This is the text of the sermon I delivered today (September 29, 2013) at Faith United Methodist Church in Sandy Ridge, Pennsylvania. This was a homecoming and it is also the first time I have preached in the area I grew up in.

Micah 6:6-8 (NRSV)

(What God Requires)

(6) “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

(7) Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

(8) He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Luke 15:11-32 (NRSV)

(11) Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons.

(12) The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them.

(13) A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.

(14) When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.

(15) So he went  and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.

(16) He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.

(17) But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!

(18) I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;

(19) I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’

(20) So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.

(21) Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

(22) But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe - the best one - and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.

(23) And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate;

(24) for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

(25) “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.

(26) He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on.

(27) He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’

(28) Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.

(29) But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.

(30) But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’

(31) Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

(32) But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

I first want to thank you for the opportunity to worship here with you this morning. Believe it or not, this is a big honor for me. I have been working as a pastor in one form or another for just over three years, but this is the first time I have preached here in the area I grew up in. Maybe it is for that reason that I am more nervous standing before you today than I have ever really been at the church I serve at every week. The Gospels remind us of the reception Jesus got when he preached in his hometown, so I guess it is par for the course to be a bit anxious this morning. Truth be told, I never thought I would be here. Just like any young kid growing up, I had plans with what I wanted to do with my life. Those plans changed over time, like they are wont to do; yet, at no point would I have said I wanted to be a pastor.

But, life has a way of coming full circle. We spend our youth trying to get away from home. As adults, we spend our time trying to make a home. As we age, in one way or another, we always end up on our way home again. Home is a place, both real and imagined, that we are constantly in relation with. We are either trying to get away or trying to get back there, but we always measure ourselves by how far away from it we are.

Home is a center for our lives. Yet, home is also the beginning and the end of our lives. And, at some point in our life, we long to go home. So what does it mean to want to go home? What does it mean to be away from home? What does it mean to be at home? What is home in the first place?

Home is that place, both real and imagined, that we belong. It is that place, real and imagined, where we find our identity. It is that place that defines us, that makes us who we are. And it is that place that we are called to, that we return to, that we yearn for.

My life, in a lot of ways, has been a search for home. I spent my youth, like many, trying to get away from it. I wanted to see more, to travel around, to experience life in a way I felt wouldn't be possible here in the place I grew up in. Home, then, was the place I knew, but I wanted to know more. Life would be successful in my eyes, if I learned that which home couldn't teach me.

So I went in search of that which I sought. I kept searching. I searched in south America. I searched in central America. I searched in the Caribbean. I searched in Lewisburg. I searched in Athens, Ohio. I searched and I searched and I searched. Then, I fell in love and the search changed. Instead of searching for my home, I searched to create one. I began to search for the things that can create a home. I searched for a job, for a city, for a place, for a life to provide for my wife, my children, myself. But it was then that I realized that as I searched for a home, my need and yearning for my own home became stronger. I no longer looked to get further away, but looked for how to get closer. I looked for ways to create a home. And I realized that while home may be a place, more than that it is a feeling, it is a reality that is made up by those who surround us. The old saying Home is where the heart is is true because home becomes the place where the people are that we love. Home is where our family is.

It is in the company of family that we are truly at home. It is a shame that some of us need to venture far away from our loved ones before we realize it was their company that we were searching for in the first place but never realized.

I began to come to this realization about 5 years ago, at least in earnest. I didn’t realize that I was on the path that would lead me here all my life, but about 5 years ago I began realizing that ministry was what I was supposed to do. Give years ago, as I was still learning to be a father, as I was still learning to be a husband, I began to realize that God was calling me to something that would eventually put me in a position to lead a church, and it was in this process that I began to piece together these different parts of my life in a way that allowed me to see the hand of God all around me. As my eyes were opened to this tapestry, I realized that home had been there all along, what I was missing was the right frame of mind to see it.

God had been there in my youth. God had been there in my travels. God had been there with me when I was on camping trips with Boy Scouts. God had been there with me in high school when my heart was broken. God had been there with me when I felt alone and when I felt loved. God had been there every step of the way. In ways both visible and invisible, God’s was working in my life to help me get to the point where I could look back and see the larger picture.

I thought long and hard about which scripture to use this morning. I originally didn’t want to use the story of the prodigal son because I didn’t want my words this morning to be about me. I didn’t want to portray myself as the prodigal son. But over the last couple of weeks, after talking with some close friends of mine at seminary, I realized that this story actually would be perfect. It is a story we all know, we have heard it countless times in church over our lives. But, in addition, we all are that son that goes off to live his life for himself only to realize later that what he sought was there all along.

