Epiphany 1C Holy Spirit and fire

Today’s gospel offers us three things to think about: John’s baptism, Jesus’ baptism, and out baptism in Jesus, a baptism “with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  First John’s baptism:  Every Jewish community has a ceremonial bath,  a mikvah, a pool just big enough for an adult to crouch and immerse the body. Going to the mikvah is a sign of commitment to obey the Law of God.  Orthodox women go to the mikvah after the blood shed in the menstrual period;   Orthodox men go after shedding blood and after a wet dream. Gentiles converting to Judaism go to the mikva as a sign of their commitment to obey the Law of God . John’s baptism was a sign of recommitment to obey the Law of God rightly understood as ethical and moral as well as ceremonial and liturgical law.  The people baptized by John were symbolically saying, “we have disobeyed God’s law; we have made ourselves like Gentiles; we repent and we come to God again as though we were Gentile converts.” 

Jesus’ baptism is also a sign of his commitment to obey the Law of God.  Jesus’ baptism begins his public ministry, his life of public teaching and witness to God. The gospel says that after his baptism he was praying. We can imagine him in communion with the Father, seeking and receiving direction for his public ministry. St. Luke tells us of the Father’s affirmation, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

We who are in Christ hear the same word, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In this sin-filled world we don’t often feel God’s pleasure. We all know how far we have fallen short of God’s perfect will for our lives. We are all repentant and forgiven sinners, made right with God by the saving death of Jesus on the cross, made new in his resurrection. By faith we receive what Jesus offers us, new life in him, new opportunities to love and serve, new opportunities to hear again, “You are my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

John said, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Jesus has indeed “ baptized us with the Holy Spirit and fire.” In our baptism we have been made new people. Our sins have been washed away, and when we sin again, when we repent that effect of baptism is renewed. All our sins are again forgiven, both the sins we remember and repent of, and also the sins we have forgotten and the sins we are unaware of, all our sins are forgiven by Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in addition to our reconciliation with God, in addition to our justification, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of truth and power. In St. John’s Gospel we are told that “you shall know the truth” and the truth will set us free.  In Romans 8:11 St. Paul tells us that by the power of the Holy Spirit, we receive new life in the resurrection of Jesus. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

How do we understand “baptism in fire?”  Fire is conversion of matter into energy. By fire the wax (or in our case the oil) of candles is converted by flame into gas – water vapor and carbon dioxide. The conversion produces both heat and light.  Evidence of controlled fire is dated about the same time as the earliest evidence of human beings. Making fire requires tools; fire allows for cooking, and control of fire requires social organization, someone to gather the wood and someone else to tend the fire and “keep the home fires burning.”  It requires a home place to keep the fire. No more wandering around gathering berries or hunting small animals to eat raw. With fire people can gather together to cook and eat stew, and make pots to cook it in and spoons to eat it with. Fire is transformative in human society.

The truth, the power, the fire of the Spirit brings us together today.  Fire has been associated with worship from the earliest times.  At least 50 countries maintain eternal flames as memorials – from Arlington at President Kennedy’s grave to Ground Zero the World Trade Center, at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, in Jerusalem at Yad Va Shem to remember the Holocaust – and so on. In ancient Rome the Vestal Virgins maintained a flame for 1000 years. Leviticus 6:13 commands an eternal fire at the altar of offering.  In some churches a candle burns before the tabernacle as a sign of the presence of the reserved sacrament, of the bread and wine which are the continued expression of Christ’s continued presence in, with, and under the elements of Holy Communion.  The baptism of fire burns within each of us. The light of Christ burns in our hearts to enlighten us to salvation, to show forth Christ’s glory until he comes again.

                 
Fire is the conversion of solid wood and wax and oil into a new form, into oxygen and carbon dioxide and into energy.  Christ converts us into his eternal presence in the world.  We are day by day being used up. Day by day we convert food into energy and waste. May the fire of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and power, the Spirit of the Living Christ, daily convert us into his faithful servants, empowered to do God’s will in the world Jesus has redeemed.   Lord, we thank you for our baptism, for the baptism of water that washes away all sin, and for the converting baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire. Amen.  

November 11m 2018 100 Years

Proper 27B November 11, 2018

Today is the 100^th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War One. Today I want to talk about that event and about the gospel. WWI was called “the war to end all wars,” by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was born December 1856 in Stauton, VA, to a Presbyterian minister in a slaveholding family. Woodrow Wilson went to Davidson, Princeton, University of VA law, and Johns Hopkins. In 1910 while President of Princeton he was elected Governor of New Jersey. In 1912 Republicans split between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson was elected President. He was re-elected in 1916 on a slogan, “he kept us out of war.” But German submarines sank neutral American ships in late 1916, and in early April, 1917 Wilson asked Congress to join Britain and France in the war. American troops fought in France from June, 1917.  

