Love Takes the Lower Place -- Luke 22:24-27; John 13:3-5 • James Sutton

Well, along with David, I want to welcome everyone—everyone who's joining us virtually, everyone who's outside joining and listening in. I know it's weird. Some spirit fingers outside. I know this is weird, us being separated, whether you're at home watching on TV or if you're outside. It's awkward.

But what we're doing is a sermon series on the compassion of Christ. Because essentially, what I want to do is run around and hug everybody in our church right now, because it feels like we're so isolated, so separated, so distant. And the reason we're doing this series on the compassion of Christ is because you don't need a hug from me. We need a hug from Christ. And that's what this series is intended to be. It's intended to give us a gateway, a portal, looking directly into the eyes of Christ.

So let's pray and ask that Jesus would join us this morning as we look at his word.

Lord Jesus, these are challenging times. And Lord, it seems like every time we get our footing, the ground opens up beneath us. And this morning, as we're again shifting the rhythms of our Sunday morning worship schedule, Lord, the changes that we've had to face this year are ever present in our face. They're punching us in the face. And so, Lord, it just seems like everything is constantly changing. Everything is shifting. Lord, it doesn't feel safe.

Lord, this morning though, we come to you, the one who never changes, the one who is always consistent, whose embrace is tight and sure and secure. Lord Jesus, we pray that as we look at your word this morning, that you would draw near to us, that despite the distance of our present circumstances, your nearness would be felt, that we would feel the warmth and compassion of your gaze. Lord, be with us this morning as we hear your word. We pray this in your name. Amen.

As I mentioned, we're doing a sermon series on the compassion of Christ. And this morning, we're looking at Luke 22:24-27 and John 13:3-5. Let's listen to God's word.

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater? One who reclines at the table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I tell you, I am among you as the one who serves." — Luke 22:24-27

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. — John 13:3-5

This is God's word.

I think in the last probably three years, I have preached or heard this passage from John 13 at least three different times. It's a passage that gets brought up a lot, right? The washing of the disciples' feet, the last supper. And you need to know that the context of Luke 22 is a conversation that happened during that supper. So that's the picture here, right? We're looking again at the last supper.

And here's my suggestion to you. My suggestion is that you, like me, who have encountered this passage many times—and probably most of you have—we have a tendency to just kind of brush by this, right? I want us to look at this passage with a little bit of fresh eyes. I'm hoping that we can recover some of the shock of this passage. And I also hope that we can start to see that some of what Jesus is calling his followers to is not simply a chore, because I think that's another way that we look at this. It's like, "Oh yeah, Jesus washed his disciples' feet. I'm supposed to do that." Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? I hope that we can see this not just as a chore, but as a blessing.

Alright, let me set the scene. The disciples are arguing over who's the greatest. For Halloween, my two sons, James and John—the sons of thunder—dressed as Messi and Ronaldo for Halloween, right? The two arguably greatest individual soccer players of all time. It's funny that they dress that way because James and John are also often talking about which of them is the greatest. It's kind of like they did that, right? It's funny. That's what's going on with the disciples. They're like, "Which of us is the greatest?"

They're all, by the way, about to abandon Jesus. So you catch the irony here. Which of us is the greatest? None of us. Jesus is about to die on the cross for all of our sins. This is the night before he's betrayed and goes to the cross.

And rather than taking a night off, it says in verse one, we didn't read verse one of John 13, he loves them to the end. He goes low. He washes the feet of his disciples, which is a shocking inversion of cultural, contextual, and theological norms as we'll see. It's a picture of what he's about to do on the cross. We get that, right? This washing of feet isn't the big deal. It's a picture of what is about to be the big deal, him offering himself as a sacrifice. And it's a model for what they're to do in their life and ministry. It's corrective of their conversation.

So here's what I want to do this morning. I want to look at three points. I want to talk about how going low is radically counterintuitive for us. I want to talk about how Jesus going low is shocking, and I want to talk about his call to go low being an amazing blessing and not a chore.

