Grow

Scriptures: Pentecost, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

  

Congratulations, confirmands! After three years of study and fellowship; three years of sermon notes and Sunday lectures and Faith Five prayers; three years of Old Testament, New Testament, and Small Catechism, you have come at last to your Confirmation. Well done. Now the hard work begins.

Confirmation is often misunderstood. Some view it as a sort of graduation from Sunday school, but it’s not. Some treat it as a coming of age rite, a sort of Christian bar mitzvah, but this too misses the mark. Confirmation is not the end of anything; in point of fact, this is only the beginning.

My Dad was an Iowa farm boy. He left home to become an educator, but he never forgot his roots, and no matter where he went, he always insisted upon planting two things: roses and tomatoes. The funny thing about both of those plants is that if you really want them to thrive, you need to give them a framework. They have to have something to lean on, to cling to, to climb up. They need guidance and direction. They need bones that will let them stand tall against the wind and rain. Give them that, and they will flourish. Give them that, and they will astound you with the beauty and abundance they produce.

That’s what we’ve been doing for the past three years. We’ve been building a framework, giving you bones. Now it’s up to you to use them, to hold fast to the faith, to grow strong and fruitful and mature in the wisdom of the Holy Trinity. God has always been with you. He knew you before you were born, knitting you together in your mother’s womb. He was there to hear your borning cry, to rejoice with your family at every first, and to comfort them at every fear.

He was there for your second birth as well, when you were Baptized, many of you in this very font. It was then that God made public profession that He has chosen you from before the world began; and there that He made unbreakable, inviolable promises, claiming you as His own, buying you with a price.

God has come to you in the love of your family, in the support of this community, and in the brokenness of life—in times of doubt and sorrow and terrible mistakes. He dwells within this congregation and within your very heart, claiming your body as His temple, offering His death in place of yours, His life to be your own. This is the same Holy Spirit of God who hovered over the waters of Creation, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and to Elijah in wind and flame; the same Spirit who led the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night; and who poured Himself out upon the Apostles at Pentecost, that they might join as one in the very life and love of God. This same God lives in you!

And so it is altogether fitting and proper that as you enter into adulthood we call upon the Holy Spirit once again to Confirm the gifts and promises He made to you in your Baptism: the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence, both now and forever.

And also we slap you. Did you know that? In Confirmation there is the anointing and the laying on of hands and a slap to the face—gentle, I promise—to admonish us to be bold in the promises of Christ, to be strong in the face of adversity, and to remember always that the Lion of Judah stands firmly beside us as our King! We slap you so that you know it’s real.

Look, if Confirmation were just a class—just a bunch of books to read and facts to remember—then all of this would be for naught. We can memorize all the creeds in the world and be not one step closer to the joy that God intends for us. The framework has been laid, but you must grow upon it. You must be faithful in the relationship that God has begun in you. Confirmation—like Baptism, like Confession, like the Eucharist and all the Sacraments—Confirmation is a relationship. It’s God coming to us, forgiving us, drowning us in our sins and loving us back up to new life. And relationships by nature are reciprocal.

Pray, and Christ will hear you. Read the Bible, and Christ will answer you. Gather together for worship with broken, hurting people and you will both heal and be healed. If you take nothing else away from your time in Confirmation class, know that life is hard and God is real and you are loved. Forever. Without condition. That doesn’t mean we won’t screw up. It doesn’t mean we won’t wound ourselves and others in our sin. But it does mean that God is with us and never tires of absolving and healing and raising us up. There is always new life in Christ. There is always a new beginning, a new dawn, until that day when darkness and shadows at last are no more. You have been given a life in Christ. It’s up to you now to live it.

My dear Confirmands. You have been raised in love—by your parents, by your community, by your Father in Heaven. You are loved more deeply than you can possibly know.

Now grow, o ye Christians. Grow, and be little Christs for the world.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.