Moses in the bulrushes

 

I think I remember first hearing the story of Moses in the bulrushes, which was our first reading today, when I was in primary school! I imagine you did, too, most probably. It’s one of the first Bible stories we ever learn.

It’s an important story, as Moses was an important person – so important, in fact, that he was one of those who visited the transfigured Jesus on the mountain-top, along with Elijah. God made it clear then that it was Jesus who we are to listen to, Jesus who has superseded both Moses and Elijah, Jesus who is God’s beloved son.
But Moses, like Jesus, wasn’t born to greatness. In fact, rather the reverse. The Israelites, at that time, were living in Egypt – you might recall how they moved down there at Pharaoh’s invitation, and that of his right-hand man Joseph. And at first they settled down, and built farms, and lived their lives according to God’s word as it was then understood, and all went swimmingly. They grew, and they prospered.

Meanwhile, however, the Pharaoh grew old, and died, and a few generations later a new Pharaoh ascended the throne, and this Pharaoh had never heard of Joseph, and didn’t really want to, either. He was concerned, because here was this enormous group of people who weren’t Egyptian at all, living in the middle of Egypt and it was possible – although not probable – that they could overturn his throne. Pharaoh wasn’t having that!

So he got together with his advisors, and they pretty much enslaved the Israelites, demanding – and getting – forced labour from them to build things and carry burdens, work in the fields, and so on. They didn’t build the pyramids – the pyramids existed long before Joseph went to Egypt – but they did build a couple of towns, Pithon and Rameses. But the harder the Egyptians forced them to work, the more children they had, and the more they prospered.

So the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were told they must kill any boy baby that was born to an Israelite woman, although they could let the girls live. But the midwives were not about to do that, and ignored their instructions. And when summonsed to explain themselves, they said blandly that all that work in the fields meant that the women had a very easy time giving birth, and the babies in question had been born long before they got there! And the children of Israel became stronger and stronger and more and more numerous.

So Pharaoh got very cross indeed, and ordered that all baby boys must be thrown into the river, there either to drown or to be eaten by crocodiles, or both. But it still didn’t stop the Israelites.

The Bible doesn’t give the names of Moses’ parents; they are just referred to as a Levite man and a Levite woman. This means they were both descendants of Levi, one of Jacob’s sons. The Levites, traditionally, end up being the tribe that is responsible for Temple worship and so on – not the priests, but the worship leaders, if you like. I don’t know if they had that role back in Egypt, but it seems significant that Moses should be a Levite.

This couple had two other children that we know of; a girl called Miriam, and a boy called Aaron who was a few years older than Moses, so presumably born before the edict to kill the male babies was made. And then Moses arrives.

I wonder whether Moses’ mother knew what she was going to do if she had a boy. I expect she was praying and praying that it be a girl, and then it wasn’t. Disaster! What on earth was she going to do? How could she give up her beloved baby to be killed?

We aren’t told that she prayed, but I’m sure she did. And she was able to hide the baby for three months, but babies are not an easy thing to hide, and eventually she realised she simply couldn’t. But she had been plotting and preparing. Her baby must go in the river, okay. But she wasn’t going to let the authorities throw him in – instead, she would put him in herself, in a basket she had spent time weaving from rushes, and covering it with pitch so it would be waterproof.

And she took the basket, with Moses in it, down to the river herself. Her heart must have broken as she placed it tenderly in the reed-bed. She had done what she could, complying with the letter of the law, if not the spirit. Only God could help her baby now.

She didn’t dare hang about to see what would happen, but her daughter Miriam could lurk discreetly, pretending to be playing, perhaps.

And what does happen is that Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to the river to bathe, with all her attendants. And she hears the baby crying, and sends one of her women to go and see what the noise is. And the woman brings back the baby in his basket.

Pharaoh’s daughter – we don’t know her name, either; the Bible is so bad at giving women names – is entranced by the baby, and even though he’s obviously a Hebrew baby, she wants to keep him for her own, as though he were a stray puppy or kitten. But the baby is getting hungry now, and howling, and his sister, very bravely, comes up to the women and says “I know where there’s a wet-nurse, if you want one for the baby!”

The wet-nurse is, of course, her own mother, who has just that very day put the baby in the river. And Pharaoh’s daughter says “Ooh, yes please!” and so the family end up moving into the palace, albeit into servants’ quarters, and Moses is brought up as befits a royal child.

