Category Archives: Thursday worship

11/24/14

Harvest Thursday – Happy Thanksgiving!

first_thanksgivingThanksgiving is often recognized as an inter-cultural holiday, celebrating the cooperation of European Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it is also an interfaith holiday. After all the Wampanoag were not Christian.

For American Reform Unitarians* the interfaith nature of Thanksgiving actually reinforces its Christian importance, for we see Christianity not as a religion defined against others, but as an idiom, a way of speaking about Truth that can be translated into other idioms.

True Christianity was, from its inception, a religion that sees the good in members of other religions.

Continue reading →

04/17/14

Garden Thursday : Thy Will Be Done

GethsemaneDuring the Sermon on the Mount, while expounding on anger, adultery, oaths, and retaliation, Jesus repeatedly emphasized the importance of motivation over action. It is not the act of adultery that makes us adulterers, but entertaining the desire. It is not the voicing of our hatred that is the sin, but the hatred itself.

The moral character behind our decisions, that inner seed of the actions which are regulated by Law, was at the core of Jesus’ teachings.

For this reason, Reform Unitarianism honors Garden Thursday — the day on which Jesus accepted the necessity of the painful events to follow — as the highest of Holy Days.

It is at Gethsemane that the teachings of Jesus and the story of Jesus come together.  During the Prayer in the Garden, by praying “Thy will be done” in the face of imminent suffering, Jesus made the commitment of moral character he had preached about in the Sermon on the Mount.

It was this decision in the Garden of Gethsemane that signifies the taking of the fruit of the Tree of Life, countering and remedying the imbalance created by the taking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.  As that Knowledge brought responsibility to the first Adam, requiring punitive Law to regulate human actions, the moral teaching of the “Second Adam” (as Jesus has been called) transcends and fulfills the Law with the virtue of character.

Law, married to Wisdom, becomes whole. The Lion lies down with the Lamb.  Knowledge and Life together bring us back into Paradise.

The arrest of Jesus, his trial, and the crucifixion that followed were, like the material events consequent of any decision, secondary to the spiritual and moral event that took place inside the soul of Jesus when he said to God: “Nevertheless, Thy will be done.”

This fulfillment of Christ’s own teachings was the true pinnacle of his ministry.

_

[A version of this homily has been published on earlier Garden Thursdays]

[The stained glass above is at First Reformed United Church of Christ of Burlingon, North Carolina.]

12/6/12

03.1.2 Advent and Annunciation

Scripture and homily in brief for Advent/Annunciation Thursday, the Ultimate Thursday of the 12 Days of Gold of the Christmas Season.

Luke 1:26-38

26 In the sixth month [of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John] the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
28 And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’
29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
30 The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.
32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.
33 He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’
34 Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’
35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.
36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.
37 For nothing will be impossible with God.’
38 Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.

Homily in Brief

Although the calendar date for Advent/Annunciation is 1 December, the first of the 12 Days of Gold, the Reform officially celebrates the beginning of the Christmas Season today on the Ultimate Thursday of the dozenal.

This differs significantly from other Christian traditions, which celebrate Advent four Sundays before Christmas, and celebrate the Annunciation (the day on which Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would conceive Jesus) on 25 March, a materialist nine months of gestation prior to Christmas.

For the Reform, the biological placement of the Annunciation is not as important as the inspirational role it plays as part of the Nativity story. By observing this herald of the Nativity together with Advent, AUR brings the entire narrative of the birth of Jesus together in one ritual season, setting aside December as a month of preparing for new beginnings: the beginning of the life of Christ, the beginning of the era of the Tree of Life, and the beginning of the new year when December finally turns over to January.

 

11/29/12

03.0.0 Thursday Worship : St. Andrews Day

Scripture and homily in brief for the Thursday before St. Andrew’s Day, the eve of the Advent/Christmas Season.

Gospel of John 1:35-41

35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples.
36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.
38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi [which means “Teacher”], where are you staying?”
39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.
41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Anointed.”
42 And he brought him to Jesus.

 

Homily in Brief

Andrew is not the most well-known Apostle. However, he was the first disciple of Jesus Christ.

It is fitting, then, that the Feast of St. Andrew also be the Eve of Advent, in anticipation of the first idiomatically Christian season of the AUR calendar, Christmas!

