IDENTITY THEFT
ROBBED BY RELATIONSHIPS
DR. JIM DIXON
GENESIS 3:1-10
JUNE 3, 2007
“It is not good that man should be alone.” Those are the words of God as recorded in Genesis, chapter 2. It isn’t good that man should be alone. We are relational beings and God has made it so. He has created us, first of all, for relationship with him. That’s the primary relationship and then secondly God has made a relationship with each other. But of course something is wrong in the world of relationships and that’s what Genesis, chapter 3, is all about. It’s about sin and how sin destroys relationships. On the vertical, sin destroys relationship with God so you see Adam and Eve having sinned, seeking to hide themselves from the presence of the Lord God. Of course, sin also affects relationships on the horizontal so you see Adam and Eve beginning to blame each other. They are banished from Eden.
Then you move to Genesis, chapter 4, and you see the birth of Cain and Abel and you see Cain rising up and murdering his brother, robbed by relationship. Cain felt robbed by God. Certainly Abel felt robbed by Cain. God felt robbed by His creation, robbed by relationships.
Of course, the Bible is about redemption so God sends His Son into the world. He sends Him with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel calls us back into relationship with God that we might be His sons and daughters, that we might find our identity in that relationship with Him, that we might be born into the family of God. This is the power of the Gospel. Then the Gospel calls us into relationship with each other and it’s called the Church, that we might learn how to love each other. This is what the Church is for, that we might find this relational healing and that we might grow in love. Of course, the Gospel calls us into ministry as it sends us forth into the world with the message of Christ so we find our identity in our relationship with God and with God’s people and in our call to the world. But our problem is we’re still sinners. That’s the problem. We’re still sinners and being sinners we can still be robbed by relationships and we can lose our identity.
Today I want us to look at some scenarios, some various relationships that can rob us. There are various ways in which relationships can rob us. First of all, I want us to look at relational loss, the death of a loved one. We can be robbed by the death of a loved one. We can even lose our identity, lose sight of who we are in Christ when a loved one dies. In John, chapter 11, we see Jesus coming to Bethany, two miles from Jerusalem. He’s coming to see His friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, a brother and two sisters who live in Bethany. They are best friends with Jesus and whenever Jesus came into the region of Judea and Jerusalem, he would stay with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They would have food and fellowship and would discuss the Kingdom of God.
Lazarus had just died and Jesus foreknew this. He arrives and Lazarus has already been buried, been in the tomb four days. Mary and Martha are grieving. They are devastated and friends and loved ones had come to their home to mourn with them. As Jesus is approaching, Martha runs out and says, “Lord, if You had only been here, my brother would not have died and even now I know whatever you ask the Father, He will do for you.” Jesus said, “Martha, your brother will rise again.” She said, “I know, Lord. He’ll rise in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said, “I a?m the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. He who lives and believes in Me will never truly die. Do you believe this?” Martha said, “Yes, Lord, I believe You are the Christ, the Son of God, He who has come into the world.” They proceed towards the tomb, the family, the loved ones, and Mary runs up to Jesus and Mary says exactly what Martha had said. “Lord, if You had only been here my brother would not have died” and Jesus sees the tears.” That’s what the Bible tells us in John 11. Jesus sees the tears on Mary’s face. He looks around and He sees tears everywhere, people crying and then Jesus Christ—John 11:35, shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.”
Then the Bible tells us that He was deeply troubled, deeply moved in Spirit and troubled. The Greek word is very difficult to translate because it’s the Greek word, “embrimaomai.” Embrimaomai is a word which literally means, “to groan inwardly” but this word embrimaomai can also mean, “to have inward indignation.” It can even refer to anger and so Bible scholars are trying to ascertain and they try to ascertain what exactly was Jesus feeling in this moment. We can’t know the full complexity of it but He was crying and He was deeply troubled and He was moved in Spirit. Perhaps He was angry. Scholars want to know, “Well, what was He angry about?” Maybe He was angry at some people in the crowd who were without faith. Maybe he was angry at the devil who has come to destroy. Maybe He is just angry at death itself, angry at death and all the pain it causes but know this. Know that Jesus feels what we feel. He cries with us. When we’re angry and we lose a loved one, we’re angry and He understands and He groans. He feels our loss and of course that loss can be very dangerous. It’s easy to lose your identity and be robbed by that relational loss.
