Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday Sermon text - Slaves to Freedom
Matthew 4:12-23
Slaves to Freedom
James Sledge January 23, 2011
I once saw a not too original comic strip in the newspaper. A teenager was angry at his parents for not letting him do something he wanted to do and so he yelled out, “I’ll be glad when I’m 18 and no one can tell me what to do!” The final panel of the comic showed his parents doubled over in laughter.
As much as we celebrate freedom and individualism in this country, almost none of us ever reach the point where we can do whatever we want, where no one can tell us what to do. It may be parents; it may be a teacher or professor; it may be our boss; it may be the speed limit sign backed up by an officer with a radar gun, but at various places in our lives, we either do as others say or suffer the consequences.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying. It starts early. Toddlers love the word “No!” Children and adults enjoy saying, “You can’t make me.” Part of American mythology is that anyone can grow up to be president, or anything else he or she wants to be. We know such things are not quite true, even if they are truer here than in most countries. We know it isn’t true but we really like the idea that no one can tell us what to do, that we can simply decide, and if we try hard enough, we will make it.
Our love of personal freedom and choice means that our culture is particularly sensitive to anything that limits them. In some countries, all children are given aptitude tests at a young age and then slotted into certain academic or vocational tracks before finishing elementary school. But that would never fly here.
Yet despite all this, young people often ask themselves the question, “What should I do with my life?” They may also consider what they want to do, but I think these are very different questions. What I want to do may be purely a matter of personal choice, but what I should do speaks of something outside myself having some say in the matter.
Sometimes people go to career counseling services to help figure out what sort of thing they should do. Some colleges offer these services to their students. People who are thinking about changing careers sometimes use them. And our denomination requires people who want to become pastors to be evaluated by a reputable career center.
Such career counseling usually includes lots of tests that chart personality and interests and aptitudes. That’s based on the premise that certain traits will make some careers much more likely than others. When I was 12, I would have loved to become a rock and roll star, but it didn’t take very many guitar lessons to convince me that would never happen.
So I’m wondering, what information would you consider in order to make a decision about what you should do with your life? Whose voice would you listen to; what authority would you recognize as having a say in your decision?
And we don’t need to limit this to decisions about career. There are many questions about what we should do with our lives. Where should I go to college? Should I go to grad school? Should we get married? Should we have children? How should we raise our children? How should I spend my leisure time? What sort of volunteer and community service should I do? How should we spend our retirement? What should we do with our estate? The list goes on and on.
How do you answer such questions? What resources do your bring to making such decisions? Who gets a say in answering the question, “What should I do?”
I wonder how Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John answered that question. How did they decide what they should do when Jesus showed up and said, “Come on, drop everything that you’re doing; leave everything behind and come with me?” Did they even know what Jesus meant when he said they would be fishing for people? What on earth would make them simply get up and go like that?
When Jesus begins his ministry, the very first words Matthew reports him saying, the words immediately before he calls Simon Peter and Andrew are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think that a lot of people hear the word “repent” and hear a call to confess, to admit that you’re bad and need to turn from your evil ways. But I don’t think that is what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is saying that God’s rule, God’s new day is drawing close, and to get ready for it we will need to start living differently. Peter and Andrew and James and John repent, not because they stop doing something that is bad or wrong, but because they go in a new direction when Jesus calls. They hear Jesus telling them what they should do, what they must do if they are to get ready for the kingdom.
Years ago, before I went to seminary, I recall taking part in a discussion with a group of youth at the church where I was a member. At one point they were asked whether or not they would go overseas to some dangerous, poverty stricken country if they were absolutely certain that Jesus was calling them to do so. I’m not sure a lot of us would have been as honest as they were. Every single one of them said, “No.”
I don’t recall much of the conversation that followed, but clearly these high school students understood their lives to grow out of the choices that they would make, and this choice would not fit. It violated whatever standards, guidelines, or expectations influenced them, whatever authoritative voices they listened to.
