, but odds are that the Ephesian church isn’t home to active rings of bank-robbers and purse-snatchers. So maybe the “thieves” that Paul has in mind are guilty of more subtle forms of theft – like laziness, though which people leech off the community without ever giving back. Or maybe it was selfishness – well-heeled folks whose deep pockets are tightly sown shut and securely sealed up. They are “well off,” yes, but not necessarily “well-to-do” when it comes to actually doing something sacred and holy with the heft of their bank accounts.
Regardless of the particulars that surround their thieving reality, what astounds is headline news that thieves are afoot in the cloisters and corridors of St. Paul’s Church of Ephesus. Specifics notwithstanding, Paul’s crime-fighting strategy – surprisingly – relies on honest, faithful work through which to earn a paycheck, in turn though which to have something to share with those in need.
In other words, Doc Paul’s antidote to thieving hands is a more generous spirit.
If you are so generously invested in another, as to want to help him or her in any and every way that you possibly can, then you are vastly less likely to exploit anyone for your own selfish gain. Accordingly, with the Holy Spirit in your corner, your chances of faithfully keeping God’s Eighth Word in its totality are far, far better.
Feel the assurance of heartfelt generosity – as well as a challenge to open-handedness – as you listen for the Word of the Lord:
“Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord,” Paul writes.
“You must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ!
“For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts,
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
“So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. (Ephesians 4:17-28)
Meet my friend Jeff – Jeff Fuqua, an affable flat-lander from the great state of Illinois.
Jeff first rang our doorbell maybe five or six years ago. Our then-middle-school son Ryan answered the door and invited him in. Jeff preferred to wait outside until an adult came to the door.
His needs were basic: A place to lay his head, and some food to nourish his body. So, we paid for a couple night’s lodging at the Stoney Creek Inn over on Rossville Road, and we drove together to Fareway to purchase some groceries with a $100 bill that my wife, Julie, and I had squirreled away for such emergency humanitarian use, which included our own sudden, rainy-day needs.
And since that first visit, Jeff’s arrivals have become annual rites of summer. This year’s reunion with Jeff came a little later than usual – last weekend to be exact. He sat with Julie in Sunday worship, then he headed back to his hotel room to watch some pro football on TV. By birth he’s a Chicago Bears fan, and he thinks the Dallas Cowboys are overrated. Same goes for Aaron Rodgers. But that Patrick Mahomes kid seems like a decent guy.
By Tuesday Jeff was ready to hit the road again, but there was one more really important thing that he needed: a new pair of walking shoes. For you see, Jeff is homeless, and he doesn’t have a car. He walks everywhere he goes, and his travels take him places far and wide across the Midwest. Shoes are his stock in trade – size 13, to be exact, and he prefers Sketchers.
Ever try to find size 13 Sketchers walking shoes in northeast Iowa? It’s a tall order!
But finally, at the third store we checked, Jeff found a pair that fit, and the shoes became my gift to him. At the end of the check-out aisle, Jeff kicked off his old, worn-out shoes, removed the tags from his new pair, slipped them over his size 13 feet, and laced them up snuggly. His old pair went into the now-empty shoebox, which with its worn-out contents went into a nearby trashcan.
The fullness of Jeff’s life story remains a mystery.
He was married for a time, and he has an adult son and daughter whom he hasn’t seen in years. A divorce created some sort of rift that’s estranged Jeff and his children for a decade or more. Like many of life’s relationships, it sounds like things were “complicated,” and his ex-wife’s remarriage somehow or other muddied the waters of Jeff’s fatherhood.
In credit of accomplishment, Jeff earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work from the University of Illinois, and he worked as a crisis intervention counselor for troubled teens. These days, though, other than picking up occasional odd jobs and gig work, Jeff doesn’t have a regular job. He’s homeless by choice and to make his way through life relies on the kindness of strangers and the generosity of friends.
I suppose he technically would be counted among the “thieves” of whom Paul writes – one of the rogue scofflaws and panhandlers whom Paul encourages to “labor and work honestly with their own hands.”
And maybe so. But I’ll leave Jeff to work that out with the Lord – as much or more as I work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, on my knees before the Eighth Commandment and its call to generosity, and its naming as “thieves” people who have resources to share but can’t or won’t offer not even one thin dime.
With the God’s Eighth Word firmly in hand, the Holy Spirit reminds that I’ve got, oh, maybe a dozen pair of shoes in my closet – sandals for summer, boots for winter, dress shoes for church, sneakers for the wellness center. And if I can afford that many shoes – and without too much hardship could purchase yet another pair that caught my eye and matched an outfit, then I surely can afford to buy my friend Jeff – when he really need it – a new pair of his only shoes and means of transportation.
Jeff did turn down my offer of some new, heavy-duty hiking socks to go with his new shoes. He said they were too expensive. “I’m not paying 15 bucks for two pair of socks” was his economic assessment of the thick, cotton-fibered footwear. It was yet another memorable adage from a catch-as-catch-can friendship that renews itself annually in the warmth of summer.
Unusual though it might seem, ours is a friendship of double blessing: I to him, and he to me.
As the Lord commands, I’m able to bless him with the very stuff of life – food, clothing, and shelter, because God has blessed me and my family with the very same stuff. In return Jeff blesses me with the wonder of his experience, the quickness of his wit, the depth of his faith, and the gentleness of his heart. (And he’s got a twinge of an Illinois accent that provides a certain quaint lilt to his speech.)
For me – thanks to the Holy Spirit, it is a sacred privilege to be the hands and feet of Jesus for Jeff. And because of such sharing, I’m further privileged to call Jeff my friend – my brother in Christ, a fellow child of God whose double blessing of friendship and service I shall always cherish.
That’s really what the Lord has in mind with his Old Testament orders to stop the stealing.
That’s really what Jesus is talking about in the New Testament’s greatest commandment to love and serve God, friend, neighbor, and stranger.
That’s really what the Commandments and the Gospels are all about: Creating open hands and generous hearts. Double blessings, the Word of the Lord.
Bread for the world, thanks be to God!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on World Communion Sunday, October 1, 2023. It is the 10th in his current series on The Ten Commandments.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Friday, September 30, 2023, at the funeral for member Duane Miller, who died Sunday, September 24, 2023, at age 89. Commentary and reflection by Scott Hoezee and St. Teresa of Avila inform the message.
A nourishing fringe benefit of being a small-town pastor is the surprise delivery of food.
The ringing doorbell breaks the quiet of a Saturday afternoon, and when you answer the call, your visitor holds a sack of fresh-picked green beans or bushel of crisp apples. Sometimes it’s a chicken that earlier in the day had been clucking around the farmyard in blissful ignorance of its fate, but now – cleaned and dressed, the prized capon cocoons in a Zip-Lock bag, ready for roasting.
Other times, the smiling face at the backdoor hands off a container of snow-white filets: Bluegill, crappie, maybe some perch, that just hours ago had been innocently swimming around some slow-moving backwater of the Mississippi.
Words of marvel over God’s Creation – and the telling of a few “fish stories” – furthered the charity and enriched the nourishment. Then back to his running vehicle he’d go.
“Have a good one, pastor. See ya Sunday!”
“You too, Duane. God bless!
Look out for deer on your way home! And tell Shirley is says “hi.”
I assume Duane limited-out on the day’s catch when and only when he was fishing solo.
When he was drowning worms with the grandkids, Duane, I’m told, spent most of his time baiting hooks, untangling lines, and just generallymaking sure the barb of an errantly cast hook didn’t sink deep into tender, young flesh.
Anxiety, impatience, and youthful exuberance notwithstanding, Duane logged countless hours along the shoreline and aboard the pontoon, blessedly nourishing body and mind, soul and spirit, of young and old alike.
But in this moment, the boat sits empty and tied at the dock, and we’re all feeling more than just a little hungry. Death has a particularly nasty way of making a body feel empty and hollow. Death makes our insides growl and groan with a kind of starvation that’s never fully fed.