There are some obvious parallels with Jesus here, aren’t there? The humble parents, the oppressed people, the edict to kill the baby boys. Ironic, perhaps, that Mary and Joseph fled into Egypt to keep Jesus safe!

Meanwhile, Moses grew up as a child of the palace, although he obviously did know he had Hebrew roots, as we learn later in his story. But Jesus, we hope, had a happy and serene childhood in Nazareth, treated no differently from other boys his age, playing with his friends, going to school, and only very gradually learning that he was different and special as he grew up.

I’m not sure, by the way, whether he knew what Peter’s answer to the question “Who do you say that I am?” was going to be, as we heard in our Gospel reading. Did he already know he was the Messiah? He obviously knew he had a special calling from God, that he was God’s beloved son – but, the Messiah? Peter’s answer was very definitely God’s voice to him. Yes, you are the Messiah. But he asked the disciples not to say anything, as he didn’t want to be elevated to the status of a political leader, which is what they had always imagined the Messiah was going to be.

Moses, as we all know, led his people out of slavery and to the very boundaries of the Promised Land; Jesus wasn’t about overthrowing the occupying power, or really anything to do with politics; he brings us out of slavery in a totally different way – the slavery of sin, as the Bible calls it.

But Moses’ story has more to teach us than just the parallels with Jesus. It’s about God’s wonderful provision for his people.

It must have been so awful for Moses’ mother, mustn’t it? She knew she had to put her precious baby into the river; he could be – and probably would be – swept away and drowned, or eaten by crocodiles, or both. But she was also placing him into God’s hands, and God wasn’t going to let him be swept away or eaten. God saw to it that it was just at that precise moment that Pharaoh’s daughter and her attendants came down to bathe. And just at that precise moment that the baby woke up hungry.

And so Moses was saved from the crocodiles, and grew up a child of the palace.

Jesus, too, was saved from the edict that all baby boys be killed; his parents listened to the angel who warned them, and took him to Egypt, where they stayed until that Herod died, and then resettled in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up as a normal village child.

I wonder how God provides for you and me? We are probably not going to be leaders of our people, but we are still God’s beloved children. And St Paul reminds us that “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus”.

We didn’t read the passage from Paul’s letters set for today, as it would have made the service too long, but it was that bit from the letter to the Romans where Paul reminds us that although we are one body in Christ, we are all different, and God has given us all different gifts, which we should not be shy about using.

I am sure that almost all of us, looking back, can see times when God provided for us – I know I can, several times, over the course of my life. Sometimes it was using decisions I made; other times it was the right person in the right place at the right time, and so on. And I expect – although I don’t actually know and don’t especially want to know – there have been times when I’ve been the right person in the right place at the right time. And I’m sure there have been times when you have, too.

Pharoah’s daughter was in the right place at the right time. So, of course, was Simon Peter, to tell Jesus that “You are the Messiah, the holy one of God!” I pray that all of us may be the right person in the right place at the right time – and I think I pray that we’ll never know it, as then we might think it was we who did it, not God! Amen.

Being Wrong, Putting it Right

 

Our Gospel reading this morning is a very odd sort of story, isn't it?
Here we have Jesus telling his disciples that what goes into your mouth doesn't matter, it's what comes out of it –
what you say, even, perhaps, what you think –
that matters.
And then he goes and says something that everybody, certainly today and, I suspect, throughout a great deal of history, finds incredibly offensive.

Well, the first bit is easy enough to understand.
Jews and Muslims both have very strict dietary rules, and believe that breaking them makes you unclean, and unfit to be in God's presence.
And they also have strict rules about washing yourself before worship,
being clean on the outside before, one hopes, being made clean within.

But Jesus was able to see, as his followers couldn't,
that what you eat doesn't actually matter.
Many of the rules –
about not eating pig, or shellfish, for instance –
made sense in an era where there was no way of refrigerating food.
Eating them might give you a tummy-upset,
but it wouldn't be the end of the world if you did.
What goes into your mouth, says Jesus, eventually passes through and comes out the other end, but what comes out –
well, that just shows what kind of a person you are!