A couple of my favorite famous stories… One concerns Ivan IV. The story was told by Paul Harvey and here’s the rest of the story, but you can research this in many history books. Ivan IV ascended the Throne of Russia in the year 1547 at the age of 17. He was a teenager. That same year he took his wife, Anastasia. He chose her. She, too, was a teenager and 2,000 teenage girls were lined up before him, all of high birth, and he chose Anastasia. The moment he saw her, he melted and he chose her. She was a Christian girl. She loved Christ. She loved the cause of Christ and His Kingdom and Church. Ivan IV was also a professing Christian. Her love for Christ very much influenced him and he began to serve the poor. He was a servant of his people. He reached out to the oppressed and he sought to liberate the oppressed and he fought for the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ. He was a builder of churches and a servant of Christ. He was beloved of the people and so it was for 13 years until the year 1560 when Anastasia died. They had had 13 years together and they had been 13 wonderful years but now everything would change because his beloved had died and he could not bear the pain. The people heard him scream from the Royal Palace. He had lost his wife and he changed and he formed military police that functioned as death squads. They went forth and murdered and raped and pilfered.
He began to terrorize people and he enjoyed torture. He tortured members of his own family. He began to hate God. He shook his fist at God. He began to burn churches. He became an enemy of the Church and for over 20 years, he served as what today historians call Ivan the Terrible. But, you see, he was once wonderful. He was robbed by relational loss. He lost his identity and became a monster. I know there is no one in this room like that. No matter who you’ve lost, no matter how much it hurts, you’ve not become a monster. Relational loss is very dangerous and we can lose our identity.
Jane Pierce was a Christian woman. She loved Christ. She went to a weekly Bible Study group with other women and she was in the Bible every day. She loved to read the Word of God. She had a wonderful devotional life and Jane Pierce was a servant of the church, very faithful and very much in love with Jesus Christ. She had her share of pain in life. She lost her first son in childbirth and Jane Pierce lost her second child at the age of 4 as kind of an epidemic came through her region of America and she lost her second child. Her third child was Benjamin. She called him Benny. She loved him and she loved her husband. It was January 6, and the year was 1853. Jane and her husband and Benny, who was 11 years old, were going from Boston to Concord on the train. They were excited. They were excited because they were having a new adventure. They were going to be moving to a new house and a new city and they would be moving from Concord. So as the train raced toward Concord that day, January 6, 1853, a horrible thing happened. The train derailed, the cars went off the track, tumbled and rolled. In the midst of the rubble, Jane and her husband found themselves alive and relatively unhurt but they began to look for Benny. It was Jane’s husband who found him. He had died and his face was horribly disfigured. He covered him up so Jane wouldn’t see but it was too late. Jane had seen. She would never be the same.
I think many of you know the story. Jane and her husband went to that new city, into their new house, her husband took that new job and the people of America wept with them because her husband had become the new President of the United States. Jane Pierce’s husband was Franklin Pierce. Just two month after Benny’s death they entered the White House. Jane went upstairs to her bedroom and virtually did not come out for 2-1/2 years. The media referred to her as “the shadow in the White House.” She, amid her pain, couldn’t take it anymore. She didn’t read the Bible anymore. She wrote letters to her dead son apologizing for not protecting him better. She just ceased to be light in the darkness, ceased to be salt on the earth, ceased all ministry. When she finally came out and into the public, she was the essence of melancholy the rest of her life, her identity lost.
We can understand. We can sympathize. We really understand and yet it’s not meant to be that way. We think of the promise in Revelation, chapter 21, that “One day God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more. Neither will there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore.” We long for that day, don’t we?
Luke, chapter 9, is kind of a strange passage but appropriate here. A young man comes to Jesus and Jesus invites this young man to join His disciples and to follow Him, to join in the Talmadine, to join the disciples of Christ. The young man says, “Well, yes, but first Lord, let me go and bury my father.” Perhaps his father had just died or was close to death and he wanted to go and stay with his father until his father died. We don’t know.
