This is the sermon preached at the 8:00 service on Confirmation Sunday at Peace (April 29, 2012)
In a few minutes, we’ll watch Peace’s traditional Confirmation video--with pictures of the nineteen confirmands growing up. Some of you will remember seeing those little faces. Perhaps you have watched them play bells or soccer or sing in the school choir. Maybe you even remember the day one was baptized, that he cried or she almost slept through the whole thing. Some of them were baptized here at Peace, others at other places. And today, they affirm the promises made to them in baptism.
It’s a special day for them. A day when they are reminded of the awesome promises of God--the one who named them and claimed them and knows them each by name. The God who loves them beyond measure. And even though you might not be there at 10:30 when they stand before us and say their “I will and I ask God to help and guide me’s,” it’s a special day for all of us. It’s day when we can remember the promises that we have made over the years. Promises to the strangers and promises to our loved ones. Promises that we would support them as they grew. And we remember the ones who made the promises to us. No matter where it happened, the fact is that someone made a promise to you to help you grow in faith.
We believe we are united as the body of Christ. So even though none of you were there on the day I was baptized, there were people who spoke for the body of Christ and made promises that they would help me grow. And even though many of the people who have helped me understand what it means to live into the identity of child of God were not there on the day of my baptism, they have helped fulfill the promises those other brothers and sisters in Christ made. We work together. We speak for one another. We are the body of Christ. Together. United across time and space by the God who knows us each by name.
Most of us were brought to the font by our parents. They made promises to nurture us in faith, to help us grow and learn what it means to be a child of God. But as Martin Marty writes to parents in his little book about baptism, “You will need all the help you can get.”
No parent can do it alone. We turn to others--the Sunday school teachers and choir directors and camp counselors and the person who always sits behind us in church and whose voice we miss when she’s not there. All of those people help us grow up to begin to understand what it means to be a part of this mystical body of Christ. To have brothers and sisters who are not biological, but spiritual. Who are all part of this huge and amazing family of God.
Living in community is part of what it means to be a child of God. There are no only children in this family. Instead, we have millions of brothers and sisters, spread across the world, most of whom we will never meet. And yet, somehow in the marvelous mystery that is faith, when we make promises in baptism and when promises were made to us, all of those far away brothers and sister are included, too. And when we pray for all of the baptized, we pray for a whole huge body of Christ. It is mind boggling and amazing. This is the stuff that makes this pastor really excited!
So what holds it all together? God, of course. But love has a big part to do with it, right. Little children, John writes in our second reading today, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. He calls that ancient community to task. He urges them to attempt to understand that if they have any chance of living together in harmony, they better figure out pretty quickly what it means to show love, not only speak it. To live it out in their actions. Every day. Even when they didn’t like that neighbor or didn’t get along with that one. It’s a noble and worthy goal. And it didn’t stop with that gathered community. It’s the command from Christ: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s hard, isn’t it? And so we pray for help. We keep turning back to God and asking, once again, for guidance and grace. Because we struggle, we fall short, we fail. And we try again and succeed and turn back to God for help. And even with this saint-sinner life, God loves us. Every single moment of every single day.
Even though our human communities are sometimes a little messy, isn’t it also in these relationships that we see God’s work most clearly? Isn’t in these moments when we realize, in spite of our questions and our struggles, that yes, somehow God is at work in this world? In laughter with friends or those evenings when all of the sudden you realize hours have passed and you didn’t even realize it. When you witness the patience of a husband with his beloved of many, many years whose mind is wracked by dementia. When you watch as the boundaries created by assumptions are tossed aside and perhaps only for a split second you feel as if you are catching a glimpse of the kingdom to come. God is working in the world. Through us. In us. Around us. God is working in this world.
Today is an important day for the confirmands. And will tomorrow and the next day be. And so will they be for you. We don’t have to wait for confirmation day to role around again to remember the promises and affirm them. Unlike baptism, which happens only once, we can affirm the promises every day. It doesn’t take a special day to remind ourselves of the promises “to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” Our faith does not play out only within the walls of this church. The love of Christ is embodied in each one of us, the children he knows each by name. And we carry that love out into the world. And it makes a difference.
God’s love, which we have the honor and privilege and responsibility to share, makes a difference in this world. It makes a difference when God’s love causes us to love the stranger or enemy or friend. It makes a difference when it causes us to visit the sick or feed the hungry or see the homeless person on the street as a fellow human being. It makes a difference when we take the time to see God’s image reflected in the folks we meet. We don’t live our lives in individual bubbles. We live them in community. Most often, we probably live our lives among people we know and trust and love. But every once in awhile, stop and ponder the promise that we also live our lives as a part of a great community of saints. People of every time and place whose lives are intertwined with ours simply because we are called child of God.
At each of our baptisms a different community represented the whole body of Christ, promising to help us grow. And that process takes a life time. It involves questions and struggle and moments of clarity and moments of doubt. It involves turning to trusted loved ones and sometimes total strangers. It requires love, both given and received.
We love because God first loved us. We are bound together because God calls us to live not as individuals, but as community. We are witnesses to the love of God that weaves through all of history. We are members of the body of Christ. We are known and we are loved. And we are, each and every one of us, called child of God. Amen.
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