Which 'Traditions'?
Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · December 4, 2022 · New Traditions series
Marc Jolicoeur looks at Jesus' own life in Luke 2 and His words in Matthew 23 to show that tradition is meant to lead us into relationship with God. He encourages regular worship gatherings and reading Scripture together, whether or not we feel anything.
More from Marc Jolicoeur · The New Traditions series
Topics: Faith, Discipleship, Worship
Transcript
[0:00] Spiritual but not religious. Spiritual but not religious. Have you guys heard of this before? You know, I'm talking about, this is a growing demographic of people according to census data. It's growing not just in Canada, but in the US and really across the world in many areas, and it's not like there's a question in the census that says, "Are you spiritual but not religious?" But there's usually two questions that get asked: Are you, do you consider yourself spiritual? And then, do you consider yourself to be religious? When you answer those, then they kind of collate it together, and there's a really, a big and growing number of people who consider themselves, by that estimation, to be spiritual but not religious. And what's interesting is a good chunk of those people actually attend churches.
[0:49] Sometimes even regularly. So then the question you have to ask yourself, at least the question that I ask myself, is, what is religion? It's a good question. So when, if you ask somebody that point-blank most often, they're probably going to say something like, well, religion is a system of belief about God or about divine things. If you ask somebody else to push a little further, they might say, well, it's not just a system of beliefs, but it's a pattern of behavior as well. However, if I ask someone, hey, do you brush your teeth religiously? They could honestly answer that question whether or not they pray or, you know, do the sign of the cross while they're brushing. And the reason for that is because in English at least, and probably in French and some other languages, we know that the word religion kind of has a broader range of meanings. It's not only things to do with the divine but things that we take seriously. So some of you watch hockey or football or soccer religiously, or something we do habitually. So some of you might eat peanut butter toast religiously. I'm not sure you could say then that religion and tradition, have a pretty large overlap in meaning.
[2:10] Now from this very platform you have heard it said before, and likely will hear it said again, that we are not a church that is about religion, but we are all about relationship, not about religion. All about relationship. What do we mean when we say that? I mean, surely by any of the definitions that I gave earlier, we have to be in some way, if not defined by, at least affiliated with religion, right? So what we mean when we say that we're not about religion but all about relationship is that what we do when we come together, the traditions that are associated with the religion are not the reason that we gather, not the reason we do the things we do, not the reason we say the things we say, spend the dollars we spend, sacrifice the time that we do. But the reason for our religion is relationship, right?
[3:09] Redefined relationships with one another and a renewed relationship with the one true God of the universe. Now, in my view, I would say that we're pretty much all religious people because in one way or another we are all traditional people. Different traditions, mind you, but traditions nonetheless. So I'm not really sure that you can say that there are people who are, you know, spiritual but not religious, but I'm dead certain that there are people who are religious without being spiritual. For those of us who consider ourselves to be Christians in this church tradition, the word tradition kind of has a bit of a bad rap for a lot of us, and I think one of the major reasons is that we think Jesus Himself was pretty much against religion. We had this picture of Him being this kind of counter-cultural revolutionary whose whole time was spent burning down the traditions of His day.
[4:09] My question, I suppose, would be, why is that the vision that we have of Jesus? Is that a New Testament vision? We're in the second week of Advent, right? So we're in the hopeful anticipation of the coming King. Many of you will know the Gospel account of Luke, the second chapter. It's where we get a lot of our Christmas traditions from. So Jesus is born to Mary and Joseph in a stable somewhere. Actually, a census is involved here too. There's angels. They tell some nearby shepherds to go and see the angels. See, their minds are blown, they run away, and then, listen, this is the very next verse in Luke 2, starting at 21: At the end of eight days, when He was circumcised, He was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.
[5:03] Now when the time came for the purification according to the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord. I'm going to skip down just a little, and to offer a sacrifice according to what is specified in the Law of the Lord. So He was circumcised according to tradition. His family followed traditional purity laws, and they partook in the traditional sacrificial system. So, I don't know, you could say pretty traditional family, right? So now this is a bit of a, you know, theological pretzel that I'm going to stay here. But go with me, we could theoretically say that the infant Jesus didn't really have much say in what His parents were doing, right? That's a fair point. But if we move along here just a few more verses ahead in the same chapter, starting at 41: Now Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem every year for the Feast of Passover. When He was 12 years old, they went up according to custom. But when the feast was over, as they were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.