The British naval blockade led to severe food shortages in the German cities, and though the 1917 Russian revolutions took Russia out of the war Germany began to lose. In mid-August 1917 Pope Benedict XV offered a peace proposal, basically to return to the positions held before the war, but the proposal was rejected by Wilson and by the French. In early November 1918 the German and Austrian imperial political systems collapsed. The November 11 Armistice was a German surrender.

The terms of the Armistice and of the 1919 Versailles treaty were harsh and punitive. The blockade and famine continued for 10 months. Germany was assessed heavy reparations to France and Belgium. One consequence of the armistice and treaty was German anger. That anger and the great depression led to the rise of the Nazi party and Hitler.  After the Second World War US aid under the Marshall Plan 1948-52 helped European recovery and led eventually to a common market.

We can draw a few lessons from WW I. One lesson is that war is unpredictable, and the more people are involved in the war the harder it is to end the war.  For much of the 19^th century modern European powers had won colonial wars against poorly armed locals. In Europe the 1815 Council of Vienna balance of power was upset by the unsuccessful revolts of 1848, by the inconclusive Crimean War of 1853-56 of France and Britain against Russia, by the 1863 border conflict between Denmark and Prussia, by the 7 weeks Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the 7 months Franco-Prussian war of 1870.  The American Civil War showed the bloody effects of a 4 year war that mobilized a whole people, but the European powers concluded that with modern technology wars could be won in a short time. They were wrong.

World War One came to involve whole nations, and it was nasty, brutish, and long. Even on the morning of November 11, with the armistice set for 11 a.m. conflict continued. Henry Gunther, of 3811 Eastern Avenue, Baltimore, was the last American to die. Henry was 23 years old, a Roman Catholic, a bank clerk. Drafted in September 1917 he advanced to supply sergeant, then was busted to private when a censor read his letter home complaining about miserable conditions at the front. The Baltimore Sun newspaper reported that “Gunther brooded a great deal over his recent reduction in rank, and became obsessed with a determination to make good before his officers and fellow soldiers.”  Just before 11 a.m. on November 11 Gunther’s unit came on two German machine guns at a road block.  Against the orders of his sergeant Gunther charged with his bayonet. The German soldiers, already aware of the Armistice that would take effect in one minute, tried to wave Gunther away. He kept going and fired "a shot or two".  When he got too close to the machine guns, he was shot in a short burst of automatic fire and killed instantly.  The army restored his rank and awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross. A Veterans of Foreign Wars post in east Baltimore was named for him. It has ceased to exist.

George Edwin Ellison, a Leeds a coal miner, father of a 5 year old son, was the last British Army soldier killed – at 9:30 a.m.  George Lawrence Price, of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan was the last Canadian Army soldier killed – at 10:58. Augustin Trebuchon had served in the French Army from the beginning of the war. He was killed at 10:45 a.m. The name of the last German soldier to die is not known.   

It is hard to call back the dogs of war.  And as war, so with anger.  It is easy to yield to the temptation to anger, and very hard to let that emotion go. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, 48 years before, the French had lost Alsace-Lorraine. Marshall Foch refused the German request for an immediate cease fire. So 11,000 men died on the morning of November 11.

A second lesson from this day 100 years ago is that Jesus calls to forgive, to make peace quickly with our adversaries. He taught us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  The modern version translates as “sin.” “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

 I spoke of the harshness of the Armistice and the Treaty. Jesus tells us in St. Matthew 5:43-45, and also in St. Luke 6, “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

About 18 million people died in World War I, 6 million Allied military, 4 million German and Austrian military, 8 million civilians , about 6 million of them from famine and disease including the 1918 flu epidemic. All WWI veterans are dead. The last, at 110, was Frank Buckles of Los Angeles, on February 27, 2011. The memory of all these who died lives on.

 “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors, and their deeds follow them. (Revelation 14:13)

Pentrcost 18B A Little Child

Proper 20B  Pentecost 18 September 23, 2018

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, a Norwegian zoologist and psychologist, lived 82 years, from 1894 to 1976. In his 1921 Ph.D. dissertation he described the pecking order of hens, called the dominance hierarchy. The birds had an order in which individuals were allowed to get to the food trough, enforced by pecking each other. For 17 years, from age 10, Thorleif had kept and watched chickens. Since then similar dominance hierarchies have been observed in many other species.

