Revelations 14:12-14 - ”There is a Time to Live”

Amen.

>> Our Old Testament reading is Psalm 116

and it's about an experience man has and

he thinks that he's dying.

I love the Lord because he has heard my

voice and my pleas for mercy.

Because he inclined his ear to me.

Therefore, I will call on him as long as

I live.

The snares of death encompassed me.

The pangs of Sheol laid hold of me.

I suffered distress and anguish.

Then I called on the name of the Lord.

Oh Lord, I pray deliver my soul.

Gracious is the Lord and righteous.

Our God is merciful.

The Lord preserves the simple.

When I was brought low, he saved me.

Return oh Lord to oh my soul to your

rest.

For the Lord has dealt bountifully with

you.

For you have delivered my soul from

death, my eyes from tears,

my feet from stumbling.

I will walk before the Lord in the land

of the living.

I believed even when I spoke. I am

greatly afflicted.

I said in my alarm,

all mankind are liars.

What shall I render to the Lord for all

his benefits to me?

I will lift up the cup of salvation and

call on the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows to the Lord in the

presence of all his people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the

death of his saints.

Oh Lord, I am your servant.

I am your servant, the son of your

maidservant.

You have loosed my bonds.

I will offer to you the sacrifice of

thanksgiving and call on the name of the

Lord.

I will pay my vows to the Lord in the

presence of all his people in the courts

of the house of the Lord

in your midst, oh Jerusalem.

Praise the Lord.

Our New Testament reading comes from

Revelation 14:12 to 14.

Revelation 14:12–14

And I heard a voice from Oh, sorry.

Here is a call for the endurance of the

saints.

Those who keep the commandments of God

and their faith in Jesus.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying,

"Write this.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord

from now on.

Blessed indeed, says the spirit,

that they may rest from their labors,

for their deeds follow them."

This is the word of the Lord.

>> Good morning, everyone.

It's good to be with you and join my

family

at worship this morning. Um

Ross didn't feel the need to introduce

me.

So, I won't introduce myself anymore,

but uh

um I am I'm the campus pastor at UBC

Okanagan and long-time friend of the

congregation and uh always always happy

to to be here and to preach and bring

God's word.

Um

you might have you might have detected

from the two readings, Old and New

Testament readings today, that that we

have a a topic of of death before us,

you know, a serious one um

on a beautiful summer morning. I know it

seems a little incongruous, but that's

what we're going to do and talk about um

particularly

how we as Christians should be thinking

about medical assistance in dying in

MAID, which is a big topic right now and

when I think that we we as the church

need to take very seriously and reflect

on. So, may the words of my mouth, the

meditations of all of our hearts

be fitting and acceptable in your sight,

oh Lord God, our rock and our redeemer.

There's a

There's a great story in the Old

Testament.

Israel's first king, King Saul, is on

the battlefield and he's waging war

against his hated foes, the Philistines,

you know, the the bad guys.

And he's dying. He's stuck full of

arrows.

And he begs his armor-bearer to draw his

sword and thrust it through him.

But his armor-bearer would not, we read,

for he feared greatly.

You bring up that slide.

Larry.

His armor-bearer would not.

For he feared greatly.

That was ancient Israel.

We in modern Canada have lost that fear.

We will

take someone's life who wishes to die.

And indeed we will take our own life if

we choose to.

About a decade ago

Canada's Supreme Court decriminalized

assisted suicide and passed legislation

to provide for what's called medical

assistance in dying or maid

for people who were definitely going to

die and were going to die soon. That's

what it was when the when the law came

in. Since then maid has expanded. Now

adults can choose to die if their

condition is incurable and serious even

if they're not going to die from that

condition.

Many Canadians agree with this. We don't

have the statistics for 2025, but 2024

made was the second leading cause of

death in our nation, which is quite

startling.

And most Canadians when pulled think

that made should be expanded to those

who are suffering from mental illnesses

and also

to children over the age of 12.

