Mary at the Tomb: John 20:1, 11-18 • Geoff Bradford

This morning, we're going to read from John chapter 20 verse one, then 11 through 18. If you'll follow along or read out loud with me as I read God's word.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb, And she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, They have taken away my Lord and I don't know where they have laid Him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. Jesus said to her, Mary. She turned and said to Him in Aramaic, Rabboni, which means teacher. Jesus said to her, Do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and to your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord, and that He said these things to her. — John 20:1, 11-18

This is God's Word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever been in a cave? I'm not talking about one of those modernized caves with lighting and paved pathways and handrails and elevators. I mean, what they call a wild cave with none of those improvements. I've been in a lot of caves. I grew up in an area with lots of caves. And I know that the experience of being underground can be an unpleasant one for some people. Caves are cold. They're about 55 degrees. Of course, there's no light, and they're often damp and even tight spaces. And over time, your body begins to acclimate. You begin to get used to the cold. Your eyes begin to adjust to the dark. Even with just having a flashlight, your eyes begin to adjust.

But the experience of coming back out of a cave, particularly if you've been in one for several hours, can be a really disorienting experience, particularly if you come back up in the middle of a sunny summer afternoon. The sun feels good, but the light can be blinding and even painful.

Easter may feel just like that for us today. As a nation, we are in a dark space with this coronavirus. We're in tight quarters in the shelter at home orders that we're obeying. We're in the squeeze of what appears to be a major economic downturn. Fear and uncertainty of what is to come really surround us. So celebrating Easter today, it's okay if it feels a little bewildering to you. If it feels like you should be enjoying Easter Sunday, but you're struggling to engage.

Can I just be honest? I feel that way too. Easter for pastors, this is our Super Bowl. This is our big Sunday. And yet I feel this very personally. Easter is actually my pastoral anniversary here at Christ the King. Nine years ago, this Sunday was my first Sunday at this church. And I love this church. I love being pastor here. And yet here I am talking to a camera. I'm not with my people this morning, and it's a letdown. It doesn't feel like Easter. Not so much super in our Super Bowl this year, am I right?

If that describes you at all today, can I suggest that maybe you are in the perfect headspace to engage this passage? You're in the best frame of mind to be able to identify with Mary Magdalene as she encountered the resurrected Jesus on that first Easter Sunday morning. Your sense of bewilderment, maybe feeling like you're having a hard time worshiping, a difficulty in rejoicing today, if that's you, you're in the right place. You're in the right place. This is for you.

Who is Mary Magdalene?

Now, the hard thing about engaging a story like this is it's hard to enter into a passage where we really well, we know the ending. It's like when someone has given away a plot twist when you're about to watch a very suspenseful movie and right before you see it, I hate it when people do that. So we're going to have to do a little work to be able to enter into this passage because we do know the rest of the story.

Let me start off with who she is not. There are a lot of Marys in the gospels, but this is not Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. This is not the woman caught in adultery. This is not the woman who anointed Jesus's feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, and she is certainly not the lover of Jesus. Sorry, Dan Brown, a la da Vinci Code.

Here's what we do know about Mary. She's from a region called Magdala. That's where Magdalene comes from. It's not her last name, it's her hometown. She first appears in the gospels in Luke eight, where we're reading about a group of people who share these two characteristics. Listen as I read.

Jesus made his way through the towns and villages preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. He went with the 12 as well as certain women who had been cured of evil spirits and ailments. Mary, surnamed the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna, Susanna, and several others who provided for them out of their own resources.

So we know about Mary that she's part of a group of women who provided for Jesus and His disciples, but we also know that she is remarkable and that she is one of this group of women who have been healed from a great oppression—a great injustice. Seven demons were cast out of her. She's been cured of something. And because of this, Mary is incredibly devoted to Jesus. We see her showing up at the cross in the scene we read just a few Sundays ago where she's there with Mary, Jesus's mother, and John the disciple. And we see her over and over in groups of people. She's always mentioned within a larger group, but not now. Now she's at the tomb, she's alone, and her grief is inconsolable.