Going Low is Radically Counterintuitive

First of all, going low is radically counterintuitive for us. I want to suggest to you that washing feet as a kind of model for what we do is exactly the opposite of how we think about what we should do. Jesus telling his disciples that they should likewise wash each other's feet—him telling us that is essentially like him telling us to walk on your hands and start doing everything backwards from what you normally experience.

There are many things about the gospel that feel backwards to us. So we kind of expect this from Jesus. For example:

To be strong, you must be weak.

To receive, you have to give.

To live, you must die.

To be great, you must serve.

But it's so contextually hard for us. Think about almost every experience you've had in life. Think about growing up in school. How do you be great? You have to be the best. You have to beat out everybody, get the best grades, try to collect the most friends, become the most socially cool, do the best in sports. Just in life, that carries on. Greatness is defined by collecting the largest group or the group that gives you the best. Our friends are the ones that we want serving us. We look for people who are going to be in two-way relationships.

Look at social media. If you scroll through social media, we see that this is the opposite of how life works in the world. Everything on social media is about me, me, me. Look at me. Businesses survive and become great in business by collecting the most money, gaining the most market share. In sports, it's about winning the most. Their accolades pile up. ESPN doesn't do 30 for 30 on the team that loses the most. I'd love to see that 30 for 30, but that's not how it works.

And even in the church, I would submit to you that this kind of model for living that the world presents to us is so normal for us. When I get together with other pastors, almost the first question that always gets asked is: How big is your church? How many people you got? How many programs are you doing? It's so natural to us.

We think of Jesus calling us to wash feet or pick up our cross in one of two ways. We either think of it as a simple shift to our day-to-day lives. We brush past it and go, "I'm doing that. I'm doing that in some small, simple ways, and that's all that matters." We think, "Well, there was that one time that I was nice to that one person, so I've done it. I don't need to look at this passage." Or we think of it as a really inconvenient chore. So inconvenient that it's unreasonable. Jesus, really you want me to be like you? We think about the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says:

Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Really? That's just unreasonable, Jesus. We can't do it. It's out of the question. It's an inconvenient choice. I can't be bothered with that living in the world. I've got to do the kinds of things that I need to be successful to take care of myself. I can't sacrifice the way that you're asking me to.

It's a radical reinvention though. That's what Jesus is calling us to. You know, I want you to think about The Matrix. I love that movie. I used to use that as sermon illustrations all the time. I think I've taken a break enough from it to where it's okay that I'm doing it this morning. But you remember the scene where Neo, he wakes up in a little pod and then he gets flushed, right?

And then Morpheus and the gang pick him up in the ship. Laying there on the table, right? He's got all the wires stuck into him. He has this initial conversation with Morpheus where he's like, "What are you doing?" And Morpheus is like, "I'm rebuilding your muscles." He says, "Why do my eyes hurt?" He said, "Because you never used them before."

What Jesus is doing in washing his disciples' feet is that radical. He's saying, "Hey, listen. I'm gonna set a pattern for you. I'm gonna try to shock the system. I'm gonna inject like these needles into you and try to shock your muscles to where they start to develop. I want you to open your eyes and start using them. I want you to start living the way you were intended to live instead of the way that you live in the world." He is calling them to a radical reinvention of life. It is totally different from what we experience.

So when you encounter this passage where Jesus is washing his disciples' feet, I want you to understand that this isn't something that's just a nice thing that Christians read about once a year to try and feel warm and fuzzy about what happened at the last supper. This was a moment in which Jesus was trying to break through, punch us in the face and say, "Wake up. Start living. Start doing the things that you were made to do the way you were supposed to live."

How Do We Live This Out?

So how do we do that? Like, that's the question, right? Some of us get that this is radical and we counter it year after year and we're kind of just feeling guilty. Like, how do we do this? Well, the first step is to use our eyes that we've never used before and to look at Jesus. For those of us who have used our eyes before and we have seen Jesus, we need to look at him again, over and over again.

This is why we celebrate the Lord's Supper, not just once a year, but every week. Because a part of the radical reprogramming process that we're undergoing, we understand that that's not gonna happen in our own power. We have to come back again and again to not just our model, but also the source of our ability to do that—to look at Christ. So that's our first point. This is radically counterintuitive for us.