It's It's not just the average Canadian

who has lost this great fear that Saul's

armor-bearer had. A survey that I saw on

the death with dignity site, it may be

prejudiced, suggests that the majority

of Christians in Canada, Catholic and

Protestant, overwhelmingly support made.

And I don't know if that survey is of,

you know, church-going, Bible-believing

Christians or the kind of, you know, my

grandmother was a Presbyterian, so I

guess that kind of makes me a Christian,

too.

Uh I don't know.

But anytime we in the church largely

share the values of our culture,

we do need to stop, pray,

and reflect.

We're going to do a little bit of that

this morning.

Bring up the next slide, Larry, please.

Came across this quote a a couple of

years ago

from the Christian ethicist Stanley

Hauerwas. He writes this,

"If in a hundred years Christians are

identified as the people who do not kill

their children or the elderly,

we will have done well in our pastoral

care."

We live in a culture where compassion is

sometimes used as an excuse to be

killers and liars. Words like care,

love, and compassion can be

self-deceptive

when not disciplined and driven by our

theological commitments.

We'll unpack that a little bit, but I'll

put my cards on the table right off.

In a years,

I want my great great great

grandchildren to be known as the people

who don't kill their children

if they're imperfect or unwanted, and

they don't get rid of their elderly if

they're imperfect or unwanted, too.

I want us to be that

I want us to be a weird people, okay? A

people who look strange to our culture.

In other words, a people who witness

faithfully in life and death

to the God who creates life, who

commands life,

who redeems life, who ends life.

A God who in Jesus Christ died for our

sins so that we might have life and was

raised from the grave

that we might have that life

everlastingly.

So, to be that kind of people,

to bear that kind of witness,

I think Houras is right. We need to

watch our words.

Two words especially

circle around made discussions that

sound like Christian words,

but aren't. They're used to justify

medicalized suicide. And I think when

you really need to pay attention to

these words,

dignity

and compassion.

Dignity

and compassion. You know, a big reason

why made is popular is that it promises

that we can die with dignity.

And the powerful made lobby,

also reflected in Canadian law,

argues that to have dignity is to have

control of yourself, to be in charge.

The technical word for this is autonomy.

You might have heard this word. To have

autonomy literally means to be a to have

your own law. You're in charge, you're

in control.

That is what it means to have dignity.

So, to not have charge over your body,

your mind, or your future

because of injury or illness or

disability

is to be robbed of that dignity. Right?

This kind of thinking is pervasive. I'm

sure you've heard it. Someone has to

wheel you around now because you can't

move. Someone has to change your diaper

because you're not in control of your

faculties.

Someone has to care for you because you

have Alzheimer's or dementia.

We look at people who are suffering this

and often draw the conclusion that

they're lacking dignity in some way.

They're a burden

rather than being in control, free, and

independent.

This is how we in the West in Western

cultures think about being human. So, it

shouldn't surprise us then that the

elderly in our society are especially

tempted

to suicide.

They end up dependent

on others as their bodies break down and

their minds slow.

Shouldn't surprise us either that this

notion of dignity circles around the

discussion about mental illness.

People suffering from depression or PTSD

or a psychiatric disorder are not dying

from it.

But their affliction leaves them

dependent

on their family, their spouses, their

kids, therapists, nurses.

And that seems less dignified.

Shouldn't also surprise us

that poorer Canadians are more likely to

seek MAID than richer Canadians.

This is a a fact that even the

newspapers

the newspapers revealed a couple of

years ago.

If you think about it though, it makes

sense in a in a society that idolizes

being free and independent, to be

financially dependent on others

means you're not in charge.

You've lost dignity.

We need to watch our words, especially

this word dignity.

Cuz the Bible simply rejects this modern

dogma that a person has dignity only

when they're in control of themselves.

In fact, the Bible teaches us that we

are made

to depend on others.

