Declaration
Summary
After the Spirit’s arrival at Pentecost, the crowd asks two questions: “What does this mean?” and “What shall we do?” Matt Crummy explores how Peter, the disciple who had denied Jesus only weeks before, answers both with one of the most consequential speeches in history. Drawing on the prophets and the Psalms, Peter reinterprets what his listeners already believed. He shows them that the crucified Jesus is the risen Messiah, raised because death itself could not hold him. When the crowd is “cut to the heart,” Peter calls them to repent and receive the gift of the Spirit, a promise extended to all who are far off. Matt reflects on how God chooses flawed messengers, why we so easily forget what he has done, and what it means to receive his life as a gift.
Questions for reflection
The crowd at Pentecost asked, “What does this mean?” and then, “What shall we do?” How have you seen understanding lead to action in your own faith journey?
Peter was the disciple who denied Jesus three times, yet God chose him to proclaim the gospel publicly. How does that shape the way you think about your own failures and God’s willingness to use you?
Peter connected what his listeners already believed to what they hadn’t yet seen. What is something you’ve understood about God that has deepened or shifted over time?
Peter describes death as unable to keep its hold on Jesus. Where in your life do you most need the hope that death and despair do not have the final word?
The sermon asks, “What are we forgetting?” What helps you remember God’s faithfulness in the ordinary rhythms of your life, and what tends to crowd it out?
The promise of the Spirit is “for all who are far off.” Who in your life might feel far off from God, and how could you reflect his welcome to them?
-
Matt Crummy:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”Now, I didn’t say it quite as well as he said it, of course, but that is one of the most famous lines ever given in a speech. The man was, as you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I might add. The year was 1963, in Washington, D.C., on the Lincoln Memorial steps, in front of a staggering 250,000 people on the National Mall. Two hundred fifty thousand people. That’s a lot of people. King was only 34 years old.
Now, there are moments that define our lives—that define our collective imagination as communities, as cultures, as countries. They change the horizon, I think, of what’s possible. They may give us courage. They might dash our hope. They might convict us or inspire us. The crew of Apollo 8 reading Genesis chapter 1 as they orbited the moon. Frederick Douglass asking, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” at a Fourth of July event in Rochester, New York.
It is in these moments that the Spirit of God—prepared though we may not be, wise though we may be narrow-minded, patient though we may be distracted—inspires and equips people to speak to our very souls, to you and me, to who we are and who we could yet become. It’s not always someone of great eloquence or advanced training. But the book of Acts is interesting in this way. As Dominic reminded us last week, it practically shouts: the Spirit of God is on the move in all of creation. It’s filled with surprise and wonder and courage and risk. And God speaks to us powerfully in ways both large and small, private and public, lighthearted and serious—in our highs and in our lows.
For me, the year was 1987. I was in Fargo, North Dakota, and I heard a man named Billy talk about sin and righteousness and Jesus and his death and resurrection. And I responded to an altar call at that event, though I was just a few months short of four years old. It’s actually one of my earliest memories. It might even be my earliest memory. And that man, of course, was Billy Graham.
Now, I don’t know what you will remember from this morning, if anything. I don’t know what I will remember from this morning, even by the end of this day, perhaps. But I know that the Spirit of God is both powerful and present in you and in this community. And so we sing, and we take communion in a little bit, and we look to the Scriptures to remember who God is and who we are—to be drawn out of ourselves, in a sense, to get a fresh perspective. This is the power of Christ in you and in me.
The author of Acts, Luke, seems to think this is important. In fact, speeches account for nearly a third of the book of Acts. These are the moments that shape the moral imagination of the early church—moments that would transform them and galvanize them into a world-changing movement, one we still find ourselves in today, remarkably. The people of God. That’s the story.
Now, one could look at the exciting events we read about last week at Pentecost and kind of miss a key miracle that follows: Peter’s speech to the crowd. And like the speeches I mentioned earlier, this address would literally change the course of history. So with that, let’s pray, and we’ll look at our passage for today.
God, we thank you again for this time. We thank you for the Scriptures. We thank you for these stories that are so much more than stories. They are lives. They are generations changed. They represent so much more than just something in a book. I pray that that would come to life for us today. And I pray that you would speak in this time. We pray this in your name. Amen.
