January 2, 2000, Christmas I

When I was a small boy I used to think often about the fact that in the year 2000 I would be fifty-two years old. The year 2000 seemed awfully far away back then, and so did a situation in which I I would be fifty-two. My own father wasn't even fifty-two until I was almost finished with college.

Both of these inconceivably a-long-way-off events have now arrived. The year 2000 appeared yesterday, and my birthday is tomorrow. We are still in the Christmas season, believe it or not, and the indicated thing to talk about today is the doctrine toward which Christmas -- the birth of Christ points us.

The doctrine is called "Incarnation" -- and it is all tied up with turns of the year and birthdays and the passage of time. The doctrine of Incarnation tells us how God's presence continues on in the world day after day, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium.

The doctrine is deceptively simple. The New Testament teaches, and the Church believes and proclaims, that Jesus Christ has two parents: God, and a human woman who had never, as she put it herself, known a man. That makes Jesus both God and man, and so makes it possible for him to reconcile God to man and man to God.

"Incarnation" comes from the same Latin root from which we get such words as "carnal" and "carnivorous" and "carnival." The word means "meat." "In-carn-ation" means "coming into meat." What is coming into meat is God, who is pure spirit. God comes into the world in a new and decisive way through the birth of Jesus. He shows himself to us in the way we can most easily understand. He becomes one of us.

Now not to rush the season, but thirty years or so later Jesus goes away from earth -- back up to heaven. To be sure, he doesn't drop his body on the way up like a stage of an ascending rocket and become spirit again. But he does go away nonetheless, when the whole point of his coming was to make God present in the word in a very pointed and specific way.

The overall way God remained in the world after Jesus' Ascension is the Holy Ghost. When the Holy Ghost comes down at Pentecost, God is no longer localized, or limited to defined areas where he can operate. God is now available to everyone, everywhere.

But Jesus remains incarnate in the world most specifically through the sacrament of the Church. The Prayer Book tells us a sacrament is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Sacraments have two parts: the outward sign -- what you see -- and the inward grace or help what you get.

It isn't too hard to use that definition to show that Jesus is himself a very big sacrament. What you see is a human being. What you get is God. In the sacraments of the Church God gives us his grace -- his help -- his power -- through ordinary material things -- average, everyday stuff, if you will. He comes to us in water, and olive oil, and the hands of bishops who are all sinners, and unleavened bread and everyday wine.

Christianity is a religion which takes the material world with the utmost seriousness. We know God made the material world, and we know he calls it good. We know Jesus became material for us on Christmas. When, as St. John puts it, "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" the spiritual and the material were fused forever.

There can no longer be any idea that the spiritual and the material are opposites. In Christianity we know the spiritual through the material. He who has seen Jesus has seen the Father.

The Incarnation of Jesus -- a once-for-all-event -- extends into time through the Church. The Prayer Book tells us the Church is a sort of meta-sacrament. It defines the church as "that body of which Jesus Christ is the head, and all baptized people are the members." The church is Jesus' body. It is through his body the Church that he does his work in the world.

One becomes part of his incarnate body through baptism. As Jesus says himself, "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The incarnate body builds itself up and it finds out where it is headed through eating and drinking at the altar. Again, as Jesus says, "Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

We emphasize the sacraments in our version of the Christian religion because Jesus commands us to do so in the gospels, and because the sacramental emphasis ties us to the experience of the vast majority of Christians past and present, and finally because the sacraments mean it can be Christmas all year long. The sacraments extend Christ's Incarnation God's presence in the world -- into time -- time which wears on through birthdays and decades and millennia until, finally, his coming again.

John Betjeman, the late poet laureate of England, concludes his poem "Christmas" by saying that nothing "Can with this simple truth compare/That God was man in Palestine/And lives today in Bread and Wine."

And, a bit more familiarly, Charles Wesley writes, "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see/ Hail the incarnate Deity/ Pleased as man with man to dwell/' Jesus our Emmanuel/ Hark! the herald angels sing Glory to the newborn King!"

The Collect: Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 1:1-12

The Gospel: St. John 1: 1 - 14

January 6, 2000, Epiphany

Even though this evening's Gospel is better-known and a bit flashier, I am really quite partial to the Epistle. It comes from St. Paul's letter to Effuses, and it explains both the meaning of the Epiphany of Christ and what St. Paul's special connection to the Epiphany is.

Two delicious phrases in the King James Version stand out: first, "the unsearchable riches of Christ," and, second, "the fellowship of the mystery." The unsearchable riches of Christ -- the fellowship of the mystery.