In order to understand the response of Jesus, it perhaps helps to understand Jewish funerals in the time of Christ. When a person died, their corpse had to be taken out of the city immediately. Under Jewish law, a corpse, a body of a deceased person could not remain in the city overnight. This was true in the city of Jerusalem, all other Jewish cities by Jewish law, and so immediately the body was cleansed, the body was anointed with perfume and oils. Before a funeral, the body would have been wrapped in burial cloth and then they would have had the processional out of the city. The head of the processional would have been the eulogizer and the eulogizer was to speak good words over the departed.
We have funerals and memorial services today and they’re really eulogies. You never heard bad words. You hardly ever do at a memorial service. The word “eulogize” from “eu” which means, “good” and “logos” which means, “word,” “good word.” This guy, the eulogizer at the front of the processional was there to say good words. Then came the stretcher, the funeral bier which is like a liter, a bed you could carry, and the corpse was on that. That was followed by the dirge singers. These were great vocalists. The dirge singers were followed by pipers and the pipers were followed by mourners. Some of the mourners were family members and friends but some were professional mourners who were paid to mourn and they really knew how to do it well.
Then they get to the burial site and they bury the corpse and the words were spoken and the service was held. Then they would come back to the house within the walls of the city and then the people would begin to come. The period of mourning was 7 days to 30 days. They would put on ashes and they would weep and they would also sing. They would fast and they would also feast but it was a period of time that, in its cumulative effect, was to be healing.
This young man wanted to go back for that and Jesus said, “Leave the dead to bury the dead.” Sounds maybe a little hard-hearted? Certainly a defiance of cultural traditions. Of course, scholars have looked and said, “What could this possibly mean?” And yet most would agree He was saying, “Leave the spiritually dead to bury the physically dead.” You’re called to life and you have this statement of Christ, “Proclaim the Kingdom of God. Proclaim it now. Time is short. The Son of God is not going to be with you long. Follow me.”
I know we all live in different eras, different generations but the call of Christ never changes. I know in the midst of grief when you’ve lost a loved one, it takes time to heal. God knows that. Many books, countless books, have been written on grief. I have read some of them. I know there are stages of grief. I know every human being varies in terms of how they process grief but I also know this. You can’t lose your identity. You can’t cease to be light. You can’t cease to be salt. You can’t cease to serve the Kingdom. This is who you are.
I know some people who, in the midst of loss, seem never to get over it. The shadow descends and it never lifts. The sun never shines. The years pass. We all sympathize but understand this world is not our home. We are all bound for heaven and there’s work to do. There’s a Kingdom to serve. In this life we may never completely get over the pain in this life but we’ve still got to move on because there’s work to do and we’re the sons and daughters of God called into His family, the Church, and given as assignment to the world.
There’s a second way in which we can be robbed by relationships and lose our identity and that I think is relational defeat or relational rejection. Have you ever been rejected by anybody? My guess is you have. I know I have. Have you ever felt defeated in a relationship? That can be dangerous. We can lose our identity if the pain is great. Of course, Christ has called us to love. Love is risky.
Jesus was a Rabbi in a time where there were many rabbis but Jesus was a Rabbi like no other. Jesus had authority like no other rabbi. The crowds throughout Judea and Galilee saw this. They discerned this. They could just see that this Rabbi is different, and He spoke as one. The crowd said, “Who has authority.” The Hebrew is “semikhah,” “authority,” and Jesus had authority over everything. He had authority over life and death. He had authority over disease and illness and He could raise the dead. He had that power. ” Semikhah,”—”authority.”
He had authority over scripture, Torah, the Bible. Every rabbi had some authority with regard to Torah, with regard to the Bible and they called their disciples to their yolk which was their interpretation of Torah but Jesus’ yolk was different and is different. The yolk to which Christ has bound us is a yolk of love. Jesus said, “All of the Bible is summed up in love, all of Torah.” Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6, “You shall love the Lord your God” and then the lesser known, Leviticus 19:18, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He said, “This is the summation of the law and the prophets. This is Torah love. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you that you love.” The commandment was not new. It has existed in Judaism and elsewhere but, you see, it was a new summation of Torah. It was a new summation of Torah, love.