The Shock of Jesus Going Low

Let's move to the second point and look at Jesus going low. It's so shocking on so many levels. I want you to be shocked. Like Neo's muscles with the electricity—be shocked by what's going on.

Here's what normally we talk about. The level of shock that we normally go to is: okay, let's talk about the historically shocking nature of this. In ancient Israel, the teacher doesn't wash the disciples' feet. That's not how things work. In fact, even the chief slaves don't wash anyone's feet. It's the lowest member of the slave group that normally would be charged with washing anyone's feet. It's such a disgusting task, especially in the ancient world where everybody's walking around getting all dirty. It's such a disgusting task that it's not given to anybody except for the lowest of the low. And it's certainly not something that the highest of the high would ever do.

And that's the context here, right? Jesus is the honored guest. He's the teacher. He's the one that's supposed to be receiving, not the one that's giving. So that's kind of shocking, right? In the sense that it would be shocking for us if we experienced this in any of our cultural or historical contexts. You know, David Hill, who's a professor at NC State, if he started washing his students' feet, that would be shocking. They're used to receiving criticism and direction from you, not you getting in between the toes to get the grime out. That's not how that works.

But I also want you to see that it's contextually shocking in the moment, right? This is Jesus' last meal before he dies. He knows this. The disciples should know this. He's told them about it. They don't get it. It's his last meal.

You know, when it's really hard to love somebody or to serve someone is when you're suffering. Think about that. Let me just tell you about Saturday nights at my house. I just let Katie know, "Hey, guess what? I'm preaching tomorrow. So I got all this stuff in my head. I'm really worried about how I'm gonna be perceived. There's a lot of suffering going on in me right now. So guess what? The five kids, that's you. I'm not washing anybody's feet tonight. I'm not washing the dishes tonight. You're doing this because I need to be focused on me. Because I've got a lot going on, right?"

You don't expect to go in and visit someone in the hospital, right, who's suffering and dying—because that's about where Jesus is—and have them serve you. You expect it to go the other way, but that's what's happening here.

Another kind of contextually shocking part of this is the disciples arguing over who's the greatest. Are you kidding? They argued about it all through their time with Jesus. He was with them for three years. The list of knuckleheaded things that they did abounds. Read the gospels. These guys were nuts. They did nothing right. It's not like these guys were cute little puppies just hanging around Jesus, always doing kind of cool things. There wasn't something that he was getting out of this relationship. It's not what you would call a healthy reciprocal relationship in which he poured into them and they poured back. That wasn't how it worked. They were always doing the wrong thing.

So not only is Jesus in enormous suffering, right, about to go to the cross, but there he's also doing this with a group of people who he knows are gonna fail him once again. They're about to all abandon him. One of them will betray him and actually be, probably, the reason that he's going there. Another one who's so boastful about how much he loves him will deny him three times. This is the group whose feet he washes. They don't deserve it. Not just because of their station, but because of their behavior. Contextually, it is shocking that Jesus does this.

The Theological Shock

Now let's go another level and look at this theologically. Jesus has throughout John these I am statements, and it culminates in him saying:

Before Abraham was, I am — John 8:58

Jesus has repeatedly pointed to the fact that he is God. So this is not just a teacher washing his disciples' feet. This is the eternal God of the universe getting on his hands and knees, virtually naked, washing the feet of his disciples. Theologically, that is ridiculously shocking.

You think back to the temple. The Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies. It's the ark of the Covenant. You remember the ark of the Covenant—it's the one that Indiana Jones found. Picture that in your mind because they did a good job of representing it the way that it probably looked. It's got the angels on the top. It's a box. Can you touch it? No. You touch the Ark of the Covenant, you die. Just like the Nazis did at the end of the movie. You don't touch it. You don't open it. It sits in there because this is the most holy place.

