Sharing in God's Abundance

2 Corinthians 9, Isaiah 25:6-9

When the Bible speaks of abundance it is exclusively not in the terms of wealth stored up in the bank so that I can live a more than comfortable life doing things I want to do.  In the Bible abundance is a feast, a full table to be shared in celebration with others.  Abundance is the feast that comes at the end of the harvest when the owner of the fields and the workers sit together around a huge table filled with food and gratefully celebrate God’s goodness towards them.  Abundance is an open table to which all are welcome.

My grandmother, we called her Mawmaw, she knew abundance.  She came from a farming family, the youngest of sixteen.  She said they came in two waves of eight, but the siblings in the second wave were the only ones she ever talked about.  Being the youngest girl, I suppose, meant she spent a lot of time in the kitchen and you could tell.  Mawmaw could cook.  A meal at her house was always a semblance of a feast spread out.  There was always a little of this and a little of that, some were leftovers, and some made that day and it all amounted to a lot.  Sometimes it seemed there was so much food on the table, it was hard to find a place to set a plate.  This was every evening meal.  My grandparents didn’t have a lot, but they had abundance.

My best friend growing up, his mother, Mom Landis, she knew abundance as well.  There was always a place at her table and lots to eat.  There were always people, family and friends coming and going at their house and if you were there at dinnertime you ate.  Sometimes there would just be a pot of something going on the stove and it didn’t matter what time it was you just grabbed a bowl and ate.  She made the best chicken and dumplings, oyster stew, and spaghetti sauce.

In the Bible abundance, God’s abundance, is that there is always enough, more than enough for people to gather around a table and be well fed and enjoy each other.  There’s always a pot of something for anyone and everyone to draw on.  In God’s abundance nothing keeps forever so share what you’ve got now. 

That being said we have to stand under the conviction that there is something fundamentally un-Kingdom of God-like with a lifestyle that demands we work for a number of years putting aside whatever we can so that we have something to live on when we can’t work anymore.  Moreover, this idea we have that abundance is a big bank account and a productive stock portfolio is foolish.  Take that barn-building rich fool in the parable for example.   Hoarding is not what God has in mind for humanity.  There is and can be abundance in this world, God’s abundance, for everybody to share in and have enough.  Yet, when people start stockpiling it means a few start getting it all while most everybody else ceases to have enough; and, the resources that the earth has to give us become polluted and depleted.

Our passage from Isaiah begins with “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast” and there also the Lord will destroy death.  With that prophecy Isaiah was pointing forwards to the day of the end times that began in Jerusalem (Mt. Zion) with Jesus’ resurrection.  A feast began back then in the early church in Jerusalem.  The first Christians began to share what they had.  Those who owned fields that they didn’t need sold them and gave to others in the church who had need.  Widows and orphans, the most vulnerable in that day, were well taken care of.  In effect, the early Christians eliminated poverty among themselves there in Jerusalem by living in God’s abundance.

Paul tried to extend this practice to the church on a more global scale.  The collection he speaks of in 2 Corinthians was an effort at this.  The Jerusalem churches had suffered a great famine and so Paul was getting the churches in Turkey and Greece to help them out.  He was trying to enact God’s abundance. 

Unfortunately, he found a bit of reluctance in Corinth, which was a very wealthy area.  When he first asked them to help, they were very willing.  But, a year had past and he was finally coming to them to collect the money and he was hearing that they hadn’t been saving anything up for him. 

Paul reminds them that in God’s abundance, those who sow generously reap generously.  This is not a TV ministry ploy where the TV preacher says send me $1,000 and God will reward you 100 fold duping you to think that $100,000 is headed your way.  One doesn’t give generously expecting a reward back in money, but rather a reward in righteousness.  The more we share the abundance we have the more God fills our lives with what I would call the joy of feast-fellowship and the certainty that we will never want.  I can truly say I felt joy around Mawmaw’s and Mom Landis' tables and that’s the way it is to be around the table of God’s abundance.