When I was 10 I got interested in a Pacific sea bird, the blue footed booby, and finally got to see one in the Galapagos. The blue footed booby lays two eggs 4 days apart. The older chick frequently picks on the younger.  I’m an only child, but we have two children and our daughter has two daughters. I’ve learned from observation about sibling rivalry.

Dominance hierarchies and sibling rivalry come from competition for what are perceived as scarce resources. There is only so much food, so much parental attention, so much time to give. That is true in this life, but God is eternal and infinite. God created everything that is, and God has provided enough for everyone to have a fair share.  

So dominance hierarchy, pecking order, sibling rivalry, are all part of the sinful order of the natural world. As St. Paul wrote In Romans 8, “22 we know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as God’s children, the redemption of our bodies.”

 In today’s epistle St. James says, “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

Christian faith trusts in God’s grace to provide. God is eternal and infinite. God created everything that is, and God created enough for everyone to have a fair share.  Christian life is radically egalitarian. We are all beloved children of God. The God who made us all loves us all equally. We are all sinners, saved by grace. Sin is sin, an offense against God’s will for the world God has created.

In today’s gospel Jesus takes a little child and tells the disciples, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” It took a long time before Christians began to act in the world according to Jesus’ word, but in the past century we have begun to end child labor - at least in the western world.

Children are now regarded as gifts of God, not as small laborers, or as extensions of their parents.  We are now more able to see children as gifts and we are more able to recognize ourselves as God’s children, as God’s gift to the world, and so we are more able to see the gift of Jesus, God’s gift to all humankind, given for our salvation.

We can recognize in the simple trust of a child the trusting relationship God seeks with us. Babies have a grab reflex. Put your finger in a baby’s open hand and he will grab for it. The baby doesn’t know what it is; it could be harmful, and over the years we have all grabbed on to things that have in fact harmed us. We have to learn to evaluate what comes to hand, take the good and leave the rest.

But God is good, and God’s will for us is good, and God gives us many good gifts of life, and health, and ability, and wisdom. He calls us to serve him, using his gifts to his glory.

We serve with the cross as our model and example. In the last days of the Davidic kingdom of Judah Jeremiah warned about those who devised schemes to destroy and make people forget God’s care for his people. The rulers of Jesus’ people fulfilled Jeremiah’s prophecy. They sought to destroy Jesus, , saying, "Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!"  

The wicked will always to destroy the goodness and love of Jesus. But they failed, and they will always fail,  because God raised Jesus from the dead and in his new life gave all who will believe in him new life – new life every morning, new life from the grave, new life in child-like trust and joy. 

          All God’s children are God’s gifts in the world Jesus Christ has redeemed. Let us live seeking greatness in God through service to him and to all the other children of God has given us to love.

Remembering

Remembering  9-9-18 

 

Jesus took bread and wine, gave them to his friends, and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” So this morning we receive bread and wine, remembering Jesus and giving thanks for his current presence in our lives and his spiritual nourishment in the new life we share with him.

The church where St. Mark wrote his gospel began with a small group of Jewish men and women. Over time others came to join, strangers, people who did not grow up in the Jewish community. And then the larger Jewish community divided,  leaving the Jews who knew the new life in Jesus separated from their family members who could not accept Jesus’ death and resurrection.

 

The new church community knew Jesus’ healing. They knew the spiritual freedom from forgiven sins. They knew the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit. They knew the spiritual food of Christ’s spiritual body received by faith in, with, and under the forms of bread and wine.

 But they missed their friends, and these new people were different. Their food was different; they brought non-kosher food to the parish suppers. They ate barbeque.  In a time of public baths, all could see the new Christian men were not circumcised. It was not easy to establish fellowship of Jews and Gentiles in the church community. Christian fellowship is not easy, but God can do it when we want him to. 

But Mark’s gospel told how Jesus had gone to Gentile territory and told how Jesus healed Gentiles.  Mark’s gospel told about the woman from the Lebanon coast whose daughter Jesus had healed of the demon and about healing the deaf man in the Greek speaking city on the far side of the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus had moved around. He spoke in synagogues. He spoke to groups of people wherever they were. Sometimes he needed time by himself, away from people, some quiet time with the Father.  Jesus went for quiet time to the mountains and went for quiet time at the beach.