Genesis 1,

God creates us male and female.

That little word and carries a huge

weight.

All the weight of dependence. We're not

made to be independent. We're made to

rely on others, to be dependent on.

That's fundamental to what it means to

be human for Christians.

To depend on others, and it's a good

thing.

Some of us think, and I hear this often,

um well, you know, when I'm when I'm old

or when I'm sick, I I don't want to be a

burden. I don't want to be a burden to

my family,

um financially.

I don't want to burden them with the

cost of of my of my illness, with the

hassle,

all that kind of thing. We don't want to

be a burden.

You bring up the next slide,

Larry.

Is it not in large measure

what it means to belong to a family,

asks the Lutheran theologian Gilbert

Meilaender,

to burden each other

and to find, almost miraculously,

that others are willing, even happy,

to carry such burdens?

I think he's got it right.

Those of you who are married, think back

to your marriage vows.

For better or worse, for richer or

poorer,

in sickness and in health.

Nobody makes us say these words, right?

We want to say them. We want to take

that burden on,

the burden of the other person, in love.

Think back to the birth of a child, your

child, your niece, your nephew, your

grandchild.

The first time you hold that little 7,

8, 9 lb bundle, it feels like a thousand

pounds of responsibility, right?

It's a burden.

But we want that burden. We want to take

that on.

And if this is true of families, how

much more true is it of the church

family?

Paul says in Galatians, "Bear one

another's burdens."

I'll be blunt. If If you want to be

autonomous,

if you don't want to burden others,

don't get married.

Don't have kids.

And don't get baptized.

Because when we baptize babies and

adults in our churches,

the pastor will pose a very inconvenient

question to the congregation.

"Will you support this child? Will you

support this adult in faith?" Right?

We're being burdened.

But we want to be, don't we?

We want those burdens. We're made to

depend on others.

We're called to bear the burdens of

others. There's nothing undignified

about this. In fact, it's part of the

glory

of our human dignity.

And above all, we were made to depend on

God.

We're not autonomous.

God creates us with limits.

Limits of body and brains,

personalities, possibilities.

The great theologian Karl Bart, and

Pastor Emery always loves to quote,

says this, if you bring up the next

slide,

"It's good for us to be limited

because it is the eternal gracious God

who limits us."

God is unlimited.

Therefore, we don't have to pretend to

be.

This is good news. We can accept our

limits from God

because we're in the hands of an eternal

gracious God.

We get a sense of some of those

limitations, those good limitations that

make us depend on our unlimited God from

the song that Laura read earlier, Psalm

116.

A psalm written by someone who thought

he was dying.

And he's remembering what it was like,

if you bring up the slide, Larry, when

the cords of death

ensnared me, encircled me.

And the point isn't that God rescued him

from death,

but rather how he felt as he thought he

was dying.

Not wanting death, not seeking it, but

facing it, he professes twice, "I am

your servant.

I am your servant." Like he's dependent

on God, dependent on God to keep him

from death, to keep his feet from

stumbling, his eyes from tears.

This is powerful sense of dependence on

God

in life

and in death.

Trust in this eternal gracious God

lets us accept his good limits on our

life, including the time that God

determines for us to die.

For Christians, death is not something

we seek, not something we celebrate, but

we accept it when it comes from God's

hands.

It's a challenge today because medical

technology, as you know, just keeps

expanding. We can keep extending our

lifespan with interventions after

interventions.

Even Christians can easily fall into

this trap of thinking about life as

ours, as mine to control and to keep.

And this leaves us clinging to life

obsessively.

But the same Karl Bart that I quoted

from earlier also says, "Life is not a

second God."

But, we do treat it like that, don't we?

Like an idol.

Let's not make life an idol. It's a gift

to us.

And the eternal gracious God has put

limits on it according to his good will.

I was I was profoundly influenced in my

early 20s by the death of of my

grandmother.

She was diagnosed with bowel cancer.

