Tag Archives: The Wisdom Jesus

“The Reign of Christ the King”

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A Sermon for 25 November 2018 – Christ the King Sunday

A reading from the gospel of John 18:33-37.  We break into the portion of the gospel of John when Jesus has been brought before Pilate to be condemned to crucifixion.  Already Pilate has been outside to talk to the religious leaders who have brought Jesus to the local Roman ruler.  And Pilate has wondered if this man isn’t innocent.  He returns to his headquarters to speak to Jesus directly.  Listen for God’s word to us.

“Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I?  Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me.  What have you done?”  Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?”  Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king.  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God!

 

Anyone who’s ever spent time with stories from the gospels likely recognizes how odd things seem.  In stories recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; Jesus does things like sit down to eat with those despised as outsiders.  Heal-with-a-touch people considered unclean, untouchable by religious law.  Welcome women, children, and others – even those from other nations – all who were hailed as less than in Jesus’ day.  Not to mention, forgive those violently taking his life, as even in death he remains grounded in the way of non-violence.  If we stop to read the gospels – and know a thing or two about the times in which Jesus lived, then we begin to see behavior in Jesus and in his first followers that may look quite different from what’s too often seen today.  We may look at the stories of Christ and his first followers and think:  “Wow!  It’s behavior, practices, acts – from truly beyond this world!

It’s Christ the King Sunday – the final Sunday of the liturgical year – the culmination of the cyclical story that takes us in Advent through the waiting, waiting, waiting for God to act among us in a new way, to the in-breaking of Christ as a baby in Bethlehem, to his radical way of living among us which led directly to his death but could not be the end for a God who is Life and would start something amazing among us through the Spirit, so that we would grow together in this world to walk that same radical path of love.  Today we remember Christ is King!  He reigns supreme with the strongest power known in the universe.  Not force, in which the powers of this world put all their hope; but love.

This year in the scriptures assigned by the lectionary for Christ the King, we’re taken right to the judgment seat of Pilate.  Here in the gospel of John a seemingly private conversation between Jesus and Pilate is recorded.  It might be helpful to remember that John is the latest written gospel and it begins with that beautiful poetry of “In the beginning” (John 1:1-14).  There was God.  There was Word.  There was Spirit and the outflow of their love created the world.  The continuing outflow of their love caused it to be that Word would take on flesh to dwell among us.  . . .  Jesus attempts to explain this to Nicodemus when Nicodemus comes to him in the shadow of night trying to understand what Jesus might be up to.  As the gospel of John records the story, it’s the first teaching of Jesus and it begins like this:  “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3).  If you’re scratching your head going:  “Huh?”  Don’t be alarmed.  Supposedly Nicodemus was a part of those who devoted their whole lives to understanding God and he’s just as confused as the next.

In her book entitled The Wisdom Jesus:  Transforming Heart and Mind, Cynthia Bourgeault makes the case that Jesus isn’t just the Savior of the world – here to die and be raised to new life for us, as we’ve primarily come to emphasize in the Christian tradition of the West.  Jesus also is a wisdom teacher – one among us to perk our consciousness that we might come to know how to live.  How to follow the path of his Way.  It’s why so much of what Jesus teaches is hard for us to grasp.  People seek to take him at face value like he’s a teacher who rattles off fact after concrete literal fact.  When wisdom teachers speak, according to Bourgeault, “pithy sayings, puzzles, and parables” all for the sake of the transformation of the human being (The Wisdom Jesus, p. 23).  Bourgeault points out that much of Western Christianity has seen the kingdom of God in one of two different ways.  She writes:  “A lot of Christians . . . assume that the Kingdom of Heaven (or of God) means the place where you go when you die – if you’ve been good.”  . . .  Others “equate the Kingdom of Heaven with an earthly utopia . . . a realm of peace and justice, where human beings live together in harmony and fair distribution of economic assets” (Ibid., p. 30).  I’ve heard of both, haven’t you?  In fact, one or the other, or both, seem the concern of Pilate.  He’s Rome’s representative in Jerusalem, after all.  If Jesus is a King, he needs to know if his Caesarea has anything about which to be worried.