We are called to love and love is risky in all of its forms. Even romantic love is risky. I want you to see kind of a classic clip from the movie “Notting Hill.”
Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are characters. He rejects her really because he himself fears rejection and he fears that if he commits to love her, inevitably he would ultimately lose her and he could not bear the pain. Is this not life? I mean in so many levels and layers and so many different types of relationships, love is risky.
Barb and I know I love her and she loves me. The odds are one of us is going to die before the other and the one left behind will have to bury the other. That’s called life, but Jesus calls us to love. All these different kinds of relationships even though there’s risk and there’s pain, in the midst of it, remember who you are in Christ. Never lose your identity.
Of course, Jesus cared very much about relational pain. When you look at marriage and divorce and what Jesus said about marriage and divorce. Jesus is trying to limit the pain. In Judaism, in the time of Jesus, there were two rabbinical schools—Hillel School and the Shammai School. The Hillel School was the liberal school of rabbinical theology. Hillel School said, “Hey! If you want to divorce your wife, it’s not hard. Here are some reasons for which you can divorce your wife.” This was in the rabbinical records. You can divorce your wife, according to the Hillel School, because she was barren. Your wife was unable to produce children? Divorce her. Secondly, you can divorce your wife because she is a bad chef. This is starting to look easy. And then you look through the list in the Hillel School and you can divorce your wife because you think another woman is more beautiful. “I divorce thee. I divorce thee. I divorce thee.” An easy thing for a liberal school. It happened all the time and the pain was pandemic then.
The Shammai School was the conservative rabbinical school. They said, “No. A man cannot divorce his wife except for grounds of unchastity. This was the teaching of the Shammai Rabbinical School. Only unchastity was grounds for divorce.
In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek words for unchastity are “porneia” and “moicheia.” Porneia literally means fornication. Moicheia means adultery. The words had some scope but what the Shammai School was saying is, this is serious. Jesus, when questioned, sided with the Shammai School and against the Hillel School. Jesus stressed the sanctity of marriage and he warned about divorce. The reason was He didn’t want it to be common. He understood the pain. He understood the devastation, the sense of loss, and some people, even some Christians, really lose their identity and perspective of who they are when they go through that pain and that loss and forget that they’re precious to God. They forget that they are a child of God. They forget that they’re in the family of God and they have a mission to the world in the midst of that pain.
Of course, there’s the rejection of friends. We’ve all experienced loss of friendship. That’s never easy. Sometimes it’s really hard. Maybe you’ve had to take a stand on something friends have not understood and you lose them. I think there are many different kinds of rejection and defeat in relationships. I think transference sometimes takes place when we transfer that rejection onto our relationship with God. When we’ve been rejected by someone in the world and we love them so much, and it hurts so much, we project that onto our relationship with God as though God has rejected us, as though Christ has rejected us. He loves us desperately.
I’ve talked to so many people in my office so many times who are in the midst of their pain and their loss and their sense of defeat and rejection. They feel like Jesus has rejected them. At least for a season, they kind of lose their identity in Christ. God would caution us to keep our perspective.
I want to take a little aside for a moment. There are people in our immediate surroundings who are in a lot of pain. There are people who grow up in the city of Denver who feel almost nothing but rejection. There are kids who grow up, many of them minorities, who don’t have a mom or dad or don’t have a dad or have never known their dad or don’t have a mom and have never known their mom. They just feel rejection. They don’t do well in school because they live in kind of a culture of defeat and they feel more rejection. We are the people of Christ. We are sons and daughters of God and He’s told us to reach out to them. It’s not just about our pain. It’s about their pain so we’re supposed to comfort one another and reach out to the world. We’re supposed to take Christ to the world and to the nations.
There are homeless people. A year ago I came to you with Mayor Hickenlooper’ s Homeless Initiative because I serve on his Task Force. I asked you if, in response to Mayor Hickenlooper’s request, that every church adopt a homeless family if you would do that. I’m so proud of you, so proud of you, because 200 of you that Sunday stepped forward a year ago—200 of you—and 16 groups were formed. Each of these 16 groups adopted a homeless family. The reports are awesome. You’ve grown closer to each other, you’ve helped hurting people. You’ve helped them find their way in life and you’ve shared the love of Christ.