Grief hangs over you like the gray skies above. Tears flow like a great river, and rough wake tosses you to and fro like a rag doll. You need to find safe harbor. You need some comfort food – maybe even a stiff tumbler of straight-up brandy and a pinch of snuff.
Yet there just doesn’t seem like there’s anything good to eat or drink. Nothing but hunger, the glass well below half empty. You cast your nets – far and wide, but throw after throw, you get skunked – no fish flipping and flopping inside the faded-blue Igloo cooler that normally held abundance.
Then, along comes Jesus. “Catch anything?” – No?
“Then come. Sit by the fire. Warm yourself. Have some breakfast.”
Listen for the Word of the Lord in the Gospel of John:
After he rose from the dead, Jesus showed himself to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he showed himself in this way.
Gathered there together one evening were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.
The disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And though there were so many, the net was not torn.
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”
Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.(John 21:1-14)
Hanging around on a remote beach with a bunch of hapless fishermen who came up empty the night before isn’t exactly where you’d expect the Lord to show up.
After all, Jesus has just risen from the dead, and he ought to be back in Jerusalem telling old Herod and Pilate the truth of what had happened to him as a result of their execution orders.
Jesus ought to be anywhere else but on that beach. He ought to be off somewhere – oh, I don’t know – maybe curing cancer or healing the blind, releasing some prisoners or making some crooked ways straight – all the stuff that makes the big headlines for the Lord God of abundance and goodness.
Even the spectacular catch of fish that Jesus hauls onto the beach that morning seems puny compared to all the stuff he’s done before. Earlier in the Gospel story, Jesus takes a couple of fish and a piece or two of bread and pulls off the eye-popping, jaw-dropping miracle of feeding 5,000-or-so people.
Now that was impressive!
But now, here, in our lesson this morning, Jesus goes to the opposite extreme: He feeds seven people from a catch of 153 fish. Doesn’t seem like much of a big deal.
Maybe, then, we need to rethink where we expect the Lord to show up in our lives and what we expect him to do when he gets there.
We’re often so desperate to infuse the resurrected Jesus with such meaning that we don’t see him showing up in the ordinary circumstances of everyday living and doing the little things that mean so much – like providing a simple meal when we’re so incredibly hungry!
It is in the ordinary routine where we probably need to see Jesus more often – seeing Jesus in exactly the everyday set of circumstances that John’s Gospel shares with us – on a beach, cooking breakfast, filling hungry stomachs, warming and lifting up sagging spirits.
Because isn’t that precisely where we need to encounter a Savior? When hooks need bait, and lines need untangling?
We don’t just need a stained-glass Jesus who is so heavenly and other-worldly, a Jesus who speaks at only the holiest and most obviously sacred of events and occasions. We need a Jesus in the kitchen – “amid the pots and pans,” as one ancient writer puts it.
We need a Jesus who’s on the beach and at the office, with us in the car running the errands, riding behind us on the motorcycle, sitting next to us in the classroom, milking the herd in the parlor, riding shotgun in the tractor during planting and harvest.
We need a Savior who accompanies us on our everyday journeys – a Savior who reaches out and touches the ordinary circumstances of our lives with much-needed abundance and goodness.
We need the humble cook who prepares a meal over a simple charcoal fire so we can sit back and savor an abundance of comfort and strength that we need to make it through from one day to the next – never really “getting over” the death of a loved one but, with the courage and strength of the Holy Spirit, learning to live with such heartbreaking loss.
While in the shadow of death it seems impossible, but indeed joy and laughter, a sense of wholeness – however scarred – one day will return, even as the “first withouts” – holidays, birthdays, anniversaries – dampen eyes and lump throats.
Thanks be to God, an abundance of healing mercy and a goodly amount of resurrection hope rises with the dawn of each new day.
Such amazing grace probably won’t taste as flaky delicious as pan-fried perch. But it’ll be sufficient – grace so adequately nourishing and effectively comforting, that we join the psalmist in joyful, full-throated celebration:
“The Lord is shepherd of my life; I shall not want for anything. He anoints my head with oil, and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.”
In this world or the next, may nothing in life or in death separate us from the healing love of God – the good and abundant love of God made known in simple and comforting things that show up at just the right time: In the breaking of bread, in the frying of fish – and maybe even, dare I say, in the sipping of a hot toddy on a chilly autumn night.
Surely so, in the kind face of the caring soul who shows up at the back door some morning bearing a sack of comfort food and extending a gracious invitation: “Come, let’s have breakfast.”
Over our two months of exploration, a couple major attractions should be overshadowing our walking tour of the Ten Commandments.
What I hope first captures your attention are the positive aspects of the Commandments – the holy attitudes and loving behaviors that the Lord prefers and encourages. Those Words of Life, first given to Moses atop Mount Sinai, all point to what Jesus much later will call the Greatest Commandment: Loving and serving God, loving and serving friend, neighbor, and stranger, as you yourself would want to be loved.
The regular, Spirit-led practice of loving wholly and unconditionally is proof positive that those Commandments once written in stone are now written on your heart.
Just as the prophet Jeremiah foretells, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (31:33)
Just as the prophet Ezekiel declares, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (36:26)
And just as the apostle Paul affirms, “You show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:3)
What I pray you’ve also found worthy of note is the broad umbrella of the Commandments. They cover more ground than first meets the eye or ear.
As we’ve already learned, “murder” involves physical death by the hand of another as much or more as lethal blows and fatal assaults that pummel souls and spirits without mercy. “Adultery” indicts all intimacy – physical, spiritual, and emotional – that severs itself from commandment love and authentic emotion, never feeling the need or necessity of honest, sincere commitment.
Do not, sisters and brothers, think more highly of oneself than you ought (Romans 12:3), by skipping over these and those Commandments that you think you’ve never broken. Do not, friends and neighbors, squander the gracious opportunity to fess up to your brokenness, by remaining so stiff-necked, when the Lord extends heaven’s hand of forgiveness, grace, and peace – again, and again, and again.
As both bane and blessing, the Commandments stretch the breadth and depth of our understanding that God comes to us in Christ not to condemn but to save, not to reject but to love. And our living, breathing embodiment of the Commandments – at work and play, in the classroom or the coffee shop – becomes our thankful and faithful response to such undeserved favor and privileged status.
Heads this morning now humbly bow before the Eighth Commandment – again, a seemingly simple and straight-forward prohibition, this time of theft.
Consider it gratitude for grace that our favorite lyrics call amazing; abide in its peace that cherished Scripture deems beyond understanding. And trust this Good News that is for you, too: God’s Law is not a means to an end. God’s Law means to personify never-ending gratitude in God’s people through the inspiration of holy living.
Its obvious forms of outright robbery and burglary are surely forbidden. But as it always is with the Word of the Lord, his Eighth brings poignant reminder that theft comprises a vast, gurgling swamp of various and sundry felonies, high crimes, and misdemeanors. As they say, the devil is in the details, and those sordid details are what poke us in the ribs, where we feel the pinch; why God’s brow deeply furrows, why tears pour from divine eyes.
In this morning’s lesson, the acute source of such human pain and divine sorrow – God’s lament over theft – lies in particular with what for too many passes as ethical business practices.
And into our ailing economy steps Amos, a simple, rustic shepherd whose rich, prophetic baritone rumbles with eloquence. Like his fellow prophets, Amos blows into town with a blaring message: God is done with you, people! In no small measure because of how you buy and sell the poor to line your own pockets and stock the bar for the weekend’s booze cruise.
It’s not that people aren’t going to church. Oh, they’re all there for weekly Sabbath worship.
No, what’s got God’s goat is that worship has fallen into rank hypocrisy. Stumbling boldly but blindly into the temple, the supposedly faithful and true believers scurry like rats through the door with hands stained by the blood of the poor. None of them notices. But God surely does! And what the Lord sees is nauseating.