Andrew was also the brother of Simon who later became St. Peter, the Rock of the Church. In fact, it was Andrew who introduced Simon to Jesus.  During the holiday season, as we wish good will toward all, St. Andrew’s Day reminds us to begin close to home, with our siblings.

On St. Andrew’s Day, let’s look forward to the Season. (And, do something nice for your siblings!)

11/22/12

02.1.3 Harvest Thursday

Scripture and homily in brief for HARVEST THURSDAY, the first (liturgically) of the Four Great Thursdays of AUR, and the 12th of the 12 Days of Thanksgiving.

Psalm 95:1-3

1 Let us go sing to YHWH; let us shout out to the Rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving; and with song let’s shout out!
3 For YHWH is a great god, and great king above all gods.

Homily in Brief

first_thanksgivingThanksgiving is often recognized as an inter-cultural holiday, celebrating the cooperation of European Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it is also an interfaith holiday. After all the Wampanoag were not Christian.

For American Reform Unitarians the interfaith nature of Thanksgiving actually reinforces its Christian importance, for we see Christianity not as a religion defined against others, but as an idiom of Truth that can be translated to other idioms.

True Christianity has from its inception been a religion that sees the good in members of other religions.

Jesus praised the faith of the pagan centurion over that of his fellow Jews, and used a member of the hated Samaritan sect (considered heretics at the time) as a symbol of goodness in explicit contrast to leaders of his own faith community. When ministering to the Greeks, the Apostle Paul even went so far as to claim that the “Unknown God” long worshiped in Hellenistic religion was in fact the very same God of Abraham and Jesus.

Some might dismiss Paul’s assertion as a marketing technique, and perhaps so. However, the willingness to seek Christian truth in other religions validates Christianity as a religion about reality rather than a religion merely about itself.

↔

There is, in every religious community, a moral tension between loyalism and realism. Realism sees the religion as an idiomatic description of reality, therefore open to other forms of description.   Loyalism reduces that description to a mere catechetical shibboleth, a set of talking points used like passwords to prove one’s membership in the club. Under the loyalist vision, a religion becomes an entrenched camp isolated (by its own members) from the rest of the universe.

A religion truly about the Creator cannot be an enclave in Creation. The truth of God does not need to be spread across God’s own work by a tiny minority of creatures; God’s truth is evident throughout the universe, to be seen by those with eyes to see and heard by those with ears to hear.

And, necessarily, using the words of their own languages and imagery of their own cultures.

↔

The idiomatic approach of Reform Unitarianism takes realism to its full measure by recognizing that some of the underlying ideas of other religions must be valid (and correspond to Christian concepts) if the God we worship is indeed the God of all Creation, and not merely an imagined god of ethnic or sectarian narcissism.

For us, the Thanksgiving story represents two groups of God’s children, speaking in different idioms, coming together for a precious moment of peace and communion. The words and labels each used to discuss the ultimate nature of reality and its moral implications may have differed, but if there is such an Ultimate Truth then it must be the same Ultimate Truth for all, despite the difference in languages used to describe it.

The politicized, sectarian, God-denying, and autolatrous view is that the Native Americans were un-Christian heathens. The truly Christian, universal, Creator-affirming, moral view is that although the compassion the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims may not have been “Christian” charity, it was certainly Christian charity.

Have a wonderful feast day, and give thanks for all of the blessings in your life!

11/8/12

01.2.2 All Corners Day

Scripture and homily in brief for the Thursday occurrence of All Corners Day, the Ultimate Thursday of the Piety dozenal of All Hallows season.

Isaiah 28:9-13

9 Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine, those just weaned from milk, and drawn from the breast?
10 For rule must be upon rule, measure upon measure; blah blah, yada yada, bit by bit:
11 Very well then, with foreign lips and strange tongues will he speak to this people.
12 To whom he said, “This is rest, let the weary rest with it; and this is refreshment” yet they would not hear.
13 But the word of Yahweh shall be unto them rule upon rule, measure upon measure, bit by bit; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken.

First Letter to the Corinthians 14

2 Those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody hears them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit.
3 On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their enrichment and encouragement and consolation.
4 Those who speak in a language build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church.
5 Now I would like all of you to speak in languages, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in languages, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.
6 Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you speaking in languages, how will I benefit you unless I speak to you in some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching?