For us, the sight of the empty tomb or the mention of the empty tomb on Easter is a sign that it's time to shout, "Hallelujah! Christ is risen!" But for Mary Magdalene, it must have been like experiencing the crucifixion all over again. If it weren't enough to have Jesus taken away from her by death on the cross, now she shows up at the tomb and even His body has been taken away. Mary must have felt on that dark morning like loss upon loss upon loss. And any of you who have lost someone close to you knows what this feels like. You have something that belongs to the one you lost and you treasure it. You hold on to it. You smell it. You hold on to that item because you can't hold on to the person.

And here she says the first words we hear from Mary in all the scriptures:

They have taken the Lord and I don't know where they've laid Him.

And all she can do is weep. Weep and try to figure out where she can go. She's not even disrupted by talking to two angels who try to convince her that her Lord is not there. Mary shows up at this tomb that early Sunday morning, and I want to use this phrase: she is living in a Good Friday world. She is in isolation. She's all alone. Nobody else came with her and she is weeping and she comes while it is still dark. She is living in a Good Friday world.

The Blood of the Lamb

Peter DeVries is a writer who is largely forgotten today. His books were really popular in the 60s and 70s, and he's remembered for satire and comedy. But probably the most important work by Peter DeVries is a book that's not funny at all. It's a thinly disguised autobiography called The Blood of the Lamb. In the story, the main character, a man named Vanderhope, is a man whose 11-year-old daughter is dying of a blood disease. In real life, Peter DeVries and his wife lost their daughter Emily in 1960 at age 10 to leukemia. DeVries pours out his grief in this novel and puts his experience into the mouth of his main character Vanderhope and Vanderhope's daughter Carol.

Day after day, week after week, Carol hovers on the edge of life. Vanderhope tries to pray. He doesn't presume to pray that everything will be all right, but he prays just for one more year with his daughter Carol, rehearsing in his mind all the things that they could do in that next year. And at last the day comes when the news is finally good—the bone marrow report shows that it's down to six percent, practically normal, that Carol's in remission, that she's going to go home tomorrow.

So the next day, on the way to the hospital, he buys a cake. He stops by the church, St. Catharines, where he's been going to pray. As he shows up there, the nurse from the night before is there as they're praying, and she warns him. She says there's an infection that's going through the ward like wildfire.

He writes: "I hurried into the hospital. One look at Carol, and I knew it was time to say goodbye. The invading germs had not only ravaged her bloodstream by now but had broken out on her body surface in discolorations—one even spread down a thigh. By afternoon it had traveled to the knee and by the next, gangrene." The nurse whispered that it was only a matter of hours now and all her dreams would be pleasant.

Vanderhope saw her on her bicycle, the sun in her hair, shining spokes at the piano bench practicing the smile of satisfaction when she got it right. He knew that none of that would ever be the same again. The nurse left the room and he moved to the side of the bed and whispered rapidly in this momentous moment. He says:

The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee.

The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.

And then we read, "Then I touched the stigmata one by one, the prince of the needles, the wound in her chest that for so many months had been scarcely closed. I caressed the perfectly shaped head. I bent to kiss the cheeks. Oh, my lamb. Oh, my lamb." He said.

Later in the afternoon, Carol died and wanting to secure the unfathomable pain in the particulars, Vanderhope looked around for the clock. I guessed what the hands would say, he said: 03:00, the children were putting their schoolbooks away and getting ready to go home. After some more legal formalities, Vanderhope went to a bar and had a drink and then another and another. But then he remembered the cake that he had left there in the church. So on his way out of St. Catharines, he looked up at the crucifix over the central doorway—its arms outspread among the sooted stones and the doves.

And he says this: "I took the cake out of the box and I balanced it in a moment in the palm of my hand. Then my arm drew back and I let it fly with all the strength within me. It was miracle enough that the pastry should reach the great height at all—for that height from the sidewalk—the more so that it should land squarely just beneath the crown of thorns on the face. Then through tear-scalded eyes, I seemed to see the hands free themselves of the nails and move slowly toward the soiled face. Slowly, very slowly, deliberately with infinite patience, the icing was wiped from the eyes and flung away. I could see it fall in clumps to the porch steps. Then everything dissolved and Vanderhope, no longer able to stand, sat down on the worn steps of the church."