Through Amos the Lord makes crystal clear that he’d just as soon prefer folks stay home and not even try to worship him, rather than arriving at church reeking the wicked stench of shady lives ruled by greed and plunder – smugly settling into their pews with absolutely no desire or intention to change, absent even the most basic awareness that their business practices and lifestyles of the rich and famous are not sustainable!
To make a bad vibe even worse, God further spots people watching the clock, feeling impatient and anxious for the service to end sooner rather than later. Why? Because of what people talked about in the fellowship hall over coffee and cookies. They talked about business and commerce, their own profit, and surely not another’s gain.
“Can’t wait for the Sabbath to be over, because I’ve got lots to sell tomorrow.”
“I know, right?” was always the instinctive reply. “These forced Sabbath days off are a real pain, eh?”
“Can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow. I’ve got a new pricing scheme that I’m just itching to roll out when the doors open at 9.”
But sadly, in reality, their supposedly solid business plans really were complex sets of stealth and scheme by which to milk every last shekel from an already-impoverished Israelite society. Feel the financial pinch, as you listen for the Word of the Lord. This is the New Living Translation of Amos 5:
What sorrow awaits you who say, “If only the day of the LORD were here!”
You have no idea what you are wishing for. That day will bring darkness, not light. In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion – only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house – and he’s bitten by a snake. Yes, the day of the LORD will be dark and hopeless, without a ray of joy or hope.
“I hate all your show and pretense – the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings. Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.” (Amos 5:18-24 NLT)
Ouch! Biblically speaking, we’re a long way away from laying down in green pastures with the Lord as our Shepherd and having no want.
Flipping ahead to chapter 8, God invites Amos into dreamy vision: “What do you see, Amos?” “Fruit,” he replies.
In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word for “fruit” looks a lot like the word for “the end,” which makes this a wordplay, a pun lost in translation. In the greatness and prosperity around him, Amos sees sweet “fruit.” But God instead declares that – because of greed – “the end” has come for God’s people and their biblical nation of Israel.
Greed by another name or mutual consent is still greed – a robust, mutant variant of theft well banned within the Eighth Commandment and named in Amos 8:
Then the Sovereign LORD showed me another vision. In it I saw a basket filled with ripe fruit.
“What do you see, Amos?” he asked. I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.” Then the LORD said, “Like this fruit, Israel is ripe for punishment! I will not delay their punishment again. In that day the singing in the Temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!”
Listen to this, you who rob the poor and trample down the needy!
You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over and the religious festivals to end so you can get back to cheating the helpless. You measure out grain with dishonest measures and cheat the buyer with dishonest scales. And you mix the grain you sell with chaff swept from the floor. Then you enslave poor people for one piece of silver or a pair of sandals.
Now the LORD has sworn this oath by his own name, the Pride of Israel: “I will never forget the wicked things you have done!” (Amos 8:1-7 NLT)
The whole tragedy lasted not even 20 minutes from beginning to end.
Yet within that narrow window, New York City experienced the worst workplace disaster in U.S. history up until then.
Though many years in the making, the grisly event unfolded on March 25, 1911, just before quitting time at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Workers – mostly young, immigrant women – had sweat through another long, grueling day of work on the eighth and ninth floors, and they were more than ready to punch out, slip on their party clothes, and enjoy a little fun on the town that Saturday evening.
Then, someone screamed “fire.” And the rest, as they say, is history.
So much of Old Testament revelation addresses fair business practices, and such Word also speaks volumes about God.
Theologians of our own day seize-hold of that living and spoken Word to claim it’s not enough simply to set up a society in which everyone has an equal chance to get ahead in life and live the dream. Truly just societies also must labor overtime to ensure that those already poor and marginalized are not further exploited but actively lifted up.
Building the biblical case is easy enough. Indeed, the Lord’s First Testament is absolutely chock-full of God expressing deep concern and special care for the Bible’s odds-on favorite trifecta of widows, orphans, and non-native residents within one’s land. These were – and remain – vulnerable constituencies.
By tradition the men ruled the roost of ancient Israel. Family name and inheritance provided stable places in society and rooms with riverfront views. Thus, a woman without a husband, or a child with parents, or a newcomer lacking any prior claims to land and livelihood very well could be and most often was left high and dry with no legs to stand on. Which is precisely why the Bible over and again charges the rest of the faith community with a positive obligation and solemn responsibility to protect these three groups in particular and also in general those poor in body, mind, or spirit.
As another notes, God’s Word leaves no room for debate: God detests poverty and wills its elimination.
But if one constant spans the length of human history and crosses the boundaries of culture, it would be greed. The rich – many but not all – tend to want to get richer, and they comfortably rely on clever and sometimes-legal ways of protecting what they already have. Then as now, the way the rich get richer – sometimes but not always – is by putting the squeeze on the poor.
And as yet another observes: If theft could be limited only to such obvious misdeeds as purse-snatchings, shoplifters, and window-smashing thugs who steal Blue-Ray players and laptop computers by night, then the Eighth Commandment’s condemnation of theft would be simple and straight to ponder and apply as the law of the land.
But it’s complicated. In market-driven economies, we must seek out fraud and hold accountable its perpetrators among both labor and management. We must sift and winnow through sketchy advertising claims and flimsy political narratives to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The Spirit through the Eighth Word compels us to hard questions – to ponder and wonder if people richly blessed with lots of money, most of whom mostly spending their money on themselves, are guilty of a form of passive theft, simply by virtue of holding back with a death grip those resources at hand that easily and painlessly could be shared with others, including those in need.
And here’s the point of inflection: “Do not steal” hits not only Wall Street embezzlers, cat burglars, and armed robbers. “Do not steal” smacks everyone up alongside the head! God’s Law against stealing rises from human propensity to grab more than our fair share through devious, duplicitous, and in the end disastrous means – sometimes, without even realizing it!
And blessedly so, the Eighth Commandment spurs you and me to generosity, encourages us to share, give, donate, and offer freely and joyously. No. 8 maintains healthy balance between the opposing poles of wrong-taking and right-possessing.
Because in this Commandment, what God assumes is our possession of things. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that.
Nonetheless, there’s a right way and wrong way to acquire the trappings of life, even as there are right and wrong ways of possessing the stuffs you acquire. Regardless of collar color: If the money you earn comes via unjust practices or behaviors, or because you cheat a fair wage from your employees, or since you regularly deny your boss of your honest day’s work, then beyond a doubt you are guilty of stealing.
Further, as a salaried or hourly worker, as an at-home caregiver or retiree, even if everything you own has come through legitimate avenues of honest work, it still remains possible you’ll hold onto that proper gain in ways that constitute passive stealing. If you never give anything away, never share with those who have less, but instead use what you have only for your own pleasure, then you may well be on your improper way of owning even what is legitimately yours.
Ill-gotten gain is wrong, but so is self-centered use of even well-earned reward.
Much to think about, as autoworkers strike for hefty shares of record profits. Much to ponder, when point-of-sale screens more and more flash prompts of pre-calculated tip options – 10, 15, or 20 percent. Just for pouring a cup of coffee? Much to understand, in that showing up for work on time is no longer considered a given.
Much to think about, much to ponder, much to understand: the Eighth Commandment, the Word of the Lord. “Let justice roll down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, September 24, 2023. It is the ninth in his current series on The Ten Commandments. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Gustavo Guiterrez, Scott Hoezee, David Holwerda, and Lewis Smedes inform the message.
As he stood high atop Mount Sinai, dutifully noting Yah-Weh’s directives for faith and life, Moses should have asked the Lord for some more details about No. 7: “You shall not commit adultery.” Five words, period. End of sentence.
And down the list the Lord moves on.
A few more holy words surely would have been really helpful – particularly so for folks like you and me, living in a time and place when and where sexually explicit materials bump and grind seemingly nonstop. And the sources of incitement and titillation seem exponential in their spread, such that lurid expression now screams out every which way you turn.