18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you;
19 nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words within my understanding, in order to instruct others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown language.
20 Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in [regard to] evil, but in thinking be adults.
21 In the law it is written, “By people of strange tongues and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people; yet even then they will not listen to me,” says the Lord.
22 Tongues, then, are a sign not for believers but for unbelievers, while prophecy is not for unbelievers but for believers.
23 If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
24 But if all prophesy, an unbeliever or outsider who enters is reproved by all and called to account by all.
25 After the secrets of the unbeliever’s heart are disclosed, that person will bow down before God and worship him, declaring, “God is really among you.”

Homily: Speaking in Tongue and the Value of Others

In the spirit of All Corners Day, today’s lesson is ultimately about how religious truth transcends national, linguistic, cultural, and even sectarian boundaries.  Unitarian Reform celebrates All Corners Day in honor of those called the “Pious Outsiders,” virtuous persons of other nations and faith traditions.

But, given our readings from scripture, it is important to address the issue of “speaking in tongues,” an emblem of the universality of truth that spans the history of our religion from the Prophets of Judaism through the Fathers of the Christian Church.  It is a poorly understood Christian idiom that is often corrupted to mean babbling incoherently in a meaningless trance state barely distinguishable from a drug trip.

Despite folk myths about speaking in tongues, in the early days of the Church it did not refer to what we now call glossolalia1, ecstatic chattering, but xenoglossia, the miraculous ability to communicate in a language you have not learned through normal means.  Glossolalia, as it is practiced by certain sects, is believed to demonstrate something admirable about the individual who has fallen into a psycho-social ecstasy: that he or she has been touched by the Holy Spirit.  Xenoglossia, as understood in its proper Christian context, symbolizes something admirable about the teachings of Jesus Christ: that they can be communicated in all languages and understood by all nations.

The real point of this central Christian image is not to prove an individual has scored spiritual points, but to show that truth transcends the bounds of tongue and culture.

By the time of Paul, pagan recruits to Christianity had already begun corrupting the idea of “tongues” to selfish purposes; as his First Letter to the Corinthians shows, poorly supervised converts were misapplying the message of the Pentecost miracle in a way that communicated nothing and only served to glorify the self [see 14:2-4].  The original meaning of xenoglossic translation of wisdom for the benefit of unbelievers had become corrupted in the child’s play mimicry of glossolalia for self-aggrandizement among (supposed) believers [see 14:22].  In a typically conservative Pauline fashion, the Apostle simply discourages the idea altogether rather than expounding on the nuances of the Corinthians’ error, and this has contributed considerably to confusion about the concept.

However, it is clear from the writing of other early church leaders that “speaking in tongues” meant miraculous multilingualism:

In chapter 16 of the Gospel of Mark, written around 70 CE, among the signs of “those who have believed” is that “they will speak in new languages.”  Glossolalists often claim that the tongues they are speaking represent a supposed language of Heaven or of angels, which would not be a “new” language at all.  The obvious meaning of “new languages” in Mark is that the languages are new to the speaker.

In the Acts of the Apostles, also written in the 1st Century, when the prophecy in Mark comes to pass it is described like this: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”

In the 2nd Century, Irenaeus wrote that “in like manner we do also hear many brethren in the Church, who possess prophetic gifts, and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of God.”

During the conflationist controversies of the 4th Century, even an apostate like Hilary of Poitiers described tongues as “gifts of either speaking or interpreting divers kinds of languages.”

Also in the 4th Century, Eusebius of Caesaria (not St. Eusebius of Nicomedia) specifically speaks against glossolalia, accusing the heretic Montanus that “he became possessed of a spirit, and suddenly began to rave in a kind of ecstatic trance, and to babble in a jargon, prophesying in a manner contrary to the custom of the Church which had been handed down by tradition from the earliest times.” [emphasis added]

Augustine of Hippo, who survived into the 5th century, clearly defined the meaning of speaking in tongues as xenoglossia, stating that those who did so spoke in languages “which they had not learned.”

The miracle of the Pentecost was clearly xenoglossia, and its spiritual meaning that God’s truth knows no language, no culture, no boundary of the human mind.  And that is the spirit of All Corners, when we open our hearts to the good in those who speak other languages, salute other flags, and worship using other words.

Go with God, in the impartial love of agape and the universal power of the Logos.

1 Unfortunately, the term glossolalia, which is derived from biblical Greek, has come to refer almost exclusively to the phenomenon of babbling incoherently in a mistaken demonstration of inspiration by the Holy Spirit.  Despite our objection to this unscriptural use of the scriptural term, we use it here in that context to assist in distinguishing this false interpretation of “speaking in tongues” from its proper, xenoglossic, meaning.