As Jesus stands before Pilate, he’s asked:  “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33).  In the vein of a true teacher of wisdom, Jesus turns back the question on the questioner:  “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” (John 18:34).  He might as well have been saying:  “What do you think, Pilate?  You see the leaders out there wanting to do me in.  Am I the King of the Jews?”  Insisting Jesus reveal his crimes, Jesus finally tells Pilate:  “My kingdom is not of this world.  That’s easy enough to see or else my followers would be here storming the gates to free me.  Using the very same force upon which Rome and the powers of this world rely” (John 18:36).

I wish the gospel writer would have used a word other than the same one used in the rest of the gospel of John.  Like when John records:  “The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him . . .  And for God so loved the world” (John 1 & 3).  I wish the word recorded by John on Jesus’ lips before Pilate would have been the word society.  Culture.  Even way, as in:  “my kingdom is not like your way.”  Anything to keep us from thinking that Jesus wants nothing to do with the physical stuff of this world.  Too long Christian history has abused the physical in this world due to misguided understandings of God.  After all, if spirit is all that is good and matter is all bad, how can we claim God created physical matter?  This beautiful earth with all its creatures including us, who are an interesting elixir of heaven and earth, spirit and matter, in-fleshed people of God.  If the world is all bad and the spirit is all that is good, then certainly God wouldn’t have taken on our physical flesh in Jesus the Christ.  . . .  Because God took on our flesh and blood; in Jesus God could wake up each day in a home with parents around him, and feet to put on the ground, and taste buds to take-in that first sip of whatever it was he’d drink every morning.  And finally had ears to hear the sweet songs of the birds.  And muscles to feel the strain of physical labor – the wood and tools in his hands as he worked alongside his dad.  Jesus could feel the hot sun on his back as they built.  And notice the beautiful colors as it began to set each night.  He had a brain to think and try to keep calm.  And a heart beating in the center of his chest with which he could feel the full range of human emotions.  I do believe that if God didn’t value the physical stuff of this world – including all the stuff of human flesh, then God never would have chosen to be in-fleshed among us in Jesus the Christ.  But, as the gospel of John so beautifully reminds:  God so loved this world; that God, in Christ, came to us in a new and wonderful way! (John 3:16).

While it is true that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world in the sense of the norms, rituals, and values of so much of our society.  Nonetheless, it is right here and now; in this world.  Jesus says it himself when elsewhere the Pharisees ask him when the Kingdom of God will arrive.  Luke 17:20-21 records his answer as:  “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed . . . for in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.”  In Putting on the Mind of Christ, Jim Marion interestingly concludes that the kingdom of God might just be “a metaphor for a state of consciousness . . . a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place” (The Wisdom Jesus, pp. 30-31).  Hear that again:  the kingdom of God might just be “a metaphor for a state of consciousness . . . a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place” (Ibid.).  An awareness that sees no separation between God and humans, and humans and other humans.  It’s a Oneness.  A mutual indwelling, about which Jesus tells his followers a few chapters earlier in the gospel of John when they gather together that fatal night.  He tells them:  “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you  . . .  abide in me” (John 14:20; 15:4).

When we’re aware of that kind of oneness – when we’re living that kind of unified sense, then indeed the kingdom of God is in us.  Then, and maybe only then, can we be about the behaviors of Christ’s way.  Putting into practice things like expanding our table fellowship because God in Christ ate with the despised of the world.  Maybe as we take on the consciousness of Christ our King, we can sit with people in pain to help heal them too just like God in Christ did.  Perhaps we could enact gracious welcome of all – including men and women and children of every race and tribe and ability because God in Christ certainly did.  Perhaps we could put down the weapons of war and for once understand that the most powerful energy in the world isn’t force, but love.  Because in Christ, God showed us this Way.  The Truth which always leads to Life.

It’s Christ the King Sunday.  The day we celebrate the One whose Way is not like the ways of this world.  Whose Truth looks differently than the lies we’re encouraged by this realm to live.  When we finally get that, his reign expands in us for the Kingdom of God to be seen through us!

Blessings for Christ the King Sunday, children of the King!  May he reign in us all forever!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2018  (All rights reserved.)

 

The Way

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A Sermon for 14 May 2017 – 5th Sunday of Easter

A reading from the gospel of John 14:1-14 (NRSV).  Listen for God’s word to us.

“’Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Believe in God, believe also in me.  2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.  4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.’  5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.  How can we know the way?”  6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.  7 If you know me, you will know my Father also.  From now on you do know him and have seen him.”  8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”  9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.  12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.  13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.’”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God!

