Confirmation Sermon

ON BEING A CHRISTIAN Confirmation Sunday Easter 5C April 28, 2013


The title for today’s sermon was inspired by the title for the devotional on the back of the bulletin this Sunday “On Being a Christian.” How appropriate for a confirmation service. The outline for today’s sermon was inspired by the personal confirmation verses chosen by the six confirmands this morning. Each verse speaks to one aspect of being a Christian today.

We begin with the love of God. Joel chose as his personal confirmation verse John 3:16 which Martin Luther once said is the gospel in a nutshell – a concise and complete statement of the gospel in one verse. And it all begins with the love of God for us. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” As this verse says by its grammatical structure, the basis of everything we are doing today is God’s love for us, a love that he had for us long before we ever thought of him or ever sought after him. As 1st John 4:10 says so well, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.”

This is a love that is wholly undeserved, and in many ways, unexpected. Once we have experienced the love of God in the giving of his son, we understand that we have no claim on God at all, but that he has claimed us as his own. As we look around, and examine our own lives with honest eyes, we know that we sinners do not deserve the love that a holy God has lavished upon us. As Martin Luther said in the catechism in the section of the Lord’s Prayer on “forgive us our trespasses” “for we sin every day and deserve nothing but punishment.” And so we do not claim to deserve anything, but receive everything by faith in Jesus Christ. Tori chose Ephesians 2:8 which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not because of works, lest anyone should boast.” Today as we go through the Rite of Confirmation we are not asking if these young people are good enough to be confirmed, although they are good young men and women. What I will be asking is if they believe in Jesus Christ as their savior. Today the families of our confirmands are rightly proud of their children, and the young adults they are becoming. But as 2nd Corinthians 10:17 says, “let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” because it is the Lord who gives salvation, forgives sins, and sends the Holy Spirit to form us into what we should be.

When we have been baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, put our faith and trust in him, and been confirmed, then we can face the future with confidence and hope. We know that the Lord, the creator of the universe, loves us and has our best interests at heart. This is said so well by the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, well known for his somber prophecies, who nevertheless quoted the Lord himself as saying, “For surely I know the plans I have for you…. plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” That was Bennett’s chosen verse. That last phrase is especially meaningful, “to give you a future with hope.” The God who sent his Son to be our Savior and who has invited us to believe in him for our salvation, is certainly not going to leave us to our own devices entirely. He has plans for us, plans in which we prosper and flourish, in which we grow into the best possible person we can be. We all know it is not going to be one triumph after another. There will be stumbles and falling and a few wrong turns along the way. We may even have to stop, back up, and start over, but God has plans for us – for our welfare – so that we can face the future with hope.

We can also face the future with courage. It is certainly true that a lot of people live in fear these days. People fear the dangers that surround us, such as the terrorists who attacked the Boston marathon, or industrial accidents such as shook West, Texas, not to mention the fear of serious illness – or even more personally - the fear of failing. But with the Lord beside us, we need not fear. Taylor chose as her verse Psalm 27:1 which says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” The answer, of course, is nothing. As it says in Psalm 46 says, “The Lord is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear….” I heard once of a man who taped this quote on his bathroom mirror so he would see it at the beginning of each and every day: “Lord, help me remember that nothing will happen today that you and I cannot handle together.”

Along those same lines is that verse from the Sermon on the Mount that Sierra chose as her personal confirmation verse. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” For those of us who are worriers, this verse is a great antidote. It comes after Jesus has encouraged his disciples to look up to the birds of the air. He says that they do not plant or harvest or store in barns, and yet, he says, your heavenly Father feeds them. He begins his discussion by saying, “do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, or about your body, what you shall wear” and he ends the discussion by saying, “but seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” When we know that our future is secure, and that we are destined to spend eternity in that new heaven and new earth that our second reading today from Revelation 21 mentions, then we can face each new day with confidence. We can fully embrace the challenges, the joys, and even the disappointments of each and every day. Now please don’t think that this is promoting waiting until the night before the big test in school to cram for it. Far from it. Thinking and planning ahead is very important. But worrying is not good for us. I have found that most of the things I worry the about never happen. So make the most of today. As Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

And finally, we go back to the word with which we began: love. In today’s gospel reading Jesus said, “a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you….” If we were to sum up what being a Christian is all about it is this: to be loved by God and to love one another. First and foremost always is the love God has for us in Christ Jesus. Our response is to love one another. Jesus says, “by this will people know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We will not bully or demean those who are different. We will not pass by on the other side when we someone in need along the road. We will not seek revenge on those who have harmed us. And so Shalynn chose that capstone verse of 1st Corinthians 13: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Today we have talked about faith. We have talked about hope. But we began and end with love. We walk by faith. We live in hope. And we both are loved and love another. That’s being a Christian. AMEN.

I invite you now to sing a song based on the whole of 1st Corinthians 13, #644.