In response the Lord’s Seventh Word intends to inspire our authentic living of demure lives – decency stretching far beyond sexual intimacy and expression. But oh, how very perversely tight the definition of decency gets stretched these days! And how wholly tempting to bypass No. 7 as a commandment we’re convinced we’ve kept.
Yet, just as the previous commandment prohibiting murder calls out homicide that’s not just physical but also emotional or spiritual, the Seventh Commandment’s direction is far afield, too. In bed with prohibition of actual infidelity is warning about all things that incite indecency, or inspire lewd suggestion, or further blue already-stale and -musty air with more locker-room talk: Thought, word, and deed that dehumanizes, consumes, and casts aside the other without so much as a second thought.
At its best, human sexuality reveals the beauty and wonder of another’s creation in the divine image. At its worst, unbridled, malicious lust suffocates that spiritual reality. Which, in turn, becomes free rein to debase and abuse the other person.
Without question people for generations have ached with passionate fantasies, and keeping those natural, human desires in check explains the biblical-day phenomenon of “bleeding Pharisees.” They were highly devout religious leaders who so seriously took the charge not to lust after women that they stumbled around with their eyes purposely shut. Thus, lacking vision, they routinely bumped into walls, doors, and other immovable objects, along the way bloodying their foreheads to create red badges of abstinence.
In our time such extreme self-denial fares no better. Nonetheless you’d most definitely need such severe blinders to spare your sight of scantily clad men and women in suggestive poses. For the preacher, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But bullet-ridden perch and walleye with powder burns really aren’t very taste-tempting or nourishing. So let’s instead feed on the same spiritual food that the apostle Paul serves up to the Ephesians.
The prominent blessing of this passage shines in the occasion to connect our sexual identity with our baptismal identity.
Throughout this clip of his letter, Paul uses language and imagery all pointing to baptism. “You were once darkness, but now you are light,” Paul writes. If you read carefully or listen closely, Paul paints a starkly harsh image. He doesn’t say the saints in Ephesus once walked in darkness – or that they’re covered in darkness. Paul instead says they once were the incarnation of darkness, with nary even the first clue about anything, much less any realization of their need for light and its gracious sources in Jesus.
But now, in Christ, they not only have light by which to see, but they also have become that light! That’s baptism in a nutshell! When you are baptized, you are changed, turned in a new direction – away from your dark self and toward your divine light. You’ve got a light by which to see everything more distinctly, including, as Paul makes clear here, one’s sexuality.
Yes, Moses should have asked for more, but Paul fills in some of the blanks. Listen with all of yourself for the Word of the Lord.
Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.
Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God. Let there be no sexual immorality, impurity, or greed among you. Such sins have no place among God’s people. Obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes – these are not for you. Instead, let there be thankfulness to God.
You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. For a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Don’t be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey him. Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret. But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts.
And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another for Christ’s sake. (Ephesians 5:1-21 NLT)
During the height of the 1960’s sexual revolution, an English satirist wryly noted that these days people seem to have sex on the brain, which, he said, is a funny place to have it.
Or maybe not!
To riff on the poet of Psalm 139, we all are fearfully and wonderfully made – powerfully and firmly knit together in the wombs of our mothers, by God and in the image of God – to be, among other things, sexual beings. That’s part of the conspiracy between God and nature. In the spot-on assessment of another, sexuality lies right next to our ever-present instinct for breathing.
When push comes to shove, nature is downright cruel, particularly to the young. Biology fills youthful bodies to overflow with enraging hormones long before the maturing spirit within has acquired the emotional and intellectual maturity to properly understand and creatively channel such energy. So, please be slow to judgment. And temper your calls for abstinence-only. It works about as well today as it did for those bloody-faced, pug-nosed Pharisees.
In her defense nature has her reasons for doing things as she does.
Nature works to ensure that no one must spend his or her days alone. In declaring such daily loneliness “not good,” the Lord creates soulmates and life partners appropriate for all. And our sexual selves play roles in sparking beneficial attraction and mutual affection.
Nature’s other concern, of course, is getting folks into the gene pool. Those mental and bodily changes that adolescent biology spark – and the myriad ways that nature heats up the passion of our emotions – are working in tandem: Nature wants us to be fruitful and to multiply, in obedience to the command of the Creators in Creation, replicating and perpetuating ourselves and our species.
When it comes to the stuff of the birds and the bees, nature is uncompromising: At every level of our being – physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, sexual pressure forever pushes us toward one another in committed companionship and intimacy, and further into the gene pool, even when you and I are barely able to tread water.
So, when you next see a young man or woman strutting his or her sexuality, even as you blush, and cast aspersions, and wonder what’s wrong with kids today – please be sympathetic and understanding. You were once there, and nature is just doing what nature does. Such are her ways; such are her proclivities, and God is a co-conspirator with it all.
That said, never be naïve about the sheer, raw power of our sexuality.
Inappropriate handling of its brute, unrelenting force lies at the root of many of our deepest psychological and moral struggles, as well as many of our most chronic social and cultural challenges. Such pressure takes myriad forms but, blessedly, always intends to open our lives to something bigger than ourselves and to remind faithfully that respectful intimacy with others, the cosmos, and God is our real goal. Our sexuality is so grandiose that it would have us want to make life-giving and -affirming love to the whole world.
And isn’t that our No. 1 commandment?
“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” the religious leaders ask Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.
Jesus replies, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as you yourself would want to be loved.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)
Adultery is a sin, because adultery is intimacy with another cut off from such commandment love, devoid of authentic emotion, feeling no need for commitment.
The notion of love, emotion, and commitment providing the substance of intimacy speaks from a bygone era, right? And thus we’ve grown quite comfortable shunning, avoiding, and excusing such nonsense as too messy, too complicated, too demanding; a real buzz-kill; obstacles to study and work, fun and freedom, personal expression and self-fulfillment.
Sadly, we’re still a long way from integrating sexuality and spirituality in fully healthy ways and fruitful means. Our souls and spirits are yet works in progress, and each of us works out his or her own salvation with fear and trembling. But, easy and tempting though it might be, before you start passing out the scarlet letters, remember that in the end it’s baptism that should make the difference when it comes to how you view yourself, your body, and one another.
Indeed, Moses didn’t ask for more, but God does say more: In the loving intimacy of his coming to us in Christ Jesus – claiming us, and naming us, and loving us. And in that same Spirit, you’ll never go wrong – at least as far as the Seventh Commandment is concerned – when your candid appraisal or pick-up line speaks passionately and intimately of such grace.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, September 17, 2023. It is the eighth in his current series on The Ten Commandments. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Walter Brueggemann, Scott Hoezee, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Ronald Rolheiser inform the message.
Number Five is the sole Commandment to come with a promise: “If you honor your father and mother, ‘things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.’” (Ephesians 6:3) We must be doing a good job of honoring our givers of life, because indeed things are going well. Aug. 21 marked the 167th anniversary of our congregation’s founding, and our long life of mission and ministry remains as vital as ever.
+ Let’s start with September’s special mission offering. We are partnering with the organization RIP Medical Debt to purchase and forgive medical debt on a grand scale. Because the people at RIP Medical Debt are good at what they do, every $1 we offer will remove at least $100 of debt for an Iowa or Minnesota family overwhelmed by medical bills.
That really makes a difference in people’s lives! Too many families suffer great hardship trying to pay their medical bills. Unfortunately, this type of debt is all too easy to accumulate. So, let the healing begin!
To participate in this offering, place cash in an envelope labeled “RIP Medical Debt” or earmark your check in the memo line. Place your offering in the collection plate during Sunday worship, or mail it to the church at P.O. Box 422, Waukon, IA 52172-0422. Go to RipMedicalDebt.org to learn more.