Now in fairness to them, they had only said “No” to a hypothetical situation. Peter, Andrew, James, and John might have said the same thing to a hypothetical question about leaving the life they knew behind and following Jesus. But then they met him…
Our culture makes it quite easy to believe in Jesus. Even though our society is becoming more and more secular, believing in Jesus is still something of a norm. But I do not think our culture encourages following Jesus. In fact, it tells us over and over that it’s a bad idea. It might well deny us the prestige or wealth or possessions or any number of other things our culture tells us we need for a good life.
Jesus calls people to counter-cultural lives, lives that love enemies, that take up the cross, that give themselves for the sake of others, even others who don’t deserve such a gift. Following Jesus looks like a foolish choice, and it looked just as foolish back when Jesus called those fishermen, until they met him.
I think that a lot of us live with a significant, unresolved conflict in our lives. On the one hand we know deep down inside that we were created for something, for a life of meaning and purpose. There is a should for each of us, a calling. But we have been well conditioned over and over again to think that happiness comes from being free to do whatever we want, from following our own wants and desires. Some of us are virtually slaves to freedom, finding it impossible to trust anything other than our own wants and desires. After all, how could anyone else direct our lives better than we can?
When Peter and Andrew and James and John meet Jesus, they drop everything. They abandon all the plans they previously had and go with him, not knowing where it will lead. I don’t think it was anything that they wanted, at least not until the met Jesus. I’m not sure that following Jesus ever seems like something people would want to do at first, which is probably why so many stop at believing in Jesus. But if we ever actually meet Jesus and hear him calling us…
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - God's Favor
for people trample on me;
all day long foes oppress me;
my enemies trample on me all day long,
for many fight against me.
O Most High, when I am afraid,
I put my trust in you.
People routinely claim that God is on their side. Any claim to be doing God's will is a claim on God's blessing or favor. Any religious cause presumes God's favor. Even politicians regularly claim to be guided by God, which of course claims God's favor on what they are doing.
One problem with this is that many of us are prone to think that God is for whatever we are for. If we are conservative God is conservative and and if we are liberal God is liberal. Perhaps God is one or the other, or perhaps this is simply a demonstration of the human tendency toward idolatry, to create God in our own image.
Today's psalm seems to take for granted something frequently attested in both Old and New Testament. God's favor is especially on those in trouble, on those who are persecuted and oppressed, on those who are poor and exploited. Of course rarely are politicians or those who run churches and denominations persecuted, oppressed, poor, exploited, etc. More often they are people with power, and often they will invoke God's blessing on attempts to maintain their power and influence.
I do not intend to speak for or against anything in particular here. Rather, I am simply wondering about the way that I and others go about claiming God's favor and blessing on our actions. And that reminds me of something Bono said at a presidential prayer breakfast a number of years ago. He was quoting someone - I don't know who - when he offered, "Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Get involved in what God is doing; because it is already blessed."
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Friday, January 21, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Who Is This?
Who is this Jesus? That's still a fundamental faith question isn't it? And it's a question with lots of different answers. The fact that the Bible contains four different gospels seems to suggest that no one answer is sufficient. And I wonder if it is really necessary to decide on a single, correct answer.
There are certainly answers that I think are wrong, that cannot be reconciled with any biblical portrait of Jesus. One popular image I find disturbing is that of the resurrected Jesus returning as an avenging warrior. Those who embrace this image sometimes claim it is drawn from Revelation. But a close reading of that book will find its main picture of Jesus as a lamb that is slain.
But as troubling as such distorted pictures of Jesus are, I think a more pressing problem for many of us is settling for an incomplete picture of Jesus. For example, we can claim Jesus as Savior and simply stop there. But of course the earliest Christian profession of faith said, "Jesus is Lord." He is the one whose voice we are to obey, the one whose voice is to replace our own desire and will, the one who we are to give control of every facet of our lives, not just the "religious" part.