But biblical and archaeological scholars understand that in the context of the ancient Near Eastern world, what was the ark supposed to represent? It wasn't the little box where God dwelt. The movie got that wrong. It was meant to represent a footstool. When the Shekinah glory descended upon the temple, it's like God was sitting on the top, and in the holy of holies were his feet. And once a year—only once a year—after going through a rigorous cleansing process, the high priest was allowed to go in, and he had to have a rope tied around him because he might have an impure thought at some moment and just drop dead because he's where? At the feet of God. Which are covered by the angel's wings. That's why those angels have those wings. There's two of them covering the feet of God.

So here's the theological implication: you can't even go as a sinful human being to the foot of God. That's how holy he is. How majestic he is. And yet here we have God going to the feet of his disciples and washing them. You see how shocking this is?

Moses wasn't even allowed to look at the face of God. He got to see his back. The idea of God being that intimate is so theologically shocking. It doesn't make sense in the context of the Bible unless you think about one particular contextual setting. That kind of love, that kind of display only makes sense in the context of the Trinity.

If Jesus were to totally undress and start washing anyone's feet, it should be the feet of the Father. That's the picture where we tend to think of that being appropriate. When you think about the Trinity, the Trinity is this eternal situation in which the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are totally in love with each other, totally magnifying each other, totally giving themselves over to each other.

If you're new to Christianity, the trinity is this mind-blowing concept where there's three persons but one God. They're perfectly unified. And that's what love is. When I did a wedding last week, that's what I talked about. I talked about how a wedding is actually a picture of the trinity—the two becoming one, right? In the context of a relationship with God, the two becoming one. Love is supposed to be that kind of unifying.

So do you see what Jesus is doing? He's actually inviting his disciples back into the relationship which they were created for. Back into a relationship with God that is that intimate, that full of love, that raw. It's incredible.

Listen to this quote from C.S. Lewis. It's one of my favorites. I picked it up from another sermon. This is from The Problem of Pain. He says this:

In self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm of all creation and of all being. For the eternal Word gives himself in mortal sacrifice, and that not only on Calvary. For when he was crucified on Calvary, he did that in the wild weather of his outlying provinces what he had done at home in glory and gladness. From before the foundation of the world, Christ surrenders begotten deity back to begetting deity in obedience. As the son glorifies the father, so also the father glorifies the son.

C.S. Lewis had a way with words. But listen to this again—I love this one line: "For when he was crucified on Calvary, he did that in the wild weather of his outlying provinces, what he had done at home in glory and gladness."

Jesus in washing his disciples' feet, being a picture of the cross, is ultimately just an expression of the pattern of how he lived in Trinitarian existence for eternity. And he's coming to the wild weather of his outlying province. So when we talk about this being counterintuitive, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the wild weather of the outlying provinces. That's where we live. But Jesus broke through the wild weather to calm the storm, to bring us the picture of what love really looks like in the eternal context of the Trinity. It's a portal that he's opening, showing us, "Hey, look, this is what life is supposed to look like. This is what Jesus is trying to rebuild."

John 13 actually begins an arc that moves towards John 17, which is the high priestly prayer where Jesus prays, "Lord, may my disciples be one with each other and one with you as you and I are one." You look back at the beginning of this passage:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from the supper. — John 13:3

Do you see? He's just living out the pattern of his existence, of his life. And he's calling us into that.

The Call to Go Low

That brings me to my final point: The call to go low is a radical blessing and not a chore. It's not something to be dismissed. It's not this unreasonable chore that we should hate. It's something to be embraced because it is this call to real life.

But I do want to acknowledge that it is costly. It is costly to live the way that the Trinity lives in the wild weather of the outlying provinces. It costs Jesus something. He went straight to the cross after this. His way of living, his way of loving led to his dying. That's why he tells us, brothers and sisters, that following him means we take up our cross and we follow him. We like to follow him. We don't like the cross. But it's going to cost. We have to recognize that.

We also need to recognize that it's vulnerable and risky. Jesus was naked. We don't like opening up the way that he's doing this with the disciples. We don't like the kind of risk and vulnerability that's going on here. But that is the kind of vulnerability that exists in heaven. That is the sort of love and relationship that we're called to. We're afraid of it though. Why? Because here in the wild weather of the outlying provinces, when you open yourself up, often you're rejected. Just like Jesus was rejected.