[6:15] Skipping ahead a little bit because negligent parents, it sounds scary. They began to look for Him among their relatives and acquaintances, and when they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for Him. After three days, they found Him. Where? In the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. So here we see that even when Jesus was shown to be making His own choices, those choices seem to lead Him to traditional places of where you might expect to find God, namely in the temple. Now listen, we couldn't even possibly begin to take the time necessary to do an itemized list of the times that we see traditional behavior from Jesus in the New Testament, when He was teaching in synagogues, when He was visiting the temple, when He was celebrating Jewish festivals, notably Hanukkah actually, but it's really all over the Gospel stories. It certainly seems like this Jesus pretty on board with tradition.
[7:15] Then I ask you, if so many of the things that Jesus did and said could give us the impression that He was a relatively traditional person, how on earth have we come to characterize Him otherwise? Well, funny enough, from some of the things that Jesus did and said, right? He, yes, He did speak in synagogues and in the temple, but He also did so on mountainsides and on boats. Yes, it does seem as though He participated in the ritual worship practice of His day, but then He would also, like, touch lepers and dead bodies unnecessarily. He was kind of mixing it up. And here's probably ground zero, though, is how He seemed to engage with the quote-unquote experts in the law of his day, the so-called scribes and the Pharisees, like, all throughout the Gospels. He is just like roasting these guys in debates. Like, it's not, it's no contest, according to the Gospels. But ground zero for this is probably Matthew chapter 23.
[8:16] If you see this kind of sub-headed in your Bible, it might be called the Seven Woes, and whoa, does He let him have it? Here's chapter 23, verse 15: "Woe to you experts in the law and you Pharisees, you hypocrites! You cross land and sea to make one convert, and when you get one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as you yourselves." I mean, hey, so typically the reason that we kind of, we make the story about these Pharisees, we think of them as legalists, and what we mean by that is, if we kind of amplify the point, is we said earlier that we're not about religion here. We're all about relationship. But we say, well, they were all about religion. So, like, we caricature them and say they were all about tradition. Now that may or may not be true. It's kind of complicated, but the thing that seems a little bit clearer is that it's not that Jesus is calling them out for what they taught, but more so for what they did. The opening verses of the 23rd chapter of Matthew say that Jesus said, "The experts in the law and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat.
[9:31] Therefore pay attention to what they tell you and do it. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they teach." Or, for contrast, here's another one of those so-called woes in verse 23: "Woe to you experts in the law and you Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of mint, dill and cumin, yet you neglect what is more important in the law: justice, mercy and faithfulness." But wait, for it: "You should have done these things without neglecting the others." You see this tension, this tension of a Bible that seems to give us a whole bunch of traditions and then itself seems to critique these traditions. I want to say, well, maybe it's just a New Testament versus an Old Testament thing, right? It's the new versus the not so new anymore. Well, there's actually all kinds of this tension showing up in the Old Testament itself. Let's take a look at just a few verses. Here's one from Jeremiah chapter 7: "For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices.
[10:44] But this command I gave them: Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people, and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you." Or what about this very, very well-known Psalm, Psalm 51, usually attributed to David: "For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise. By Your favor do good, desire, build the walls of Jerusalem. Then You will delight in righteous sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offering; then young bulls will be offered on Your altar." See, both in the prophetic books and in Israel's own songs of worship, we clearly see that tradition is not the be- all and end-all, but it doesn't really seem as though it's frowned upon either.
[11:47] It seems like, even from the very beginning of the Bible, the point of tradition was always to help us get towards relationship, a relationship between His people and Himself. Now, part of trying to have a complex conversation like this sometimes involves saying clearly what you are not saying. Let me take one such statement right now. I am not saying that non-Jewish believers in Jesus need to convert to Judaism and practice the Jewish law. I am not saying. I can hear somebody's back going, "I think Marc wants to start eating kosher." No. No, I had bacon yesterday. I did. And I'm free. I'm free in Christ. I believe the New Testament is clear in this teaching. And so that's not what this message is about. But just in case anybody was reading me wrong, I did want to make sure that was there.