And then a few days later –
we don't know the exact date, that wasn't the kind of thing that the first gospel-writers thought important –
a few days later he's off in a non-Jewish region, and he is so incredibly rude to the woman who comes begging for healing.
What is going on?

Of course, the traditional explanation is that he was testing her.
Well, that may or may not be the case, I don’t know, but it’s what people often say because it’s what they think Jesus is like.

The difficulty is, of course, that we can't hear the tone of voice he was speaking in.
Did he snap at her, which is a bit what it sounds like?
He had ignored her for some time until the disciples asked him to deal with her or send her away.
Was he trying to be funny?
I wonder how you “hear” him in your head when you read this passage, or one of its parallels.

I tend to hear him as being thoughtful, trying to work it out.
You see, in the time and place when he was brought up,
he would have learnt to assume that the Jews were God's chosen people, and nobody else mattered.
Some things, it would appear, given the situation in Gaza today, never change.
But the point is, Jesus didn't know any better,
which I think today's Israelis ought to.

It might sound strange to say “Jesus didn't know”, because after all, He is God, he is omnipotent and so on.
But we believe –
or at least we say we do –
that He is also fully human.
Unlike the various gods and goddesses of Greek myth,
he wasn't born already adult,
springing fully formed from his father's forehead, or something.
He was born as a baby.

Think about it a minute.
A baby.
Babies are so helpless when they are born; they rely on us, their parents, to do everything for them.
And they gradually grow and learn –
first to sit up,
then to begin to play with objects,
chewing them as well as fiddling with them.
And gradually to pull themselves to standing, and to walk, and so on.
And Jesus had to do the same.
He will probably have chewed on Mum's wooden spoon when his teeth were coming through, and when he was of the age to put everything in his mouth –
and later, he will have discovered that it makes a lovely noise when you bang it on the table,
and have to learn that not everybody enjoys that noise!

And so on.
He had to learn.
We are told he grew in learning and wisdom.
Remember the time when he was a teenager and got so engrossed in studying the Scriptures that he stayed behind in the Temple when everybody else had packed up and gone home –
and then, when his parents were understandably cross,
he said “Oh, you don't understand!”
Typical teenager –
and, of course, Jesus was learning the whole time about the Scriptures,
about who God is,
and, arguably, maybe a tiny bit about who He was.

And here, perhaps, he is learning again.
We can't rely on the Gospel-writers' timelines,
they tend to put episodes down when it suits their narrative.
And here is Jesus, perhaps having slipped away for a few days' break into Tyre and Sidon,
where he was less likely to be disturbed than in Galilee.
And then this woman comes and will not go away.

We don't know anything about her, other than that she was a foreigner –
Mark says she was Syro-Phoenician, Matthew, here, calls her a Canaanite.
Either way, she was basically Not Jewish.
An outsider.

You know, the Bible is full of stories about outsiders coming to know and trust Jesus!
Just off the top of my head you have the centurion whose servant was healed, the other centurion who Peter went to after his dream to tell him it was okay to do so,
and the Ethiopian treasury official.
Oh, and Onesimus, Philemon's slave.
Philemon himself, come to that, but I think by the time the letter was written, it was becoming more widely accepted that non-Jews could be Christians, as well as Jews.

But at the time, these people were outsiders.
No good Jew would have anything to do with them.
And Jesus ignores the woman, until his disciples ask him to get rid of her.
And even then, he doesn't heal her daughter.
Instead, “It's not right to take the children's meat and give it to the dogs!”

But I wonder.
Do you remember the wedding at Cana, which we are told is his first recorded miracle?
And his mother came to him and said “Disaster!
They've run out of wine!”
His first reaction was basically, “So what?
What's that got to do with me?”
but then he went and got the servants to fill those huge amphorae
and the water turned into wine.
He changed his mind.
His first reaction was not to do anything, but if there is one thing
he appears to have learnt, it is to listen to the promptings of the Spirit.

And in this case, too.
The woman, consciously or not, said exactly the right thing:
“But even the puppies are allowed the crumbs that fall from the children's table!”

And to Jesus, that was God's answer.
Yes, he could and should heal this woman's daughter.
So he did.
With the comment that right then, her faith was probably greater than his!

You know, the first time I heard this sort of interpretation of this story,
my immediate reaction was “No way!”
Jesus couldn't be like that –
he couldn't have got things wrong!
You may be thinking the exact same thing, and I really wouldn't blame you!