And after a few bouts of chemo,

decided that was enough.

It was too hard.

And she had lived the span of her life.

So, prayerfully, she decided to stop

clinging to her life.

The master was calling home his servant.

And she died at our home over the course

of a couple of months

with my mom caring for her and some

wonderful nurses dropping in doing

palliative care.

She was a burden to us,

but a blessed burden.

And at the very end, when she died, she

was, of course, just skin and bones,

reduced by the cancer, and she had to

wear a diaper, couldn't speak, didn't

always recognize us.

That was a death with dignity.

A death with dignity.

Psalm 116, "Precious in your sight, oh

Lord,

is the death of your saints."

See, when we lose our bodily functions,

we don't have the freedom to get out of

our wheelchair or bed, we don't lose our

dignity.

We confess Jesus Christ. We confess

Jesus Christ as the perfect human being,

right?

The embodiment of what it means to have

dignity.

As scripture tells us that Jesus took

the form of a slave

when he became incarnate, when the son

of God became incarnate. That's in

Philippians.

And as he was led to the cross, all his

freedom was taken from him.

He died helpless and naked.

Someone had to give him a drink because

he couldn't raise his hands to do it.

And Jesus says, "Father, into your hands

I commit myself." He's utterly

dependent.

Full

of the glory of human dignity.

MAID advocates talk a lot about dignity.

So should we as Christians.

But when we use that word, we mean

something different, something better

about what it means to be human

and how we live and die as the people of

God's hand.

What about this other word, compassion?

Our culture also speaks very loudly

about compassion when it talks about

MAID.

And I think it's probably here that we

as Christians

feel the tug towards MAID most acutely

because we are a people shaped by our

God and our God is compassionate. Psalm

116, which we read, God is merciful.

His people are merciful, too.

We love compassion and we want to be

compassionate.

So why would we oppose ending someone's

life when they feel like their suffering

is too much to bear?

I had a conversation recently with

someone on campus who knew I was a

Christian and is interested in in MAID

from an academic point of view and

um

she said, "Doesn't your Bible say, 'Do

unto others as you would have them do

unto you?'

You You want to suffer.

So why would you ask someone else to

keep suffering?

She said, "I I also put my cat down when

it was old and suffering."

I said, "I

I I said, "You also probably neutered

your cat without asking it. Um so, let's

not push the analogy between

between being a human and an animal too

much."

But but her comment her comment does

strike it strikes a nerve, right? Do

unto others. We don't want to suffer.

Why would we Why would we let others

suffer?

Words like compassion and mercy and love

for us as Christians, they don't float

free

from the biblical story.

They don't float free from the biblical

story where we learn of the limits that

God has put on a human life

where we learn of God's commands, "Thou

shalt not kill."

And above all, we learn God's character.

To quote Stanley Hauerwas again,

words like care, love, and compassion

can be self-deceptive if they're not

disciplined by our theological

commitments. In other words, if they're

not shaped by the Bible.

That's where we look. And the Bible

tells us it gives us a kind of framework

for comprehending suffering and for

understanding how we deal with that.

And the Bible shows us living

between the resurrection of Jesus and

his coming again in glory. God's victory

over death, sin, and suffering has

already taken place

in the death and resurrection of Jesus

Christ. But the full realization of that

victory in this world and in our lives

has not yet

not yet taken place.

So, as a result, as Christians, we have

joy and peace and love.

But

present in our life is also grief and

suffering and injustice.

As Christians, we're not called to a a

kind of

we're not called to a kind of

stiff-lipped acceptance of suffering.

We're certainly not called to celebrate

it. We lament it. And we we seek to

counter it within the good limits God

has made, like encouraging good

medicine, good palliative care medicine.

And the and the power of medicine to

minimize suffering is is a wonderful

gift of God.

But above all, we bear suffering, and we

bear it in hope.

Hope

that what is not yet realized, but

promised in Jesus' victory, a world

without suffering.