_

Discussion: Read again the scriptures for today.  Note that in both cases, a contrast is made between what is proper and what is childish.  Now, as in the Gospel, Paul recognizes the value of child-like innocence to evil, but he correctly identifies as childish the misuse of tongues as a selfish means of spiritual bragging.  Likewise Isaiah scolds his listeners for acting like children who merit only rule-based moral teaching rather than wisdom.  How does Paul’s response to the abuse of “tongues” echo the reproof of Isaiah?

11/1/12

01.2.1 All Hallows Day

Scripture and homily in brief for the Thursday occurrence of All Hallows Day, the First of the Piety dozenal of All Hallows season.

First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 12

12 Just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the body parts—though many—are one body, so it is with the Anointed.
13 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one part but of many.
15 If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.
16 And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body.
17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
18 But as it is, God arranged the parts in the body, each one of them, as He chose.
19 If all were a single part, where would the body be?

20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’
22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem weaker are indispensable,
23 and those parts of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect;
24 whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member,
25 that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.
26 If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

Homily in Brief

On All Hallows Day (also known as All Saints Day) we honor “all saints, known and unknown,” by which we mean not only the roster of officially accepted saints but also anyone who has demonstrated a noteworthy degree of virtue in the way they lived or died.

There is a common but unfair criticism among Protestants that the Catholic church, in its veneration of saints, simply replaced pagan polytheism with a new polytheism.  After all, were not pagan emperors and other celebrated figures believed to take on godhood after death, through the process known as apotheosis?  And how is the assignment of saintly patronage—for example, as Thomas is the patron of stone masons—any different from the spheres of godly influence in ancient Graeco-Roman religion?  The  argument that saints are simply refashioned gods seem bolstered by the fact that today’s holiday, All Hallows, began when Bishop Boniface of Rome (i.e., “Pope” Boniface IV) rededicated the Pantheon, or “Temple of All Gods,” to Mary and all of the martyrs.

But, there is a crucial distinction between the pagan devotion to many gods and Christian devotion to angels and saints.  The strongest clue is in the word “angel” itself, which comes from Greek ἄγγελος, a direct translation of the Hebrew מלאך meaning “messenger.”  Unlike the rag-tag collection of powers that typify Roman mythology, the angels and saints of Christianity are messengers of the One God.  As they all point toward God Most High, they remind us that all things issued from that Source.

Christian devotion to a multitude of angels and saints in charge of different aspects of life fulfills the spiritual purpose of monotheism by channeling the many facets of Creation toward the singular Creator.

In fact, the multifaceted cult of the saints and angels helps protect against the false gods of idolatry, by reminding us that the One True God is the God of all things, not merely the master of a small part of Creation.  Religion that fails to honor the entire “body” of God’s Creation by recognizing its many “parts” runs the risk of being like the eye (in 1Cor 12:21) who tells the hand it is unneeded: a piece that mistakes itself for the whole.  To paraphrase Paul: if your whole religion is an eye, where can the hearing be?

Discussion question: Many so-called polytheistic traditions conceive their various “gods” as merely expressions of a single Divinity.  How does the nature of this connection affect the moral significance of the religion?  Can believers whose “gods” are more like angels be considered monotheists?  Is the God of such a religion the same as the God of Christ Jesus?

10/25/12

01.1.1 Ultimate Thursday – Twelve Days of Ghosts

Scripture and homily in brief for the Ultimate Thursday of the Ghosts dozenal of All Hallows season.

Job 4:12-21

12 Now a word came stealing to me — my ear received the whisper of it
13 amid thoughts from visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals
14 dread came upon me, and trembling which made all my bones shake
15 A spirit glided past my face — the hair of my flesh bristled
16 It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice:
17 “Can mortals be more righteous before God? Can humans be more pure than their Maker?
18 Even in his servants He puts no trust, and His angels He charges with error;
19 how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth.
20 Between morning and evening they are destroyed; they perish for ever without any regarding it.
21 Their tent-cord is plucked up within them, and they die devoid of Wisdom.”