But, you know, it wouldn't go away.
Like a sore place in one’s mouth, or something,
I kept on thinking about it and thinking about it.
Why was this so totally alien to my mental image of Jesus?

Then I realised that, of course, it was because I was confusing “being perfect” with “never being wrong”.
There’s a difference between being mistaken and sinning!
And, as I said, Jesus had to be born as a human baby, to learn, to grow.
And he may well have learnt, consciously or unconsciously, that as a Jew,
he was one of the Chosen, and thus superior to everybody else.
But he had already learnt, as we found in the first part of our reading,
that keeping the Jewish Law wasn't what made you clean or unclean –
so perhaps it wasn't such a huge leap to discover that being Jewish or not didn't actually matter.
God still loved and cared for you, whoever you were.

And in the end, I found this thought very liberating.
It made Jesus far more human.
I realised that, while I had always paid lip-service to the belief that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, in fact, I’d never really believed in his humanity!
For me, he had always been a plaster saint, absolutely perfect,
never making a mistake,
never even being tempted.
I realised I’d envisaged him overcoming those temptations the gospel-writers talk about with a wave of his hand, not really tempted at all.
But, of course, it wasn’t like that!
St Paul tells us that he was tempted “in every way that we are”,
and if that doesn’t include really, really, really wanting to do it,
then it wasn’t temptation!

But if Jesus could be mistaken,
if he sometimes had to change his mind,
if being perfect didn’t necessarily mean never being wrong,
then that changed everything!
Suddenly, Jesus became more human, more real than ever before.
The Incarnation wasn’t just something to pay lip-service to, it was real.
Jesus really had been a human being, with human frailties,
just like you and me.
He had had to learn, and to grow, and to change.
Suddenly, it was okay not to get everything right first time;
it was okay not to be very good at some things;
it was okay to make mistakes.

And, what’s more, it meant that the Jesus who had died on the cross for me wasn’t some remote, distant figure whom I could aim at but never emulate, but almost an ordinary person,
someone I might have liked had I known him in the flesh,
someone I could identify with.

As I have frequently said, these Sundays in Ordinary Time are when what we think we believe comes up against what we really believe.
Do we really believe that Jesus, as well as being divine, was also human?
Do we think of him as having had to learn, to grow, to change.
Do we think of him as having made mistakes,
having to change his mind, having to –
to repent, if you like, since that basically means changing one's mind
because one realises one is wrong?

And if that is so, if Jesus is not some remote plaster saint, but a human being just like us –
how does that change things?
How does that change our relationship with Him?
And how does it change things when we make a mistake?

Feeding the Five Thousand

 

Introduction

Poor Jesus was having a very bad day.

In fact, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

He had just learnt that his cousin John had been killed by Herod, and he badly wanted to get away by himself to talk to God about it, and to begin to come to terms with it.

He did manage to get away a bit later, and when he was feeling more peaceful, he walked across the water to rejoin the disciples.

But right now, he hasn't had a chance to get away by himself,
He went across the lake in a boat, but the crowds walked round
and because Jesus was nice like that he gave up all thoughts of going off by himself for a bit, and he healed the sick people, and I expect he taught them a bit, too.

It was getting dark, and the disciples know that Jesus really needed to eat,
and they could use a break themselves,
so they try to get him to make everyone go away.
But they've all followed Jesus further away from town than they meant, and it would be rather a long way to go back without a breather first, and some food.
But there is no food –
and nowhere to buy any,
even if they could have afforded it.
Just five loaves and two fish.
In some of the other gospels, we learn that this belonged to a small boy, who had shyly come up to Andrew and offered to share his lunch with Jesus, although Matthew doesn’t mention this.
But it appears that this was all the food there was.

Of course, I don't suppose it was all the food there was, not really.
After all, there were mothers in the crowd,
mothers with small children.
They would have made sure they were well-provisioned for the day.
Probably many of the men had lunchboxes
or whatever they carried their food in;
certainly the children would have.
Mothers do tend to see to it that their families are provisioned,
and few people would go out for the day without some sort of arrangements for a meal!