Little Ziggy is about to get baptized.  A bundle of wonder, the adventure of his life unfolds before him!  He’s been born into a loving family, with a great big sister, and parents doing all they can to provide for his every need – including his every spiritual need.  In just a few moments he’ll be brought.  Promises will be made – not just by his mom and dad, but by you all too.  Until the day he’s old enough to claim Christ for himself, we’re doing it for him today.  And every day hereafter he will be a brother of ours in Christ.  It’s important that we remember that he’s not too young to be experiencing faith already.  From the time we are born into this world, the nurture we experience from the adults of our world is our first experience of a loving God.  To the extent that he’s surrounded in love by his family at home and his family of faith here, his trust of God is being formulated before he even has words to exclaim how amazing God’s grace feels!  . . .  Baptism days are big days for us all in the Church of Jesus Christ.  . . .  I hope we don’t forget what it first was like, when the Risen Christ’s followers underwent the sacrament for themselves.  As the radical movement was spreading, people who had been raised according to other religious practices were drawn to the water.  They were schooled in the message of the abundant love of God as shown to us in Jesus, the Christ.  They were asked if they were ready – ready to enter into a new family.  A new covenant community where they would walk with one another, helping each other not only to understand what this disciple of Christ thing all was about, but also to live as one initiated into the covenant.  One engrafted into the group.  They were entering – as is Ziggy today, as have we all at some point in our lives.  Baptism is about entering into the Way of Christ.

Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault presents it beautifully in her book, The Wisdom Jesus.  She reminds that Jesus isn’t just Savior.  That is only part of his work among us – to save us from the cycle of our sins that can make life now a living hell.  Western Christianity has emphasized this as Jesus’ role.  Meanwhile, we’re discovering that the Eastern Church initially understood Jesus as Life Giver.  As one who invited others unto the path of wisdom.  Life Giver, Bourgeault writes:  is one “whose life is full, integrated, and flowing.  Jesus’ disciples saw in him,” Bourgeault explains “a master of consciousness, offering a path through which they too could become . . . enlightened.”  Ones whose primary task on earth is to “put on the mind of Christ.”  To live the Master’s way.  (The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia Bourgeault, p. 21).

The gospel of John describes this way . . . the Truth that leads to Life.  Jesus is desperate at the last supper with his friends to teach them that he is one with the Father.  In him, the one laying down his life, Jesus teaches that the Father can be seen.  One commentator writes:  “In John, Jesus himself embodies the way to God and therefore the way of discipleship” (Feasting on the Word, Yr. A Vol. 2, Donald Senior, p. 469).  His life, death, and resurrection show the path of how we are to be in this world – disciples of his who follow in like manner.  . . .  And what do we see when we look at him?  He shows us that his way is the way of being so fully united with God that one is at one with God’s will for the world.  It’s the only way, says Jesus the Life Giver, that we will find ourselves with God.  . . .  This is the way described right before this four-chapter Maundy Thursday monologue, when Jesus gives the new command to “love one another” (John 13:34).  This is the way “by which all will know we are his disciples,” he claims, “if we have love for one another” (John 13:35, paraphrase).  Thankfully, all are invited to this path.  Everyone’s welcome to follow in the way of emulating our Savior and Lord, thereby finding ourselves saved.  Given Life now and forevermore.

It’s not the path that ends at the baptismal font.  It’s the way that’s just beginning.  As Ziggy grows, it will be up to his parents and us too to show him the way.  To teach him how to use the personality, skills, and time he’s been given in such a way that his life is united with the One whom Jesus called Abba, Father.  . . .  Listen to the words that soon will be proclaimed at the font:  “In baptism, God claims us, and puts a sign on us to show that we belong to the very household of God.  . . .  By water and the Holy Spirit we are made members of the church, the body of Christ, and joined to Christ’s ministry of love, peace, and justice.”  . . .  We’ll plead to God in prayer today that Ziggy will be “a new creation through these baptism waters” to “preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, and set at liberty those who are oppressed.”  It’s a tall order for such a little guy.  So we’ll ask God to “strengthen him to serve  . . . with joy” until all is made new (PCUSA Book of Common Worship, WJKP, 1993; pp. 403-415).  Before it’s all over, we’ll see the water on his brow and hear the proclamation that he is a child of the covenant . . . one to whom God will keep the promises made here today forever!  . . .  But this day is not just for him.  It’s for us all too!  In a moment, I will remind you to remember your baptism.  To remember and be grateful!  For you too are a child of the covenant, marked in your own baptism, no matter how long ago, as one who also has promised to follow in Christ’s way.  To embody the path of Love for as long as you shall live.  . . .  It means we’ll get busy now – ensuring we too continue to grow in the knowledge and love of God.  We’ll nurture one another and pray we’re strengthened always to live the good news.  To embody in word and deed that the Way of God is the path of showing love to one another AND to those in this world who are in any kind of need.  We’ll lay down our own desires to be united with God’s will for a world so deeply cherished.  We’ll live as new creations serving with joy until ALL at last is re-newed.  The light of our lives growing as we follow in the Master’s Way.  . . .  Brothers and sisters together, let us always give thanks to our Savior and Life Giver Jesus, the Christ who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen!