[12:35] Hopefully, whether or not you're convinced, you can stick with me, and you can accept the claim momentarily that the biblical perspective on tradition is not necessarily bad. The Bible doesn't seem to elevate tradition, but it also doesn't seem to, what's the other, what's the opposite of elevate? Make it bad, doesn't make it bad. In our culture, though, it's not always the argument that you get that tradition is bad. All those, a fair amount of people who are saying that, but what we're actually having is a whole bunch of people saying the tradition is meaningless, that it's effectiveless, that it doesn't do anything. I think we see lots of different examples. We don't need to look too far, but let me just pick on marriage really quickly. I think marriage is seeing a very interesting time in our culture. A lot of people are really interested in marriage, but a whole lot of people aren't. People who really love one another, but they're saying, you've heard it said, I'm sure you have, it's just a ceremony.
[13:33] Marriage is just a dead ritual. It's a dead institution. Or this is a very popular one: I don't need a piece of paper, honey, to show you how I love you. So there's this interesting kind of tension that we're living in, and yet there's also something that you might find surprising, is that in secular and even sometimes atheists, atheistic institutions around us, people are starting to come alive to the fact that rituals and practices actually do things. So you're seeing in the business world, you're seeing in academia, and certain medical fields, people who, at the top minds, are starting to encourage people to take part in traditions. I find this fascinating, and so I've been doing a lot of research. I'm only going to share one example with you right now.
[14:20] I recently heard an interview with somebody named Dr. Tanya Luhrmann. Tanya is an American psychological anthropologist, which is a big word, big name. She basically studies religions as mostly what she does. And a few years back, she wanted to do some significant research on what is called neo-paganism, or you could just think of it as magic, essentially. So she started interviewing and talking to a bunch of people who are essentially people who practice magic, and she was really trying to understand what made them and what made the practice tick. What was going on? And one day one of the interviewees said to her, you know, Tanya, if you want to understand magic, you need to practice magic. And so Tanya did.
[15:07] She says that for the next year she took 15 minutes a day. And she partook in the practices of magic. She would recite and write spells. She made offerings with little chalices on little altars, and, to her surprise, because you didn't expect this to actually work, she said that the world started to seem more alive to her, and she had several quote, cool, weird experiences. She said that she sensed presences during rituals, and at one point her imagination revealed to her what she described as a god with a type of horned goat head. And when she described this image to others who'd done similar rituals, it matched the description of what they'd seen. But here is a brief quote from the interview that really struck me. I want to share with you.
[15:59] I was reading a novel about the Arthurian legend called The Mists of Avalon. And there are lots of Druids in the story. If you don't know what a Druid is, you can Google it. It's not really scary. I woke up one morning and I swear I saw six Druids standing at the window. "My experience is that they were perceptually present," she says. "They were really there." Now, if you're with me in the room, you're with me online, you might be saying, "Well, of course you saw Druids, Marc. She's clearly mentally ill." And maybe. I don't know Dr. Luhrmann. What I do know is that she got her doctorate from, let's see, Cambridge University, and to this day is currently teaching at a very high level and effectively at Stanford University.
[16:47] These are both top-notch institutions, and she spoke very eloquently, and she seemed to have no dog in the fight. Like, she didn't go into this thinking that there was anything behind it, which I think is really important. And so what I hear in her research and in her writing is that this actually wasn't about her beliefs; it was actually a lot more about her behaviors. And I'm gonna tell you that I personally stand here today to tell you that I believe her. I believe her claims, and I wholeheartedly would discourage any of you from partaking in anything like that, these kind of magical practices. That's it, but the point is I believe her, and I also believe that people are absolutely desperate to feel things.