The Book of Revelation says he will wipe

every tear from their eyes. There will

be no more death,

or mourning, or crying, or pain,

for the old order of things has passed

away.

As such, until that time,

we seek to be patient, patient in

suffering. That's what Paul says in

Romans 2, be patient in suffering. And

we commit to bearing others' sufferings

through compassion, by being present

with them as a loving, faithful witness,

as a hopeful witness to the victory of

Jesus Christ.

Now, our society doesn't have this

biblical framework for for thinking

about suffering, for enduring it. So,

people grow impatient at their aging

bodies, and they push medicine to

overreach

by trying to give us a life completely

free from suffering. And then when

efforts to get to prolong life without

suffering

fall,

then we take matters into our own hands.

I was speaking with a a student a couple

of years ago.

Um for about half a year, I met with her

regularly. She suffered from acute

psychiatric problems and depression. It

was really really a small miracle that

she was able to finish her university

degree.

And um

she told me that she told me that her

her her dad

um said that when MAID is open to people

suffering from mental illnesses in

probably 2027, her dad said she should

get MAID.

And and I I had trouble kind of

processing this as as I'm listening to

the conversation. And I said I said I'm

trying to sympathize with the dad and

said like, you know, why would he say

that? And she just said she said he just

can't bear to see me suffer.

MAID allows us to remove human suffering

by removing the sufferer.

But that's not compassion.

We read over and over again in the New

Testament that suffering as as terrible

as it is

can make us more Christ-like. I mean,

you might know people, friends, family

members, maybe you, people of faith

who've suffered greatly. And often when

they look back on their anguish, on the

season of suffering

they would they say something like, I

wouldn't change that. I wouldn't change

that even if I could. Not because they

enjoyed it. It was awful.

But because of what God did through it,

what he taught them, how they learned

from it, how they were changed by it.

Many speak of drawing close to God

during these trials, growing in faith,

learning to depend on him more.

Maybe you're thinking, well, yeah, that

makes sense if you know, if you've got a

long life ahead of you, but what about

someone who's already dying, who's old

and dying? What Why still suffer? It's

just pointless pain, isn't it?

Compassion would say end it all.

But that's not what Christian compassion

would say. And even here, at the very

end, especially at the very end, we have

a chance to grow more Christ-like.

Came across this prayer in one of the

old prayer books. If you can bring up

the slide, Larry.

This is a reason why we should Everybody

should have an old prayer book.

Check out this prayer.

This is from the Book of Common Prayer,

the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in

mid-17th century. Sanctify, oh Lord, the

sickness of your servant Todd.

That the sense of his weakness may add

strength to his faith and seriousness to

his repentance and grant that he may

live with you in everlasting life

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Isn't it a great prayer? We don't pray

prayers like that anymore, but we

should.

Imagine

Sanctify, oh Lord, the depression of

your servant name. Sanctify, oh Lord,

the Parkinson's of your servant name.

Sanctify, oh Lord, the cancer

of your servant name.

This is a prayer that in suffering unto

death one has the chance to grow closer

to Christ. And what What a wonderful

witness. What a missional moment that

can be at life's end.

And those who've been baptized into

Christ are commissioned by him to bear

witness. Witness to our God, to his

character, to his love, his plan, and

his purpose.

And this mission, this calling weighs on

every person in the church throughout

our whole life,

even in when we're suffering and even as

we're dying, we bear witness to who God

is.

I've used this word witness a lot in

this sermon with with with intent. If

you could bring up the next slide,

Larry. It's one of these great biblical

words.

The The word in Greek is marturion,

witness, where we get the word martyr.

And the New Testament actually will

translate this word back and forth

between witness and martyr. There's two

examples. You shall be my witnesses, you

should be my martyrs to the end of the

earth. That's from Acts.

And in Revelation, I saw the woman drunk

with the blood of the saints, the blood

of the witnesses, the martyrs of Jesus.