I wonder if many of us wouldn't do well to be more open to hearing additional answers to the question, Who is this Jesus? Rather than trying to distill a single, neat answer, we might become more open to varied images and facets of Jesus revealed to us in Scripture. Granted this will require us to become a bit more comfortable with ambiguity, but as Richard Rohr says in his devotion today, "Adult spirituality begins when you start learning to live with ambiguity, rather than insisting on absolute certitude every step of the way. Why do you think we call it 'faith'?"
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Thursday, January 20, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Spiritual Maturity
Small children tend to think that the world revolves around them. This is largely a logical conclusion based on their parents' doting on them and responding to their every cry. Of course as they grow older, as they mature, they gradually discover that this was an illusion. The world is not all that focused on them. The world keep spinning and one day moves to the next with little regard for them.
But we never fully mature, do we. We still measure things by how they impact us. As we get older and wiser, it is not our only measure. In most of us, it is tempered by concern for how things impact others, but concerns about number one often still dominate. Most of us don't take naturally to be self-sacrificial.
For me, this focus on self often leads to anxiety and sometimes frustration. Am I doing a good enough job? Do people like and respect me? If there is difficulty at the church, is it my fault? What should I do differently?
Pastors have long been accused of having Messiah complexes, and to the degree this is true, I suspect it comes from thinking that a congregation revolves around us. We're indispensable. The sun rises and sets on us. The congregation succeeds or fails because of us.
"I am the LORD, and there is no other." That is true whether or not I figure out and understand the most difficult theological doctrines. God is always God, and I am, always and finally, one of God's creatures, a vessel fashioned by the potter. No amount of wishing or hoping will make me a different vessel than the one I am, and there is actually something rather freeing in that acknowledgment.
I frequently repeat a favorite quote from the opening of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves." And I suppose that wisdom and maturity are not all that different. True wisdom, true maturity, both frees me from my anxieties as well as freeing me to praise God. I just wish I could mature a little faster.
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - The Bible Tells Me So
I mentioned that we handled Mary a bit differently and then said that we elevated Scripture over Tradition. The Bible trumps our way of doing things, and if we come to see a practice as being at odds with Scripture, we change the practice. For example, over time we came to see the prohibition on ordaining women as un-biblical. We thought that the overall witness of the Bible was that God can and does call women and men to all roles in the Church, and so we changed our ordination practices.
My conversation came back to me this morning as I read today's lectionary passages. Psalm 15 spoke of God welcoming those "who do not slander with their tongue, and do no evil to their friends, nor take up a reproach against their neighbors." I thought of the recent talk about civility in American politics and wondered about all of us Protestants who take the Bible so seriously but who nonetheless slander with our tongues those with whom we disagree.
Then I read the passage from Ephesians and found myself even more troubled. "But fornication and impurity of any kind, or greed, must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly, and vulgar talk; but instead, let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." What troubled me is they way we Christians selectively emphasize what these verses condemn.
Some Christians seem focused almost entirely on issues of personal purity, while others worry much more about problems of greed. As a more "progressive" Christian, I find myself in the camp that often pushes issues of social justice and loving one's neighbor. And people on both sides often point our fingers at each other and accuse them of perverting or distorting the faith. It seems that Christians of all stripes are quite practices at selectively doing what the Bible says.
Now I do not for a second minimize the difficulty of interpreting Scripture and determining just what it looks like to live as the Bible tells me to live. On many issues there are contradictory Scripture passages that require us to make judgments about the witness of the Bible as a whole. But this process, as well as becoming mature in our faith, requires us becoming aware of the filters we use to weed out parts of Scripture we do not like. Without doing this, we elevate our likes and preferences to a position of ultimate authority. This not only is a classic definition of idolatry, but it makes it easy to demonize those whose likes and preferences are at odds with ours.
Perhaps this is why humility has traditionally been considered a Christian virtue, even if it seems to have fallen out of favor in our culture.
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Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Earthy Faith
look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid
to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
until he has mercy upon us.
Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
There is something about these lines from Psalm 123 that resonate with me. There is something plaintive about them. There seems a longing here that both expects God to act and expresses anguish that God has not yet done so; "for we have had more than enough of contempt."