DeVries concludes this way: "Thus Vanderhope was found at that place, which is said to be the only alternative to the muzzle of epistle, the cross of Christ."

Why do I read that? That is life in a Good Friday world. Death and tears, anger, pain, loss. But you're the hero of the anger when he throws the cake up at the statue of Christ. I hope you don't know much of this kind of pain, but I bet a lot of you do. More and more of us are coming to the realization that we are living in a Good Friday world right now. Tears, death, pain, and loss.

And you know, it's into this Good Friday world that Easter happens. But can I warn you, this is so much more than just Easter? We're used to Easter. If you've grown up around church, we're so used to Easter, we might miss it. Because it's not just Easter. It is the second first day.

The Unexpected Resurrection

You ever wondered why the disciples weren't there at the tomb on that first Easter? I mean, Jesus had been so particularly specific: "I'm going to suffer. I'm going to die. After three days, I will raise from the dead." I mean, you ever wondered why the women coming to the tomb on Easter morning were coming looking for a dead body? It's because no one was expecting the resurrection.

You know, I hear modern people say things like, "Oh, those gullible people of ancient times. They were back into their theology and superstition. Of course, they thought Jesus was raised from the dead." But the reality is there was nothing like resurrection from the dead as it's described in the New Testament in the ancient world. Nothing. The physicality of Jesus raised from the dead, Him hugging Mary, Him later on in John 20, eating fish—all this, there's nothing like that in the ancient world.

The reason no one was ready for the resurrection is because Jesus was just so dead. And also because there was nothing in their brains—either in the Jewish mind or the Greek mind—that had any kind of categories that could jive at all with the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus. Jewish culture had no categories for it. And even Greek culture had ideas like we do—maybe like a person living on forever in terms of their memory or influence. But this was a Platonistic culture, influenced by the writer Plato. They had no room for such an insane thought.

This is why there are no lawn chairs outside the tomb where the disciples are waiting. There's no watch party like we're waiting for turtle eggs to hatch. There's nothing like that, because no one expected this. And to be honest, we don't have much room for this in our minds either.

Have you noticed that the theme of the last two Pixar movies is about resurrection? It's really fascinating. One of the last movies Pixar put out was called Coco. It's a story of a young boy growing up in Mexico named Miguel, who loves music and is avidly interested in learning to play the guitar very well. But Miguel is accidentally transported back—remember, this is Mexico—into the land of the dead, like Day of the Dead, picture that, where he seeks the help of his deceased great-great-grandfather, who's a musician, to help him come back among the living and to reverse his family's ban on music.

In Coco, resurrection means what we often talk about—that a person's memory will live on with us forever. That's what resurrection means in that movie. Like saying someone's immortal like Shakespeare or Bach, it means that their influence will last forever. But that is not what the New Testament has in mind. The Bible has so much more in mind with resurrection.

Let's try another Pixar film. Onward is the story about a family of elves—a mom and two brothers, Ian and Barley. They've lost their dad years ago when Ian was a baby. On Ian's sixteenth birthday, he receives a present that was wrapped and prepared by their dad before he died for his boys. He opens it up and it's a wizard staff and a magical stone. Ian does the enchantment and it works sort of. It does bring their dad back from the dead, but only the bottom half, waist down. That's the gag from the movie.

The whole point of the movie then is to try to get the rest of their dad back. In Onward, resurrection means having someone who is dead returned back to you. Is that what the New Testament means? I mean, Mary getting Jesus, her rabbi back? Yeah, but I mean, that's true. But resurrection in the Bible means so much more. And John wants us to see the so much more part. That's what we read in this passage. He wants us to see there's so much more going on that first Easter morning than just resurrection, than just Easter.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early. — John 20:1

Okay, so what? Here's what. John is showing us that this is Genesis one—in the beginning, the first day starting over again. This is the beginning of a new beginning. This is the start of a new start. This is a second first day.