So it's going to be costly. There's probably going to be some rejection. This is going to be hard. I want to acknowledge that. I'm not trying to minimize the cost of our discipleship with Jesus Christ. But I do want you to see that this is a blessing.

Part of how we're going to get there—Hebrews 12 gives us a picture that's helpful, I think.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so you will not grow weary and lose heart. — Hebrews 12

Some of us have grown weary and lost heart. But this helps us recapture the beauty of what discipleship with Christ looks like. Let me go through this real quickly.

Notice the beginning: "For the joy set before Him." There's a gift—this incredible joy, eternal joy. That's the joy that Jesus is experiencing in heaven. That's the joy that awaits us. There's this future joy. And how do we get there? How do we experience this gift? Well, we fix our eyes on Jesus. We look at his pattern. It shouldn't be surprising to us that it's costly or that we're rejected in this world. That's going to be the case. But look where it got him.

Paul Miller has his book, The J Curve. You go down into suffering and then you rise into glory. That's what happened to Jesus. And brothers and sisters, that's what's going to happen to us. We need to look through the portal that he opened and see into the eternal. Because when we do that, we realize that what he's calling us to is a gift, not a curse.

Also notice that he endured and he scorned. That's what Hebrews says. He endured the cross and scorned the shame. I talked about the cost. There's an endurance portion of this. There is a sense in which this is hard. But I want you to understand: enduring the cross, enduring hardship and suffering in this life is possible because you have enough to endure. You who have been given Jesus Christ have everything.

In Jesus Christ, you have all that you need. So anything that this world could ask of you, you have a bankroll that can endure that. You can weather this—a little tiny storm before the eternal portal, before you go to be with God for eternity and revel in the riches and glory and splendor and health and security that is yours in Jesus. It's a little bit of endurance, and because we have so much, we can totally do that. That's so easy. It was so—in some sense, think about Jesus coming. Why was he able to do that? Because he had a bankroll bigger than anything. We have one too.

Scorning the Shame

Notice too, scorning the shame. There is going to be so much shame heaped upon us, brothers and sisters, because we're Christians. If you live the way Jesus lived, if you love the way he loved, people will reject you. There will be shame. But think about it like a middle school dance. I worked in a middle school for ten years. What happens at a middle school dance? All the boys line up over here. All the girls line up over here. All the teachers are scratching their heads going, "Why aren't they dancing? We're playing their favorite music." That happens every time. Why? Because the guys don't want the shame of going over and asking a girl to dance and then getting on the floor while all their buddies ridicule them for dancing with a girl. Why would you ever dance with a girl? They have cooties, right? They're still getting over that mindset.

Kids, if you're at home listening to this, boys, listen: it's okay to dance with girls. It's okay. Scorn that shame when you get to middle school. Go over and ask a girl to dance with you and party out, man. That's what we're called to do as believers. We're called to reject, to scorn the shame of the middle school dance. Stop being afraid of getting in the center of the floor and breaking it down. That's what Jesus has called us to: scorn the shame.

Eternal Glory

And then the last part of the Hebrews 12 passage is that he sits down at the right hand of the Father. The disciples were arguing about who's the greatest. Well, that's the greatest feat in heaven. Jesus was the greatest. I hope that goes without saying. Jesus was the greatest. And after he scorned and endured and he did the J Curve and went up into heaven, what was there for him? Eternal security and glory. And that's what's waiting for us.

Do you see how it feels like a chore, but it's really a blessing? It's really a blessing, this call to this life. It's easy to look through the portal and talk about the future of our heavenly existence. That is the goodness, the blessing of this call. But I want to submit to you that there's actually blessing now.

That it's not just pie in the sky, by and by. It is that. But it's great pie, by the way. But there's stuff here for us now. I think about the disciples arguing about who's the greatest. Just think about that picture. Here they are with the true greatest having a meal. What would you give to be able to have a physical meal with Jesus right before he's about to go to the cross? What would you talk about? Would you talk about your achievements? No, it would be all about like, "Oh Jesus, man, talk to me." Like the disciple on an island of self isolation by virtue of their selfishness.