I sometimes think that the Christian faith lost something very valuable when the Church came of age amidst the Western philosophical mindset of the Greco-Roman world. Greek philosophy conceived of divinity as steady-state perfection, and as Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the Church conformed itself to such notions. In the process, the more earthy and dynamic faith of biblical Judaism got displaced. In Western thought, God could not change, could not know passion, could not, as God does frequently in the Old Testament, change God's own mind.
I would never recommend my personal spirituality as a model for others, but one place where I have experienced some spiritual growth in recent years is in developing a more dynamic relationship with God, one where God is not quite so bound by philosophical notions of impassive perfection, one where I can be disappointed with God and God can respond to that disappointment.
Over the years I have met very many people who are extremely loyal church folks, who never miss a Sunday and live exemplary lives, and who yet will not even entertain the notion of questioning God, much less being upset or angry with God. Certainly this is not the way of the Hebrews nor the way of that Hebrew named Jesus. He embraced a Jewish faith that could question God's plans, that on the cross could borrow from the psalmists and cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
We have been so acculturated to think of God in Greek philosophical terms that many of us feel it is an act of unfaithfulness to question God, to rail against God, to demand something of God. Many recoil at the very notion of such things. But I have found my spiritual life energized in discovering a more earthy, dynamic faith, one willing to join with Jacob in wrestling with God, and perhaps even limping away with a blessing.
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Monday, January 17, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Called
The Reformed/Presbyterian tradition in which I work and was raised has long emphasized the idea of vocation, which is another term for call, for something we are meant to do. Yet even in my tradition it is common to think of faith as primarily about belief. And I think such notions have contributed mightily to a loss of vitality in the Mainline Church.
A faith that doesn't make any difference in how I live seems terrible disconnected from life. Such a faith implies that God isn't concerned with our life on earth. This despite the fact that Jesus came healing and caring for people, that he taught us to pray for the day when God's will is done here on earth, that he proclaimed God rule had drawn near. Jesus seemed remarkable interested in the shape and quality of our earthly lives.
I don't think it an overstatement to say that any Christian faith that does not call me to live in certain ways is a distortion of faith. Any Christian faith that does not manifest itself in the day to day is a distortion of faith.
I was just a young boy when Dr. King was assassinated, and so I don't have many vivid memories of his life. But I do recall hearing adults I knew criticize his actions. These adults were all church folk, and some of them were sympathetic to his goals. But they couldn't get past the fact that he seemed to be "a troublemaker." This, of course, is one of the nicer things they said about Jesus.
The idea that faith should be no threat to the status quo might be valid if we live in the Kingdom, in God's rule fully come. But short of God's rule, any faith that hears Jesus' call to take up the cross and follow him will often find itself ill at ease with the ways of the world. And any such faith will find itself having to make choices between the ways of the culture and the ways of Jesus. Martin Luther King could have been a very successful preacher and church pastor, could have kept to church matters and avoided causing trouble. But he lived out the call God placed on him. And many people caught a glimpse of God's coming Kingdom in the the hope Dr. King proclaimed and worked for.
"Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called." We each have our part to play in moving the world and history toward God's end. As Dr. King well knew, the arc of history eventually arrives at the destination God intends. So why wouldn't we want to become a part of that arc, whether or not the world around us sees its trajectory?
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Sunday, January 16, 2011
Text of Sunday Sermon - Remembering Who We Are
Remembering Who We Are
James Sledge January 16, 2011
Many of you are probably familiar with the movie, We Are Marshall, and even if you’re not, you may know some of the story behind it. It begins when a flight carrying to football team home from a game crashes, killing players and coaches and university officials. It is an incredibly devastating event for the campus and the surrounding community.
But the tragedy of the crash is only the backdrop for the movie. Its story is about trying to resurrect the football program from the ashes. It is no easy task. There are many at the university and in the community of Huntington, WV, including the school president, who don’t think the time is right, for whom the pain is too fresh and raw to even think about going to a football game again.