[17:42] I believe they are desperate to make a connection with the divine. And I believe that practices do things. Well, at this point you might be saying, "What a great Christmas message, Marc. Oh, it's so cozy. I just, mmm, I feel all the Christmas feels. I wish I had a cup of cocoa. Mmm." Well, stick with me. I will circle back to feelings soon, I promise. But thank you for mentioning Christmas, because that does actually move us towards Christian tradition, because yes, Christmas is a Christian tradition. Not all of the lights and all the things, but the practice of Christmas. Christmas is a Christian tradition. There's lots of Christian traditions, and they kind of fall into two categories, right: beliefs and behaviors, our doctrines and our doings, our creeds and our deeds. Now, I'd say it's natural. It's justifiable, and it's possibly even correct to say that our behaviors as Christians flow from our beliefs. We do things because we believe things. We aim to treat our fellow humans with dignity and with respect because we believe that, as it says in the opening chapters of the Bible, God created us in His own image. We love our neighbors, as Jim was talking about this morning. We love our neighbors with our behaviors because we love our neighbors with our feelings.
[19:07] I think that's great, and I think it's mostly true, except for when it's not, right? If we had to wait to love, to feel love for our neighbors, heck, to feel love for our kids before we actually acted in ways of relating to them, sometimes those actions would not come. And so that's one problem that I don't have a resolution for right now. But can I bring up another problem as well? Here's the other problem: is that sometimes we think that our behaviors are only supposed to be outflows of our feelings. And so we think that if we know the way we're supposed to feel, then we can just change the way we're supposed to act based upon our feelings, if we understand, if we feel like we understand what the action is supposed to be doing, that we don't need to do the action. We can just change that. I don't have a time this morning to give you illustrations. I did put an illustration online, which you can look up later on if you want to, but to me, these are two kind of problems that, when you look at Christian behaviors and Christian beliefs, if you look at them merely as one flowing into the other, I think we have a little bit of a conundrum, and that conundrum leads us to the stickiest part of this message this morning. If you're sticking with me, what I've been trying to do this whole time, believe it or not, is to get us to talk about actual traditional Christian practices and what they might look like. But to do that, it always runs the risk, especially in our day and age, of making me look like stuffy or bossy or a cult leader.
[20:56] Like, I think that's probably the worst potential one. We're kind of allergic to talking about things that we, quote unquote, should do. So if I was to stand here and say there's not things that, not only things that Christians ought to believe, but there's kind of normative ways that Christians ought to behave, it does run the risk of me coming off as judgmental or coercive or abusive. And the problem is that there's actually good reason for that. We have seen far too many examples of communities, many of those communities have used the name of Christ, who have used authoritarianism as a way of restricting and taking advantage of people in some pretty unthinkable ways. Maybe some of you within the sound of my voice today have been hurt by such people or by such institutions.
[21:45] Maybe even some of you have been a part of a different kind of church in the past, and anything that smacks of authoritarianism or hierarchy, you know, it helps you kind of relive that trauma. And so I want to say sincerely that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for that pain. I haven't lived that pain, but I'm sorry. And yet I do know that if we allow the misuse and abuse of tradition in the past to make it such that in the driver's seat. Now it's you, me, you, each of us individually, we're responsible for being the sole arbiters of what our behaviors are.
[22:33] We have to kind of discover or create what it means to be a Christian. I think in that process the problem is we might discover or create our own Christ. And so with us in the room or online right now, there are people who are hearing this message in different ways. Some of you don't consider yourself followers of Jesus at all. Some of you have been with Him for a long time. Some of you are like, "Preach! I love this," but you don't do that because you realize this is not that kind of church. Some of you have already checked out, and you're not interested in what I'm saying at all. Talking about traditions opens up a can of worms, and I have not met too many people. I don't know too many people who like worms.
[23:19] Now, as you likely know, I am a pastor here at this particular Wesleyan church. So I tend to ascribe to and abide by the traditions of this particular denomination, but I want to make it clear that that's not actually what this message is about. Over the last few weeks you might have noticed we've done some different elements in our worship service. We've had some kind of free verse Scripture readings according to voice. We've also had a little bit of Byzantine chant. These are well outside of our own particular traditions. And the reason that we did that was not because we're looking to go in that direction or we think it's better, but it was actually to kind of help build towards this point, which is that we have, as a church, not this church, but as a church, we have shared traditions, traditions that have spanned the not just the centuries, but the millennia. They have spanned all around the globe, and they have spanned the theological differences that are between our different traditions, and it's about those traditions this morning. I want us to briefly take a look at. I don't have time to go into very many of them. I'm gonna put them on the screen here so you can see them, and then I'm gonna highlight a few at the end. But if you want to do a deep dive, you can go ahead and Afraid to do that. So what are some Christian traditions?
