Tag Archives: new-testament

We face a choice: the power of Herod or the power of Jesus

Posted on by symonhill

This morning (Sunday 28th December 2025) I led worship at New Road Baptist Church in Coventry. I was honoured to be asked to do so, as this is the church that I attended for years when living in Oxford, and where I served as a deacon.

Below is the text of my sermon. To be clear: this is basically the text that I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a few extra comments.

The picture below shows a scene from The Massacre of the Innocents by Leon Cogniet.

The sermon followed two Bible readings:

Matthew 2, 13-23

Hebrews 2, 10-18

King Herod was frightened. He was not frightened of an invading army, or violent rebels, or a rival politician, or even the Roman Emperor who had given him his power. He was frightened of a baby.

Who’s frightened of a baby? King Herod the Great, as he was known, understood something about power. He ruled over a sizeable chunk of the area that we now call Israel and Palestine, which was then part of the Roman Empire. Herod was declared by the Roman Senate to be “King of the Jews”. He was really a puppet ruler for the Roman imperial authorities.

So when the magi turn up and ask where the “King of the Jews” is to be born, Herod is alarmed. He is the King of the Jews! On one level, it’s a bizarre question. It would be like asking Keir Starmer where the Prime Minister is, or asking Donald Trump where you can find the person who really should be President of the United States.

So Herod tricked the magi, and asked them to let him know after they have found Jesus, so that he can visit him. His real purpose, we soon learn, is to kill him. That brings us to the part of the story that we heard earlier. This horrible, terrifying story that tells of how Herod massacred children to try to ensure that Jesus was dead.

Now this may not seem a very cheerful story to be discussing in the Christmas season! Sometimes we don’t know what to do with this story. It often isn’t included in readings at events such as Nine Lessons and Carols. If we include it in Christmas services, we are tempted to brush over it, an inconvenient disruption to the smooth flow of a comfortable story. Although today, 28th December, is observed particularly by our Catholic and Anglican friends as the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when these murdered children are remembered.

I want to suggest that recognising this horrible atrocity – and others like it – is very relevant to the hope and joy that we talk about at Christmas.

This is because the birth of Jesus isn’t simply a reason to feel cheerful for a day at Christmas. In Jesus, God is with us not only when we’re celebrating or feeling cheerful. God is with us however we’re feeling. Whether you love Christmas or dread it, Jesus’ birth is good news. The nativity is a story of hope in the midst of despair, love in the face of violence, solidarity in the depths of loneliness and power of a sort that the Herods of the world do not understand.

As we discussed earlier, Jesus was not visited by three kings, but by an unspecified number of magi, or wise men. Ironically, however, the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel is a story with kings in it – not three kings, but two kings. On the one hand, we have King Herod, described by the Roman Empire as King of the Jews. On the other hand, we have Jesus, described by the magi as King of the Jews.

Thus Matthew’s Gospel places before two very different belief systems, two different sets of values, two different notions of power, two different calls for our loyalty – King Herod or King Jesus.

To understand this more, let’s get back into the details of the story. I think this account in Matthew’s Gospel is very relevant to life today. Scholars debate and disagree with each other about its historical accuracy. However accurate Matthew’s account is in historical terms, it is widely accepted by historians that Herod was a brutal ruler. I am not going to go into questions of precise historical fact now, however. I want to focus on how in this story Matthew presents us with truths about Jesus and about the choices that face us.

This story may seem to be full of things that seem alien to us, but if we dig a bit deeper, we will find many aspects that are really quite familiar. Herod had the sort of power that is maintained with violence and fear. I dare say he may not have been able to imagine a king who would reign in any other sort of way. Accustomed to violence and fear as he was, he responds to the birth of Jesus in the way he knows how. He orders a massacre of children in Bethlehem to ensure that the threat of Jesus is ended before it has begun. He is prepared to sacrifice the lives of many, many innocent children for that aim.

It is very hard to imagine the fear that must have gripped Mary and Joseph when Joseph was warned in a dream about Herod’s murderous plan. Did he wake up, screaming and crying perhaps? He must have woken Mary and told her about the dream. We can imagine them hastily picking up Jesus and grabbing what few possessions they could, all the while fearing that soldiers would burst through the door. That fear may well have gripped them every minute of every day until they made it to Egypt as refugees. And what of the fear and horror of the children who were killed, and their parents?