I hope you have noticed that the wise men have arrived safely at the crèche this evening after their long journey from the windowsills. Even though the focus of their visit is upon the suggestive gifts they bring baby Jesus St. Paul wants us to focus upon the gifts Jesus brings us-his unsearchable riches.

It is not that we cannot search his riches,, it is that we can never search them out fully. We can never fully grasp them or appreciate them or understand them. The riches of Christ include the forgiveness of our sins, and reconciliation to God, and the promise of going to heaven to be with God forever. On Epiphany God offers the unsearchable riches of Christ to everyone.

The "fellowship of the mystery" has to do with, dare I say it, the inclusiveness of God. The Epiphany -- the manifestation -- the showing up tells us that in Jesus everybody can become one of God's chosen people. From Abraham to Jesus chosenness was limited to Jews. Now chosenness is for everyone -- both Jew and Gentile.

All the word "gentile" means in this context is "non-Jew." Jesus came to earth to make it possible for Gentiles to join the chosen people through baptism, and so become honorary Jews.

St. Paul says the mystery is indeed "that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel." So the fellowship of the mystery turns out to be the Church where membership is available to Jew and Gentile alike.

Jews were chosen first, Gentiles are chosen later. God gave St. Paul the task of preaching the mystery of proclaiming to the world that chosenness is for everyone.

After we Gentiles have learned what the mystery is, the questions that lies before us are, "Do we accept the mystery? Do we want to join the fellowship?" Jesus says, "Many are called, but few are chosen." Gentiles have to ask ourselves, "Do we choose to be chosen?" God has shown now that he has chosen us. Will we now choose him?

The Collect: O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This collect is to be said daily throughout the Octave.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3: 1 - 12

The Gospel: St. Matthew 2: 1 - 12

[The Archbishop's sermon for Epiphany I is not available just now. ed.]

January 16, 2000, Epiphany II

The gospel readings for the Epiphany season describe various ways Jesus showed himself to the world. These showings, or manifestations, are called epiphanies -- appearances. On Epiphany itself Jesus is manifested to Gentile wise men, showing that he is not only the Messiah of Israel, but also the saviour of everyone else. Last week he showed himself to us as a precocious pre-adolescent boy who comes to the temple to assert his connection to his heavenly father.

Today's epiphany comes at Jesus' baptism. He is manifested not only as the Messiah, but also as God's Son and the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The baptism reveals the two main things the church claims Jesus is the saviour the Old Testament promised and God become a man. Jesus submitted to a baptism -- literally a "getting wet"-- that was encouraged and administered by his cousin John the Baptist. John said that the long-awaited Messiah was about to appear, that people should prepare for his arrival by turning away from their sins, and that the. best way to show the intention to turn away from sin was to get dunked in the Jordan River. John baptized on the spot where Joshua had led the Israelites into the Promised land some thirteen centuries earlier.

Later on John said that the other reason he baptized was that God had told him that while he was baptizing he would find out exactly who the coming Messiah was.

John the Baptist tells his own disciples, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God."

What John says about Jesus' baptism can help us understand how it connects to the baptism we administer to people in the church. John says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Ghost. Jesus himself says that you cannot go to heaven unless you are born of water and the Spirit. At the end of St. Matthew's gospel, Jesus tells his disciples to go teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

We baptize people because Jesus tells us to. We use water, because he tells us to use water. We use the name of the Holy Trinity, because that is the formula he tells us to use. Simple.

Our baptism with water in the name of the Trinity is the baptism Jesus brings. It is not the water baptism John administered to Jesus and to the crowds at the Jordan. Our baptism is baptism with the Holy Ghost.

John's baptism did not change the people whom he baptized. It merely showed that they wanted to be cleaned up from their sins. The baptism of Jesus -- the baptism the church administers -- makes a fundamental change in the person being baptized.

First of all, he becomes a member of the body of Christ -- the church -- in the same way my arm is a member of my body. A baptized person is an organic part of the body through which Jesus does his work in the world.

In baptism we die the death we deserve -- the death that is the punishment for our sins -- our disobeying God. After we are baptized we live by the power of the Holy Ghost. We have eternal life from that point on, because we are living God's life, and God's life never ends.

Baptism is also an adoption ceremony, in which God takes each of us on as his own child and gives us the same status that his one natural child Jesus enjoys. Jesus tells us to use the name of the Trinity, because baptism makes us part of the Trinity. We are in the Son, so the Spirit -- the power which connects the Father and the Son -- flows through us.