Because when Mary sees Jesus, she mistakes him for someone. Clearly the tomb must have been in a beautiful place because she mistakes him for the gardener. What is John showing us? This is Genesis one all over again. What was the first human tasked with doing? Gardening, working in the garden. And here is Jesus raised from the dead in a garden, talking to a woman. This is like a new Adam. And she, representing all of us, is like a new Eve.

If you go back and study Genesis one, you'll notice this in the details of the story: Eve is the one who does most of the talking. Actually, it's revealed over time that Adam was there with her the whole time as the serpent brings the temptation, but he's silent. The signature sin of Adam in the garden is his silence. But not here, not this second Adam, not this new beginning. This Adam speaks up and it is such a tender scene. He is so gentle with Mary. He keeps asking her questions, sort of waiting for all of this to dawn on her.

She's in a place of lament. She's in Good Friday world. She's in the dark at the cave, and she's bewildered coming up into the sunlight. So he keeps asking her questions. He asks her, "Woman, why are you crying?" He asks, "Woman, who are you looking for?" And Mary responds, "Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've laid him and I will take him away."

She's trying to get her bearings. She's problem solving. She's trying to figure out how she's going to transport the body. She's still living in a Good Friday world. But then Jesus says this one word to her: Mary.

For years, I thought that Jesus ignored her question—tell me where he is, and I'll take him away. But listening to another teacher recently, I realized that Jesus answers her question with one word. And it's pure poetry. He names her. He doesn't say "Mary, look, it's me right here." He just says her name. There's the body. There's the body. And it's not just a body anymore.

Resurrection Means New Creation

Resurrection is not just about what happened to Jesus at one moment in history. That's a cool event that we come back together and have a memorial service about every year. Resurrection is about what started with Jesus that is now taking place in his people and will one day break into all of this universe and make all things new. New creation, new creation—the beginning of a new beginning, the start of a new start.

One biblical scholar, N. T. Wright, puts it this way:

The point of the resurrection is not simply that the Creator God has done something remarkable for one solitary person, Jesus, but that in and through this resurrection, the present evil age has been invaded by the age to come. A time of restoration, covenant renewal, forgiveness—an event as a result of which the world is a different place than it was. And human beings have the new possibility to become a different kind of people.

See, yes, we live in a Good Friday world, but we are Easter people. What does it mean for us to be Easter people living in a Good Friday world? Three things.

First is this: being Easter people means that Jesus knows your name. You see how intimate the scene is when Jesus just turns to her and says, "Mary." He knows her name. He calls her by name. It reminds me of the story I read a few minutes ago from the Blood of the Lamb, where the father turns to his daughter who's dying and says, "Oh, my lamb. Oh, my lamb." And here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And He calls Mary's name. And He calls my name, and He calls your name.

Being Easter people in a Good Friday world means that we remember above all things that the name—my name, your name—is whispered from the name of Jesus as He is up in heaven before the Father, as He's on the cross dying for our sins. It is such a personal Easter. This is not a generalized resurrection. This is a very personal one.

Second, being Easter people in a Good Friday world means that the last become first. The last become first. Think about it. This first Easter, Peter, John and Mary, they all go to the tomb. They all go inside, they all see and yet Jesus, He waits. He waits until Peter and John are gone to reveal Himself. And in a way, Jesus picks Mary.

Think about Mary. She is last and least. She's a last and least person. Here's why I say that: she's what we would call a mental patient. In Luke 8, we read that seven demons were cast out of her. Now in the Bible, seven is not used in a specific way, but an idiomatic way. You could use it kind of like the word "mega." She is mega possessed with all these demons—a legion of demons. She is a last and least person. This is not a reliable witness for the world. She's also a woman. In that culture, women were a last and least people. They were not allowed to own property. They couldn't testify in court. But again, Jesus chooses her. Jesus chooses her as His first resurrection witness.

Jesus included women like nobody else did in the first century. But if the first Eve introduced Adam to the fruit, here is the new Eve introducing the world to this new creation news: "I have seen the Lord."