There are a few Christmas carols that do mention Herod’s massacre. The carol Unto Us a Boy is Born speaks of Herod killing the boys in Bethlehem “in his fury”. The Coventry Carol refers to Herod “raging”.

What rage? What fury? Matthew’s Gospel says that Herod was infuriated when he realised he had been tricked by the magi. But did he order this massacre in a fit of rage? Well, he might have done. But it’s also possible that this massacre was ordered not in a moment of anger but as a calm, calculated political decision. Perhaps Herod sat down with his advisers and concluded that the only way to be sure that he had dealt with the threat posed by this baby was to kill all the babies in the area.

Did Herod find some way to justify this massacre to himself? We can imagine Herod’s advisers gathering around him, telling him what he wanted to hear. Perhaps they feared that this surprising baby could become the focus for a new rebellion against Roman rule. I can imagine them telling Herod, “Well, your majesty, if this baby becomes a focus of rebellion, then there could be a violent uprising, and the Roman authorities will retaliate, and far, far more innocent people will be killed”. And they might go on. They might suggest that it is better to kill a few innocent children now so as to avoid a rebellion that could lead to far more innocent people being killed overall. 

Now that argument might not sound very convincing. But it is of course the sort of argument that certain types of politicians and commentators use all the time.

This year that is now ending, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nobody denies that those nuclear weapons killed innocent people – including far more children than Herod ever killed – but many will justify that massacre on the grounds that it saved more lives overall. There are people who are prepared to defend killings of Israeli children by Hamas, and other people who justify the killings of Palestinian children by the Israeli armed forces. Once you start talking about the “greater good”, you can end up justifying pretty much anything.

This is the sort of argument that the Herods of the world understand. This is the sort of power that they know about. What Herod could not have understood was that this Jesus was not merely a rival for the title “King of the Jews”. He posed a challenge to the whole structure of power and violence that Herod and the Roman Empire – and many others like them – represented.

The Herods of the world think that power comes with violence and control. Yet as he grew up Jesus lived so much by the power of love and justice that the Roman Empire considered him a such a threat that they executed him.

By the time Jesus was an adult, King Herod the Great was long dead. But Herod’s son, Herod Antipas, executed John the Baptist and was involved in the events leading to Jesus’ own execution. And the Roman imperial authorities to whom the Herods owed their loyalty made another attempt to get rid of Jesus. They thought they could rid of this troublesome Jewish peasant by crucifying him. He did not seem to have any power or strength in the way that the Herods and the Ceasars understand power.

But with Jesus’ resurrection, God confounded the world’s notions of power. The forces of sin and injustice were put on notice that their days are numbered. In Jesus we hear the good news that God’s subtle, transformative power of love and justice is on the way to winning. As Martin Luther King said, “the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice”.

Jesus calls us to live by his power. But unlike a tyrant who demands obedience, Jesus simply, gently invites us to follow him. As we heard earlier in the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is not afraid to call us siblings.

But it is hard sometimes to really trust in Jesus’ sort of power. We are all, I think, tempted at times to fall back on trusting in Herod’s sort of power.

Two weeks ago, I was in London, watching a group of far-right activists celebrating their racist, xenophobic and homophobic beliefs. These sort of rallies sadly happen quite often. What was unusual about this one, however, is that it was described as a “carol service” .

As many of you will know, a number of British far-right activists are claiming to defend Christianity and what they call “Christian Britain”. This is often a thinly veiled excuse to attack migrants, Muslims, Jews or LGBT+ people. On the platform at his bizarre event were several people dressed in clerical collars – clergy from fringe right-wing denominations, giving theological sanction to the far-right.

I cannot of course see into the hearts of the people on that platform. It is not for me to question the sincerity of their faith. Only God sees into their hearts, as only God sees into mine: God will judge them and me. But I can say that I do not recognise the Jesus who such people claim to be promoting.