People often ask if baptism guarantees salvation. If you are baptized, does that assure you of a ticket to heaven even if you make no further Christian effort in your whole life? Clearly the answer to that question is, "No." Baptism is necessary, but it is not all that is necessary.

First of all, we baptize babies in our church. We do that because it seems to be the New Testament practice, and because it was what everybody did until the sixteenth century, and it is what the vast majority of Christians continue to do now. Jesus and St. Paul both say, however, that to be saved you have to make an adult commitment -- you have to proclaim your loyalty to Christ in public as soon as you know what you are doing. That is something the Biblical sacrament of Confirmation accomplishes.

Salvation and going to heaven boil down to having a relationship with God through Christ -- a relationship like any other -- one in which you have to keep the connection alive on a regular basis. We keep our relationship to God going by confessing our sins week by week and claiming the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross; by talking things over with God in prayer and Bible study; and by getting our eternal life recharged by eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood as he commands.

Baptism is the first step on the path to heaven, but then you have to let the Holy Ghost who comes into you at baptism keep you on the path. That is why the Prayer Book's baptism service does not proclaim "This is it," but prays, instead, that this person may lead the rest of his life according to this beginning.

The Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth; Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12: 6 - 16

The Gospel: St. Mark 1: 1- 11

[The Archbishop's sermon for Epiphany III is not available just now. ed.]

January 30, 2000, Epiphany IV

Today's gospel/New Testament lesson tells us what Jesus did immediately after he preached the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount established him as the second Moses -- another man on a high place talking about the Law of God.

When, as St. Matthew says, "Jesus came down from the mountain," he performs two healing miracles as a follow-up. The first one is on a Jew and the second is on a Gentile. That gives us the Epiphany connection Jesus came to save and to heal both Gentiles and Jews.

The Sermon on the Mount attacks the teaching of the Jewish leaders of Jesus' time. Jesus says the rabbis' interpretation of the force of the law lets people off the hook too easily. It allows them to think that they have not broken a law if they think about it and talk about it, but don't actually do it.

That teaching got him into trouble, and it made people accuse him later on of wanting to overthrow the law and all of the customs Moses taught. So this morning when Jesus heals the man with leprosy, he is careful to tell the man to obey the law of Moses.

Jesus says to the healed man, "Shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift Moses commanded for a testimony into them." The Law said that only priests could certify that someone had been healed of leprosy, and the law prescribed a sacrifice as a thank offering for the healing. By telling the healed man to obey those points of the Law, Jesus was trying to show that he had not come to destroy the Old Testament law, but to fulfill it -- to bring it to completion and to its logical conclusion.

He performs his second healing on the servant of a Roman soldier. The soldier commands a hundred men, so he is called a centurion. He approaches Jesus and says, "I have a servant at home who is suffering from paralysis." Jesus says, "I'll come over and heal him."

That statement raises again the question of Jesus' loyalty to the Law. Visiting a gentile's house would make him ritually unclean. But Jesus makes the point quite clearly all through the gospels that it is more important to go ahead and heal even if it means breaking one of the finer points of the Law. God gave the Law to make things better, not to make things more difficult.

In any event, the centurion says, "Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof" -- you don't need to get yourself into trouble by coming to my house. I am confident that all you have to do is say the word right here and my servant will be healed.

The centurion goes on to say that he is a man under authority. He operates within a chain of command -- a military hierarchy. He has a hundred men who serve under him, and they do what he tells them to do.

His unstated further point is that he believes that Jesus has the same kind of power over disease that he has over his men. All Jesus needs to do is say the word and the servant's paralysis will disappear, just as all he needs to do is say the word and his soldiers will obey.

Jesus is amazed at the understanding the centurion displays. He marvels at him and says, "I have not seen this kind of faith in Israel. And let me tell you that people are going to come from all over the earth to get into the kingdom of heaven, but the ones who were invited to be there first are going to be tossed out into a dark void."

Then Jesus tells the centurion, "Go home. What you believed I could make happen will happen." And the centurion's servant was healed at that very moment.

So what do we make of all this? First and most obviously, the centurion is right -- Jesus does have authority over disease. Sickness and disease are consequences of sin -- the alienation between man and creation that comes from the alienation between man and God. Jesus has come to earth to repair every kind of brokenness and alienation. Jesus passes his healing power on to the church, and we use it.

Second, the byplay between Jesus and the centurion reminds us that we live in a hierarchical universe. We cannot allow our democratic political sentiments blind us to that fact. The rule of God is not a republic, not a democracy, not even an aristocracy. God rules a kingdom, and we are his subjects.