And of course there is the problem of starting from scratch. The entire program is gone, save one assistant coach and a few players who had not made the ill-fated flight to that game. But in the face of all these obstacles, with the urging of the students and others in the community, a coach was hired, and the slow process of starting over again began.
It would be years before the football program returned to true respectability, but those who were there at the start turned in a remarkable performance. With those few remaining players, walk-ons from other sports, and incoming freshmen, they fielded a team and even won their opening home game.
For the players and students at Marshall in 1971 when they won that first game, the cheer “We are Marshall” spoke of an identity forged from the horrible tragedy and the remarkable triumphs they had experienced together. “We are Marshall” did not mean quite the same thing as when some other school shouted a similar cheer. Other students might be proud of their school and thrilled with their team’s successes, but not many people can fully know what it meant for those students to say, “We are Marshall!”
To some degree, that’s probably the case even for current day Marshall students. 1971 was a long time ago. There are memorials and other reminders. The movie likely revived those memories, but it is not difficult to imagine a time when shouting, “We are Marshall” would not be much different from shouting, “We are Dayton.” It would still mean that they are students at Marshall, but not much more.
It is perilously easy to lose an identity gained at great cost. Our daughter, Kendrick, who works with Teach for America in New Mexico, told me an experience she has had of this. While home for Christmas, she talked about her elementary students, all of them Navajo and many residents on the reservation adjacent to the small town where she teaches. She said that these children are fiercely proud of their heritage, of being Native Americans and Navajos. And yet, they seem to have little sense of what that heritage means or entails.
Kendrick said she was surprised that she knows a lot more about Native American history than her students do. Despite their deserved pride in their heritage, their “We are Navajo” cheer speaks of little more than an accident of birth.
It is perilously easy to lose an identity, and something similar to the experience of those Navajo children sometimes goes on in the church. We have our own identity, our own cheer, “We are Christians.” It is a claim to be a particular people shaped by a particular life lived “in Christ,” a life lived out in a particular community, the Church. It is an identity that was forged by faithful disciples who walked in the footsteps of Jesus, who were willing to take up the cross, were willing to die to spread the good news of God’s coming rule. But over time, the cheer “We are Christian” can come to mean less and less. It can speak of little more than an accident of birth, little more than being raised in a society that, until a few generations ago, expected people to belong to a church.
When I first came to Boulevard some 10 years ago, we did some work in both the Session and Deacons to name who we were, to claim our particular identity as Presbyterians here on this corner of Grandview Heights. One of the exercises involved trying to describe our core values. In other words, what is genuinely expected of a member? Not what would we like members to do, but what things are so integral to being a member here that not doing them would cause people to feel they had violated some key standard or norm. After much discussion and debate, we were able to agree that the only things we truly expected members to do were attend occasionally, and be nice.
Imagine for a moment that you had decided to start a non-profit organization so you could change the world. You want to invite people to join this group, and when you do they quite naturally ask what your group does. If you answered, “Oh, we meet, and we try to be nice,” how many people do you think would be dying to become part of your organization?
We live in a time when a lot of people are hungry for meaning and purpose in their lives. They would love to discover some sort of spirituality that made a difference in their lives, that helped them become something more than they are right now. And for such people, I’m pretty sure that “We meet, and we try to be nice,” simply doesn’t cut it.
Of course, that is not who we are called to be as the Church, and Paul speaks directly to that in his letter to the Christians in Corinth. The situation in Corinth is quite different from our situation, but before Paul gets to any particular problems, he introduces his letter with a general description of what it means to say, “We are Christians.”
It is a common calling. Paul does not speak to the pastor or staff or leaders of the congregation. He writes to the church of God that is in Corinth. The church is a group effort, a fellowship together in Christ where all the necessary spiritual gifts are given to the community so that it can be Christ to the world until God’s rule arrives.
Paul says nothing about individual salvation. Rather he speaks of a covenant people, sanctified, set apart and called to be saints. The word saint means holy, and it is not a designation for certain, special Christians, rather it is at the very heart of what it means to say, “We are Christians.” It says we are called to be a holy people, that is, a people consecrated to God, a people who by our lives show Christ to the world.