In Acts 2:4, as we read last week, it says this: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues”—or languages—“as the Spirit enabled them.” Now, that phrase, “as the Spirit enabled them,” means something like, “as the Spirit gave them utterance,” or “as the Spirit gave them to speak out”—meaning it was God who granted this ability, right? To speak out, or to declare something publicly, in a special way.
The Greek word used here only appears three times in the New Testament, and all three are in Acts. Once in Acts 2:4, which I just read. Another time—which will be part of our passage today, in Peter’s speech—is Acts 2:14. It says Peter “raised his voice and addressed the crowd.” The word “addressed” here is that word again.
Where it gets interesting is by way of comparison with the very last usage in the book of Acts. We’ll get to that in a second. As we work through Acts, we see Paul arrested and testifying about the person of Jesus to various leaders, including King Agrippa in Caesarea. And a guy named Festus—a Roman governor who is present at this hearing with Paul much later in the book—is recorded in Acts 26. As he’s listening to Paul, he finally loses his patience. He can’t take it anymore. It says this in verse 24 of chapter 26: “At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. ‘You are out of your mind, Paul!’ he shouted. ‘Your great learning is driving you insane.’ ‘I am not insane, most excellent Festus,’ Paul replied. ‘What I am saying is true and reasonable.’”
Now, to pause for a moment, I personally think that Most Excellent Festus is a great name for a cat. So I’m just going to offer that, if anyone is thinking about getting a cat. But I digress.
So there’s a parallel to what we’re looking at in Acts chapter 2. In both Acts 2 and, much further on, in Acts 26, this Greek verb about speaking forth comes right after the speakers are accused of being mentally compromised—drunk in one case, crazy in the other, right? So Luke is trying to draw our attention to the reception of these public proclamations. With tongues, with Peter’s presentation of the gospel, and with Paul’s defense to Agrippa, we have people—meaning the crowd—being confronted with something they can’t quite explain. So they find it unbelievable. These are boundary-testing moments.
The verb used here tends to mark prophetic speech in the Old Testament—or its parallel in Hebrew, the words of oracles. It’s a weighty word, and that’s what we’re looking at today. And I think this nicely frames our study here.
Luke and other ancient writers often use questions—if you’ve ever read ancient philosophy, it’s like that—as teaching tools, to help you understand what a story is about, right? Or a point they’re trying to make. So we have two interesting questions that serve as bookends in Acts 2. Following the miracle of tongues, Luke recounts the crowd’s reaction this way. He says, “They asked one another, ‘What does this mean?’ Some, however, made fun of them and said, ‘They have had too much wine.’” There’s the drunkenness, right? Then we have Peter’s speech as an explanation of this meaning, right? He’s answering them. And then following his speech, they respond again. Acts 2:37 says, “When the people heard this”—meaning his speech—“they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” There’s the other question. See that flow?
And I think this is the same thing I experienced as a young boy in Fargo, North Dakota. For me, I was learning something about meaning, right? I felt something. I recognized something about myself—about humanity, maybe, more broadly. And understanding moved toward action. I had a follow-up conversation with my dad. And essentially, we talked about this hinge point, right? I even have a little pamphlet I signed on that date that I still have at my house today. I should have brought it. “What does this mean?” is what the crowd is asking. And then, “What shall we do?” right? But I needed to know: what should I do?
Let’s look at the first half of Peter’s speech here. Verse 14 says: “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: ‘Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel.’” Then he quotes the Old Testament: “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”
So ends the quote from Joel. Now Peter finishes. Again, he says: “Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”
Whoa—where did that Peter come from, right? You know that thing in movies where a character is, like, socially awkward and mousy? And then something happens, and all of a sudden they get, like, a makeover, and their complexion’s perfect, and all of a sudden they’re socially with it. They don’t need glasses for some reason, right? And then there’s a montage, right? This is Peter’s montage moment.