Remember the movie, Cars? It's been out for like twenty years, so I feel good about spoiling the ending. That's where this is going. So if you haven't seen it and you're watching online, you can pause it and watch the movie. You should have done it like, you know, fifteen years ago at least. But those of you who are outside in the parking lot, I'm sorry. I'm about to spoil the ending if you haven't seen it.

So in Cars, where does it begin? You got Lightning McQueen. He's like the best, right? Where is he? He's stuck in the trailer all by himself. He's got no friends. None. Even his agent doesn't really like him. He's totally isolated and alone. And that is what our self-important kind of lives get us. So I would submit to you that right now there are probably ways in which our selfishness and our lack of service are creating isolation and loneliness for us in the same way that it did for Lightning McQueen.

Listen again to this quote from Lewis. There's a second part. For when he was crucified on Calvary, he did that in the wild weather of his outlying provinces, what he had done in glory and gladness. We talked about that. For before the foundation of the world, Christ surrenders begotten deity back to begotten deity in obedience. Now listen to this:

And as the son glorifies the father, so also the father glorifies the son from the highest to the lowest. Self exists to be abdicated. And by that abdication becomes the more truly self. To be there upon yet the more abdicated and so on forever. This is not a law which we can escape. What is outside the system of self giving is simply and solely hell. That fierce imprisonment in the self. Self giving is the absolute reality.

Do you see that? Some of us are living in hell because we have decided that living the way of the cross, washing feet, serving others is a chore. The reality is it's a blessing.

McQueen—the end. I told you I was going to spoil the ending. I started with the beginning. What happens? He gets in trouble and he actually has to serve. He has to pave the road in Radiator Springs. As he starts actually serving, he starts doing it in a selfish way. Like, "I'm gonna plow through this. I'm gonna do it so fast so I can get back to the race and the things that are important about me." And it was terrible. But slowly over time he learns he's gotta serve the people in the community. That was the intent of what he was supposed to do. And as he does that, he forms relationship and all of a sudden he has friends. And what happens? He's transformed. By the end of the movie, what happens? Instead of winning the race, he goes—this is the ruining part—he goes back and he gets the king who's about to retire, and he drives him across the finish line. He loses the race. 30 for 30 on a loser. There it is. Because he served.

John Piper said this: you'll find the deepest joys in life are not when people are hailing you and your status, but when they are helped by you and your service.

Thanksgiving as a Practice Ground

I want to end this way. We're about to head into Thanksgiving. And one thing that I've noticed is that Thanksgiving and Christmas are on a decline. I was talking to somebody and they recently told me their favorite holiday is Halloween. And I was kind of like, "Halloween might be my favorite holiday too." Why is that? Well, Halloween is all about just having fun. You get dressed up and real super kooky and you go out and go crazy. You don't have to deal with your extended family like you do on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I said it. Mom, dad, I love you. If you're out there watching online.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are on a decline because it's hard sometimes to be with your family. And you kind of have this expectation going home with family that it's gonna be easy. You're just gonna be able to chill and relax. But not that way.

Here's what we're gonna need to do if we're gonna be transformed. It's kind of like Lightning McQueen. We're gonna have to sandbox this a little bit. We're gonna have to practice. This is something we're gonna have to regularly get into the rhythm of. And I would like to submit to you that Thanksgiving is a great sandbox for us to try and live this out.

So here's what I want you to do. Every morning that you're at home or wherever you are with family or however that looks like, I'd like you to turn to John 13 and meditate on Jesus. Look at him with your eyes that are opened. And then I want you to allow that to be instructive for how you engage your family.

Wash their feet. If you want to wash their feet literally, knock yourself out. But I would suggest to you that there's all sorts of ways in which there are power dynamics in your family and you have some power, right? Rather than exercising that power over people, serve them like Jesus did. Go low.

And see if Thanksgiving doesn't start to rise in its stock as you draw closer to your family and allow that to be a picture of how you then move into other spheres of your life, other opportunities to do that. I would submit to you that there's all sorts of them. There's all sorts of ways in which you have authority and power over someone, and you can go low because that's the pattern of our savior. And it's a pattern he gave you as a gift, not as a curse.

In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.