+ Next, the long-awaited improvement project at the manse has been completed. In August, a crew from Kelly Concrete poured a new walkway from the front porch to the sidewalk. Then, masons from Darrold Berger Masonry used ornamental brick to repair deterioration of the concrete porch steps. Masons also tuck-pointed the mortar joints of the existing porch bricks.
As part of this project, two overgrown and ailing evergreens were removed from either side of the porch. The Property Committee is working on a new landscaping plan for the manse front yard.
+ Last but surely not least, we are making a difference one pie at a time! The Presbyterian Women (PW) pie-makers thank the church members and friends for their generous gifts of flour, sugar, and money to purchase supplies. So far this year, 291 bake-at home-pies have been made: 149 rhubarb, 75 peach, 36 blueberry, and 31 peach blueberry pies were made.
Because of your generosity, we cleared $2,000 making rhubarb pies and $2,000 making the peach blueberry pies. Each pie-making day, we have 18 to 20 ladies show up with rolling pins, aprons, and coffeecake in tow!
What are the pie profits used for? Local outreach within our community and church!
Baked rhubarb pies were donated to a local benefit for fire victims. And as they have for years, the PW purchases swimming pool passes for local kids in need and milk tickets at school for those in need each semester. This is in addition to our annual mitten Christmas tree every year where we supply the school with hats, mittens, and clothing.
In the past couple of years PW has remodeled both the women’s and handicap bathrooms, had the church kitchen cupboards refinished and repaired, and kicked off the air conditioning project for the sanctuary. Last year, the profits from the Fall Harvest Dinner were close to $7,000, so PW added the remaining funds to total $10,000 earmarked for air conditioning the sanctuary. And in 2020 and 2021, PW donated $15,500 towards the painting of the sanctuary.
Apple pie making is coming up soon so get your orders in early! by calling Gloria Krambeer at 563.568.3182 or Fern Rissman at 563.568.4486. Help us make a difference one pie at a time!
If someone doesn’t know how to make a pie and wants to learn, the ladies would be more than willing to show you how! And don’t forget the decorated Christmas cookies that will be made in December!
Together, let us continue to honor our heavenly Parent with the words of our mouths and the works of our hands, that all might thrive and prosper.
Those pieces still recognizable as a cricket lay bottom side up. The missing parts, presumedly, composed the linear slick of black goo scuffing the gray floor, on the shoulder of the steel-blue track at the Wellness Center.
Passers-by the deathly scene included countless walkers and runners, lifters and squatters, preeners and primpers – ears plugged by iTunes or Spotify, mind’s eyes laser-focused on the laps, reps, and sets that lie ahead, oblivious to the grisly remains that lay cast aside like a wet gym towel for the better part of a week.
Perhaps the cause of death was premeditated murder: Intentional squishing by a stinky sneaker or simply asphyxiation by the smell of teen spirit, or possibly accidental crushing under the black-metal foot of the nearby pickle ball net. Nevertheless, for poor, old Jiminy, it was a distinction without a difference.
Whatever the blunt force, trauma is trauma. Regardless of intent, murder is murder, because dead is dead.
And too few of us are noticing.
Now comes the Lord’s Sixth Word with something commanding to say about such indifference: Thou shall not murder.
Blessedly so, overt acts of capital murder are statistically rare among God’s people.
Thus it’s tempting to breeze past the Lord’s prohibition of homicide with a certain sense of smug spiritual accomplishment. You’ve certainly abused the other nine commandments quite thoroughly. Yet you’ve managed to honor No. 6 without breaking a sweat, and you never hesitate to point the finger of blame at those who don’t.
But instead of letting ourselves off the hook, or targeting obvious commission of murder by others, let’s cordon off a crime scene around ourselves, and thoroughly investigate so meticulously, such that we all feel the yellow-jacketed sting of guilt. And let us re-discover those precious qualities of daily living that constitute murder’s opposite, so as to remind that it’s never enough simply to avoid killing someone. You and I also have tons of work to do, actively and faithfully, to build up – not tear down – friend, neighbor, and stranger.
By explicitly forbidding their murder, the Lord implicitly reveals that he further hates the angry root causes of murder: Envy, spite, hatred. Lust and jealousy. Vindictiveness and revenge. Inhumanity and blasphemy. In God’s sight all such attitudes and behaviors are simply murder by other names. Stepping into their extremes with voracious premeditation – mode, means, and opportunity precisely plotted – always leads to the spilling of blood and the loss of life.
Which brings us to this morning’s Scripture lesson: The sad, sordid, and bloody story of Naboth’s vineyard – and what King Ahab and Queen Jezebel do to Naboth. Worry less so about who’s on first and what’s on second, and please focus more so on the foul, chocking atmosphere of lusty conspiracy that clouds the lead-up to the crimes.
Note also what so often happens, in all that ramps up to actual murder: We lose sight of the victim’s true humanity and reflection of divinity. Among other things, this cleverly written text in 1 Kings 21 lifts up Naboth’s true humanity by repeating his name nearly 20 times in a mere 16 verses.
The author is trying to tell us something here. So, by the Spirit, listen for that something, as I share with you the Word of the Lord.
Later the following events took place: Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of King Ahab of Samaria.
And Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard, so that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house. I will give you a better vineyard for it. Or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money.” But Naboth said to Ahab, “The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”
Ahab went home resentful and sullen because of what Naboth the Jezreelite had said to him; for he had said, “I will not give you my ancestral inheritance.” He lay down on his bed, turned away his face, and would not eat. His wife Jezebel came to him and said, “Why are you so depressed that you will not eat?” He said to her,
“Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if you prefer, I will give you another vineyard for it.’ But he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” His wife Jezebel said to him, “Do you now govern Israel? Get up, eat some food, and be cheerful. I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.”
So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name and sealed them with his seal. She sent the letters to the elders and the nobles who lived with Naboth in his city. She wrote in the letters,
“Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly. Seat two scoundrels opposite him, and have them bring a charge against him, saying, ‘You have cursed God and the king.’ Then take him out, and stone him to death.” The men of his city, the elders and the nobles who lived in his city, did as Jezebel had sent word to them.
Just as it was written in the letters that she had sent to them, they proclaimed a fast and seated Naboth at the head of the assembly. The two scoundrels came in and sat opposite him. And the scoundrels brought a charge against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, “Naboth cursed God and the king.” So they took him outside the city and stoned him to death. Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, “Naboth has been stoned; he is dead.”
As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, “Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead.” As soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it. (1 Kings 21:1-16)
One of the Reformation-era catechisms explains the Sixth Commandment in terms sufficient to make everyone squirm.
In addition to frowning upon self-harm and reckless endangerment, God just as soon prefers you not belittle, hate, insult, or kill your neighbors — not by your thoughts, not by your words, not by your looks or gestures, and certainly not by actual murder. The Lord further intends we not be parties to these spiritual felonies, which include high crimes like the desire for revenge and the de facto state of anger that rages every which way.
I’m not alone in sensing that sometimes the average person seems to be teetering constantly on the edge of exploding. It surely feels like everyone is angry these days. And no one is winning the argument! Assuming, of course, that victory is the elusive goal of our bickering.
But here’s the thing: Triumph and conquest over one another are not part and parcel of Creation’s playbook, and Jesus in his renowned Sermon on the Mount pulls not his punch:
“You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.” (Matthew 5:21-22)
Anger, envy, rude gestures, dirty looks: So much so the stock-in-trade lifestyle that encircles you and me like a ring of roaring fire. We do some of these things without thinking twice. Someone cuts us off in traffic, we sneer, and label them “idiots” and “jerks.” We do it all in front of our children and grandchildren, threadbare filters of inappropriate word and deed made sufficiently porous by the crude scripting of the latest podcast, political ad, or TikTok vid:
Fist-shaking, finger-flipping, f-bombing; red-faced, vein-popping fury – all because he cut you off, or she forgot to use her turn signal, or is just driving too slowly. And lost in your blind spot is the other’s true humanity and reflection of divinity.
So what is God’s will for you in the Sixth Commandment? That you stop it!