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Now, that’s interesting. So Paul—or Peter. Man, I’m going to confuse Peter and Paul this morning. I’m sorry. Peter quotes the prophet Joel to help the Jews understand something very significant: that a new chapter is being turned here. One that was actually foretold, and is unfolding before their very eyes and ears. It’s as though history is happening around them. Prophecies are being fulfilled. And all of this had been foreordained—meaning God, the Godhead, the Trinity, knew that this would occur and actually took action to see that the curse and agony of death would be broken for all people. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Israel themselves had been called to be a kingdom of priests—if you’re familiar with the Old Testament—and a light to the nations. And now that calling was blooming. It was opening outward. And this is a radically inclusive picture of the kingdom of heaven. It says, “Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”
So they ask, what is the meaning behind these miracles we’re seeing today? And Peter responds how? By connecting them to the greater story of God—the story of Jesus. And the passage he quotes from Joel would have been more significant, I think, to first-century Jews—for sure—than it is to us today. Peter quotes Joel 2:28–32. Just a little earlier in Joel 2, in verse 12, God calls Israel to return to him with all their hearts. It says this in verse 12—this is the prophet Joel channeling God here, right?—“‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.”
So for Peter, this is a speech of reinterpretation. And I think this is a good lesson for how formation works in people. He appeals to what is good and right about what they already believe to be true. And then he connects it to what they don’t yet see—where they haven’t understood but need to understand; where they’ve called something good that’s actually bad, and maybe the converse of that, right? And I think this is part of the role of the sermon, actually, in our gatherings. And remembrance is at the heart of communion and worship in our gathering together. It’s why we need each other and the Scriptures—to remember, to see afresh, to understand reality.
And Peter repeatedly appeals to them by saying, “Fellow Israelites.” He’s saying, “Listen, friends, I know this is going to be hard to hear, so I need you to remember that I’m on your team, right? I’m a fellow follower of Yahweh. Remember that, because I’m going to say some stuff. The man you put to death—the rabbi Jesus—he’s the long-awaited Messiah. It’s him.”
Can you imagine the gut-wrenching feeling for those who truly experienced a spiritual awakening during this speech? I just think it would feel like, oh my God. Truly, what have we done? Maybe you’ve felt that way before, I don’t know. Perhaps you’re in a moment like that today, where your own mistakes have caught up to you, or they feel like they weigh a ton and you are overwhelmed. But you certainly have a friend in Peter, and in me, and in anyone else who’s following Christ.
And as Dominic has reminded us—last week and before that—Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times before the crucifixion. He was effectively a deserter, a traitor. Can you imagine the guilt he experienced? Only to be shocked by the resurrection, and then chosen as the torchbearer for the early church, publicly, at Pentecost. And I think this is a key point for this morning: that’s exactly the way God wanted it. Same with the apostle Paul, who persecuted Christians before converting. God chose what is weak in the world to reveal that what we think of as strength is an illusion. It’s a construct. It’s fool’s gold.
So let’s read the end of this section again. This is verse 22. Peter says, “Fellow Israelites”—fam, right? He’s saying “fam.” That’s what he’s saying: family—“listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”
In the original language here, the picture in verse 24 is as though death itself was in labor. “It was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” is the picture. It’s the word for birth pangs. The image here is of the tomb as a womb, and death could not contain him, right? That’s the image—the word that’s used.
And it reminds me of this painting you may have seen before around Easter time. It’s from a Swiss painter named Eugène Burnand, from 1898. It depicts John in white and Peter with a beard, running to the tomb of Jesus after hearing Mary Magdalene’s report that the body of Jesus was missing. And what I love about this painting is the wide eyes of Peter. Those are eyes that have seen some pain. Could it be? Could it really be? My friend and rabbi, whom I denied and abandoned, is alive? Is it possible that my greatest mistake has the potential of being undone? What a beautiful picture of hope I think this is—of forgiveness, of love, of expectation.
The thing is, we haven’t seen the last of Peter’s mistakes either. There are some big ones yet to come in his story. And yet God still chooses this man Peter—a flawed messenger—which, of course, makes him a perfect vessel to proclaim that, in fact, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord can be saved, right?
Okay, so speaking of flawed messengers, we’re going to continue our passage here. We’re going to look at the words of King David, whom Peter quotes. Verse 25—this is Peter quoting David. “David said about him”—meaning Christ; this is David prophesying about Christ—“‘I saw the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest in hope, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, you will not let your holy one see decay. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.’”
And now again Peter says, “Fellow Israelites, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay.”