Tragically, as Christians, we have all too often tried to turn Jesus into Herod. We have justified violence and coercion in Jesus’ name, we have insisted that Christians should have privileges in what we call a “Christian country”, and if we do not actually send people to kill the innocent, we shut the doors of our hearts and the borders of our countries and send people back to die.

Before we judge others for doing these things, let’s ask ourselves how often we have been tempted to slip back into trusting in Herod’s sort of power rather than Jesus’ power. Sometimes we are tempted to believe that only violence, coercion and privilege will be successful. If we find ourselves using the sort of arguments that Herod might have used, it is time to stop and think.

We are all challenged to make the choice between the power understood by the Herods of this world and the alternative sort of power embodied in Jesus. This is a challenge that faces us every day, in decisions big and small.

Of course, Jesus’ call is not the same for everyone. Jesus calls us to varied tasks and I do not think that he expects us all to agree about everything. But we do not have to share all the same views to take the power of Jesus as our starting-point.

And we will be tempted, and sometimes we will fail. We will face the temptation to trust in Herod’s power, to accept the idols of money, military might and selfishness. But as the Letter to the Hebrews says, Jesus himself has been tempted and he is able to help those who are being tempted. Every time we fail, God calls us again to turn around and follow the power found in a refugee baby lying in a feeding-trough.

Today and every day, in the coming year of 2026 and in every year, we face a choice: the power of the tyrant or the power of the baby. It’s up to us.   

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My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.

The Peace of Christ or the Peace of Rome?

Posted on by symonhill

I was honoured to be asked to write about active nonviolence for Shibboleth, an excellent new Christian magazine that I heartily recommend (not just my own article!). This is my article, which appeared in Issue 2.

Jesus was executed by one of the most violent empires in history.

It is staggering just how rarely this is mentioned in churches. For centuries, we have been told that Jesus was killed by “the Jews”. Antisemitism has combined with attempts to depoliticise Jesus’ message by shifting the blame away from imperial authorities.

We cannot, however, get away from the fact that Jesus was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea. The gospels present the Jewish leaders as complicit in Jesus’ death, but these were the Jewish leaders who collaborated with Roman rule and owed their position to not upsetting the Romans. They were not representative of Jews generally.

Supporters of Roman rule championed the “Pax Romana” or Peace of Rome. For them, “peace” was a euphemism for order, control or an absence of conflict. There is no conflict when all resistance is crushed. The Romans claimed to bring “peace and security” to conquered lands. “When they say ‘peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them,” wrote Paul in one of his earliest letters (1 Thessalonians 5,3).

Jesus proclaimed a very different sort of peace. I suggest that to understand Jesus’ teachings, we need to recognise that he was speaking to people for whom violence was a daily reality. They included civilians abused by Roman soldiers, slaves beaten by their “owners”, women mistreated by men.

Yet many Christian discussions of the ethics of violence start from the wrong place. They focus on war between nation-states and the decisions of governments.

Of course, national wars appear in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), which contains varied attitudes to violence. Those passages that justify massacres do not in any sense point to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Many other parts of the Hebrew Bible include prophetic condemnations of violence and oppression. At certain points, Israelite forces are reminded to rely only on God’s strength – Gideon is told to reduce the size of his army so his victory is attributed not to military power but to God’s power (Judges 7,2).

Wars between nation-states today generally involve people being ordered to fight by their governments, based on the bizarre premise that we all have more in common with our rulers than with people like us who happen to have been born on the other side of a line on a map.

But the Christ who breaks down barriers exposes the reality of violence. And it is with Jesus’ teachings that a Christian ethic must surely begin.

When Jesus’ spoke about turning the other cheek, he was speaking to people who were used to being hit.

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek…” says Jesus (Matthew 5,39). To be hit on the right cheek (with the right hand) implies a backhanded slap. This was the way in which people disciplined supposed inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves, men backhanded their wives, employers backhanded workers.

The submissive response to being hit is not to turn the other cheek but to cower, cringe or step backwards. These are all very understandable reactions. To respond with violence is also understandable, though probably futile when the aggressor has far more power. But calmly turning the other cheek is a gesture of nonviolent defiance, potentially confusing the aggressor and tipping the balance of power, at least for a moment.