The task continues. The need is endless and we need more groups, more of you to adopt homeless families. This is for a limited period of time. It’s a commitment of six months and you can do it with your small group but would you adopt a homeless family? Would take some people who just have felt nothing but rejection? Would you go to them with Christ and would you work through The Denver Rescue Mission (because that’s how it’s all set up and that’s a Christian organization)? Would you help these lost people find Jesus, find their identity in Christ and become sons and daughters of God, enter the family of God and begin to be light and salt? Would you feed their bodies and feed their souls and show them how to feed themselves and show them how to find the food of Christ? What an incredible opportunity.
So relational defeat can steal our identity. Another area is relational entrapment. I don’t know how many of you have ever felt like you were trapped in a relationship. It might be a relationship with a child. A lot of children are handicapped and have emotional and physical and mental dysfunction and some of those dysfunctions are in the extreme.
Through the years I’ve had two friends in the ministry with extreme cases of mental dysfunction in their kids. One friend is named Brad. Brad was my friend in college and I knew him in seminary. Brad and I have kept in touch through the years. He married my high school girlfriend. They fell in love and went on the mission field. They have two daughters and one daughter is so severely handicapped mentally and physically that she is not at all able to function. She’s almost a vegetable, not even able to walk. The years have been hard. Many times when I would see Brad and he would have tears in his eyes. He would tell me that he and Pep have struggled with depression in the midst of it all and how hard it is and how they once thought of institutionalizing their daughter that she might receive professional but loving care and yet they felt as a mom and dad that they wanted to do this. But it’s so hard. When you have a child like that you don’t just call up and get a babysitter. When you have a child like that you just don’t take off on a vacation. When you have a child like that you don’t think, “Well, you know, I can’t wait until she grows up and heads out on her own.” That’s never going to happen. You don’t dream dreams of career success for a daughter like that. You know that she’ll always be with you as long as she lives or you do. It’s not always easy.
I saw Brad last year and I asked him how he was doing. I could see there was a sparkle in his eye. He said, “Man, our daughter is 19 and she looks like she’s about to take her first step.” Incredible. He was so excited. I asked him if he regretted the choice that they had made to raise her themselves and take care of her. Brad said, “She’s the biggest joy in our lives.” I had a friend named Tim in the ministry. Tim had been in my youth group and we kept in touch over time. I was there at his wedding and as he entered the ministry. Tim loved to rock climb. I remember he fell 60 feet and the Lord miraculously preserved him. I visited him at the hospital. He was laughing at the situation and rejoicing at God’s goodness.
Tim later lost a foot when he was run over by a train. Life was never easy for Tim. Tim and his wife had three kids, two of them very emotionally and mentally dysfunctional and one was kind of like Brad and Pep’s daughter, almost in a vegetative state. So hard. Tim and his wife wondered if they should institutionalize them, or keep them? They decided to keep them and for Tim it was a tough journey. He went on in the pastorate to become a great preacher. He pastored the Central Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. It’s a great church and he’s a great preacher. One day Tim took his life. We were all just stunned. A few years ago Tim went into the garage and started his car. He sealed the garage up and breathed in the fumes and died of asphyxiation. He just wanted out. He couldn’t take it anymore.
I understand life is tough. You might be thinking that life isn’t tough. Maybe it hasn’t been tough for you but for a lot of people in this world life is really hard and we are the children of God. We are sons and daughters of God, called into the world. In the midst of what might feel like relational entrapment, we can just lose everything. I do not sit in judgement of parents who institutionalize their kids. God has grace for that and it might be needed. Of course, I rejoice in parents who raise such kids. What a loving sacrifice.
We are the children of God so we are called to demonstrate the Fruit of the Spirit—love, joy and peace are Fruit of the Spirit. You might be thinking, “Well, anything that takes away my love, my joy or my peace, I should avoid because that’s my identity. I’m a child of God. I have the Fruit of the Spirit. I model love, joy and peace and I don’t want anything that takes it away but remember there are more Fruit of the Spirit—patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. God is teaching us through all these things as we grow in Him and we do not lose our identity. God wants to teach us patience, “hupomone” to “abide under a weight;” “makrothumia,” “to suffer long” because there’s beauty that comes through some of these qualities and God is always at work in us. We are in the midst of transformation and life is not always easy.