This is why churches need to potluck as much as they can and, if they can find a way, feed the community around them.  On this mountain, inside the walls of this church and in our homes the Lord Almighty is preparing that end of times feast where he swallows up the pall of death and wipes away tears.  Christians potlucking is a powerful sign to what God is up to in history.

Sharing in God’s abundance requires that we exercise two qualities of character that God has given to everyone in Christ Jesus by his Spirit: hospitality and generosity.  Hospitality, God has opened up and welcomed us into his very life, the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  So also, when we open up our churches and our homes to share meals with neighbours and friends in Jesus name, he is in our midst and he makes himself and his abundance known.

Generosity, Paul says God loves a cheerful giver.  The Greek word for cheerful is hilarios from which we get our word "hilarious".  God loves it when we are generous to the point of what the world would call "joyfully ridiculous".  God the Father gave the Son who gave himself over to death that we might have life filled with the Holy Spirit.  I'm not going to call that joyfully ridiculous, but it is the extent that God went to destroy death for us.  The least we can do is discover the joy of not hoarding and rather being ridiculously generous knowing God will always meet our every need.

We Christians have an acute responsibility to model hospitality and generosity as a way of life.  God’s abundance is available in this world and we are those whom he has called and made able to be the living testimony to this Kingdom of God reality.  The first Christians did it to the extent that they eliminated poverty in their midst.  Are we up to the challenge?  Or, maybe I should ask that question in a different way:  Would you like to know the abundant joy of the Lord?  Amen. 

One Small Talent

Matthew 25:14-30

It’s stewardship time of the year again.  It’s the time we talk about how we use those things that God has entrusted to us; our time, our talents, and…wait for it…our money.  The pulpiteers get up and remind us that everything we are and have comes from and belongs to God and so we can’t talk about how it’s our time, our talent, and…wait for it…our money.  It’s God’s time, God’s talent, and…wait for it…God’s money and therefore, we are only stewards of God’s resources.  Then, in the midst of that stewardship sermon the preacher usually asks the congregation how they are doing with giving to the church of that God entrusted time, talent, and…wait for it…money.  Then, it ends with a challenge to do better.

 Well, that’s not the stewardship sermon you’re going to get from me today.  I’m not going to prod us on how good of a steward we each have been of God’s time, God’s talent, and…wait for it…God’s money.  No, rather I am going to inquire into what we each have done with the new life God has given us in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.  You see, before we can talk about what we do with the “stuff” God has entrusted to us, we must first reflect on what we do with the life of Jesus Christ that he has entrusted to us.

One of the most basic teachings of the New Testament on this subject has to do with Baptism: when we were baptised we actually participated in Jesus' death and resurrection.  This means that as followers of Jesus Christ we are DOA for any understanding at all that the life we live is in any kind of way life on “my terms”.  We have to throw Sinatra’s mantra of “I did it my way” into the grave where it belongs and live in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ filled with and led by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus said as much when he said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”  That means we must daily die to self to live in Christ.

Paul also wrote in his letter to the Galatian churches: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).  The lives we now live as Jesus’ disciples are not our own.  We belong to Jesus who faithfully loves us and out of that love gave his life for us that we may live a new life in him in which we are becoming ever freer from the oppressions of sin as we follow him living life on his terms.  It is a great comfort that God is for us and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ and that God will work all things to the good for us who love him.  Jesus is our loving Saviour, but he is also our Lord and so we must ask ourselves “How am I doing with the Lordship of Jesus Christ over my life?”

God has given us each who live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ one small talent.  A talent was almost 59 kgs. or 130 lbs. of gold.  Metaphorically, this talent is the personal power of Jesus and his resurrection life.  It is his very self, the Holy Spirit.  And, in accordance with The Parable of the Talents, are we going to invest this talent of Jesus’ living in us and let it grow?  Are we going to abide in Jesus (live in him) and be fruitful (for he will transform us to be more and more as he is and use us to draw others to himself)?  Or, are we simply going to bury it in the ground where we just keep him as a matter of private religious belief as we continue to live our lives on our own terms.

This way of looking at stewardship in terms of what we do with Jesus’ life in us is to think of it in terms of discipleship.  A good way to start doing this is to look at what happened when he called his first disciples.  I like how he called Peter, James, and John to be his disciples in Luke’s Gospel. 