Jesus had become a public figure. He was known. He was known as a teacher, and he was particularly known as a healer. People were amazed at his power over the demons. We don’t talk about demons.  We sing the third verse of “A Mighty Fortress” about this world with devils filled, but that language is 500 years old. We don’t use it.  We talk about mental illness. We name as epilepsy the convulsions the ancient world associated with demonic possession. We prescribe phenobarbital.   Many of us know something from our own experience and from raising adolescent children about obsessive thinking and compulsive behavior. For most of us supportive families and friends help us develop systems and strategies to keep our thinking and behavior within moderate and socially acceptable limits. But all of us who serve or have served as parents know something of the anxiety that our children’s obsessions can cause – whether it is rock music, sports, cars, boys, girls – single-minded enthusiasm can be hard to take. The woman who came to disturb Jesus’ time of rest and reflection was suffering from an extreme and debilitating ca1se of a not-uncommon experience.

And Jesus listens to her. “Almighty God from whom no secrets are hid.” The God who made us knows us, and loves us, and hears us when we pray, even when we can’t articulate our need. He helps by his indwelling spirit of truth to know what we need and want, and he helps us by his indwelling spirit of power to ask for what we need.

Jesus’ first response looks like rejection. I think it is testing. God does test us in prayer. He wants us to be clear in our minds, wills, and spirits about what we need, do we can recognize God’s answer when he gives it.  Jesus‘ dialogue about the dogs may have been heard by the early church as a reminder that Jesus’ ministry was to first to the Jews, to the people God had preparing through their history to receive his Messiah. The church is reminded that Jesus is a Jew, that the apostles were Jews, that the early church began as part of the Jewish community. We honor the Jews, and we thank God for offering salvation in Jesus Christ to all people, Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, men and women, native born and immigrants. The Gentile woman’s response shows she is ready to receive her daughter’s healing, and Jesus cast out the demon. He casts out our demons when we ask him to.

The deaf man miles away in the Decapolis needed more than the word the woman heard. Jesus took him aside and communicated to him what was going to happen. He opened his mouth and felt Jesus’ finger and heard Jesus’ word, “Be opened.”

We come to the rail and open our hands, remembering Jesus at the Last Supper, remembering with thanksgiving those who brought us here to receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation, our spiritual nourishment, as we are set free from the burden of sin to live the new life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.   

 

Feedin 5000

Feeding 5000

Our gospel readings in the next 4 weeks are from St. John chapter 6. They tell of the feeding of the 5000 and the meaning of that miracle. The feeding is reported in all 4 gospels. All say the day was ending, all have 5 loaves and two fish, all have the people sit down on the grass to be fed, all were satisfied, and 12 baskets of broken pieces were collected.  St. John adds that it was near the Passover, but the grass indicates it was spring time. I’ve been in that area in the summer, and things are dry and brown.

St. Mark 8 and St. Matthew 12 also tell of another later feeding of 4000 with 7 loaves. Jesus’ feeding large crowds with limited resources was an important part of the church’s memory of Jesus’ ministry. That memory, and Jesus’ explicit command to feed the hungry and heal the sick has inspired many soup kitchens and hospitals, including our own weekly food collection for hungry people of Avery County.

Martin Luther’s sermon on this text includes a medieval allegory. The grass is the Jewish people, from Isaiah 40, “all flesh is grass.” From the Jewish people the Word of God came forth, for salvation is of the Jews. The five loaves signify the Word of God as we receive it by the five senses. The loaves are in the basket as the word of God is contained in the Holy scriptures. That as Jesus took them in his hands to bless and increase them signifies that by Christ’s word and deeds, not by our own deeds or reason, are the Scriptures explained, rightly understood and preached. The two fish are the example and witness of the patriarchs and prophets shared with the people of God. The 12 baskets of fragments are the writings of the 12 apostles, the fulfilment of the writings of the Old Testament.

Allegorical interpretation has fallen out of favor. We prefer a more naturalistic interpretation. A popular comment on the feeding is that when Jesus called the people to sit down in groups he formed immediate communities in which those who had come prepared with some food shared with those who had not. So Jesus teaches us to share, to help people in need. That is true, and we see examples of it frequently. I remember the pictures of the Houston flood and people being rescued by volunteers in fishing boats. We contribute to needs, and as I do so I hope others will be there for me in my time of need.

But there is more to the story of the feeding than simply human sharing. Another account of feeding many with limited resources is in today’s reading from the Elisha miracle stories in 2Kings. Baal-shalishah means Lord of the three, and is identified as an Arab village in the West Bank where three dry valleys come together. On the surrounding hills are new Jewish settlements. God continues to provide – in this case five-fold – 20 loaves for 100 people. 

St. John’s report of the feeding of the 5000 makes the connection to Passover. Passover was God’s powerful action to set the people free from slavery in Egypt,  followed by God’s continuing to feed the liberated people of Israel with manna in the desert.

 God fed the people physically with manna and God continues to feed us spiritually in Holy Communion. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast.”