God's authority comes from his own being. It is not authority we have granted him or voted to give him that we might somehow take away or take back. The quicker we realize that God is in charge -- in charge in a good and loving and fatherly fashion to be sure -- but in charge nonetheless, the happier we shall be.

The story shows us further that Jesus healing power is for everyone Jew and Gentile alike. What he says about the centurion's having greater faith than anyone in Israel is explained later on by St. Paul's teaching in Romans. "Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in. And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, 'There shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.'"

Collect: O God, who knowest us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: grant to us such strength and protection, as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13: 1- 7

The Gospel: St. Matthew 8: 1- 13

February 6, 2000, Epiphany V

The epiphany in this morning's Gospel is Jesus' manifestation of himself as a teacher. Jesus was a teacher -- a rabbi. There can be no doubt about it. But some people like to suggest that Jesus was only a teacher. That appears to treat him with respect, but it really dismisses him.

Jesus' teaching does not demand our attention because it is wise and clever -- though it is indeed wise and clever. Jesus' teaching demands our attention because of who he is -- the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God. He is a teacher, yea, and more than a teacher.

Today he returns to his familiar technique of teaching in parables. His parables are stories that make one point or another about God and our relationship to him. But Jesus also says that the most important purpose of the parables is to separate the people who understand them from the people who do not -- those who get it about God from those who don't get it.

Today's parable describes how things are in this world -- and, by extension, how things are in the church. There are thirty-nine Articles of Religion in the back of the Prayer Book. It may be that my sermons are too short for you ever to have noticed them. They are more or less the Church of England's answers to the questions that the Reformation of the sixteenth century raised. For you heresy-hunters who read my sermons on the Internet I hasten to acknowledge that I know that the Articles don't have any official standing in our church -- but I like them anyway.

The twenty-sixth Article makes the reassuring point that if some particular clergyman is a moral re-probate or holds weird views about theology, those things in themselves don't make his sacramental ministrations invalid. If you go to a church that is officially apostolic and orthodox, you can be sure that the Holy Communion the priest gives you is real, even if he is a horse thief and a Unitarian.

In any event, Article 26 begins, "Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good," -- in the visible church evil is always mixed with good -- and that is precisely the point of today's parable. Jesus tells about a farmer who sows good seed in his field, but at night his enemy comes and sows weeds in the same field.

When the wheat and the weeds begin to come up together, the farmer recognizes that an enemy has done this to him. When his farm workers ask if they should root up the weeds, the farmer says, "No. You cannot be sure as you are yanking up weeds that you won't be yanking up some good wheat along with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest, and then the reapers will separate them out."

Later on Jesus explains this not-really-too-tough-to-understand story to his rather slack-jawed disciples. He sows the good seed, and the wheat that comes up are his people. The enemy is the devil, and the weeds he sows are the people who belong to him. At the final judgment the angels will separate the wheat people from the weed people. The wheat people will be in heaven, and the weed people will go to hell.

So there are some lessons in this parable beyond the most obvious one -- that there will be a Judgment at the end, and as a result some people will go to heaven and the rest will go to hell. First, Christians should never be surprised at the presence of evil in the world or in the church.

Once we got over our tremendous shock that other people can actually act out of their selfish interest (something we, of course, would never do) then we have to face the fact that we may not be as clever as we think we are about telling the difference between the good ones and the evil ones between the wheat and the weeds.

The kinds of weeds Jesus talks about here in fact look a good deal like wheat. The line dividing good and evil is often rather more blurry than clearly defined. We have to be very careful about the kind of self-righteous moral crusading that would suggest that we are absolutely sure who and what are thoroughly good and who and what are thoroughly evil. Jesus is giving us the helpful caution, "Don't worry about having to sort all this out yourselves. I have a plan for sorting it all out at the end."

In today's epistle, St. Paul suggests some ways in which we can become a bit more certain about our own place among the wheat. We need to realize that in the church we are all part of the same body. We are members of the same organism. To do right by another member of the body is to do right by ourselves, because we are connected.

The most important matter is forgiveness. Jesus forgives you, you should forgive others -- no grudge-holding -- work it out, don't let it fester. Charity is what holds everything together, and to have charity is to do whatever is best for the other person. Charity is not necessarily the same thing as being nice. Charity often takes the form of refusing to allow people to keep on with their own uncharitable and destructive behavior.

St. Paul says, "Let the peace of God rule in your hearts." Whenever you have to make a judgment call, try to resolve it in favor of what will most promote peace -- what will be most like what Jesus would do.