This call is common to all who are baptized. At the font, whether as infants or adults, we are joined to Christ. The old self is crucified with him and a new self is born. In baptism we are joined to each other, becoming one. In baptism the Holy Spirit is present and grants each and every one of us spiritual gifts so that working together, we can be the living body of Christ to a hurting world. This is who we are. This is our identity.
But when we forget that every person in the pews is our brother or sister and care for only those who are our friends, we lose that identity. When congregations called to be one in Christ remain divided by race, we lose our identity. When we “go to church” rather than “be the Church,” we lose our identity. When we want the 10 Commandments displayed on public buildings but don’t live lives shaped by those commandments, we lose our identity. When we think that saying “We are Christian” primarily means believing in Jesus, being good, and getting into heaven, we lose our identity.
But when we remember… When we remember that our baptisms have marked us and set us apart for distinctive lives; when we remember that God has both called us and gifted us to be saints, a holy people living as Christ’s living body at work in our community and the world; when we remember that we are one, a holy fellowship in Christ; when we remember and begin to live into our calling, the presence of the living Christ becomes palpable in us. New life and vitality are breathed into us by the Spirit, a life and vitality that draw others into this holy fellowship. When we remember who we are and live into that identity, the love of God again takes on flesh and reaches out as hope to the world. The hope and promise of God’s new day begins to become visible in us… when we remember who we are.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Sin, Modesty, and Civility
Notions of our own limitations and the need to keep ourselves in check flow quite naturally from a theology that is willing to claim sin as a part of our identity in the same manner an alcoholic embraces that identity. It is an acknowledgment that opens us to new possibilities, that admits we cannot do it alone, that is open to being redirected toward something better. But somehow we have become less and less inclined to think of ourselves as having fundamental flaws that require checks or restraints.
I suspect that the move toward where we now find ourselves was begun with the best of intentions. Perhaps is was a reaction against the unfortunate tendency of religion using "sin" as a label for anything that religion doesn't like. Music, dance, alcohol, sexual orientation, political affiliation, voting for "Obamacare," and a nearly endless list of other things have all been declared sins at one time or another. And Jesus finds himself in conflict with the religious folk of his day over his "sin" of violating the Sabbath. No wonder that some folks want to reject the entire concept.
A reaction against religious misuse and abuse of sin is understandable. But this rejection does not change anything about our true nature. If we are to be most fully alive and fully human, surely we must understand who we truly are.
John Calvin once wrote that all true knowledge resides in knowledge of God and knowledge of self. And a false view of ourselves, whether this be a view that obscures our tremendous gifts, capacities, and the image of God in all of us, or whether this be a view that ignores our limits, frailties, and self destructive tendencies, will necessarily lead us to live as people other than who we truly are.
Balance is always a difficult thing to maintain. This is as true in spiritual matters as it is in political ones. Balance often demands that we hold seemingly contradictory things - such as being in the image of God and captive sin - in tension, that we live with paradox and even contradiction. But often rather than deal with this difficulty, we choose to ride a pendulum, swinging back and forth, seeking a faith, a spirituality, an ideology, a political philosophy that is easier and simpler than the complex creatures that we truly are.
As David Brooks points out, civility requires a modesty that rejects such false simplicity, that knows I do not have all answers. Even my best efforts need the refining and correcting help of those who disagree with me and may notice what I have missed or distorted because of my own biases and blinders and limits and, yes, sin.
You would think that people of faith might be of great help in restoring some sense of appropriate modesty and resulting civility. But I have seen some of the most uncivil behaviors at church. The tone of debate I have occasionally seen in my own denomination is little better than that displayed in American politics. I wonder if it would make any difference if, when we were about to engage in some heated debate, we quit worrying so much about other folk's sin and claimed out own. What if we borrowed from AA and prefaced our remarks with, "Hello, my name is Joe and I'm a sinner. Now here's what I think."
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