Much like the son in this story, I wasn’t able to recognize when I was younger those sacrifices that my parents made for me. I wasn’t able to recognize how much they loved me and because of that I wrote them off way too much. I wanted more, I wanted it my way, I wanted to live my life the way I knew would be best and my only consideration was my own happiness. Being a father now, I know that there are days ahead of me that my own kids will want to do the same thing and that is scary, because a father or a mother always loves their children no matter how much trouble they might get into, no matter how many stupid stunts they pull, no matter how many times they don’t follow our advice, we love them. And we know that despite loving them so much, we know there will come a day when they won’t see how much we love them and will claim that we are just not getting them, that we just don’t understand.

But, looking back, I can say that I was blessed to have two parents who turned me into the person I am today, who helped me to be a better father than I would have been without them, who helped me be a better husband than I would have been had I not had their example. And I am thankful for that. It means more to me that I can explain that my mother is here today. And it hurts to know that by the time I figured out I was being called into ministry, it was too late for my father to be able to hear me preach. More than anything else, his absence is the one I feel the most. I have come to realize that the love which defines home is sometimes best understood as the love between father and son, even though for much of our lives the relationships we have with our fathers is complicated. But as complicated as the relationship may be, the love is stronger than just about anything else.

I would like to share with you a short story that I came across the other day. It is the sad but inspiring story that emerged from the Vietnam War and it is about the stamina and cohesiveness of the Elmo Zumwalt family. Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr., a graduate of Annapolis, quickly progessed from rank to rank. He was appointed chief of naval operations at age 49, the youngest person ever to hold that position.

Lieutenant Elmo Zumwalt III embraced his father’s credo, “Duty, honor, intelligence, and compassion.” Much against the admiral’s wishes, the young man elected to serve in Vietnam. He neither sought nor received special treatment from the Navy. In fact, his assignment was an extremely dangerous one: patrolling the rivers in small craft. During this time the powerful chemical defoliant, Agent Orange, was used along the riverbanks.

In 1983, Lieutenant Zumwalt learned he had developed cancer. It was traceable to Agent Orange; ironically, his father had given the order to use it.

Their book, My Father, My Son, details the unbelievable account of the family’s courage and commitment to one another. There was no blame; each man did what he thought he had to do. The son’s painful days finally ended. However, before his death he wrote his father a beautiful letter. Here is the last paragraph:

“How I loved you. How I would have loved to continue to fight battles by your side. You always made a difference. You made my last battle, the journey to death, more gentle, more humane. I love you, Elmo.”

We all love the story of the prodigal son, because to a some extent we all can empathize with the son. But, to some extent, too, we can empathize with the father. We know the importance that forgiveness can bring to a relationship and we all know what it is like to be in need of forgiveness.

This morning I didn’t want to stand up here and recount a sad story, but sometimes it is in the sad stories that we see the most joy. The father in the story, at the sight of his son coming home, rejoiced. Even if he knew all the wrong his son had done, at that moment, he didn’t care. He was joyous simply with the knowledge that the separation was over. Coming home is a celebration.

It is in that celebration that we gather today. We have come home to share our lives with one another. This celebration today we share with those that we love. While there may be a few people missing from our tables today, their absence also reminds us of the fact that we all are on our own way home. From the day we are born we are on a journey home. For some that journey is long and for others not so much, but the destination is the same. Much like the prodigal son, we may fear that homecoming, but the parable we read from Luke’s Gospel this morning reminds us that while we may not think we deserve a homecoming celebration, the Father will be ready to welcome us back to the home that we all share and that day we will feast with Him, with those who have gone home before us and those that still journey to join us. That, my friends, is the good news.

The prophet Micah reminds us this morning, too, that getting there isn’t as difficult as we make it. The Bible is big and complicated, but the story of the prodigal son and the words from Micah remind us that there is a home we are venturing too and getting there is more simple than we know. We may say that the Father expects a lot, but in reality what he expects is not that difficult to do. He wants us to do justice. To know that there is a wrong and a right and that our decisions should reflect that. Yet, even after the call for justice, we are to love mercy. We are to acknowledge that God’s grace is what helps us stay on the road home and that we are to reflect that mercy to others. And He wants us to acknowledge and live into the fact that we do not journey alone, for He is with us and we walk with Him through it all.