See what do we see here? Who sees the risen Christ? The last and least. The afflicted. The oppressed. The labeled. The possessed. Those who followed Him to the grave.

You know, if this is you—if this is you—if you are like Mary, I want to tell you: God loves Marys. Being Easter people means the last become first. God makes the last first. He chooses Mary. He loves Marys.

Third, He doesn't just love Marys. He also loves His failed disciples too, because being Easter people means grace for failures. If I asked most Christians, "Who's the big bad guy in the last week of Jesus's life?" most people would say Judas. And it's true. Judas sold out Jesus. And yet if you look very closely at the Scripture and understand the world of the first century, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that Judas was a political revolutionary who misunderstood what Jesus was all about. And his selling out of Jesus, his betrayal, was actually an attempt to try to force Jesus's hand—to bring his kingdom in with great power and to overthrow Rome. And that Judas really just misunderstood Jesus.

Now, you ask people in the first century, reading this, hearing this story for the first time—hearing the gospel—what would they say? "Who's the big bad guy in the gospels?" You know what they'd say? Jesus's disciples.

See, Judas misunderstood Jesus. But Peter and the rest of the disciples, they did something absolutely unforgivable. They abandoned their rabbi. In the world of the Bible, following a rabbi was an enormously big deal. Think back to the calling of the disciples from their fishing boats—Peter, James, John, Philip, Nathaniel. These boys, when they were called by Jesus, were probably 12 or 13. We know that because they were working for their dad. They didn't have their own boats. So they were apprentices.

And when Jesus calls them, this is what people puzzle over: they drop everything immediately, nets right where they are, and go follow Jesus. And why would they do that? Because being called by a rabbi was one of the highest honors in first century Judaism. Nobody gets called by a rabbi. There are very few rabbis, and to be called to follow one—their parents would not have yelled at them for leaving the nets. They would have been proud and honored.

But the reverse is also true. To desert your rabbi, that is one of the deepest dishonors and failures. It is incredibly shameful.

This is what's so remarkable here in Jesus's words in verse 17. When He tells Mary, there's no hint of malice in the message that He's giving her to give to the disciples. He doesn't say, "Now you go tell them, or you go tell those miserable deserters." No. He says, "Go tell my brothers."

Go tell my brothers. And He even outlines for them gospel grace. He says, go tell them, I'm gonna send to my father and your father, my God and your God. See, he's pulling out a Sharpie. He's circling the words. He's saying, you're still my brothers. God is still your God. He is your Father. And man, this is good news. This is Easter news for failures.

And if you feel this morning like a failure, if you can identify with us, any level of sense of desertion and failure in your life pales in comparison to these disciples. But what it shows us is this: you can't send away your salvation. And you can't abandon a God who never abandons you. This is what it means to be Easter people in a Good Friday world.

Living in Tension

As we live as Easter people in a Good Friday world, there's just tension in that. There's tension because there are two things at the same time: hope and tears. Hope and tears.

We said what has started with Jesus, the beginning of a new beginning, the start of a new start, the beginning of a new creation that has already started in an invisible way in the lives of His followers of those who believe in Him today, just like the followers back then, will one day spill out into all of our universe and make all things new. That kind of renewal, that new creation will flood every inch of this earth as Jesus makes all things new.

So one last movie reference, one last kids movie reference: Lion King. There's a scene toward the end of the movie in which the land which has been ravaged and really ruined by under the reign of Scar, who is not the rightful king. His unjust and illegal rule suddenly at the coronation of Simba, suddenly light breaks in into the gray. Suddenly plants begin to grow. The new creation life floods the valley of the shadows and where there had been death and decay, suddenly there's health and flourishing. And brothers and sisters, that is our hope. That is our hope that the scar is off the throne. That of course, the reign of the evil one, there are shadows of his influence and work everywhere.

There is a Good Friday reality that we still live in, where death and darkness and pain and loss are a reality that we live in. And yet we live in this tension. We know that what has happened inside of us will one day happen to all of the universe.