I think that's significant, don't you?

That this single word

witness also means martyr. Sometimes a

witness to God is a suffering witness,

even a witness unto death.

You see what terrible suffering and

suffering that feels purposeless does is

it tempts us to believe that God can't

be trusted, that he's not in control,

and that he's not good.

And so we take life into our own hands

and we use made to end it.

But to kill ourselves, to commit

suicide,

is to witness that God cannot be

trusted.

He cannot be trusted in life

and in death.

Again, suffering is never something we

seek or want, but when it comes to us,

even at life's end,

it gives us the opportunity as

Christians to commit ourselves to a good

God.

Like the saints in the book of

Revelation that Laura read from, this is

about endurance. Don't know if you

caught that. Here's a call for

endurance, it says, to those who keep

faith.

Then I heard a voice from heaven say,

"Write this.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord

from now on.

Blessed are the dead who die in the

Lord." Not a celebration of dying,

but a commendation

of those who kept faith, who trusted,

who hoped, who can say in the words of a

of Psalm 116, "I believed even when I

was greatly afflicted."

I want to be able to say that when I'm

dying. I believed

even when I was greatly afflicted. What

a powerful witness to our God and to his

victory in Jesus Christ.

There's so much more I could say about

compassion, but I I need to wrap it up.

Um

We witness to the good limits that God

has made for us, which is why we talk

about dignity.

And we give hopeful witness to God's

victory in Jesus Christ, even when

suffering tempts us to think otherwise,

which is why we talk about compassion.

And in doing this, we're becoming this

strange, weird people that Howar asked

talked about, a people who don't kill

their babies or themselves or the weak

or the elderly.

In this last 2 minutes,

let me get practical, because the church

is set in the midst of this Canadian

society that has a will to suicide,

which means that you and I know people

who have asked for MAID or who will ask

for MAID. They're going to be our

neighbors, our friends, our families,

our coworkers.

Further, because Christians are

compassionate people, we often end up in

workplaces

that are

on the kind of raw edge of life, like

hospitals and care homes,

where we get confronted with these

issues. Nurses and doctors, elders doing

hospital visits.

If our position as Christians against

suicide is clear,

what's our posture to be?

How do we How do we live this out?

I mean, imagine you've got a friend or a

cousin,

and he he tells you that he's thinking

about MAID. He doesn't want to live

anymore with his cancer

or his PTSD.

What do we do in those situations? I

think

we bear witness, first of all. We bear

witness. We We share with him gently,

lovingly, our better story. Maybe the

Spirit uses it to even bring him to

faith.

But perhaps he's still be set on killing

himself, and he's registered for MAID.

He's set the date.

We keep visiting him. We keep visiting

him in the care home in the hospital,

praying with him, talking to him. Maybe

praying that prayer that I showed you

earlier. Oh Lord, sanctify. Sanctify

this illness

so that it makes him more like Christ.

Maybe praying for forgiveness, too.

For him.

What if he invites you into the room

when it takes place?

This isn't hypothetical. I was speaking

with a couple

an elderly couple a few weeks ago

and they live in an assisted living

complex in Kelowna

and their neighbors have registered for

MAID so that they can die as a husband

wife together on their time, their

terms. And they invited this couple to

be part of it. They said, "We know

you're Christians. Would you Would you

Would you say a prayer with us? Will you

sit with us

as this happens?"

And they asked me, "What do I do in a

situation like that? We don't I don't

want to abandon them, right? I don't

want them to feel abandoned."

What is bearing witness to God in life

and in death look like for us in a

situation like that?

Should we be there?

I think we we need to be really careful

on a few counts.

If we were to participate in a MAID

right

I think the first thing we have to

consider is what happens to our soul.

What happens to us when that happens?

Think of it like this. I'll give you

I'll give you an outrageous comparison.