That you and I turn down the dials of rage and righteous indignation a notch or two!
That you clear the chamber, holster your pistol, and shoulder your rifle!
That you and I become instead peace-loving, friendly, merciful – builders of bridges and creators of healthy community!
Few challenges are greater for an intrepid disciple of Jesus Christ, because anger is a natural human emotion.
Anger always arises among near-rivals: siblings, friends, classmates, peers, co-workers, fellow members of a congregation, neighbors sharing a fence line. Anger oftentimes erupts involuntarily, and that we cannot change.
What we CAN change is where we go with our anger, and the Sixth Commandment steers us away from despising, seething over, diminishing, conspiring against, belittling, and spiritually or actually murdering not only those who are different than we are in whatever ways, but also those who are similar and close to our hearts., as well as the Lord’s.
And when such lethal anger triggers and trips us up, the Holy Spirit catches us mid-fall, puts us on our knees before the Sixth Commandment, and quietly whispers into our ears, “By the way: Anger and all its bitter fruits are forms of murder, too! So, watch your step! You’re on thin ice.”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
On a personal note, a little bit of me dies whenever I pass a sign like this that hangs on a porch mere blocks from my home.
A death with dignity and compassion it is not.
Whatever the blunt force, trauma is trauma. Regardless of intent, murder is murder, because dead is dead.
And too few of us are noticing.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, September 10, 2023. It is the seventh in his current series on The Ten Commandments.
Earlier this year, the writer Oliver Berkman teetered on the brink of feeling overwhelmed by life – its responsibilities, its expectations, its demands.
Inflicting the emotional low blow was the ambient anxiety that comes as a standard feature of life these days. So, in an effort to restore some measure of his sanity, Mr. Berkman launched himself on a personal challenge of trial endurance.
Other similarly afflicted souls set their sights on competing in grueling triathlons, or heading off to intensive, sherpa-led meditation retreats, or booking the adventure-travel experience that bills itself as the odyssey of fulfillment for your wildest dreams.
But, no. Mr. Berkman took a different tack, a decidedly low-tech approach. He chose to shun multitasking.
He decided to give up listening to music, books, or podcasts, while walking, running, or driving. Or while loading the dishwasher, or unloading the dryer. Or while doing almost anything else or nothing at all! Oliver Berkman challenged himself to simply focus on what he was actually doing, one activity at a time, each in its minute.
It was surprisingly hard: Being fully present in those moments of chore singularity.
And it sounds comically ridiculous: Actually branding such a paltry deviation of habit as a battlefield victory in the grand existential struggle of the ages.
Nevertheless, here’s an idea: Why not give it a try?
Identify those tricks of trade and trendy lifehacks that enable you to avoid being fully present in whatever you’re doing and whomever you’re meeting. Then, set aside those shiny baubles of distraction for a week or two. Your goals and outcomes are simple and straight-forward:
Restoring your capacity for sequential, linear living; improving your ability to concentrate on one thing, then another, each in its turn; learning to endure the confrontation of your human limitation.
Such skills and behaviors rank high on your list of tools for resilient thriving in the anxious hours of our crisis-prone days. And somewhere along the way, you just might recognize – spoiler alert! – that you’re unwittingly addicted to doing more than one thing at a time.
Our inclination to multitask is nothing new.
The centuries-old observation is sure and worthy of full acceptance: “One thinks with a watch in one’s hand, even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market.” To continue the riff, one works out wearing Beats Pro Fit buds in both ears, and one drives to school or work listening to the latest best-seller in audio books.
We’ve also long observed that multitasking simply doesn’t really work.
You’ve might have read – while half-watching Netflix – articles explaining research strongly pointing to the scandalous reality that multitasking isn’t really even possible!
For the most part, we’re just rapidly switching our limited attention spans between Thing One and Thing Two without even realizing it! And each dart and sway of focus comes with a cost. One study of drivers found that only 3 percent showed no performance decrease when attempting two tasks at once. The 97 percent of the rest of us just end up doing everything worse!
Yet the pressure to multitask weighs heavy with unrelenting force. Burdened by so many demands at school, home, or work, you feel as though you’ve no choice but to split your attentions.
Meanwhile, limited energies parse one’s personal responsibility to address the troubles of the wider world. The numerous causes for alarm surely feel like calls to action: The climate, the fate of democracy; threats from artificial intelligence and enemies both foreign and domestic; bullet casings littering bloody classrooms, workplaces, and town squares – Armageddon seeming ever closer.
Taken together – as they always are, such burdens, demands, responsibilities, troubles, and threats make multitasking look and sound like every red-blooded American’s civic and spiritual duty!
Surely technology further tightens the screws. There was a time – way back in the day, when the option of seizing hold of smart phones and social media to distract ourselves from unpleasant tasks simply wasn’t available. The inherent limits of the tools then at one’s disposal — the slow pace of snail mail, for example, or the time and effort it took to visit a library to conduct research — meant we felt less pressure from teachers, bosses, or customers to somehow transcend the hard boundaries that our limited attention spans impose.
Perhaps that’s truly what lies at the core of our struggles as finite human beings.
It sure would explain the allure of multitasking.
To wit, multitasking offers false hope that you and I might somehow slip the bonds of our finite humanity. We’ve taken the bait hook, line, and sinker, and now, tangled in the landing net, we’ve convinced ourselves of this:
That with sufficient self-discipline, plus the right smartphone app and a stylish biofeedback watch, we just might finally get on top of everything, get all our ducks in a row, and at long last get to feeling good about ourselves. Such utopia never arrives, of course. Though it often feels as if such bliss lurks just around the next corner.
The uncomfortable truth is that the only way to find sanity in an overwhelming world — and to have any concrete effect on that world — is to surrender one’s efforts to push the hard boundaries of human time and ability, drop back down into the broken reality of our limitation, get out of the way, and let God be God. Let the One brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, be the One. Let grace be grace, and love be love.
Distracting yourself from challenging tasks by, say, listening to podcasts doesn’t actually make dirty jobs any more bearable over the long term. Instead, distraction drains the daily routine of its purpose and meaning. Diversion makes errands and responsibilities less enjoyable, by reinforcing your belief that distraction from errands and responsibilities creates tolerance for their performance — while at the same time, all but ensuring that you’ll neither accomplish the task in question, nor digest the contents of the podcast, as well as you otherwise might.
Performance climbs to its peak only when you let most tasks wait while you focus on one. Making a difference or leaving your mark in one domain requires giving yourself permission not to care equally about all the others in that moment.
Face it, there’ll always be too much to do, no matter what you do.
But the ironic upside of this seemingly dispiriting fact is a lifesaver: Never, ever, beat yourself up for failing to do it all. And please stop pressuring yourself to find the supposedly holy grail of extreme multitasking.
Instead, try pouring finite time, energy, and attention into a handful of things that truly matter, one at a time, as God calls. As Jesus teaches, and as the Spirit leads. You only can ever be in the here and now anyway, so you might as well give up the pointless and stressful struggle to pretend otherwise.
And thus the spotlight again falls on Ten Commandments. Ancient words, ever true, focus on the singular activities of greatest import:
The second word of commandment cautions of believing one’s own publicity, of thinking more highly of one’s self than one ought, of regarding one’s self as wiser than God – in trying to create images that restrict the nature of God and our understanding of God. Focus on that, and start your honest confession from there!
Focus on your lack of focus upon the image that God themselves give us in Jesus, upon how that very image – thanks to the Holy Spirit – must shine steadfastly in all your living, moving, and breathing. Focus solely on your lack of focus on dwelling in holiness.
Take not in vain! God chooses a name you can’t help but speak from life’s first cry to final breath! All of us, always, everywhere: Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips, praising the Lord’s down-to-earth love for each and every blessed one of us. Focus exclusively on your breathing. Yah-Weh. Yah-Weh.