I know some of you in terms of relational entrapment might be in a situation of abuse and God doesn’t want you to suffer through extreme abuse. He doesn’t want you to be a doormat. I know there are times you need to get out of that but never lose your identity. Don’t ever forget who you are in Christ. You are a daughter of God, a son of God and in the family of God and called to minister on the earth. Don’t let anything deter you.
Well, finally… I know our time is up but I, very briefly, want to mention relational “latria.” I mean sometimes our identity in Christ can be lost. We can be robbed by relational latria. In the Roman Catholic Church there are many different levels of respect. There is “dulia,” which is “veneration,” and it is accorded to saints. Saints are venerated—”dulia.” There is “hyperdulia” in the Roman Catholic Church, the Latin for “hyperdulia” meaning, “high veneration,” and it’s reserved for Mary. It’s reserved for Mary, and she is given high veneration. Then finally there is “latria,” and latria is “worship.” It is for God alone—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All over the world we get confused. People kind of get messed up. We give veneration and high veneration in worship. We get it all mixed up. Sometimes we give latria to people in our lives and we lose our identity because it’s only for Christ. Latria is only for Christ.
You might be sitting here today and maybe you have someone in your life that you have given to them what should only be given to Christ. Maybe there’s latria there. It might even be with your children. We live in such a time when there are in suburban America many, many parents who virtually worship their kids, find their identity in their kids. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for your kids. It results in identity theft when you begin to build your lives around your children.
Of course, we have three schools here at the church and we love our schools. We have over 1,200 students in our schools every week and sometimes kids get in trouble you know. We think we have good teachers. They’re not perfect but they try to be fair and try to be loving. I’m sure they sometimes make mistakes. We all do, but sometimes kids come home and they say, “You know, the teacher wasn’t fair” or “the teacher was mean” or “this happened” or “that happened.” I don’t know how you as parents deal with that. I mean Barb and I always told our kids, “Hey! Teachers are in a position of authority. You need to respect them and you need to figure out how to make it work. You need to figure out how to please them.” That’s what my parents told me and that’s what we told our kids.
Things are kind of different today. In a lot of homes it seems like the kids are always right. The kids run the show. Teachers are wrong. Lots of times parents come and they are very upset. They begin to approach different people as they try to take care of what they perceive to be their kids’ needs and sometimes eventually they will come to me. It’s been that way through the years. I have parents come to me and say, “This happened in one of the three schools and we want you to do something about it.” I love your kids. I really do and Jesus loves your kids more, even more than you could ever love them. Our teachers love your kids but you know sometimes I’ll be talking to a mom and dad and I just sense, “Wow! They’re living their life out through their kids.” Sometimes I’ll be talking to a mom and dad and I just sense, “Wow! They’re finding their identity through their children.” They’re desperate. You can just sense that there’s almost like a latria there.
Maybe you feel that way about your wife or your husband. Maybe you’ve given your spouse worship and there’s kind of a latria there. You’ve given to them what should only be given to Christ. To some extent and to some measure, you’ve lost your identity in Christ because of relational latria.
This is a huge subject. We can be co-dependent and maybe not know it. Huge subject. There is so much we could discuss but so little time and I know that we need to wrap it up. Remember we are children of God. We who believe, sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, His Father has become our Father and we have been brought into His family. We are learning to love no matter how painful it might prove to be. Death is part of life. On this side of heaven, don’t lose your identity because you’ve lost a loved one. The pain is understandable but remember the kingdom remains and we’re called to serve it. God still has a purpose for you. There’s more to do. Don’t let rejection from people confuse your relationship with Christ. He still loves you and He’s not rejected you. He’ll never fail you. He’ll never forsake you.
If you’re in a situation that’s just tough and sometimes feels almost like a trap you can’t get out of, remember we’re called to grow the Fruit of the Spirit and to learn patience and to love even when it involves some suffering. I’m not talking about abuse but loving our kids and our parents when they’re in the midst of dysfunction or when they’re handicapped is a goodly and a godly thing. Of course, we’re to worship Christ alone. Let’s close with a word of prayer.