It was the morning of a new day.  They had been fishing all night and caught nothing.  They sat on the beach cleaning their nets.  Jesus comes up and a crowd gathers.  Jesus gets Peter to row him out a little from shore and he teaches for a while.  Then Jesus told Peter, James, and John to go fishing again, but this time fish the deep water. Peter agreed but only because it was Jesus asking.  Peter had had Jesus as a house guest a few nights prior.  Jesus healed his mother-in-law and many others as well as cast out demons from people who screamed out that Jesus was the Son of God as they left.

They go fishing and they have the greatest catch, the greatest business success they had ever had.  The nets were so full that they were near bursting. Peter fell at Jesus’ knees in worship and said “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”   Peter realized that Jesus was somehow God with them there in the boat.  He was amazed and afraid.  Jesus had done things for others.  Now he had done something for Peter that would forever change the circumstances of a poor fisherman.  Jesus looked at Peter, James, and John and said, “Do not be afraid.  From now on you will fish for people.”  When they got to shore they left behind the enormous wealth of their catch.  They left behind their boats and nets, the means of their livelihood.  They left everything and went and followed Jesus.

Reflecting on this experience, it was on the basis of their personal encounter of the living Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, that they left everything they had to rely on in this life to follow him.  The impact Jesus has is powerful.  Then, they spent the next three years wandering about with Jesus getting to know him and working out what it meant for him to be the Messiah and them to be his disciples.  They experienced his arrest, death by crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.  Then, they spent the rest of their lives proclaiming Jesus and his Kingdom and discipling others while awaiting his return.

The personal encounter with the living Lord Jesus Christ leads to the devotion of one’s life to proclaiming Jesus and his Kingdom and discipling others.  To speak of stewardship in terms of Jesus Lordship and discipleship then is to talk about how we each have been brought under Jesus Lordship by personal encounter with him and how our lives are being totally changed and redirected by him in the power of the Holy Spirit with the result that we are reaching out and discipling others. 

So, how are we doing in terms of proclaiming Christ and discipling others?  There have been quite a few studies done in the last twenty years on the giving patterns of church members.  One of the things these studies brought to light is that most Christians do give to the church.  In North America, though the percentage has dropped dramatically, the church is still the biggest receiver of charitable donations.  But, they also found that most Christians don’t give to the church as much as they do to things like universities, disaster relief, disease research, and hospitals because they see these causes as being able to make a bigger difference in the lives of people than the church.  They give to the church because they see it as a requirement of faith rather than as the primary means of bringing about real change and the healing of people in our society.  The end result is that churches struggle financially, have difficulty finding help, and dwindle off in membership. This pattern of giving is evidence that we have buried the one small talent of personal encounter with Jesus Christ our living Lord into the tomb of “my private faith” and me living “my life on my own terms”.

So, how are we each doing with the one small talent of Jesus' life that he has entrusted to us.  Are we living it under his Lordship?  Are we devoting ourselves to letting him change us?  How are we doing with his charge to us to devote ourselves to discipling others?  Pray on these things?  Amen.

Who Are We Waiting for?

Isaiah 25:1-9

This passage has no direct historical referent.  Actually it lies in a whole section of Isaiah that lacks a referent.  There is no specific event in the history of Israel to which Isaiah is referring.  Isaiah refers to a city laying in ruins but we have no idea what city or when.  That being the case, it doesn’t mean there is no history associated with it.  It is not a-historical.  Rather, it is description of all of history from the slant of all of humanity’s relationship to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is Isaiah summing up what’s going on in all of history.

Moreover, he writes this summation to the people of Judah/Jerusalem who are on the verge of losing everything.  The Assyrians have just conquered the Northern parts of Israel are were gathering around Jerusalem to conquer it.  Babylon is becoming a world power and in two generations they will destroy Jerusalem and take the people into exile.  Isaiah has been prophesying that the snob-noxious, oppressive ways of the wealthy elite will lead to God’s judgement of his people.  This chapter of Isaiah has some comfort for when it’s all gone. 