But it was, so we are told, a small boy who was the catalyst,
who offers his lunch.
And Jesus takes it,
gives thanks,
breaks it,
and shares it.
And everyone has enough food,
and there are twelve basketsful left over.
Enough for each of the disciples to take a basket of food home to Mum.

Before we think about what this story means, and why it’s still important, I want us to listen to a video I found which tells this story through puppets.

Did you enjoy that?
I did!
But we need to look at the story, and what it tells us.
I think it tells us something about Jesus,
something about God the Father,
and something about ourselves.

2. Something About Jesus
So what does the story tell us about Jesus?
This sort of food-stretching isn't unique to him, you know!
It happens in the Old Testament, too.
Elijah goes to stay with the Widow of Zarephath during a famine and promises that her oil and flour won't run out if she will feed him, too.
Which she does,
and it doesn't.

Elisha, Elijah's successor,
performs a miracle very like Jesus',
making 20 barley loaves stretch to feed 100 people, with some left over.
Which mightn't sound too bad to us, but those loaves were only about the size of a hamburger bun –
and if you were only given 1/5 of a bun,
you might well want to complain that it wasn't quite enough!

So this kind of miracle was something that prophets did.
You might have noticed that John doesn't tend to record Jesus' miracles unless they teach us something about who Jesus is.
So on one level, in John’s gospel, the story shows that Jesus was not only a prophet like Elisha, but something greater.

And did you notice something else?
Jesus took the food,
gave thanks,
broke it
and shared it.
Doesn't that sound awfully familiar?
Doesn't that sound like something we do some Sundays,
those Sundays we have a Communion service?

So the story is saying something about who Jesus is;
it is showing us that Jesus is not only a prophet,
he is more than a prophet.

3. Something About God the Father
Then secondly, the story tells us something about God the Father.
You see, Jesus says elsewhere that he only does what he sees his Father doing.
And one of the things that always strikes me about this story,
when I read it,
is the amount left over.
Twelve basketsful.

As I said earlier, enough for each of the disciples to take a basket home to Mum!

It isn't that there was just enough food to keep everyone going until they got home.
It isn't that there was enough for everyone to have a decent meal.
There was enough for everyone to have a decent meal and still have masses left over!

That seems to be so typical of Jesus, though.
When he turned the water into wine at the wedding at Cana,
he made enough wine to stock a young off-licence,
never mind be enough for a few guests at the tag-end of a party.
And when people were healed,
they were healed!
He made a proper job of it,
even if it took him two goes.

It's typical of Jesus, and it's typical of God.
I mean, look at the sort of extravagance we see in the natural world –
all those desert flowers, for instance,
and nobody knew they were there.
All those stars,
all those universes.....

This story, with the twelve basketsful left over,
reminds us that God is generous to the point of extravagance.
And also, it was Jesus who broke the bread and shared it out.
He did the serving.
It was Jesus,
elsewhere in John's gospel,
who kneels with towel and basin,
washing the disciples' feet.
It was Jesus who said of himself,
"The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve."

So this story helps to remind us that God longs
and longs
and longs
to give us, his children,
more good things than we can possibly handle.
God wants to serve us,
to heal us,
to make us whole,
to give us what we need –
not just grudgingly,
barely enough,
but pressed down, shaken together and running over!

4. Something About Us
But the third thing that this story tells us is something about us.
And I'm afraid that it isn't very flattering.
All those thousands of people –
five thousand men,
and maybe up to four times that number when you include the women and children –
all those people, and one, just one, was willing to share what he had!
One little boy who came up to Andrew and whispered, shyly,
"Jesus can have my lunch if he'd like".
Nobody else was willing to share.

Yet most people probably had more than they needed that day.
We tend to take along more food than we'll need, just in case.
And if we make a packed lunch for our family,
if they're going on an outing,
there's usually enough that we could share it,
if we wanted to,
without going hungry ourselves.

But the people in the crowd weren't willing to risk going hungry.
They weren't willing to share their food,
not even with Jesus and his disciples.
That was too great a risk.
Perhaps they wouldn't have minded missing lunch, for once,
but what about their children?

Incidentally, I'm aware that I'm sounding as though the sole source of food was from the crowd,
rather than from Jesus.
I rather suspect it was a case of "both, and" –
I'm perfectly certain that if the small boy's five loaves and two fishes were really all the food there was,
Jesus both could have and would have produced
a delicious meal for everyone from just that.
However, I find it almost impossible to believe that nobody else at all had brought any supplies with them!
Like so much of Christianity,
the truth is probably somewhere in between;
a case of "both, and", rather than "either, or".