Keep the Lord’s Day special! Creation and Redemption rise from Sabbath. Creation and Redemption – two big movements in the story of God with us, and both nestle intimately in Sabbath. The way God made us – and the way we’ve been saved by God – both point us toward Sabbath. Focus solely on that, and abide in its grace.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 27, 2023. It is the sixth in his current series on The Ten Commandments.Scholarship and reflection by Peter Drucker and Friedrich Nietzsche inform the message.
A lunchroom filled with schoolchildren raises the curtain on a familiar cast of characters. Perhaps most immediately:
The Spillers and Wasters, the Yellers and Screamers, the Wigglers and the Jigglers – each as equally aggravating as the next, but nevertheless shaped and sized uniquely in the image of the God who made them.
Then come the social standouts, like the Hot Mess – the little who walks in shaking, sobbing, gasping for breath because she f-f-forgot her b-b-b-backpack.
Or the Gourmet, whose mom cuts the breadcrusts off his organic sandwiches – artisanal creations of careful preparation, sourced responsibly from minority-owned businesses in the developing world.
Next, you’ve got the semper fi Marine, who – always faithful – keeps her meal safe and secure, never letting different choices even come close to touching, by keeping her foods carefully but firmly sequestered in the individual compartments of her tray.
And don’t forget about the Machine. He overslept and missed breakfast, and now he plans to erase his midday calorie deficit and nourish his burgeoning growth spurt by wolfing down absolutely everything in sight, including but not limited to the bag lunch he grabbed from home, firsts and seconds from the cafeteria line, and several beverages of dubious nutrition. And he always somehow manages to be first in line for dessert!
The Spillers and the Wasters, the Yellers and the Screamers – the Hot Mess and the Gourmet, the Marine and the Machine – composed the symphony of toddlers, tykes, grade-schoolers, and teen-agers whom we served through the Feed the Kids nutrition program, hosted at Zion UCC last month with ecumenical support from the First Presbyterians and other congregations.
For whatever reason – good or bad, right or wrong – these kids were hungry. And we fed them. No questions asked.
As the Lord strongly encourages in what he numbers among the greatest commandments, we were loving, feeding, and welcoming, to friend, neighbor, and stranger, as we ourselves would want to be loved, and fed, and welcomed.
What makes such grace so amazing is that the blessing flows both ways – not only from host to guest but also and often even more so from guest to host. By this strange chemistry of God’s grace, server is served; feeder is fed.
And thus from the Old Testament book of Proverbs: “My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will bless you.” (Proverbs 3:1-2)
Which brings me to another young soul whose Feed the Kids lunchroom performance was nothing short of astounding.
Every day, after cleaning every morsel of food he’d taken, this gangly, pre-teen boy would set aside his plate. Then, with edge of one hand serving as brush and the other palm as dustpan, he’d sweep all the crumbs from his place at the table into his open hand. And then, brace yourselves, he’d lick the crumbs from his palm with his tongue. Not once, but after every blessed meal!
In no way did he intend to gross out everyone – at least that was the consensus opinion. He was doing it, everyone concluded, because he was still hungry. Quickly over his few years, a regularly growling stomach taught him that you don’t let any of your meal go to waste – not even the crumbs.
In that for me lay something of the Fifth Commandment: Honor and respect your mother and father (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16). Connecting those seemingly random dots needs to start with my dad, Francis James VanderVelden.
Like many boys of his day, my dad had a nickname: Fatso. However soul-crushing it sounds, “Fatso” intended not to bully. The alias beckoned sarcasm. My dad was svelte from life’s first cry to final breath. A nick like “Slim” or “String Bean” would have been a better reflector of my dad’s physical stature.
As first explained to me in boyhood, my dad got tagged with “Fatso,” because, every day after school, he and his chums bellied up to the drug-store soda fountain and ordered up a chocolate or strawberry malt – for my dad, sometimes a double – both flavors! Therefore, his pals – seeing my dad routinely slurp two malted milks – teased that, if his “drinking problem” continued unchecked, he’d end up getting fat. The rest, as they say, is history, and my always-slender dad was forever known as “Fatso.”
“My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will bless you. Follow your father’s example, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.”(Proverbs 3:1-2, 6:20)
That first explanation of “Fatso” satisfied my boyhood curiosity, but in adulthood I now spot a few holes in that fabric of family history.
For starters, my dad – that’s him in the back row, No. 78, with the other members of Coach Hamman’s 1940 championship football team – came of age in midst of the Great Depression. And for my dad, that meant growing up in a prolific Roman Catholic family of eight. Then, their father was stricken with what in the day they called “palsy.” What probably was Parkinson’s or ALS left him unable to work and provide for his growing family.
Thus the VanderVeldens living in their mill-town home on North John Street really didn’t have two nickels to rub together – much less any coinage to squander on such foolishness as pharmacy milkshakes!
So, back to square one: From whence the nickname “Fatso”?
The truth is lost to history, but I’ve reverse-engineered an explanation that at least feels favorable and likely in spirit and intent. So, here goes!
In my boyhood, at the end of every meal, I’d watch my dad literally wipe-clean his dinnerplate. A piece of white bread operated as mop that soaked up every last drop of brown gravy, spaghetti sauce, or simply melted butter. Had we a dog, she’d have gone hungry begging for table scraps from my dad, because he never left anything behind.
Now satisfying my curiosity about the nickname “Fatso” is belief that his unique eating habit matured in childhood, when he and siblings circled tightly around a table of simple food from Grandma Van’s resourceful kitchen. There was always enough for everybody, but going back for seconds wasn’t an option. And the meal bell wouldn’t ring again until breakfast.
A boy thus eats what’s put in front of him. And he cleans his plate. Because he’s still hungry. And accidentally ends up with the lifelong misnomer of “Fatso.” And, more helpfully, develops the habit of appreciating the mopped-up last course of any meal.
Similar frugality in her youth hard-wired comparable habits and behaviors into my mother, too, which might just have been part and parcel of the foundational glue holding them together as husband and wife, father and mother.
“My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will bless you. Follow your father’s example, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.”(Proverbs 3:1-2, 6:20)
And now that’s me – not so much the palm-licking, saints be praised! But in the plate-mopping.
Indeed I find nourishment in crumbs and mushy scraps of bread.
So, in gratitude, I try to exercise good stewardship of the provision that God has given to me – and to us, and to our posterity. I learned how to do it from my dad, Francis James “Fatso” VanderVelden. My behavior now mimics my dad’s example of well-nourished faith. Turns out, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – the highest of honors!
And BAM! There it is! Ancient words, ever true! The Lord’s Fifth Word: Honor thy mother and father, that your days will be long! The only Commandment that comes with a sure promise of eternal hope!
I bet that young crumb-sweeper over at Zion has a good father, too, and hopefully he’ll grow out of the whole palm-licking thing. But either way, the faithful nourishment of his youth surely bodes well for his earthly walk with the Lord – the eternal One who has ultimate authority over him, you, me, and all God’s children.
To riff on C.S. Lewis and his explanation of Jesus feeding the hungry (Matthew 14:13-21), the Lord prepares a full meal for the multitudes from nothing more than a couple loaves of crusty bread and a puny catch of fish. Jesus feeds his adopted brothers and sisters not because they’ve earned it, not because deserve it. But because they’re hungry.
Like my dad. Like the palm-licker. Like all those other kids we fed last month.
It is what it is: God’s fifth word of promise and hope, honor and dignity, respect and compassion – faith put into action that ensures “length of days and years of life,” for every hungry friend, neighbor, and stranger, even as you and I serve up heaping measures of refreshing patience with their failings – and with our own individual brokenness.
No, our moms and dads weren’t always the parents we hoped or needed them to be. But by grace, even a broken mirror reflects light.
“My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life and peace they will bless you. Follow your father’s example, and forsake not your mother’s teaching.”(Proverbs 3:1-2, 6:20)
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 13, 2023. It is the fifth in his current series on The Ten Commandments.