In verse one Isaiah points us to what our human purpose is within history.  It is to point to God and stand in awe, give voice to that awe, and know we can trust God.  He says: “Yahweh, you are my God. I lift you up high.  I praise your name.”  Actually, the word for praise there isn’t the usual word for praise. It’s meaning is more like “I publically confess you are God and I am not.”  We make this confession based on the awe-demanding things that God has done.  Not only has the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Big Banged this awesome universe into existence, he gets involved in each of our insignificant little lives.  He’s got plans for us, plans from long ago, plans that are sure and certain indeed trustworthy.  They will come about.  God is God.  We are not.  He does wondrous things so let’s praise him and trust him with our lives.

In verse two Isaiah tells us that God has turned a city into a heap of rubble never to be rebuilt.  As I said a moment ago, there is no particular city we can point to so city must mean something else here.  I suspect it means human efforts to be God.  To the Old Testament prophets the “city” often turns up as an image of humanity organizing itself to be its own god. The image that comes to mind for me is the Tower of Babel and what that represented.  God turns humanity’s efforts to be its own god into a heap of ruins, a city never to be rebuilt.  Isaiah says that it is the city of the “estranged one’s”.  The NIV says “foreigners”, but that doesn’t get the sense of the Hebrew word which describes someone who has turned away or become estranged to the extent of humanity trying to be its own god.  In verse three Isaiah calls these people strong and ruthless.  A better way to translate here would be terror-striking people.  Isaiah says that God will in the end makes these ruthless, terror-striking people fear or revere him, bring glory to him.  As Paul says at Philippians 2:10-11: “…at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.”

Coming into verse 4 we have some very beautiful imagery describing how our God is with his faithful ones as we live in the midst of those who are terror-striking and estranged.  God, his very self, his presence with us, is a refuge like a shelving rock that you can stand under in the midst of a torrential downpour or like the shadow of a cloud passing overhead when you’re out it the middle of a desert.  That a cloud shadow passing over is your only relief from the heat out in the desert truly points to God being our only source of hope and comfort in this world amidst a humanity estranged from its God and source of life.  Verse five is summary; only God’s presence with us, in us can silence the war-roaring of life estranged from God.

Verses six through eight are one of the most powerful images in all of Scripture of what God is up to in history, indeed in each of our lives.  “On this mountain” in one sense refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where in ancient Israel it was the place where God dwelt but figuratively it means God’s presence.  All things necessary for God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to deliver humanity from its estrangement from him come forth from this mountain.  On this mountain where God is, God has made and will one day ultimately make a feast for all peoples that for us like feasting on the finest of meats and wines, but it is also of God’s once and for all swallowing up of death. 

The mountain is what God has done, is doing, and will ultimately do for all of his creation in, through and as Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, our Lord and Saviour.  God the Son as Jesus of Nazareth took upon himself our estranged existence and died with it and God the Father through the powerful working of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead making a new humanity being made new by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who awakens faith in us.  God has swallowed up death in victory forever.  Resurrection is humanity’s end.  God himself does and will wipe our tears away.  We who have stood and continue to stand faithful in steadfast hope and patient endurance in this world of estranged humanity that tries to put us to shame for striving to be faithful, we are being delivered from that death right now because God is not just with us, he is in us making us to live anew, changing us to be more as he is.  I like the way verse eight ends: “Indeed, God has spoken.”  Indeed.

Finally verse nine chimes in with “And it will be said on that Day, ‘Look!  This is our God.”  Our God, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Our God is the only God through out all of history to really get involved in the details of human life for the good of humans.  He’s been our refuge, our shelving rock, our cloud shadow in the midst of a humanity that is estranged from him and is ruthless towards each other.  He is so especially to those whom our he calls his own and has given the faith to patiently endure.  Our God is the only God that will do away with death and make all things new.  Our God has made a feast for all peoples – the feast of his death-swallowing, tear-wiping, resurrecting, all-things healing very self.  He makes this available to everyone to all who will come and eat. 