Homily in Brief

The opening of the liturgical year evokes a key theme of genuine Christianity: facing fear and death on the path to revelation and redemption.  In the lead-up to the secularized holiday of Halloween, the Eve of All Hallows Day, we join the playful celebration of spookiness as a way of easing into the hard lessons of salvation through suffering.

In Eliphaz’s speech from Job we have a biblical ghost story, a visit from a spirit who reminds us that we are all mortal and must die.

01/15/11

Martin Luther King Jr. – American Prophet

It is quite appropriate that the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. falls on the 9th Day of Defiance in the American Unitarian Reform calendar, in the middle of Nika Week which commemorates competing factions standing together against oppression in the Byzantine Empire, just as multiracial crowds gathered before Dr. King to stand together against Jim Crow oppression in the United States.

But Martin Luther King is significant to AUR for other reasons, not only in his ecumenical attitude, but also the purity of the way he spoke of God’s relationship with Creation and his commitment of character to the will of God.

Continue reading →

11/25/10

12th Day of Thanksgiving – Harvest Thursday

first_thanksgivingThanksgiving is often recognized as an inter-cultural holiday, celebrating the cooperation of European Pilgrims and Native Americans, but it is also an interfaith holiday. After all the Wampanoag were not Christian.

For American Reform Unitarians* the interfaith nature of Thanksgiving actually reinforces its Christian importance, for we see Christianity not as a religion defined against others, but as an idiom of Truth that can be translated into other idioms.

[This Thanksgiving message was originally published in 2008]

True Christianity has from its inception been a religion that sees the good in members of other religions.

Jesus praised the faith of the pagan centurion over that of his fellow Jews, and used a member of the hated Samaritan sect (considered heretics at the time) as a symbol of goodness in explicit contrast to leaders of his own faith community. When ministering to the Greeks, the Apostle Paul even went so far as to claim that the “Unknown God” long worshiped in Hellenistic religion was in fact the very same God of Abraham and Jesus.

Some might dismiss Paul’s assertion as a marketing technique, and perhaps so. However, the willingness to seek Christian truth in other religions validates Christianity as a religion about reality rather than a religion merely about itself.

There is, in every religious community, a moral tension between loyalism and realism. By realism here, we do not mean the “Christian Realism” of Niebuhr, but realism in the sense that religion is seen as an idiomatic description of reality, therefore open to other forms of description. 

This is opposed to the loyalist approach in which that description becomes a mere catechetical shibboleth, a catch-phrase or password, distorting the religion into an entrenched camp isolated (by its own members) from the rest of the universe.

A religion truly about the Creator cannot be an enclave in Creation. The truth of God does not need to be spread across God’s own work by a tiny minority of creatures; God’s truth is evident throughout the universe.

Justin Martyr, despite his sainted status, is likely the primary culprit in this God-denying loyalist tradition as he was the first to attribute other religions entirely to the action of devils. One step more “realistic” is the approach of Paul and other missionaries who attempted to exapt the language and imagery of the cultures they encountered for Christian truth.

But, while this approach treats idiom properly as a tool rather than the stuff of religion itself, it is still prone to error due to the implication that only the language of other religions is valid, not the underlying reality that language describes.

Again, this sort of religion implies an agoraphobic god who fashions a vast universe only to cower in one tiny corner of it, charging mere humans with braving the immeasurable remainder of it in his stead. Religion that genuinely worships the Almighty Creator does not insult God in this way.

The idiomatic approach of Reform Unitarianism takes realism to its full measure by recognizing that some of the underlying ideas of other religions must be valid if the God we worship is indeed the God of all Creation, and not merely an imagined god of ethnic or sectarian autolatry.

For us, the Thanksgiving story represents two groups of God’s children, speaking in different idioms, coming together for a precious moment of peace and communion. The words and labels each used to discuss the ultimate nature of reality and its moral implications may have differed, but if there is such an Ultimate Truth then it must be the same Ultimate Truth for all, despite the difference in languages used to describe it.

The politicized, sectarian, God-denying, and autolatrous view is that the Native Americans were un-Christian heathens. The truly Christian, universal, Creator-affirming, moral view is that while the compassion the Wampanoag showed the Pilgrims may not have been “Christian” charity, it was certainly Christian charity.

Have a wonderful feast day, and give thanks for all of the blessings in your life!

_

* American Reform Unitarians revere Thanksgiving’s Harvest Thursday as one of the Four Great Thursdays alongside Declaration Thursday, Garden Thursday, and Ascension Thursday.