The Family You Come From

Well, I am so grateful to be with you. I'm always grateful to be with you, to open up God's word and explore how we can become more like Christ together. As many of you know, the Lenten season is getting started this upcoming Wednesday on Ash Wednesday, and this begins a 40-day period during the liturgical calendar when we take intentional time to remind ourselves of the reality of human sin. And our need for a sustainer, a savior, and a healer in Jesus. And one of the things that we will acknowledge on Ash Wednesday and throughout the season of Lent is the emotional tone that we are going to be asking of ourselves, and the fact that that emotional tone might be unfamiliar or maybe even a little uncomfortable for many of us. Many of us didn't grow up with Ash Wednesday or celebrating or honoring the Lenten season. And so while all of us are encouraged by American culture to avoid uncomfortable emotions like guilt or remorse or regret, we lean into the Lenten season every year and practice accepting that discomfort, accepting that it is a part of our spiritual formation to take a look at ourselves and ask the question, are there ways that we can become more like Christ together? Toward the beginning, the beginning of Jesus's ministry, and shortly after his cousin John the Baptist was killed and was arrested, the Apostle, the Apostle Matthew writes this about Jesus. He says that from then on, Jesus began to preach, repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near. This is in Matthew chapter 4, verse 17. And so during the Lenten season, we recognize that we cannot respond to this commandment that Jesus starts his ministry with, this commandment to repent, which means literally to turn around or to change, without first examining ourselves and becoming uncomfortable with what may be existing that keeps us from becoming more like Jesus. And so we're going to start a sermon series today called Journey to Wholeness, where we'll be looking at the life of Joseph in the Old Testament, starting in Genesis chapter 37, and we'll use him as a case study for examining emotionally healthy spirituality as Jesus intended. And so as we get started today, I invite you to join me in getting curious about the human experience. I want to invite you to get curious about how the human experience shapes our emotional life, the strengths that exist in our humanity, but then also the barriers that can exist and what we experience in the world and how that can get in the way of becoming more like Christ. In doing this, I believe that we'll honor Jesus's commandment to repent, because in order to repent, we'll need to first examine. And I want this to be a space of honesty and not of shame. We're not here to say, oh, we're worms, we're terrible. We're here to say that living in this world can be tough, and living in this world can make it hard to look like Jesus. And that's for everybody. And so this is a season of solidarity together, and it's a season where we sit at the face of Jesus and receive his love and receive the invitation to become more like him. And so one resource that you'll likely hear us reference a lot during this series is a book called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero. I'm seeing some nods, so I know we've got some folks who have probably read it. There's some book tabs in there and lots of highlights. And so that's good. This will be maybe a reminder of returning back to this book. And for those of you who haven't read it, I do highly recommend it. It's a, it's a book that really invites us to explore the process of becoming like Jesus by examining the strengths and barriers to Christlikeness that exist in our emotional lives. It's, it's a way of looking at discipleship as formation. It asks the question, how does the world form our emotions? How does Jesus ask us to form our emotions instead? And so I want to start off with the way that Pete Scazzero himself describes the integration or the relationship between emotional wellness and spiritual health. Here's what he says: Emotional health and spiritual maturity are inseparable. It is not possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. Emotionally healthy spirituality— this is what we're going to be exploring together. And so today we'll begin our journey to wholeness by meeting Joseph within the context of his family, and we'll answer the question: what blessings and barriers to emotionally healthy spirituality can come from our family? Our first place of belonging, and what might Jesus's life and teaching have to say about that. So I titled this sermon, "The Family We Come From." Let's pray and explore God's word together. Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to come together once again and explore your word together. I thank you for the opportunity to walk alongside of Joseph as he grows up in Genesis chapter 37, and I thank you that your spirit was with him and shaping him even then in the Old Testament. So Lord, I ask that you would help us to walk through today's sermon with openness to your voice. Would you help us to hear the truths about the human experience, what it means to exist in this world, and what it is that you invite us to think, to do, to know, and how to love in spite of all of that, Lord. Lord, you are faithful and you are with us always, and I thank you that that is who you are. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Amen. So before we read our scripture for today, I'm just going to give you a map of today's sermon. I'm going to start off by exploring Joseph's family context and helping us to understand the universal human experience through the family. Now, I, I know that maybe some of you are like, well, when are we going to get to like the Bible part? We're going to be in the Bible. But I really do believe that creating a healthy theology means understanding first what it means to be human, because we need to understand what are the problems that Jesus is trying to solve about the human experience. And we can't do that very well if we don't understand the problems that we all experience. And so we're going to spend some time looking at Joseph's family and answering that question, and then we are going to end the sermon by answering the question: what then does Jesus offer in response to the universal experience through the family? So I'm going to invite you to just remain seated and read out loud with me Genesis chapter 37, verses 1 through 11. Let's meet Joseph. Let's read together. Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. These are the family records of Jacob. At 17 years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons. Because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long-sleeved robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him. Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, listen to this dream I had. There we were binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaves stood up and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf. Are you really going to reign over us? His brothers asked him. Are you really going to rule us? So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said. Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. "Look," he said, "I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and 11 stars were bowing down to me." He told his father and brothers, And his father rebuked him. What kind of dream is this that you have had? he said. Am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you? His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind. This is the word of the Lord. And the people said, thanks be to God. I pray that this would fill our minds, flow from our mouths, and free our hearts to help us live as the beloved children of God. So here's what we just read. Joseph is the great-grandson of Abraham, the founding patriarch of the Jewish faith and arguably the Christian faith, and he's a 17-year-old shepherd who has 10 older brothers and one younger brother, Benjamin, who is the only brother with whom he shares both a mother and a father. Immediately we know that there are at least 15 family members to whom Joseph belongs: his father Jacob, his 11 brothers, his mother Rachel, who was his father Jacob's favorite wife, and his bonus mothers Bilhah and Zilpah. These are the people who say about Joseph, yep, Joseph's my kid whether I like him or not. He's a part of me, and therefore I am responsible for caring for him. In fact, this is true for all of us. God has given all of us the capacity to belong to one another first through family, to create belonging in various unique ways based on our individual and communal capacity, whether it's through birthing children or through blending siblings by marriage or through adoption or foster care or by making a lifelong commitment to someone who you welcome into your home through friendship or through marriage. Our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our aunts, our uncles, our cousins, our grandparents are the first people who, right after we are born, say to us, I love you. Family is the first group of people who help us experience our own belovedness, and family is the first place where we get to pour out our love onto others as well. It's the first place where we get to live out half of the greatest commandment that Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 22, verses 37 and 38, where he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment, and the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. This makes our family our first neighbors and therefore our very first place of ministry where we get to live out the character of God. And so this brings me to my first point for today. That we'll learn quickly as we observe Joseph within the context of his family, and it's something that's true of the emotional life through all families, that families are the first places where we experience the blessing of creating belonging. In all the various ways that family happens, by birth, by foster care, by adoption, by radical hospitality, Family is the first place where we belong to and love our neighbors. However, as we keep reading, we learn something else about all families. In verses 3 and 4, it says, and Jacob made a long-sleeved robe for Joseph. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him. It doesn't take long to figure out that Joseph isn't just Jacob's neighbor to whom he belongs and by whom he is loved, but Joseph is actually his father's favorite child, and everyone knows it. Verse 3 tells us that Jacob, also called Israel, as you saw in the scripture, loved Joseph the most because his favorite wife Rachel gave birth to Joseph in Jacob's old age. Jacob is very much like his grandfather Abraham, whom we learn in Genesis chapter 21, verses 2 and 7, said something similar about his second son Isaac, that he was able to receive Isaac as his son in his old age as well, at the age of 100 to be exact. And so it's likely that Jacob projected on to Joseph the feelings of gratitude that he had that Rachel was able to grow their family, just like Abraham projected onto his son Isaac his gratitude that Sarah was able to grow their family in his old age. And so because Joseph was the favorite, Joseph's brothers could barely stand being around him. In fact, the, the scripture says that they couldn't even speak peaceably to him, that he would just come into the room and there was just aggression and hatred that they felt just at the sight of him. Now, some of you may be wondering, okay, so I— it's clear that there's some, some favoritism going on here, but, but what was going on that, that there was aggression and hatred coming through their interactions with Joseph? Well, I think we'll need to make sure we understand some cultural context about this robe that Joseph was given. Because this wasn't like, you know, just a nice coat that our parents might give us for Christmas, and maybe they give one sibling a leather coat and then they give the other ones a polyester coat. It's not the same. Not the same. When it came to robes in this time period, these were The things that people, that men slept on. These were the things that they covered themselves with when it rained. These were sometimes the things that they scooped up sheep when they were injured and carried them to get them to safety. Robes were an issue of protection. There was typically a larger robe that men would wear on the top and then a tunic that they wore on the bottom. And so essentially, by giving Joseph this special robe, Jacob was giving Joseph a kind of protection that he was not giving to his other sons. And so it wasn't just a matter of Joseph looking more cute than the other brothers. This was a matter of Joseph literally having a different way of life because of the way that Jacob treated him compared to his brothers. But here's what's even more complicated about this dynamic, family. Jacob's favoritism for his son likely came from an innocent and unintentional place. For people who deeply want to grow their family through giving birth, growing old without welcoming the biological child you've been hoping for can be immensely painful. And so when Joseph entered the world, Jacob's emotional response to him was likely intense but unintentional. His gratitude for Joseph likely spilled over into this desire to give Joseph some tangible token of his love, which led him to blessing Joseph with this robe that he didn't give to his other sons. Probably very innocent, very intense, but very unintentional. However, we know that intent does not erase impact. And so even though Jacob likely didn't mean to negatively impact his other sons as he showed this love for Joseph, we learned that he still did based on the way that Joseph's brothers treated him. And so here's what else we learn quickly from Joseph's family that is true of the emotional life in all families. Families are the first places where we experience the brokenness of belonging in an unhealed world. No matter how the belonging within a family is created, whether by birth, adoption, foster care, or radical hospitality, our family is the first set of neighbors who can have negative impact on us. I want to pause here and acknowledge that you may have a feeling of resistance to hearing this. Because by and large, if you spent really any amount of time in the evangelical church, you probably have heard the messaging that family is the first place of protection and love, and therefore family can't cause harm to one another. Harm is what happens out there, outside of the family. Only love happens between family members. However, holding to the idea that family members can't harm one another dismisses the reality that all humans have the ability to cause harm. And the way that we often cause harm is when we meet our own needs without considering and adjusting for the impact on our neighbor. When Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans chapter 3, verse 23, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I believe that he was trying to describe the capacity that we all have to get fixated on what fulfills us to the point where we forget how pursuing what we desire can take resources and fulfillment from our neighbors. And so, like Jacob, many of us get so swept up in demonstrating to the world what's important to us that we don't think about the impact that it might have on someone else. Jacob got so swept up in showing his gratitude and love for Joseph, the son who made him a father again in his old age, that he didn't think about how rejected and overlooked and unfulfilled his other sons must have felt while watching that. But it goes even deeper. Not only do we see that Joseph's own family becomes the first place where he reaps the consequences of harm caused by a neighbor, which in this case was his own father. But because of the way Joseph's father favored him above his brothers, Joseph's emotional life and character were also affected. And how do we know this? Well, let's listen to how Joseph talked to his brothers. Here's what it says in verse 5 through 11. Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, listen to this dream I had. There we were binding sheaves of grain in the field. I can almost see him trying to make it sound good, like we were, we were out doing our thing, you know, the shepherding thing. And suddenly my sheaf stood up and your sheaves gathered around it. And bowed down to my sheath. And their brothers' first response was, are you really going to reign over us? Are you really going to rule us? But then Joseph keeps going. He doesn't get the hint. In verse 9, he comes back and he says, look, look, I had another dream, and this time the sun, the moon, and the 11 stars were bowing down to me. Now In this time period, dreams were considered very significant, and the imagery in these two dreams are progressive in nature. So this is, this is what makes it even more kind of cringy to watch Joseph not getting the message. The first imagery in the dream, maybe his brothers could tolerate because favoritism was already happening. So these were sheaves of, of grain that were obviously bowing down to, or were subservient to Joseph's sheaf of grain. The brothers are probably thinking, okay, fine, that's already happening, I can deal with that. But then the second dream is cosmic in nature. To say that the moon and the stars and the sun are going to bow down to you, you are saying that the whole ancestral line is going to bow down to you, Joseph. So that was when the brothers had enough. They were like, okay, you— we, we understand where your ego is in the family, but you think that the ancestral line is going to bow down to you? Now, as I'm looking at Joseph in this moment, I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, yes, you're 17, And I know that your brain still has about 9 more years to do its best developing. It keeps developing throughout your whole life, but its best developing has 9 more years. But you have to know that waltzing up to your brothers while they're working in the hot sun tending sheep and telling them twice that they're going to bow down to you is not the move to make. But here we see that Joseph's emotional intelligence is lacking, right? Yeah. He was unable to have enough empathy to think, hmm, you know, if I, if I say this to my brothers, they'll probably be offended and maybe even hurt, because basically I am telling them that I'm going to usurp the birth order. I am the second to youngest son, and I'm gonna skip over all 10 of them. Maybe if I put myself in their shoes, that will embarrass them. Jacob didn't mean to do this, but he has created a sense of entitlement and emotional apathy within his son by favoring him over his brothers. Because Jacob didn't demonstrate to Joseph that his brothers were worthy of the same gestures of affection that he was worthy of, simply because they were all Jacob's sons, that they were worthy of that same kind of robe, that same kind of protection. Joseph was then inadvertently encouraged to practice valuing his brothers' feelings less than his own. Joseph's emotional growth, demonstrated through empathy, was stunted by his favoritism. And so here's what else we learn quickly from Joseph's family about all families. Families are the first places where our emotional life, and by extension our character, are shaped. Now, many of us may be listening to Joseph's story and you might be thinking, well, you know, I've, I've seen and heard what it's like to be the unfavored sibling. At least he wasn't the unfavored sibling. But research is actually telling us that there is negative and lasting impact that comes from being the golden child too. When you are the favored child, here's what research tells us about favoritism in general. First off, what we know according to research published out of Hong Kong in 2020, up to 65% of families experience what's called parental different— differential treatment, or favoritism. It's pretty common. Secondly, what we know is that unfavored siblings can experience resentment and low self-esteem. When studies are done on siblings who felt that they were not preferred the, the most by their parents, this is a consistent report that they have, that they resented the favorite sibling and that that left them with a feeling of low self-esteem that they wrestle with even into adulthood. But thirdly, favored siblings can actually experience an emotional life that can be characterized by insecurity and entitlement. What we know about children is that children are observant. They can tell when they're getting praised for things that they didn't earn, like being their parent's favorite. And so like Joseph, favorite children all over the globe can experience this sense of insecurity in their emotional life that they actually don't have control over the affection that they get from other people. And so this can create patterns of validation seeking, of perfectionism and anxiety in a favorite child that clouds their ability to interact with others without overcompensating. And so then this brings us to this sense of entitlement that we might see in Joseph right now. The kind of emotional life that can create this sense of entitlement is actually one where someone is trying to cope. It sometimes is something that I gently explore with my clients in my work as a therapist, where I talk about the fact that entitlement is not just this arrogance that just comes out of nowhere, but is actually a maladaptive way of coping with our inability to control others' affection. At our core, we know that we can't make anyone love us. And so entitlement is a way to be desperate enough to say, well, then I demand your affection. I demand your attention. I demand even the things that I want, because if I don't demand it, If I don't force my way into getting it, then I won't get it. The person