Friends, that Day is present now.  That Day came with Jesus.  It’s not here in its completion but Jesus is fully here through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who organically unions us to Jesus so that we share in his relationship with God the Father now, a relationship that will blossom into the healing of all Creation when this Day reaches its fullness at Jesus’ return. 

We may be a couple of Sunday’s late but today is our kick at the can of World Communion Sunday; Christians all over the world celebrating the Lord’s Feast as a sign of unity.  Today, we gather around the banquet table in the midst of a world torn with the effects of humanity’s estrangement - viruses out of control, terrorism, poverty, war, economic oppression, abuse, climate changing due to pollution, the list goes on – we gather in this Day as a global Christian community to say “This is our God, the God we are waiting for.  He has given himself to make all things new.  He is reducing the city of our estrangement to rubble, swallowing up death along the way, and making all things new.”  Today we say to this estranged world, “Come and feast.  Come and rest.  God is here, victorious over death, and he will wipe away your tears.”  Amen.

The Responsibility of the Healed Leper

Luke 17:11-19

A Samaritan leper wasn’t a good thing to be in Jesus’ day. They were stigmatized by the people in Jerusalem and Judea. Jerusalemites looked upon Samaritans as being half-bred or impure, part Jewish and part Gentile in blood. They saw lepers as unclean outcasts whom God had cursed with a skin disease that made them look like the walking dead. To be unclean meant they were cut off from all society and not allowed to come near any place where the Lord God might be worshipped; certainly not Jerusalem. They were not allowed to touch or be touched by someone non-leprous for they would pass on this uncleanness.

But Jesus wasn’t like those “good religious people “ down in Jerusalem. The Gospels tell us that Jesus spent most of his life, time, and ministry not among the “good religious people” down in Jerusalem, but rather with those whom the Jerusalemites considered to be the dregs and outcasts of the Jewish nation, the “sinners”. It was among the “sinners” that Jesus healed and cast out demons and proclaimed the Gospel, “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” So, it was not unusual that a small leper colony would come to Jesus asking for healing mercy.

So, that’s what this entire colony of lepers did. They came to Jesus, the one whose power and authority didn't come from robes and rules but from God. Jesus, was their only avenue to the LORD God who could be moved with compassion towards them and heal them. They were tired of being treated as social pariah. They wanted this apparent curse of death gone. They couldn't go to the priests. They couldn’t go to the temple because the ancient Israelites believed that death could not come into the presence of God. These lepers looked and smelled like death. Jesus was their only avenue to the God of Israel to make their request.

Jesus' means of healing them was a bit odd. He told them to get on as if they were already healed, to go and show themselves to the priests; go and face the ones who had the “authority” to make the declaration that they were clean and could return to normal life. So, they set out and as the go, their leprosy heals. They become clean. They could go into the Temple, into the presence of God…and even into the presence of the priests.

One of the men happened to notice that he had been healed. He turned back to Jesus and began praising God loudly. He fell on his face before Jesus worshipping him and giving him thanks. And…Luke makes a point of saying, “This man was a Samaritan.” And we are supposed to see the irony there that a “half-breed” leper knows that Jesus is the LORD God in their midst when the ‘pure bred” religious authorities, the priests, did not. Jesus told the man “Stand and go! Your faith has made you well.”

In Greek the word for “to be made well” is the same as “to be saved”. Another way of saying “your faith has made you well” is, “Your faith has delivered you onto salvation.” Now, I want to draw out here that there is a distinction between being healed as in cleansed and being made well as in saved or delivered into the Kingdom of God. The cleansing made the leper able to be in the presence of God but his resulting act of faithfulness, of actually turning back to Jesus to worship him because he knew the LORD God of Israel was working in, through, and as this Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean, that's what actually saved him. His turning to Jesus and worshipping him was his salvation; salvation meaning that he was now a resident in the realm of the Kingdom of God delivered from the realm of sin and death. Being cleansed at a word from Jesus of those things that we are ashamed of and which separate us from God and make us feel cut off from God and from others is one thing. Turning to Christ in worship and following him, living under his Lordship, is another.