September 12, 2013

So as part of my Teaching the Bible class tonight, we were asked to spend some time at a few different sensory stations. Some played music, some were based on touch, on smell, on sight, etc. Each station had different relics from in and around Jerusalem and Israel. We were then asked to reflect upon them and so I wrote the following stream of consciousness reflection and I thought I would share. Not for any particular reason, but I thought I would. The Rose of Sharon, in this example, is a reference to an anointing oil, not the bush that grows in the garden.

Rose of Sharon. I know the plant or bush that we know here is not the one referenced in scripture, or so I am told. Yet, when I smelled the Rose of Sharon ointment, my mind was immediately taken back to two things. First of all, my maternal grandfather’s favorite plant was the rose of sharon. It smelled differently, but the association with the name brought to mind images of him. Secondly, while I never knew what perfume my paternal grandmother wore, the moment I smelled the ointment, it was precisely the smell that she had. I haven’t smelled her in 17 years, but I immediately knew her scent. Makes me think of how our lives and our memories are an amalgum of sensory perceptions. Even the senses we use in church, in one way or another help us to experience parts of scripture, even if we don’t necessarily realize it at the time. The smell of the sanctuary just after the hanging of the greens is something that is unique and unforgettable. The quietness of an empty sanctuary has, for years, helped us to feel closer or more apparent to God in some way. The Bible is the living word because we are alive and our lives are made up of these moments, these senses, these experiences that bind us to a story, our own and each others and ultimately God’s. The experiences we have at church or through reading scripture tie us to God’s ultimate story that has begun but has not yet ended, it is a story that is alive and however we experience that, it makes us part of that living story. Sometimes it is written, sometimes it is seen, sometimes it is smelled, sometimes it is touched, sometimes it is heard, and sometimes it simply is in such a way that we couldn’t extricate ourselves from it no matter how hard we tried.

The pictures and the objects that I had not seen before may not have reminded me about something specific or conjured up any memories, but they do help me to see that God’s story is larger than me and is experienced by others in different ways, so that my interpretation is one of many, making up the quilt that is the fabric of life that God has sewn together, uniting all his children in the story that is still being told.

God is in the known and the unknown. They mysterious and the mundane are two sides of the same coin. There is no limit to the attributes of God, whether in the strong taste of the salt, or the foreignness of the language written on an Israeli coin. Even where we don’t expect to see or experience Him, there He is.

Our words spoken in worship are also part of that story, but I am reminded that the story is told using much else than those words alone.

Sermon delivered 

September 1, 2013 at Grace United Methodist Church in York, PA

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 (NRSV)

1. Let mutual love continue.
2. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
3. Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
4. Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.
5. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
6. So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”
7. Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
8. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

15. Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of the lips that confess his name.
16. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
    
    
    This past week we celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington culminating in the famous “I have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, I am not quite old enough to remember that time, but some of you may remember what life was like at that time in this country. Maybe you remember hearing your parents discuss the events as you came home from grade school. Maybe you remember seeing the images on television of the riots that occurred in places like Birmingham and elsewhere as protesters were met with police water cannons. Maybe you remember praying for the souls of those young african american girls who lost their lives when their church was bombed on a Sunday morning.
    
    
    I can't speak of my experience in these matters, but I am aware that how we view those events fifty years down the road is very different from the way they were viewed at the time. To think of segregating society now is anathema, it is frowned upon, to suggest it is to ostracize yourself from all social circles, and for good reason. Ideas like that are, in my opinion and in the opinion of the vast majority of Christian denominations, are the opposite of what we consider to be true, Christian moral codes. But at the moment they were occurring, there was no consensus, had there been, history would no doubt tell a very different tale. What is true in one human age is not necessarily true in another human age. Cultures change, human moral principles shift. Life adapts to place and time. It is the story of human endeavor.
    
    
    Yet, this morning here we are. We gather to praise God. We gather to rejuvenate our faith. We gather to hold up that which God holds out to us, that is His Grace. If the author of Hebrews has taught us nothing else, it is that there is a distinction between what is perfect and what is not. There is perfection in this world, but that perfection is in Christ. That perfection is in the sacrifice and blood of God's own Son for our undeserving redemption. That perfection does not lie in us, nor can it, at least not in the present. It can only be obtained by an acknowledgment on our part of the gift of Christ in our lives. Yet, even in that acknowledgment, perfection is not yet attained. We must wait! We must act in life, knowing that perfection will be obtained, but at a time not of our choosing. We must act in life, secure that our redemption is bought and paid for, but without any receipt to ensure our entrance to the Kingdom. That is faith. Faith, as Hebrews reminds us is assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. We can not see our reward, we have no physical proof that it is in our future, but we have faith.
    