[24:38] Well, we have prayer. Hopefully that's enough said. We have feasts and fasts. So that's kind of the Christian calendar. And that's what Christmas is a part of that calendar. We have the confession of sin. That's a popular one, right? We have baptism. We have Holy Communion, and I would have loved to have spent a lot of time talking about giving this morning, but thanks be to God, Pastor Jim did a marvelous job illustrating just how important giving is, not just to this community, but to every community that is following after Christ. So it's these last two that I want to take a little bit of time with this morning: worship services and the reading of Scripture. Now, for years, well before the pandemic, church attendance, which is an unfortunate term, but nonetheless, it's the one that we use, people coming to a church building for worship services, has been on the decline in North America and in a lot of Western countries. So it's not a brand new problem. It's got to the point now where I think maybe a regular attender is considered somebody who comes once a month.
[25:47] And listen, part of that is with our new advent of online church. And hi there. We are incredibly grateful for the tool, and we're grateful for all of you who come that way. This is particularly, what I'm about to say is a message to people who are Christians and who are plugged in. If you are joining us midstream, you know, grab it, make sure you're grabbing a sip of coffee. But I want to have one little word with Christians here, and I know that health considerations and a lot of things, it makes this conversation really complicated, but there's one thing that I don't think is terribly complicated, and it's this: if we can't seem to find one chunk of time, one day out of seven, to be able to intentionally set aside our preferences and our schedule and to go to be with other people who are seeking together to be formed into the image of Christ, so that we can look more like Jesus to our community, I do not think it should be surprising that maybe you don't feel that much like Jesus, and maybe our community doesn't see it that much either.
[26:59] And this is not a brand new problem. Hopefully that's good news. In the New Testament itself, the letter to the Hebrews: "Let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings, as some in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and even more so because you see the day drawing near." Listen, because of the way that things work in our culture, people need to work on Sundays. I mean, you can try to get it off, but maybe you really need the money. I understand that. There's lots of good reasons, and there are also a whole lot of excuses, and missing a Sunday here and there does not a pattern break. But I'm gonna say this, and I hope to not get in trouble for it, but I would say it anyway.
[27:49] If the thing that would make it certain that you could regularly plug in to a faith community and come weekly was that you would leave this faith community and find another Christ-centered faith community, I would personally counsel you to do that. I don't want to see you go, but it's not about lights. It's not about sound, and I love lights and sound, but it's about regularity. You have passion and you have pattern, and passion is really important, but in the end, pattern is what wins. So as you might be able to tell, I'm pretty passionate about worship services, but here's the other thing that we have. We also have this long-lasting tradition within the church of reading Scripture together. If coming together for worship services, it's kind of like a family meal, well, the daily engagement with Scripture, I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't eat once a week. And so if you want to carve some time regularly to read the Scripture, that is a wonderful Christian practice. And it doesn't just happen by yourself in a prayer closet. It can, but it also can and should happen in community with other people. Now, you could say in some respects we're kind of in a golden age of Bible.
[29:09] You know, with the advent of, like, all kinds of really readable and accurate translations, and cheap and easy. It's available on your phone for free, instantly. And I know, personally, a whole boatload of you who have really good patterns built into your life with Scripture reading. You're not just reading it by yourself, but you're also doing it in your small groups. You're connecting with friends. You're using creative ways. I can also surmise there's probably a fair number of you who are not doing this, and I can tell you that I'm pretty sure that, because myself personally, up until a few years ago, I was not good at this. I found it really, really hard. I didn't have the get-up-and-go every day to go up and do it. And so it's for you that I want to let you know that we in January are launching a walk through the Bible, starting on January 9th. We're planning to take as a community. So not just you by yourself, but as a group of people, we're going to walk through the books of the Bible, getting a bit of a bigger picture of the story that we're all a part of. So some of you already have a church reading plan that you're part of. You don't need to stop that. Keep what you're doing. This is not to try to fix people who don't need help. But if you were like, you know, what, I think I need that this year, I'd like to be part of it, you can even sign up right now. It's at mw.church/bible.