The Gospel that Jesus preached was “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” To be saved is to be delivered from this sin infected world into the Kingdom of God under the direct Lordship of Jesus Christ, following him. That’s what it is to be saved. Following Jesus is salvation. The wellness that this former leper was experiencing by his faith in Jesus, his recognition that Jesus is Lord that came as the result of his cleansing and healing, his turning back to Jesus, was the wellness of salvation.

In the language of Paul, the Samaritan Leper had received God’s seal, the gift of the Holy Spirit who is the pledge that everything God has promised to us for the future is for real (Eph. 1:13-14). The Holy Spirit was at work in the leper and made him well. If one knows oneself to be cleansed and set right before God and cannot help but to turn to Jesus to praise and thank him knowing that he is God, then one knows oneself to be saved, delivered and experiencing now through the Holy Spirit a small taste of the Kingdom of God wellness that we will know in full when God makes all things new. Faith is the result of knowing you’ve been cleansed and healed because the Holy Spirit has come to you and its most true-to-heart expression is turning to Jesus to praise and thank God.

About the other nine…well, the main message of this passage is not about the ingratitude of the other nine. The core message is about cleansing, healing, and being delivered into the Kingdom of God by Jesus Christ. But, like Jesus we must ask what about those other nine. Why does Jesus seem so shocked that they did not return to him? I think Jesus isn’t indignant towards them for their ingratitude but rather he is surprised that they did not turn back to him in faith. For some reason they don't realize the full implications of their having been cleansed. They do not realize who he is. If it is the work of the Holy Spirit to show us who Jesus is, then the Holy Spirit was seemingly not showing them. I think that surprised Jesus quite a bit. Where did they go? What did they do? I reckon they just get on with their new life not realizing that their new life is in Jesus.

So how does this apply to us today? Well, because God the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit became human as Jesus Christ and bore in himself all of humanity’s sin and died with it on the cross and in turn God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit raised him from the dead every human being there ever was, is, and will be has been cleansed. There is nothing that can keep anyone ever from turning to Jesus Christ in praise and thanksgiving and by and through him experiencing the wellness of being delivered into the Kingdom of God. This wellness is nothing other than the gift of the Holy Spirit who unites us to Jesus Christ and in, with, and through him we experience God the Father’s love for all people as his children. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

We who in faith know to turn to Jesus in worship know this by faith because we are united to God in Christ through the Spirit. Moreover, nothing can prevent every other person there is from knowing this too because they also have been cleansed in the one act of Jesus Christ. There is nothing that can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the cleansing, i.e. the forgiveness of all peoples, universally so. Everybody is forgiven. A blanket of forgiveness now covers the sins of all peoples because of the love of God in Jesus Christ. He is the Lamb of God who took/takes away the sin of the world. What is surprising is that all peoples do not realize that they have been cleansed by Jesus Christ and thus do not turn to him in worship and instead put their faith in other things and therefore miss out on the wellness, the salvation of being delivered now into the Kingdom of God. The “other nine” just don’t get it. We like Jesus ought to be greatly surprised at this. Not that they are ungrateful but that the Holy Spirit is seemingly not at work in them. It’s a shocking as when those who have the Spirit are ungrateful and turn away from Jesus.

We are like the Samaritan leper. We know Jesus is the Lord. We know our lives are incomplete without him and his reign in our lives. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is genuinely at work in our lives, changing us to be more and more healed and cleansed so that we live as the image of Jesus Christ, the reflection of Jesus Christ shining forth into the world. Our responsibility as healed lepers is to live authentically in his image, to be a loving community of his disciples who love one another and our neighbours sacrificially as he has loved us expecting nothing in return so that the “other nine” who surround us will see in our love the Lordship of Jesus. And know that there is new life in him. The church in North America has tended from day one to carry on like Jerusalemites who sit in judgement of the moral purity of others all the while having forgotten that we are at heart leprous Samaritans in need of Jesus, his healing power, and his reign. Loving one another and our neighbours authentically as our worship of our Lord is our responsibility seeing that we know who he is and the Holy Spirit is at work in us. As far as the other nine, only the Father knows. Our task is to reach out as the living proof of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.