Of course it does not work in every situation. The same can be said of Jesus’ teaching to go “another mile” – which would cause trouble for Roman soldiers who were permitted to require civilians to carry their packs for only one mile (Matthew 5,41). These methods of nonviolent defiance are suggestions. Different contexts need different suggestions, with similar principles.

Jesus’ protest in the Temple is sometimes presented as inconsistent with turning the other cheek. I suggest instead that Jesus’ teachings and actions are entirely consistent. The Temple protest was disruptive but not violent (violence involves hurting people, not damaging tables). It involved the same principles of nonviolent resistance that Jesus championed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Active nonviolence is not about judging those who are driven to resist violence with violence. I cannot condemn someone who picks up a gun in a horrendous situation that I have never faced and cannot imagine. This is different to encouraging such things.

Active nonviolence is about seeking to live by a different power. This is the power of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, which turns notions of kingship on their head. The Kingdom is both now and not yet, a future reality that is glimpsed in the here and now in every moment that testifies to the love of God, from small moments of kindness to global campaigns against injustice.

Given its centrality in the New Testament, it is very surprising that we don’t talk more in churches about loving our enemies. Loving enemies does not mean having no enemies (how can you love your enemies if you haven’t got any?!). Nor is it a concept that can just be explained away, as with Augustine of Hippo’s tortuous argument that it is possible to love someone while killing them. Arms dealers and militarist politicians are my enemies, but I cannot kill or demonise them, nor fail to recognise my own sin and complicity in violence, if I love them in the upside-down power of the Kingdom of God.

The New Testament makes clear that living by this power – or trying to – is not about avoiding conflict. As Martin Luther King pointed out, a commitment to peace involves conflict with those who wage war. When Jesus said that he had “not come to bring peace but a sword”, he spoke about divisions within families and communities, so in that context he meant “peace” in the narrow sense of an absence of conflict (Matthew 10,34-36). The gospel involves conflict with forces of violence and injustice.

The New Testament does not teach us either to kill our enemies or to pretend that we have no enemies. Serving the Kingdom of God involves engaging in conflict with love – something that it is not possible in our own strength, but only by the subversive, transformative power of God that we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is a power that forces of violence and domination will not tolerate. That is why, as the Quaker peace campaigner Helen Steven used to put it, following Jesus “leads straight into trouble”.

God is not Father Christmas

Posted on by symonhill

Last Sunday (29th December 2024) I preached at Sherbourne Community Church in Coventry. I was very pleased to be asked to do so. They made me very welcome. Below is the text of my sermon.

To be clear: this is the text I wrote beforehand but in practice I deviated from the wording at times and added in a couple of extra comments. But the substance is the same.

The sermon followed two Bible readings, and focused particularly on the first one:

Luke 2, 41-52

Colossians 3, 12-17

At Christmas time, I’m sure many of us tend to think about memories of childhood Christmasses. As a child in primary school, I assumed that large swathes of the Bible were taken up with accounts of the birth of Jesus. Christmas seemed such a dominant event. Later, when I learnt more of the structure of the Bible and became aware that there were four gospels, I still imagined that a sizeable portion of each gospel must be focused on the nativity.

So it was a surprise to me as a teenager to discover that two of the gospels – Mark and John – don’t even mention Jesus’ birth. The other two – Matthew and Luke – give only a small portion of their story to it.

Matthew tells us that Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned from being refugees in Egypt once they heard that Herod had died. Matthew’s gospel then leaps forward to Jesus’ adulthood and his baptism by John the Baptist. Luke almost leaps straight from Jesus’ infancy to his adulthood – but not quite! He gives just a few lines to the story that we heard earlier, about the 12-year-old Jesus disappearing from his parents during a trip to Jerusalem.

Other than the nativity narratives, this is the only story about Jesus’ childhood that has made it into the Bible. In the second and third centuries, a number of writings claimed to tell the stories of Jesus’ childhood, but most of these were written long after the gospels that we have in our Bibles. So this very short story is quite exceptional.