At the Last Supper the disciples surely remembered the miraculous feeding. We’re not told what words Jesus used to ask God’s blessing on the 5 loaves, but at the Last Supper we are told that he said, “This is my body which is broken for you,” and “This is my blood of the new covenant.” Jesus added, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And we have been doing this – taking bread and wine, asking God’s blessing on them, breaking the bread and sharing the cup – ever since.

The 5000 sat down on the grass.  We come together in churches. They were mentally and spiritually fed by Jesus’ words and physically and spiritually fed by the bread he had blessed. We are mentally and spiritually fed by Jesus’s words, and we are physically and spiritually fed by the bread on which we ask his blessing.  

Martin Luther ended his sermon on the feeding of the 5000 with words that continue to be as true today as they were 500 years ago. “We feed on Christ, for “he alone makes satisfaction, delivers from sin and death, gives peace and fullness of joy, and does it all of his own free will, that we may know that the Gospel is devised and bestowed, not through our own merit, but out of pure grace.”  Amen.

Evil spirits

Pentecost 7 Proper 9 Evil spirits

          .Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. That authority over unclean spirits Jesus gave to the 12 continues today in the church and in all Christian people today.  By his death and resurrection Jesus finally defeated the power of evil and at Pentecost he gave the church the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and power. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism, that gift of the Holy Spirit offers us both knowledge of God’s truth to be able to discern the unclean spirits, and also God’s gift of spiritual power to defeat them.

We rejoice that by his death and resurrection Jesus has won the final victory. In the last day when he comes to judge Jesus’ victory will be evident to all creation. Until that day we have the victory, and we have opportunity to witness to Christ’s victory in our lives and in our relationships.

The evil spirits continue to tempt us.  We frequently hear stories of people being led astray. Some of the evil spirits are the spirits of rage and racism. The Washington Post recently reported about two 15 year old boys invited to swim at a neighborhood pool in Dorchester County, South Carolina. As they approached the pool a woman jumped out of the water, shoved one of the boys in the chest and yelled at him, “Get out! Get out! Get out! Now!” and threatened to call 911. The paper says one of the boys managed to record the woman and the encounter. He showed his parents the video and they called the sheriff’s office. The police report calls “it an “unprovoked assault” and says that the woman  “is clearly the aggressor in the assault even going as far as to continue to assault the victim as he was walking away from her.”  When officers showed up at her home, she attacked them and bit one’s arm, breaking the skin. She was arrested and released on $65,000 bail. The woman was white; the boys were not.

We all remember segregation and times before cell phone videos, times when parents would not have called, and the sheriff would not have responded and certainly would not have made an arrest. As a society we’ve made progress, but we still have a ways to go. Unclean spirits of rage and racism continue with us. But Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.  In our baptisms we receive from Jesus the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and power. The Holy Spirit gives us knowledge of God’s truth to be able to discern the unclean spirits, and the spiritual power to defeat them. We rejoice that Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection have won the final victory.

A few years after the Council of Nicea (325 AD) an Egyptian hermit (Evagrius Ponticus) organized an understanding of 7 general categories of evil spirits. We can remember them by a mnemonic device – WASPLEG. WASPLEG. Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony. He also organized 7 alternative Christian virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit as spiritual antidotes to the temptations of these evil spirits.

The virtue that turns away Wrath is Patience. Avarice Charity. Sloth Dilligence, Pride Humility, Lust Chastity, Envy Gratitude, Gluttony Temperance.  CDHCGT not as easy to remember.

Different spirits tempt different people at different times in our lives. Lust bothered me more as an adolescent than it has since I married. Age and gratitude have tempered envy. Pride continues to tempt. It takes a real act of faith to live out the truth that the God who made me loves me. He wants what is best for me. So I do much better when I seek to know and do his will for me.

So remember we have the victory over the evil spirits who tempt us. We have the tools of spiritual victory. So let us use them.

When we are tempted to irrational anger, to Wrath, let us seek to exercise patience. The woman in the South Carolina pool did not have to come out of the water and yell at the boy. She certainly did not have to bite the police officer. She could have avoided arrest, bail, and publicity by exercising patience.

When tempted to Greed, let us remember our corresponding need to give to those in need. When tempted to let someone else do what needs to be done so we can complain let us pray for the gift of truth to see what we can and should do.  All of us are continually tempted by the evil spirit of pride. We can pray for a right understanding of ourselves as God’s loved children, guided to seek to know and do only his will.  When tempted by lust, let us remember God’s love poured out on us and share his love in right relationships. When tempted by envy, let us give God thanks for his many blessings in our lives. And when tempted by gluttony, push back, seek temperance.  

.Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. That authority is ours. Praise God for Christ’s victory