© Copyright JMN – 2017  (All rights reserved.)

Not of this World?

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A Sermon for 22 November 2015 – Christ the King Sunday

A reading from the gospel of John 18:33-37. We break into the portion of the gospel when Jesus has been brought before Pilate to be condemned to crucifixion. Already Pilate has been outside to talk to the religious leaders who have brought Jesus to the local Roman ruler. And Pilate’s wondered if this man isn’t innocent. He returns to his headquarters to speak to Jesus directly. Listen for God’s word to us.

“Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God!

 

There’s a couple in my new neighborhood who have been really welcoming to me. The first day when I was moving in some boxes, they walked by and made a point to introduce themselves. Then a few weeks ago they stopped in to tell me of an upcoming neighborhood potluck. I didn’t know for sure where they lived until one morning when I passed by a house and the man was outside doing something to his car. He’s always so chipper – no matter the early hour. It’s impressive to me as I barely am awake most mornings when I’m out there walking my dog. One day I noticed a sticker on the back window of their car. It reads: “Not of this world.” . . . I’ve been a little confused as to what exactly they intend with their sticker. Especially because it’s on the back window of their sleek, silver Infiniti, which leaves me wondering if they bought the car to keep themselves focused on infinity, as in eternity; or if they really are focused on a luxury vehicle and the sticker is just an after-thought.

I’m not so sure I like the sticker – what with a long Christian history of abuse of physical matter in this world due to misguided understandings of God. After all, if spirit was all good and matter was all bad, God never would have created physical matter. This beautiful earth with all its creatures including us, who are an interesting elixir of spirit and matter. The breath of God breathed into the soil of the earth, according to the Genesis 2 telling of it (Genesis 2:7). If the world was all bad and the spirit was all that was good, then certainly God wouldn’t have taken on our physical flesh in Jesus the Christ. I know we focus a lot on his death and resurrection, but he really was a living human being – like each one of us. It must have been so cool to be him – excited each day to wake up in a home with parents around him, and feet to put on the ground, and taste buds to take in that first sip of whatever it was he’d drink each morning. He finally had ears to hear the sweet songs of the birds and muscles to feel the strain of physical labor – the wood in his hands as he worked alongside his dad. He could feel the hot sun on his back as they built and notice the beautiful colors as it began to set each night. He had a brain to think and try to keep calm. And a heart beating in the center of his chest with which he could feel the full range of human emotions. I do believe that if God didn’t value the physical stuff of this world – including all the stuff of human flesh, then God never would have chosen to be in-fleshed among us in Jesus the Christ. . . . I don’t like stickers that lead people to believe that the matter of this world somehow needs to be escaped. Because we wouldn’t need to waste any time on Advent and Christmas if that was the case. . . . For God so loved this world, God in Christ came to us in a new and wonderful way!

It’s Christ the King Sunday – the final Sunday of the liturgical year. It’s the culmination of the cyclical story that takes us in Advent through the waiting, waiting, waiting for God to act among us in a new way, to the in-breaking of Christ as a baby in Bethlehem, to his radical way of living among us which led directly to his death but could not be the end for a God who is Life and would start something amazing among us through the Spirit so that we would grow together in this world to walk that same radical path of love. Today we remember Christ is King! He reigns supreme with the strongest power known in the universe. Not force, in which the powers of this world put all their hope; but love.