The crowd was selfish.
Either they had come out without any food, or,
if they had brought food,
they weren't willing to share it.
Either way,
they expected Jesus to do something about it.
They weren't going to do anything.
They were going to hedge their bets,
to wait and see,
to look out for Number One.

And are we like that?
Well, yes, we are, some of the time, aren't we.
We can be extraordinarily selfish.
Look how just a quarter of the world consumes about seventy-five percent of the planet’s resources.
And even in our country, there are those of us who have plenty, and those who are reliant on the food banks to feed their children because their benefits simply won’t stretch far enough.
And if you are one of the ones who have enough, have you given anything to the food bank lately?
It’s easy enough to buy an extra tin of tuna or packet of ramen noodles and drop it in the bins the supermarkets all provide for such purposes.

We can be extraordinarily selfish,

and we can be extraordinarily faithless.
We can't offer more than ourselves to Jesus,
but how often do we offer even that?
The small boy offered what he had –
five loaves, and two fishes.
It wasn't much, but he had the courage to offer it.
Nobody else seems to have had the nerve.
But why not?

Partly, of course, it was selfishness and fear –
if I give my lunch to Jesus,
maybe I won't get any.
Maybe my kids won't get any.
I'm not going to offer;
I need what I have for myself.

But partly it was a different sort of fear.
Fear of rejection.
And that is one of the most difficult of all fears to overcome.
Been there,
done that,
read the book
bought the T-shirt
You don't go to Jesus with your five loaves and two fish because you're afraid he'll shriek with laughter and say
"Who on earth do you think you are!"
You don't go to Jesus and say
"Use me as you will",
because you're afraid he'll either send you off to work somewhere highly disagreeable,
like somewhere with a seriously nasty climate
far away from all your friends and family.
Or else we're afraid that he won't!
That he will say "Oh, I couldn't possibly use you!”
and sort of throw you aside like a used tissue.

But, you know, that's not God!
We've just seen how God longs and longs to be far more generous to us than we can possibly imagine.
And when we say "Use me as you will",
he says "Great!
Now, here's this present,
and do take some of that,
and are you sure you won't have any more of the other,
and you really need some of this, and...."
until you practically have to say,
"Hey, hang on, give me a chance to breathe!"

Oh, but, you are saying,
I've offered and offered and nothing has happened.
God doesn't want me!
Well, I have to ask two questions, then.
The first is, did you really mean your offering,
or did you pull it back as soon as you'd made it.
And the second question is,
are you sure God isn't helping you do exactly what you're meant to be doing right now?
Not all of us are called to spectacular tasks, or to go and work somewhere with a disagreeable climate, and so on.
Some of us are asked to stay right where we are, and be salt and light in our own families and communities.

Students are probably meant to be studying hard and waiting to see where the road leads to next.
Parents are probably meant to be making a safe home for their children.
The elderly are often such enormous lights to the rest of us –
we need you so much in our churches,
just for who you are and
what you have learnt about our dear Lord as you have followed him!

In fact, it's always safest to assume that God will want you to stay where you are, doing what you're doing.
If that should change, you can be quite sure you will know about it totally unmistakeably!
But God can't use you unless you offer yourself to him,
and he will use you if you do!
And if you hold back, whether from fear, or from selfishness, or from any other motive,
then not only do you prevent the Kingdom of God from going forward in the way God would like,
but you also cut yourself off from all the good things God wanted to give you!

5.Conclusion
I've gone on quite long enough for one morning!
But this story,
this central story,
of how Jesus fed a huge crowd,
does teach us that Jesus is greater even than Elijah and Elisha,
and does foreshadow the taking, blessing, breaking and sharing of bread that is so important to us.
It reminds us of how extravagantly generous God can be,
and how much he longs and longs to share that generosity with you and with me.
And it reminds us that all too often we can be selfish and afraid,
and hold back from offering what we have and who we are to Jesus.
So lets make an effort this morning to conquer our fear and selfishness, and to offer ourselves anew to the God whose response is always so infinitely greater than our terrified offerings. Amen.