So "Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good,"… "yet do all in the name of the Lord Jesus," and "in the time of the harvest (he) will say to the reapers, 'Gather ye together the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

The Collect: O LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy Church and household continually in thy true religion; that they who do lean only upon the hope of thy heavenly grace may evermore be defended by thy mighty power; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The Epistle. Colossians 3: 12 - 17

The Gospel. St. Matthew 13: 24 - 30.

February 13, 2000, Epiphany VI

Easter is quite late this year, so the season of Epiphany has the maximum number of Sundays -- six. As we have been hearing of late, the overall theme of the season has to do with manifestations -- showings up. Jesus was born privately, in almost complete obscurity, but he began to show himself to the wider world when the gentile wise men visited him.

The New Testament gospels go on to describe various ways in which he showed himself to the world later on. The point is that if we can see how Jesus manifested himself during his earthly life, we can learn to be alert to the ways he manifests himself to us now -- as teacher, as healer, and as miracle worker.

The words of the hymn we just sang were written specifically for today, the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. If you look at the bottom of the page where hymn #53 is, you will see the name "Christopher Wordsworth." Christopher Wordsworth was the Church of England's Bishop of Lincoln in the mid-nineteenth century. He was also a noted Greek scholar and, quite obviously, a poet, as was his more famous uncle William Wordsworth.

Hymn #53 mentions almost all of the gospel readings the Prayer Book appoints for the Epiphany season -- the Church of England in those days had the same Sunday readings we have. Its refrain is "Anthems be to thee addrest, God in man made manifest." That is yet another restatement of the Epiphany message-Jesus Christ is God who shows himself to the world as a human being, and we praise him for that.

Bishop Wordsworth's hymn talks about the stories we have been thinking about for the past several weeks: the visit of three wise men, the baptism of Christ, the wedding at Cana, and the healing of the centurion's servant. Most regrettably, our version of the hymn leaves out a stanza which came in between what we have as the third and fourth ones, The missing stanza comments specifically on what Jesus has to say about the end of the world in today's gospel.

It reads, "Sun and Moon shall darkened be/ Stars shall fall, the heavens shall flee/ Christ will then like lightning shine/ All will see his glorious sign/ All will then the trumpet hear/ All will see the Judge appear/ Thou by all will be confessed/ God in man made manifest."

The gospel is taken from a speech Jesus makes during the last week of his earthly life. He delivers it from the Mount of Olives which overlooks Jerusalem. The Old Testament prophet Zechariah says that at the end of the world the Messiah will stand on the Mount of Olives, so it is the appropriate place for Christ to talk about what is going to happen at the end.

We read a rather similar passage from a parallel section of St. Luke's gospel on the Second Sunday in Advent, which is a season devoted more specifically to the end of the world. Today Jesus tells us that if someone comes along and says he has some secret information about the end of the world and his return to earth, we're not supposed to pay any attention.

He says when such people come along, we must not believe them even if they can perform all sorts of impressive miracles. The reason for that is very simple. When Jesus comes back, everybody is going to know about it. Nobody is going to have to come and whisper about it into your ear.

Jesus says his coming will be as obvious as lightning in the sky. Just as you know where a carcass is when you see buzzards, so will we know his coming by signs -- natural disasters and disruptions in the sky. Then we will see Jesus coming down out of the sky surrounded by clouds. And finally he will send his angels out to gather up all of us whom he is going to take back to heaven.

Bishop Wordsworth calls the end of the world Jesus' "great epiphany" -- his big manifestation. The last verse of the hymn tells us how we should prepare for it. We shouldn't be surprised that it tells us to read our Bibles, saying, "Grant us grace to see thee, Lord/ Mirrored in thy holy Word." When we meet Jesus in the Bible, we should try to act the way he does. Bishop Wordsworth goes on, "May we imitate thee now/ And be pure, as pure art thou."

And why should we try to find out who Jesus is, and try to be like him? It is so he will recognize that we belong to him when he comes back. The next line is, "That we like to thee may be/ At thy great epiphany." There Bishop Wordsworth borrows from today's epistle where St. John also talks about the end, saying: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

The point is that all of Jesus' manifestations -- in the Bible, throughout human history, and in our own lives -- they are all meant to prepare us for the big epiphany -- his final manifestation at the end of the world. If we read our Bibles and come to church and pay attention to what is going on around us, we shall be his when he comes again. Then (we) "may praise (him), ever blest/ God in man made manifest."

The Collect: O GOD, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of eternal life; Grant us, we beseech thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves, even as he is pure; that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth ever, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: I St. John 3: 1 - 8.

The Gospel St. Matthew 24: 23 - 31.