I think it’s quite a strange story. Sometimes, if we’re familiar with a story, we can get so used to it that we forget how strange it would sound to someone hearing it for the first time. I’m not a parent, but I have sometimes had responsibility for children as an uncle and a godfather. I think you’d all be a bit alarmed if I told you that I had lost my goddaughter on a trip to London and had searched for three days before finding her in Westminster Abbey, discussing theology with the Bishop of London.

As we listened to this passage earlier, we heard that Jesus’ parents had been travelling home from Jerusalem for a day before they realised he wasn’t with them. You might find this surprising. Indeed, you might look at it and say, “A day! How did they go a day before noticing he wasn’t there? What extraordinarily unobservant parents!”

If we react like that, it’s because we’re making assumptions based on our own culture. Today, a child is the responsibility of their parents. They need to know where they are. But Jesus’ culture was a culture of extended families. The care of children was much more widely shared than it is now. With members of an extended family travelling together – possibly with other families – it is very likely that Mary and Joseph simply assumed that Jesus was with other relatives as they all travelled together in large groups. It must have been a shock to them to realise he wasn’t with any of them.

We can only imagine their fears, worries and possible panic as they searched for days before finding Jesus in the Temple. It’s understandable if we find ourselves a bit annoyed with Jesus at this point: surely he was old enough to realise his parents would be worried?

I suspect that is not the question that concerned Luke. The gospel-writer is interested in showing us that Jesus prioritised God’s ways over human ways and could discuss important issues. A number of scholars suggest that Luke’s was following a practice common in the life-stories of Roman emperors and other powerful figures in Greco-Roman society. Caesar Augustus, who was Roman Emperor at the time of Jesus’ birth, is said to have delivered an intellectual speech at the age of 12. Perhaps Luke is telling us that this Jewish peasant, Jesus, who began his life in a smelly room full of animals could be a match for the ruler of the Roman Empire.

Indeed, many of the titles that the New Testament gives to Jesus – king, saviour, son of God – were also titles used for Roman emperors. The gospels challenge the empire’s whole notion of what it means to be a king, saviour or god.

I’m struck by Luke’s wording towards the end of the story. He says that afterwards Jesus went to Nazareth with his parents “and was obedient to them”. The word that stands out to me is “obedient”. Jesus doesn’t seem to have been very obedient when he left his parents to go and chat in the Temple. Perhaps Luke is keen to encourage us not to think of Jesus as disobedient and to emphasise that after this point he obeyed his parents.

But I can’t help thinking that if Jesus had behaved like a model obedient child, he would never have gone back to the Temple at all. Jesus was not the model of an obedient child. Despite this, some people have clearly put quite a lot of effort into using – or misusing – Christian teaching as a way of controlling children – and indeed adults. It seems to me that this tendency is especially strong at Christmas.

Take Cecil Frances Alexander, the writer of Once in Royal David’s City. She tells us in Verse 3 of the carol that Jesus was obedient to his mother. The lyrics then declare, “Christian children all must be/ Mild, obedient, good as he”. 

Well, if children are to follow Jesus’ example, should they leave their parents and wander off to debate theology? That’s probably not what Cecil Frances Alexander had in mind when she wrote the hymn. The other hymns that she wrote include All Things Bright and Beautiful, which originally contained the verse ‘The rich man in his castle/ The poor man at his gate/ God made them, high and lowly/ He ordered their estate.” Thankfully that verse is now generally missed out. But it’s clear that for Cecil Frances Alexander, God is a god a who has created and blessed the social order, a god of order, obedience, hierarchy and control.

Don’t worry! I’m not suggesting that God wants children to just randomly ignore their parents or disobey their parents. But I am worried when we give the impression that Christianity is all about following rules and doing what you’re told. As Christians, and particularly as Protestants, we celebrate a God who saves us by grace because God loves us, not through any goodness of our own. We are not saved through obedience. We are not saved through rules. We are not saved because of our actions or because we’re somehow better than others. Salvation comes through God’s grace – God’s unmerited favour, flowing out of God’s love for us. We cannot earn God’s love. We cannot earn God’s forgiveness. We seek to do good in gratitude for God’s love and because we want to follow his way – not because God’s love can be earned.

Earlier, we heard those words from Colossians: “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” It is love, not obedience, that saves us.