living with a sense of entitlement looks at the people around them and they often feel incredibly insecure. Licensed professional counselor and brain health expert Dr. Yelena Gudenko has added to our general knowledge about the impact of favored siblings. And here's a quote referring to some of her work. The favored child may develop a sense of entitlement and become used to getting their way, which can lead to problems. Favored children may feel exempt from the rules affecting their ability to sustain mature romantic relationships. Additionally, it can affect how they act in schoolwork and friendships. Now, I want to be clear, anytime we refer to research, what it can tell us about the universal human experience, we're describing what tends to happen and not what is destined to happen. So none of this is to say that if any of us are favored children, that we are definitely going to be insecure, we are definitely going to have a sense of entitlement. But what I am saying is that all of these experiences, when they do happen, when it— whether it's insecurity or entitlement, These are a part of the emotional life that gets shaped first in the family. And so I actually want to encourage us toward empathy as we read this story. Just like we can have empathy for Jacob and his deep sense of gratitude for receiving another son in his old age, I think we can also have empathy for Joseph and his lack of empathy for his brothers. I can't help but to wonder as I spend time with Joseph, how much pressure did you feel to always be the favorite in the room? Did you maybe suspect that your brothers were just as blessed with as many abilities as you were, and so you felt some guilt about wearing a coat that told you that you were worth more than your brothers, even though there was no proof of that? Because of that guilt, Joseph, did you maybe feel like you had to prove that you were worthy in every room, even if it meant saying and doing hurtful things to others? What we know is that because of the accidental distorted image that Joseph's father sent him, that he was more valuable than his brothers for a reason that he couldn't and didn't earn, Joseph was set up to cause his brothers harm. When we listen deeply to the research on favoritism alongside of the way that Joseph behaved toward his brothers, we can see that our families have the ability to be the foundation of our emotional lives, where we get the meaning that we make of affirmation and validation. And families also set the foundation for what we think is important and what we think is okay to say and do to others. This doesn't mean that our families are at fault for every decision that we make throughout all of our adulthood, but it means that everyone's family is the beginning of our emotional development. So with all of this in mind, what are we being invited into? We've taken a look at 3 universal truths that we can see in all families, that families are the first places where we experience the blessing of creating belonging, where we experience the brokenness of belonging in an unhealed world, and where our emotional life and our character are shaped. But am I saying that whatever blessing and brokenness that we experience in our families is all there is? And if we're dealt a great family, awesome. And if we discover that there's brokenness in the family,— that we just white-knuckle our way through trying to heal as best as we can? I thank God that the answers to those questions is no. What we hear in this story about Joseph's family, and in the stories about all of our families, is that the family is our first ministry. We are all empowered to look at the ways that we've been shaped by our family in our past and get curious about how we can continue to look more like Christ. I appreciate the way that Pete Casero puts it in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. He says the work of growing in Christ, what theologians call sanctification, does not mean that we don't go back to the past as we press ahead to what God has for us. It actually demands that we go back in order to break free from unhealthy and destructive patterns that prevent us from loving ourselves and others as God designed. As Joseph grew in maturity, which I think we'll later see in the rest of our series, he was empowered to look back and ask, what patterns might I be replaying that are getting in the way of loving myself and loving my family as God designed? Is it possible that I'm doing the same thing to my brothers that my grandfather Isaac did to his brother Ishmael? Am I sowing the lie that I am somehow worth more than my brothers, even though we all bear the same image of God? And so here's what I want to invite us to think about. As we develop our emotional maturity, we are invited to develop a healthy theology about who we are and who God is, what our worth is, and where that comes from. When we believe, however, that humans are deserving of less affection, care, protection, and rights than others, we can struggle to love ourselves and others as God's designed. And so as I close, I want us to reflect on one of the most beautiful gifts that Jesus gives us. And I believe that it is access to God through the most intimate connection, the family. In Luke chapter 2, when Jesus is 12 years old and he introduces himself to us as the— for the first time as the Son of God, he says to his mother Mary and his father Joseph, shortly after they've been scrambling for a few days trying to