    
    Now, there is a tendency that we humans have that I will admit, I have had trouble with lately. We tend to look on the past through a different lens than we do the present. It causes us to see the past as a bit more pleasant than it actually was. I honestly believe that those who are my age and complain about the state of life now will look back on this time in 50 years and tell stories about how the good old days were so much better than now. We will talk about how the kids have no respect because they wear their pants above their hips instead of below. We'll complain about the violence in the news and how back in 2013 it was safe enough to have only one lock on our doors. Oh, and the music, we will complain about the music, remembering how we used to be able to understand every third word, but now we can only make out one word out of five. But, the reality of the past is usually not as pleasant as we remember it.
    
    
    I thought about that tendency this week, while at the same time recognizing that the past, our past, has been an experience that has drawn us closer to the truth, but in so doing, presented us with a struggle that has been, at times, violent, divisive and even deadly to some. Even if we overlook the not so pleasant realities of our past, they are still there.
    
    
    As we finish up our time with Hebrews, the author leaves us with the parting words that we read this morning. They are, in essence, THE essence of this epistle. They are the answer to our eternal question of “how.” How do we live to bring about the kingdom? How do we act for God in a world that seems to be Godless? How can we live lives of promise and service when all around us seems to be a world of service to self and broken promises?
    
    
    How can we change even the block of this city we come to every week to worship? The answer is before us this morning in this final exhortation of Hebrews. You see, when the author tells us things like, “Remember those who are being tortured as if you were being tortured.” What that means is that acting out a faith that is pleasing to God is not easy. Coming to church on Sunday, singing some old hymns, praying together and shaking each others hands isn't enough. You might say, that was enough fifty years ago, or even a hundred years ago. But, I am here to tell you it wasn't enough then, and it isn't enough today and it definitely won't be enough tomorrow. Living out this promise has always been not only difficult, but when done correctly it is truly dangerous. We ask, why should we remember those who are tortured as if we are tortured? Why can't we just remember them and pray about them, because in reality, that is what we do. But the point the author is making is that if you are truly remembering them, you are being tortured, because the church is larger than anything we can imagine. The church is one unified body of the living Christ. That means if you are part of that body, you are not separate from any other part of that body. So if you are remembering those who suffer, it is more than a remembrance, it is you suffering as well. If you are showing hospitality, it can only be to a stranger. Giving hospitality to a friend, to another member of the body, it is not hospitality, it is simply sharing the life force that we have in common. We are called to help each other, but at the same time we are called to bring others into the body. Showing hospitality is to those who are not of us, yet. Those we don't know, but who God does know and who God does love. If we are loving something so much that it takes precedence over any part of the whole body, then it can infect the rest. Like a virus festering in a sore that is broken open and travels throughout the body. Friends, brothers and sisters, and compatriots of this body of Christ, if our faith is easy on us, then it is not faith. And if it is not faith, it is not pleasing to God.
    
    
    So let me tell you a story of what this faith that I speak of really looks like.
    