What has this to do with Christmas? As a child, I found that stories and songs around Christmas time were dominated by two individuals. One was Jesus. The other was Father Christmas. Unfortunately, I think I had a tendency to confuse their characteristics with each other.

Sometimes, Father Christmas is a friendly, cuddly figure, part of a nice, entertaining story to tell children. But he can also be misused. I remember a few years ago sitting at a café in December and gradually becoming aware of the conversation at the next table. A woman was telling her grandson that if he didn’t finish his dinner then Father Christmas might not bring him any presents. How would Father Christmas know, asked the child? He’s outside watching you, said the grandmother; I can see him through the window. The child spun round, trying to catch a glimpse of Santa through the window behind him. “You can’t see him,” said his grandmother. “Only I can see him.”

Thankfully, I restrained myself form leaning over and saying, “Well, that’s convenient, isn’t it?”

Even Santa Claus can be turned from a nice story for children into a means of control.  The cheerful tune of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town might distract us from the lyrics, which are basically a series of threats: “You better watch out”, “You better not cry”. And so on.

As a child, I found that God and Santa Claus blurred with each other. Santa Claus is apparently watching us, ready to punish or reward us. We have to “watch out” because he can see us all the time. He’ll divide us up into “naughty and nice” and we don’t want to be on the wrong list.

And as a child, that is exactly what I thought God was like. And there are many, many people – adults as well as children – who seem to think that this is the sort of God in which Christians believe. But this is exactly the sort of God that I don’t  believe in now. And I want to suggest that the God revealed in the birth of Jesus is the opposite of that sort of God.

The message of Christmas is summed up in the word Immanuel, meaning God With Us. In the birth of Jesus, God has entered into human life in a new way. At Christmas, we see that God is not a big, bearded man in the sky looking down on us. God is a refugee baby lying in a feeding-trough. God has appeared among us, born not as an emperor or a military leader but as a persecuted child in an obscure corner of a brutal empire. God is not simply up there, compiling lists of our sins and categorising us as “naughty” or “nice”. God is down here. God is with us. He shares our lives, he shares our pains, he shares our joy. Whether we enjoy Christmas or struggle through it, whether we laugh or cry on Christmas Day or any other day, God is with us, laughing and crying with us.

At times, it can be hard to believe it. It can be hard to feel it. But God is more than a feeling. God is with us whatever we’re feeling.

A year ago, the Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac made global headlines with the Christmas sermon that he preached in his home church in Bethlehem. As he surveyed the reality of life in Palestine and Israel, he asked, “Where is Jesus today?” He answered, “Jesus is under the rubble in Gaza”.

Jesus is under the rubble in Gaza.

This is the God made vulnerable in the child Jesus who walked away from his parents to return to the Temple. This is the God who as the man Jesus lived so much by the power of love and justice that the Roman Empire considered him a threat and executed him with one of the most painful forms of murder that human cruelty has ever invented. This is the God whose subtle, transformative power cannot be defeated by all the powers of sin, injustice and empire, and who as Jesus Christ rose from the dead and continues to be with us. This is the God who offers to rule in our hearts if we commit ourselves to him and reject those same forces of sin, those same idols of injustice and empire today.

God is not Father Christmas. There is no naughty-and-nice list in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus’ salvation does not come through obeying rules or fitting into structures. Of course, some rules are worth following. Some structures are good structures. But Jesus made clear that rules were made for people, not people for rules. Obedience cannot save us.

Jesus can save us. To be clear, I am not suggesting that it doesn’t matter how we live or what we do! That is the last thing I am saying. Jesus’ own teachings point to a way of life, to a way for the world, that challenges so many of the values that dominate our broken, unjust and unequal society. But he is down here with us as we resist them – and he will forgive us when we fail. So let’s rejoice in God’s salvation. Let’s seek Christ’s help to follow his teachings. Let’s pray, as the Letter to the Colossians puts it, that the peace of Christ will rule in our hearts. But let us also ask for forgiveness when we turn away – and let us be prepared to forgive others, just as the Lord has forgiven us.

And as we prepare for 2025, let us be ready to support each other, trusting in the reality that whatever we face, whatever the world faces, God is with us.