So remember that image of death itself going into labor—how it was unable to contain the source of life? Well, now we get the second half of the contrast that Peter has set up. Everyone in the crowd knew where David was. I think this is kind of gutsy for Peter to bring up publicly, right? I think he was probably fully convinced. And he does so by appealing to the words of one of Israel’s own heroes—also gutsy. Again, he’s reinterpreting what they already affirm through a new lens, which helps them see its true depth in a new light. And in doing this, Peter is also establishing Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection as foundational to the teaching of the early church. He’s also showing that God is a God who keeps his word—that what they’re seeing and experiencing at Pentecost is the fruit of God’s faithfulness to Israel, right? It’s not a break from it. He’s not ditching Israel.
So here’s a question. Can you imagine a world where this isn’t true? Because right before this, that was the case for these people, right? A world where God—maybe even to the nations around them—is a myth. Maybe some of them were at that place privately. God is a myth, and everything they see and experience is actually just somersaulting toward death and eventual nothingness. What would be the point of this beautiful life, this world?
Yesterday, I went for a walk on a wooded path near our house. And I heard the wind moving through the leaves. And although this sounds silly—and a little depressing, I might say—I realized that I had actually forgotten what that sounded like. Something so simple. And yet I had lost it in the rush of just ordinary life. And it took not much for me to remember, and feel beloved again, and just be present to the world around me.
We forget, and we need to be reminded. Our lives don’t move in a straight line from, like, lower left to upper right—did I get that right for you? Yeah, it’s hard to do—they move in rhythms, okay? It’s not like a stock chart, right? Our lives are rhythmic. They move through day and night, weeks and seasons, the same prayers, maybe, the same table. God made us people of repetition.
Think about sleep. I’ve talked about this before. Every night, no matter how strong or accomplished we are, we have to just stop. We lie down, and we let go of control, and we just somehow trust we’re going to wake up. That’s the hope. Night, or sleep, is a nightly reminder that we are not self-sufficient. And if you have trouble sleeping, you know that even more, right? This isn’t a design flaw. It’s a feature for creatures. You’re a creature. So am I. We can’t keep ourselves going forever. We receive our lives as a gift. None of us self-actualized, right? At least I didn’t. We cannot defeat our own deaths, any more than David could. And believe me, the older you get, the more you feel that.
And yet Jesus came as Emmanuel—as we read around Christmas, usually—God with us. He entered these same rhythms that we experience. He ate and slept and worked and walked and swapped stories with people and wept and sang and was misunderstood, right? He was a person. He wasn’t only a person. Luke tells us that he even fell asleep in a boat in the middle of a life-threatening storm, right? He went down into one sleep in particular, the sleep we call death. And God raised him.
Jesus came to heal what is broken in this world—to mend. He’s a mender. To make right, to restore, to offer rest. And what Peter is saying to this crowd—and to us, I think, by extension—is this: Jesus is alive. I think he was fully convinced of that. Have you forgotten? Like the wind through the leaves, are you missing what’s right before you?
Let’s finish the speech from Peter. Verse 32 says this: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’ Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles”—here’s our bookend question—“‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.’ With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.”
It says they were cut to the heart. That’s the turn. And here we encounter the other bookend question: “What shall we do?” I think this is a sign that they understand—that they understand Peter’s explanation of the meaning of Pentecost. And now they understand that it has implications for their very consciences, their own lives. And the crowd is actually acting out the lines from the prophet Joel that we read earlier, which Peter didn’t quote—this picture of rending our hearts, of “return to me,” right? That’s exactly what they’re doing.
And in Peter’s call to repentance, he follows it up with a promise—a few, actually. “You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And this isn’t just for the folks standing here. This is for everyone. He rephrases Joel again in stating that this promise is “for all whom the Lord our God will call.” And this isn’t just for, like, the holy-huddle types. It’s an invitation. Look what he says in verse 39: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” The invitation includes all who are far off.
This actually echoes some Old Testament language in Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah says this: “I have seen their ways, but I will heal them; I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise on their lips. Peace, peace, to those far and near,” says the Lord. “And I will heal them.”
What’s fascinating here is that Peter, I don’t think, fully understands the extent of what he’s been preaching yet. And he will actually struggle with the implications of this later—with this grafting in of the Gentiles into the covenant community. Peace, peace to these people we hate, right? Peace to those near and far. I will heal them.