    
    Mariah Watkins had delivered more babies than any other woman in town. But for all she knew about babies, she had borne no child of her own. Perhaps that's why she was willing to take in the stray boy who showed up one day at her barn.
    The boy she took in was a genius, but she couldn't tell it by looking at him. True, he seemed different from other children, more frail and sensitive. But Mariah didn't see what the entire world would someday come to know about George. She just saw a child in need of a home and was willing to give it to him.
    George had come to her town to go to school. When they wouldn't allow him in the white school where he lived, he traveled eight miles to attend an all black school located just across the street from the home of Mariah and her husband, Andrew.
    The next day, George told Mariah that he was lucky to have picked her barn to sleep in that night. But the woman said, “Luck had nothing to do with it, boy. God brought you to my yard. He has work for you, and he wants Andrew and me to lend a hand.”
    At lunchtime, George would hop over the fence to help Mariah with the laundry. Besides giving him room and board, she taught George about herbs, roots, and other natural medicines. She hones his cooking and cleaning skills and even taught him to knit and crochet. One Christmas, she gave him an old, tattered Bible and made sure he read it every day. Unlike most former slave women, Mariah could read – thanks to a slave named Libby who had taught her by lamplight in spite of the beating she could get for doing it. Libby was one of Mariah's heroes, and the times George stayed home from school sick, Mariah would tell him about Libby's selfless dedication to her people.
    It was during one of these storytelling sessions that Mariah spoke to George about his place in the world. Her words lodged deep in his soul and supplied the fuel for the innumerable contributions he would eventually make.
    “You must learn all you can,” she said, “then be like Libby. Go out in the world and give your learning back to our people. They're starving for a little learning.”
    George did get all the learning he could. He sucked up every drop of knowledge in the little black school in Neosho, Missouri, then he moved on throughout the Midwest in search of other schools that would take him. For many years, he made money any way he could and then entered Simpson College to study art. While George was there, a teacher noticed something special about him and encouraged him to transfer to Iowa State to study agriculture.
    This proved to be another divine intervention.
    At Iowa State, George took graduate courses under great professors who recognized his keen mind and mentored him in the fields of botany and mycology. Then as he was nearing completion of his master's degree, a letter came from the famous black educator Booker T. Washington, a man who was known throughout the country for promising to help Southern blacks rise from poverty. Washington offered George the position of director of the agricultural school and state agricultural experiment station at his famous Tuskegee Institute. He accepted the job, which was the turning point of George's life.
    In a letter of response to Washington, George reaffirmed the calling spoken over his life by Mariah Watkins. He said, “It has always been one of the great ideals of my life to be of the greatest good to the greatest number of 'my people' possible and to this end I have been preparing myself for these many years; feeling as I do that this line of education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom to our people.”
    When George arrived at Tuskegee, the agricultural department consisted of a butter churn, several starving hogs, acres of worthless soil, and one old horse. So he and his students literally built their school from the ground up, using carved milk cartons, empty cans, and whatever else could be found to construct a working laboratory.
    For the next fifty years, George Washington Carver gave his learning back to hundreds and hundreds of “his people” and then, ultimately, to the world. He became as comfortable helping a local farmer as he was advising Ghandi on health issues for India. When the tsetse fly threatened the lives of their cows, George taught African missionaries how to feed people with peanut milk.
    His research on the peanut and other vegetables came from his prayer times, and he was famous for marrying the mysticism of religion with the logic of science. He is credited with more than three hundred products from the peanut including milk, cheese, butter, vinegar, coffee, salads, soups, printer's ink, shampoo, and wood stains. From the sweet potato, he created 118 possibilities, including rubber. From the hard southern clay, he developed paints and pioneered a new science called chemurgy – the industrialization of agricultural products, like wallboard from pine cones, banana stems, and peanut shells. He also created more than fifty dyes from twenty-eight kinds of plants.
    By the end of his life, the once-orphaned houseguest of Mariah Watkins had been showered with international acclaim as a botanist, chemurgist, researcher, painter, and inventor. He was a friend of Henry Ford and acquainted with three presidents. Throughout his life, Carver kept a strong faith by constant prayer and daily reading of the same tattered Bible that Mariah had given him as a boy. As a teacher, he sparked a bright hope in his people. And in a time of great unrest, he modeled for his race how to rise about injustice without succumbing to hatred.¹
    
    
    My friends, that is an example of faith. It is jumping out of our comfort to suffer with our people. It is the ability and desire to stand up and say, this isn't right and I am not going to stand for it anymore. True faith, of the kind Hebrews speaks, is what we see in Mariah learning to read from someone who only learned to read under a system that would have beat them to a pulp had they been caught. That is the faith we should aspire to. It is not a faith of empty words in hymns we sing because we always have but never stop to understand the words.
    
    
    If we come to worship hoping to find what we all know, then we have come for the wrong reason. If we come to worship to hear the same words we have always heard, we are not here for the right reason. If we come to worship to sing only the old standards and never the new age funk or even the great Gospel Spirituals that were written for that purpose, then we have not come for the right reasons.
    
    
    Our worship is a gift to God and only to God. If it becomes about anything else, then it is an offense to God. Our lives are a gift from God and to not use them as He commands, then we insult the giver of this greatest gift we know.
    
    
    Fifty years ago, a great preacher stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. His idea that day was to give a speech, but the people gathered were not aware they were about to go to church. That speech turned into a sermon the likes of which every pastor wishes he could give. It was a call to action based in the scriptural promise of freedom for all of God's children. We know the right way to be, we lack the will to be that way. Let us remember today and every day that in our faith, we have the conviction of that which we know to be true but cannot see. God gives us the glasses that help us see that promise even before it is realized. Let us put on those glasses today and give thanks that we have a God who is our helper. Let us give thanks that we don't have to be afraid, because if we are God's who can do any harm to us?!
    1Caron Loveless, The Words that Inspired the Dreams, (West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing Co., 2000), 50-53.