find him as they were leaving Jerusalem, he says to them, 'Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father's house?' Jesus has always been trying to tell us that our relationship to God is one of immense intimacy and belonging. By calling God his Father and then saying to us, you call him Father too, He was trying to explain to us that we now get to experience God and each other as a family, and therefore equally equipped to be loved and to love as God designed. This means that through Jesus, we get to say to every neighbor, whether related by blood or not, you are worthy of affection and care and protection and rights simply because you bear the image of God as I do. In the family of God, we are equipped to say to one another, since I have been reminded of my belovedness in Christ, since I have inherited back my full identity as a child of God, I don't need to live as if there isn't enough love to go around. Through Jesus, we can experience God's original design for family and belonging, loving ourselves and, and others as God designed. And this helps create the healthiest emotional life and character. Before we shift into a contemplative moment, I want to offer you this quote because I know that calling God Father can feel very important to many of us. But what I want to invite us to think about is that calling God Father is important for a very specific reason, and it is not God's gender. Here is what Minister Desiree Seitzer says. She often writes for the organization Christians for Biblical Equality. The term father is a relational symbolic image, not a statement on God's gender. Nowhere does scripture suggest that the Israelites determined God to be male and therefore decided to call Godfather. During Jesus's time, however, one of the roles of the father was to impart inheritance. By using the relational term father and teaching us to do the same, Jesus established the heavenly principle that we as children of God are co-heirs with Christ, and the inheritance we receive is God's kingdom. Calling God Father is not about God's maleness. It is about God's intimate and universally accessible relationship with humanity. That through Jesus, through a relationship with Jesus, we get to call God our parent. And if saying that God is your Father is immensely important to you, praise the Lord, you're welcome to do that. But when you hear someone call God Mother, I want to invite you to think about what they are saying. But they are saying that this intimate familial relationship that I have experienced here on earth has been transcended and made perfect in my relationship with God. Calling God Father, as Jesus called God Father, therefore, is not just a title. It is a reminder of our identity and of God's original design for love between God and humanity and every human. And so as we shift, I want to offer a little bit of time for us to engage in a contemplative practice, because what I know is that talking about the family can create a wide range of feelings in all of us. And that is okay. Not everyone had a family where the blessings outweighed the brokenness. And so what I want to do is I want to engage in a gospel meditation where we imagine what it feels like to be the beloved child of God, where every gap that may have existed in the love that we experienced on Earth is filled in by the love that we can receive from God. And so I'm going to invite you, if you're comfortable, you don't have to. If you don't want to engage in this practice, you can just kind of stare, stare ahead and wait it out. We'll be done in a few minutes. But if you would like to, I want to invite you to close your eyes and just try and relax your body into a comfortable sitting position. Take a few deep breaths. In this moment, you may have the desire to yawn. That's okay. That's your nervous system activating. Go for it. And as you slow your breathing. I want you to listen to this moment from Jesus's baptism in Mark chapter 1. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the waters of Jordan by John. And as soon as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open, and the Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased. I want you to imagine waters that are the perfect temperature, and you are stepping into those waters without any fear or anxiety. As you keep walking forward, you feel the waters rise up your torso, and you feel the calm of being surrounded by that water. In that moment, you hear the Lord say in a calm but assertive voice from heaven, Mandy, You are my beloved daughter. With you, I am well pleased. Brian, you are my beloved son. With you, I am well pleased. Zoe, you are my beloved daughter. With you, I am well pleased. Dr. Dewana, you are my beloved Daughter, with you I am well pleased. Lynette, you are my beloved daughter. With you I am well pleased. Imagine that feeling and hear this from Romans chapter 8: For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate you from that void. That says, you are my beloved child, and you I am well pleased. So as we begin to exit this contemplative moment, I want you to imagine that you turn back toward the shore and you start walking out of those waters. But I want you to imagine that the feeling of those waters surrounding you does not leave you. That those baptism waters keep you drenched in God's love, whatever you got. And so whether you have been loved by your neighbor perfectly, God's love will fill in the gaps. That is my prayer. Amen. Amen.