This year in the Christ the King lectionary, we’re taken right to the judgment seat of Pilate. Here in the gospel of John a seemingly private conversation between Jesus and Pilate is recorded. . . . It might be helpful to remember that John is the latest written gospel and it begins with that beautiful poetry of “In the beginning” (John 1:1-14). There was God. There was Word. There was Spirit and the outflow of their love created the world. The continuing outflow of their love caused it to be that Word would take on flesh to dwell among us. . . . Jesus attempts to explain this to Nicodemus when Nicodemus comes to him in the shadow of night trying to understand what Jesus might be up to. As the gospel of John records the story, it’s the first teaching of Jesus and it begins like this: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” (John 3:3). If you’re scratching your head going: “Huh?” Don’t be alarmed. Supposedly Nicodemus was a part of those who devoted their whole lives to understanding God and he’s just as confused as the next.

In her book entitled The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind, Cynthia Bourgeault makes the case that Jesus isn’t just the Savior of the world – here to die and be raised to new life for us, as we’ve primarily come to emphasize in the Christian tradition of the West. Jesus also is a wisdom teacher – one among us to perk our consciousness that we might come to know how to live. How to follow the path of his Way. It’s why so much of what Jesus teaches is hard for us to grasp. People seek to take him at face value like he’s a teacher who rattles off fact after concrete literal fact. When wisdom teachers speak, according to Bourgeault, “pithy sayings, puzzles, and parables” all for the sake of the transformation of the human being (The Wisdom Jesus, p. 23). Bougeault points out that much of Western Christianity has seen the kingdom of God in one of two different ways. She writes: “A lot of Christians . . . assume that the Kingdom of Heaven (or of God) means the place where you go when you die – if you’ve been good.” . . . Others “equate the Kingdom of Heaven with an earthly utopia . . . a realm of peace and justice, where human beings live together in harmony and fair distribution of economic assets” (Ibid., p. 30). I’ve heard of both, haven’t you? In fact, one or the other, or both, seem the concern of Pilate. He’s Rome’s representative in Jerusalem, after all. If Jesus is a King, he needs to know if the Caesarea has anything to be worried about.

As Jesus stands before Pilate, he’s asked: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33). In the vein of a true teacher of wisdom, Jesus turns back the question on the questioner: “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” (John 18:34). He might as well have been saying: “What do you think, Pilate? You see the leaders out there wanting to do me in. Am I the King of the Jews?” Insisting Jesus reveal his crimes, Jesus finally tells Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world. That’s easy enough to see or else my followers would be here storming the gates to free me. Using the very same force Rome and the powers of this world rely upon” (John 18:36). . . . I wish the gospel writer would have used a word other than the same one used in the rest of the gospel of John. Like instead of saying: “The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him . . . And for God so loved the world” (John 1 & 3); I wish the word on Jesus’ lips before Pilate would have been translated society. Culture. Even way, as in: “my kingdom is not like your way.” Anything to keep us from thinking that Jesus wants nothing to do with the physical stuff of this world. His kingdom is not of this world in the sense of the norms, rituals, and values of so much of our society. But it is right here and now; in this world. . . . He says it himself when elsewhere the Pharisees ask him when the Kingdom of God will arrive. Luke 17:20-21 records his answer as: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed . . . for in fact, the kingdom of God is within you.” . . . In Putting on the Mind of Christ, Jim Marion suggests a third way to think about it. He concludes that the kingdom of God might just be “a metaphor for a state of consciousness . . . a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place” . . . an awareness that sees no separation between God and humans, and humans and other humans. (The Wisdom Jesus, pp. 30-31). It’s a Oneness. A mutual indwelling, which Jesus tells his followers about a few chapters earlier in the gospel of John when they gather together that fatal night. He tells them: “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you . . . abide in me” (John 14:20; 15:4). When we’re aware of that kind of oneness – when we’re living that kind of unified sense, then the kingdom of God indeed is in us.

I want to believe that’s how my new neighbors mean it as they dash around the neighborhood in their Infiniti. It could be the source of the man’s cheeriness every morning. For maybe when he greets me, he realizes I’m no stranger. Not some other who moved into the house one of his dear friends had to move out of in order to sell it. Maybe he sees us as one. Knows we’re not of this world because we’re in Christ and Christ in us; which makes us foreigners really to the ways propped up as heroic in the society in which we live. Maybe we’re both celebrating today that Christ is King – the One reigning in the kingdom that is present in us each and every day because we are citizens first of that Way. I want to believe we’ve both heard that truth from the lips of the One who deeply loves the physical, living matter of this world – you and me and all this precious earth. The One who shows us how to live in this world as ones not of this world. That’s Christ our King.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2015  (All rights reserved.)