Imagine that same friend who wants MAID

and wants you to be there. Imagine he

tells you that he's going to end his

life. He's suffered enough. He's going

to jump off the Bennett Bridge, okay?

And he's got a cement block tied around

his feet.

And he says, "Will you Will you join me

on the bridge and uh say a prayer with

me and then push me off?"

I'm giving you an outrageous example,

okay?

But But But we laugh and we're like, "Of

course we wouldn't do that. That's

awful."

But morally, what's the difference

between that and MAID?

Suicide is suicide, no matter how it's

done. And this is This is what we have

to watch our soul. And what make What

makes MAID extremely dangerous for us

is that it hides the horror of this act

behind clean white sheets

and soothing music and a candle burning

in your home.

And that's dangerous.

Reminds me actually of when my wife and

I, a couple years ago, were gifted with

a trip to some of the Bible lands, and

we started in Egypt. And one day um in

southern Egypt, we went into the Valley

of the Kings. You've probably heard of

this or read about it. Some of you might

have visited.

Where the pharaohs were buried deep in

the mountain. And you have to imagine

walking down to this death room carved

out of solid rock.

Um

Lapis lazuli and turquoise and gold and

silver on the walls and paint as you're

walking down further and further. And

then you get to this death room where

the sarcophagus is and the mummy's

inside it. And the guide was was kind of

hyping it. And like, you know, it's all

been robbed now, but imagine this this

this whole room was just sparkling with

gold and and lapis lazuli and silver.

Every It was just take your breath away.

And there's always that kind of smart

aleck in the group who cracks jokes the

whole time. And he was behind me and

he's like He's like, "Well, the

pharaoh's still dead though, isn't he?"

And you know, we all kind of chuckled.

But he But he's right.

In the In the sarcophagus is a mummified

withered corpse. And it's an ugly thing.

And no amount of gold or silver or lapis

lazuli is going to cover that fact.

MAID MAID tries to hide this act

behind something that's pristine and

serene.

But we have to be careful in that. We

Be very careful about what viewing MAID

would do to your soul.

And here's the last thing. And for me,

the central thing. Again, it's to bring

back this concept of this is this notion

of witness.

If we were to take part in a maid

ceremony as a bystander or as a

companion, are we bearing faithful

witness to God?

Everything we do as God's people in life

and in death

bears witness. We are martyrs, witnesses

that our only comfort is that we belong

to Jesus Christ.

Nothing should obscure or confuse that

witness. And I think being part of a

maid a a maid act does obscure or

confuse that witness. So, be very, very

cautious. Exercise great discernment.

I'll end with this. Um, you know, in our

in in my reformed church tradition, we

we use catechisms a lot. And I'm I'm

encouraged to see that actually

catechisms are starting to come back

among families and young people. If you

bring up the last slide, Larry.

We use this

Heidelberg Catechism, um, which has

[clears throat] which has a fantastic

opening question. Catechisms work with a

question and an answer.

When our kids were small, we made them

memorize this question and answer. I

shouldn't say we made we made them. We

incentivized them with you know, with

like Dairy Queen gift cards and things

like that.

What is your only comfort in life and in

death?

The answer?

That I'm not my own

but belong body and soul in life and in

death to my faithful savior Jesus

Christ.

This is the story

we tell our society that has a death

wish.

We hold out the comfort that we are not

our own

but we belong in life and in death, in

body and soul not to ourselves but to

our faithful savior Jesus Christ.

May we be May we be the kind of people

who proclaim that truth

and know that comfort

so that our community, our society knows

the difference it makes.

Amen.

Let me pray.

God, you were the Lord of life and death

and in Jesus Christ, in his death and

resurrection,

you have made us your own

and you promise your presence no matter

what we experience.

God, you were in the depths of hell and

suffering in Jesus Christ and you were

there

even as you were there as our exalted

Lord.

In all things, God, help us to heed your

word

and bear witness faithfully to you

and what you've done. In Jesus name we

pray. Amen.