[30:28] You can do this with your small groups. You can do this with your friends. You can do it by yourself, and we'll connect you with other people. You can even go there right now and sign up, whether you're online or in the room. And when you do that, you're going to get just a reminder email that says we'll be in touch soon. So earlier I said that we were going to circle back towards feelings. Let's circle back towards Christmas at the same time, shall we? Now I personally think that the reason that we end up doing a lot of the Christmas traditions is so that we get the Christmas feels right. We trim the tree, we watch the Christmas movies. I watched one of my favorites yesterday. And here's the amazing thing is, when you do the things, you often end up feeling the things. A lot of the times it just works.
[31:16] Of course. Sometimes it doesn't, though. And I have to admit that that's a bit of a problem for us. Sometimes you do the Christmas things and you don't get the Christmas feels. And that's one thing, but I think the bigger problem that we deal with is sometimes we do the Christian things, but we don't feel the Christian feels. And you know, what I'd really like to do is to pick up the Bible and to show you a passage of Scripture that tells you that your feelings aren't that important, that it doesn't matter. I didn't find one. You can drop me a line afterwards if you have the perfect go-to Scripture. But here's something else that's true: I didn't find a single verse that says that your feelings are that important, but they're the thing that you absolutely must have if you're going to take part in these traditions. Without the feelings, don't even bother.
[32:17] I didn't find that either. See, in our culture, I think we know. Feelings are never just feelings, and yet it turns out that they're also kind of always just feeling now. I know that hasn't been a particularly emotional service today. At least my message hasn't been. But the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I can tell you that maybe right now, whether you're in the room, whether you're joining us online, maybe today is the first time that you thought, you know, I think I feel like I want to make that step towards Christ today. Maybe some of you are in the room and you know what, you're celebrating your 75th anniversary of following after Christ.
[33:03] Maybe some of you have felt all the feels today. You showed up crying and you're still crying now. Maybe the service, the worship was great, the prayer really hit you. Well, maybe some of you are sitting here right now and you are just like stone cold rational. All are welcome. In just a moment, we're going to sing a song together, and the song is going to be a bit of a prayer. In fact, I'm going to ask you to stand right now. And often, when we sing this song, we do it in a very emotive way. It's one of the beautiful things about music, is we can use music in a way that heightens our emotions and kind of gives us some respect, what we're looking for. And in my estimation, there's nothing wrong with that.
[33:57] But today we're going to strip it back a little bit. We're going to bring it right back to its basics. And maybe you're the kind of person who wants to scream the song at the top of your lungs. Maybe you're the kind of person who might whisper along. Maybe you've never been caught dead and have no intentions of singing in front of people. You can mumble along this morning. It's okay. It's okay. But this is a song that speaks to the fact that God is here. He is present. He is a God who is living and active. He is a God who loves us and has our best interest in mind, and this is the important part, that is true whether or not we feel it, whether or not we see it.
[34:42] So this morning you can use this song as a prayer of stepping towards Christ, maybe for the first time, or this can be a prayer of faith that you've said in your heart and out loud hundreds of times. Here's the truth. I want you to hear this. I cannot guarantee that you will feel God's presence this morning. I cannot guarantee personally that you'll ever feel His presence again. If you want to find out about Mother Teresa and how she ended her life, there's a powerful story right now that speaks to the fact that she operated on a blind faith for decades. But I don't think she regrets what she did, because feelings are important, but they are not what is going to sustain you.
[35:30] Only the presence of God. Listen, there are traditions in this world. There are beliefs and behaviors that you can do, and they will have impact, you will feel. But I can't counsel you to do those. I can only counsel you in the end to the time- tested and designed things that, as a community, move us closer to the one true and living God. And so I invite you this morning to sing and pray with us. He is here. Here.