If you fancy yourself a would-be author, let me suggest a topic for a definite New York Times best-seller.
You’ll be working the crowded neighborhood at the intersection of Self-help Street and Spirituality Avenue. Your topic is flung far afield across disciplines – the healing arts, physical and natural sciences, psychology and sociology.
Your economy of words will build a case that, in order to maintain good health, human beings regularly need a day off to recuperate – a break in the action, a sabbath rest, as it were. You’ll deftly argue that body, mind, and spirit need time to get away from it all and thus rejuvenate, re-invigorate, and re-combobulate.
In this, our overinvolved and overscheduled living; in this, our hyper-busy planning and programming that seem to be wearing everyone to a frazzle – including our kids, a book like yours surely will scratch a common itch, catch on fast, and sell out quick.
Of course, the field of so-called experts is crowded. You’re not the only one preaching about some aspect of sabbath rest. For the most part, though, your colleagues tend to write “how-to” manuals, recommending as wind for your sails everything from lighting candles at sunset to psycho-therapeutic aroma treatments.
Thanks to quick-witted marketing teams, such books brag that the experience of wholeness and joy will return again upon their completed reading. Also swarming in that chatty cloud are buzzwords like renewal, delight, and enrichment.
A quick search of Amazon reveals seductive subtitles: “The antidote for the overworked.” “Live your best life ever.” My favorite was the title of a Jewish book: “Oh No! It’s Sabbath Again and I’m Not Ready: A Homemaker’s Guide to Making Friday the Easiest Day of the Week.” I was surprised that I didn’t find “Spiritual enlightenment and flat abs in 30 days!”
Making sabbath rest all about us is one approach to unpacking the Lord’s fourth word: Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Let’s take a slightly different literary tack. Following this route, however, won’t produce a book that flies off the shelves. Trust me, this yawner be a literary flop.
That’s because the books that always seem to catch on always seem to make sabbath all about you and me. Practicing sabbath, so go these storylines, will improve your life, your mental state and energy level. Why not throw in whiter teeth and fresh breath too, while you’re at it!
But as the whole of Scripture interprets the Fourth Command, Sabbath is not all about us and instead all about God. Holy Sabbath affords time to worship God, to chew on lessons and digest of sermons, to practice grateful generosity in tithe and offering, to generate the joyful noise of prayer and song.
And, Sabbath is a weekly reminder that such rest is mostly all about repenting of sin and vowing to live a more holy life on those other six days. Say what? Yes, really!
Such re-creation and redemption root deeply in the Old Testament. In Scripture’s opening scene, God’s Spirit moves across chaotic darkness to organize a verdant and just world. And after igniting that cosmic explosion and calling it all “good,” God rests. This short video explores the idea of such seventh-day rest and the biblical concept of Sabbath. Hang with it until the end to learn why Jesus adopts this idea of Sabbath as a major part of his own mission of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth.
What is the Sabbath, really?
Well, it’s the Lord’s Day! The Day of Resurrection!
The New Day’s critical mass has shifted: Less so on resting from physical work and more so on resting from sin and brokenness. Who knew?
This latter kind of “rest” thus becomes a glimpse to the ultimate and eternal Sabbath rest that just will be eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Sabbath allows preview and preparation of basking forever in the Lord’s New Heaven and New Earth when Christ returns.
Until that great day, Sabbath is about enjoying God, enjoying God’s Creation, enjoying other people as the images of God in our midst. You come to church to take the focus off yourself and put it properly onto God, God’s people, and the poor for whom we take offerings. It’s a time to find out how the sick and elderly of the congregation are doing, if the young adults are packed and ready to head off to college, and to pray for each and every one of those blessed saints in joy and concern.
It’s a time to learn a little something more about all the many sacred blessings that God reveals in the Bible.
Just as every Sunday celebrates “a little Easter,” there ought to be a little Sabbath in our hearts and minds every day – through, with, and in Monday through Saturday, in the sense that you and I aim ourselves toward God and toward others, by repenting of sin and thus reaping the bounty of reconciliation and right living – alone and in community!
Most of our brokenness essentially arises from selfish blindness, putting our wants ahead of God’s designs and ahead of human need and suffering. Sabbath-living on a Tuesday morning or Friday afternoon means that you take care of others first, not worrying about yourself, because if others do the same, they’ll take care of you.
So, what is the Sabbath?
Sabbath is the complete re-orientation of one’s thinking.
Sabbath invites you into God’s grace, into God’s story, into God’s rhythms that prepare you not to re-enter the new week of rat-racing. Sabbath encourages exiting the rat race for good!
Truly recognizing Sabbath for what God intends is to let the Holy Spirit sanctify your living every day. To use the Sabbath as a launching pad for the same, old destructive routines of busyness desecrates the Sabbath and blasphemes God!
Maybe this helps wrap your head around all that: The “weekend” is for recharging your batteries. The Sabbath is for transforming your mind. Which in the end makes Sabbath all about redemption!
As Exodus 20 tells of God handing over the Ten Commandments, the Lord commands Sabbath rest based on Creation. “For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, but he rested on the seventh day.” But in the second telling of the Law – in Deuteronomy 5, our lesson for this morning, Sabbath is about Creation and Redemption. “For remember that you were slaves in Egypt but that God led you out of there.”
Second time around, redemption rises from Sabbath rest. Creation and Redemption – two big movements in the story of God with us, and both nestle intimately in Sabbath. The way God made us – and the way we’ve been saved by God – both point us toward Sabbath. Think about how that kind of Sabbath would be a game-changer, as I read to you from the Old Testament’s book of Deuteronomy.
Moses convened all Israel, and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the statutes and ordinances that I am addressing to you today.
You shall learn them and observe them diligently. The LORD our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our ancestors did the LORD make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today. The LORD spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the fire. (At that time I was standing between the LORD and you to declare to you the words of the LORD; for you were afraid because of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)
And he said: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. You shall not do any work – you, or your son, or your daughter, or your male or female servant, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female servant may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:1-15)
The Good News of Creation looks, sounds, tastes, smells, and feels like this:
In the end, as in the beginning, and at every point in between, God alone is the Creator. God has taken gracious care to create for us a fitting earthy home. Far from being some remote god who sets the universe a-spinning but then steps back and leaves it alone, we believe that God is still vitally close to every fiber of Creation. God takes care of us, because God alone is the Maker and Caretaker of everything. All that’s left for you and me to do is this: Willingly and joyfully enter into a hallowed work that God already has well under control.
Of course, each of us has many gifts and varied talents, so it’s important that we have jobs and tasks to build meaningful work. And that we labor faithfully and diligently in the timeframes that the needs of God and others demand. And sometimes that means clocking-in on Sundays.
But Sabbath through the lenses Creation and Redemption reminds that neither you nor I can ever do it all – and that we don’t need to, either! You are enough!
If we really are faithful workers who carry out our God-given callings and vocations as best we can during the week, then with relative ease we ought to be able simply to leave those pursuits and pastimes for a while, too. Like on the Sabbath Day! The Lord’s Day! The Day of Creation and Redemption! The Day of Resurrection!
Since you and I are co-creating participants in God’s larger imaginative work, rest assured that, when we take a break – to rebalance the budget of good food, good exercise, and good rest, for body, mind, soul, and spirit, none of us is skipping out on work and into mere idleness. When you or I take a break, we’re leaving the cares of the world in God’s hands, which is precisely where all our work and all our provision have been abiding all this time anyway!
Let God be the rhythmic breath of your time. Yah-Weh! YH-WH!
Moments of simply being more highly prized than always doing. Yah-Weh! YH-WH!
All of us, always, everywhere: Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips, praising the Lord’s down-to-earth love for each and every blessed one of us.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 6, 2023. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Scott Hoezee, Stan Mast, Mike Mazzalongo, and The Bible Project, and Jen Wilkin inform the message, which is the fourth in Pastor Grant’s series on The Ten Commandments.