Hope and Tears in Our Time

You know, for many of us, this coronavirus pandemic has been marked with tears. For some, their tears about the loss of people we love. For others, it's been a loss of an event that you were looking forward to or needed to be at—a wedding, a funeral, vacation time with others. For some tears have been about your feeling of being so alone right now. Missing somebody that you feel like you should be able to be with. For others, they've been tears because there's no somebody for you to be with. This has been a time of crying.

You know, this passage is very much about tears today. And when Jesus says to Mary, "Woman, why are you crying?" that is no rebuke. That's no rebuke. The question is itself about tears and the place of tears in the kingdom of God. And we know that the end of the story is that there will be a God who wipes all tears away.

So we live in this weird tension. And what are we to do with our hope and our tears?

One last quote by N. T. Wright:

Easter is all about the wiping away of tears. In our fear of terror and joy, we have forgotten the purpose of tears. We have become embarrassed by them and with good reason since they are a God given reminder of the truth which our culture has done the best to make us forget that we are neither naked apes nor trained angels but humans made in the image of God. Now what God is that? It's the God who stood and wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. It's the God who wept over Jerusalem. It's the God who wept in the Garden Of Gethsemane. We've deemed tears too much to be childish. Whereas in fact, they are very childlike. But with Easter, we also have hope. Because hope depends on love and hope has become human and died and now is alive forevermore and holds in his hands the keys of death and Hades.

It is because of Him that we know that we don't just hope, we know that God will wipe away all tears from all eyes. And then in that knowledge, we find ourselves to be Easter people, Sunday people called to live in a world of Good Fridays. And in that knowledge we know ourselves to be Easter people called to minister in a world of Calvary's. And in that knowledge we find the hand that dries our tears, passes the cloth on to us and bids us to go dry another's tears.

The lamb calls us to follow him wherever he goes into the dark places, where tears blot out the sunlight. The places where tyrants pave the grass with concrete and He bids us shine His morning light in the darkness and share His ministry of wiping away tears.

And as we worship and adore and follow this lamb, we join already now in the song of Revelation five, the song that one day we will sing with all around the throne of God, we will sing:

Worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. — Revelation 5

Good friends, people who live in a Good Friday world, you are Easter people. Remember through your tears, the hope. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen.

The Lord's Supper and Our Longing

One of the real losses of our being together, one of the things we ache for as a church is the Lord's Supper together. And we are just not able to gather around this table like we're used to. And coming through a screen, it just isn't the same, is it? So I want to ask you to join me in this prayer of longing for the Lord's Supper together as it appears on your screen. Would you read with me?

Lord Jesus, our hearts brim with longing today. We long for one another for the day when we might gather again as Your body around Your table of grace. We long for your table spread out for us in this wilderness, where we feast upon the abundance of your house and drink from the river of your delights. We long for you, for your presence that is ours in the supper. It is your body broken and your blood poured out that alone can strengthen our hearts and satisfy our thirst.

But until the day of our joyous reunion, teach us to lament this absence in our lives. Teach us to long for you, for your church, for your kingdom, and for the day of your coming again. For on that day, You have promised to lead us up to the mountain of God where we will partake with You a banquet of rich foods prepared for all people. We pray this in the name of Him who is the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. Amen.

Giving and Worship

We also want to invite you if you would like to respond to the grace that God has given to you in Jesus Christ. An act of worship that we regularly participate in as a church is giving of our gifts, giving of what God has given to us, not as a way to earn anything with Him, but as an overflow of our joy and thanksgiving in Jesus. So if you'd like to give, you can give online, or you can give by mailing something into the church. The address and the information about how to do so are here on your screen. But we hope you know that if you're not part of our church community, please feel no compulsion to give. This is a way we honor the Lord together as a community.

Let's continue our worship as we sing this last song together.

Benediction

When Jesus appeared to His disciples in that upper room right after the resurrection, do you remember His words? He said, peace be with you. Therefore, I give you this benediction as one who has received God's peace and send His peace to you.

And now may the peace of Christ, which is beyond all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Go in His peace. Amen.