Maybe a question is: is this your view of God? One who takes sin and death so seriously that he would do something about it? So seriously that he would see our precariousness and move toward it in love? That’s what love does, right? He’s a helper—that’s how the Holy Spirit is described. That he would welcome both those near and far.
And lest you think Peter is being overly rosy here—I wrote the word “Pollyannaish” in my notes, and I was like, no one’s going to know what that means, so you can Google that later. Rosy, overly optimistic, right? He pleads with the crowd to be aware that the world around them is going to want to pull them back into that tomb we were describing earlier, right? Verse 40 says this: “With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’”
And he does so by reminding them of their own history. In fact, he appears to call back to the Exodus story, and Moses’s perspective on the wilderness generation—those who were traveling in the wilderness toward the promised land, right?—as recorded in Deuteronomy. A couple of verses there. This is Moses’s recounting of the wilderness generation in Deuteronomy. He says, “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just”—that sounds like the song we sang today, right?—“A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he. They are corrupt and not his children; to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation. Is this the way you repay the Lord, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?”
This passage goes on to describe how God patiently cared for his people in their wandering. And yet it goes on to say they deserted the Rock who fathered them. They forgot the God who gave them birth. And there’s that birth language again. The God who gave birth to a people is the same God who, in Peter’s words, made death itself go into labor so that it could not hold on to Jesus. And I think this is a warning for us today, perhaps. What are we forgetting?
Let’s keep our framing questions in mind here as well. What does this mean? What do we do? I think the miracle of Pentecost is that God has offered himself to all tribes, tongues, and nations. He’s coming back, and he invites us to return to him as well. And that we receive God not as a conqueror, but as a gift—that’s the word. That the resurrection life couldn’t be contained by the womb—or the tomb—of Jesus is our hope in life and death, too. And by grace, we are invited into discipleship—into a community of life and love and self-sacrifice and compassion, a countercultural community formed by God, not ultimately by us.
Okay, in closing: in 1940, the most famous silent-film star in the world made his very first film with dialogue—Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. It was a satire of Adolf Hitler, and it was actually released before America had even entered the war. And if you’re not familiar, Chaplin had that little mustache, and then Adolf Hitler became famous, right? And so Chaplin bore a striking resemblance to Hitler without even realizing it until later, right?
So at the end of the film, a Jewish barber who has been mistaken for the dictator is pushed toward the microphone in front of a huge crowd. And despite his objections, his friend pleads with him to make an appeal to the crowd. And so this ordinary man—who was very shy, the last person anyone would expect to hear from, certainly as a Jew—steps forward and speaks. And it became one of the most famous monologues in the history of cinema. Here are a few lines; there’s a lot I could choose from. He says, “We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
Chaplin was describing his own generation here. But I’d say, you know, 80 years on, it does sound a little bit like ours, right? We have abundance, and yet we still don’t have enough. We have knowledge, and yet we’ve grown cynical. And interestingly, later in that speech, Chaplin actually quotes the Gospel of Luke—the Luke who wrote Acts. But Chaplin is doing something slightly different from Peter. And I think—likely, as a slight critique—he maybe puts a little too much hope in our collective capacity to just become kinder and more humane. Peter has certainly seen the limits of this, both in himself and in other people.
And I think each generation faces its own challenges—idols that might compete for our affections. And the church, in each generation, is called to learn to name them, to grow in discernment, to live as ambassadors of the kingdom of God. And so, how will the good news of Pentecost shape our church today, this week, this year, and in the years to come? How will it shape your beliefs and practices? I leave you to meditate on the questions the crowd asked that day: What does this mean? And what should we do?
Ultimately, the crowd at Pentecost needed more than a pep talk, right? They truly needed the Spirit of God. And when they were cut to the heart, in their very weakness, God gave them his strength. Let’s close in prayer.
God, we thank you for your strength. We thank you that you know our frame. You know our limits. God, you love us despite our sin, our hatred. You move toward us. In the areas where we feel shame, we find you there. God, I pray that this news that Peter proclaimed—a real person named Peter, who stood up before a crowd and shocked the world—would somehow change the way we approach our day-to-day, these rhythms that we find ourselves sharing. God, we thank you for your goodness. We proclaim that both to ourselves and to the world, and we thank you for the honor of doing that. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
