St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday Sermon – Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 16, 2010
“A New Thing: Continuing On . .!” (Confirmation Sunday at SPL)
Text: John 17:25-26
Good news; bad news for a pastor. Good news: “Pastor, The Junior High Youth voted to send you a get-well card. Bad news, the vote was 11 to 10.”
Good news; bad news from a pastor to his congregation: The Good news, my friends, is we have over half the money to pay for our new building project. The Bad news: the rest of it is still out there in your pockets.
For these four young people in their white Confirmation robes who together in a few minutes, are going to confess the Christian faith in the words of theApostles’ Creed and affirm their baptismal vows, for them I have good news/bad news.
The good news is that it’s over. For you four students there’ll be no more Wednesdays after school down in the Fellowship Hall. No more worksheets to clip into your notebook; no more blanks to fill in. No more sorting thru the 6 chief parts of Luther’s Small Catechism and asking What Does This Mean orWhat Does That Mean? You have been good students to come many Wednesday for several years. Now no more Wednesdays! Good news! It’s over!
The bad news, the put-your-Christian-faith-to-the-test news, is it’s not over.
Coming to Youth on Wednesdays is over.
But coming to grips; coming to terms with what it means to be a Confirmed & Communing child of God, a brother & sister in Christ with other brother & sisters in Christ here at St. Paul & beyond St. Paul, is not over. It continues on.
As you have already begun to experience, the world you live in is going to surround you & consume you with the busyness of adjusting to high school, getting a learner’s permit, practicing to get a Driver’s License, eventually getting a part-time job, hanging out with or running around with friends who may/may not believe in going to church or have much to do with church. Like a big on-going TV commercial, you know what the world you live in is going to say to you, shout at you about your Christian training so far?
“It’s over! Forget it! Cool it! You don’t really have to believe all that stuff about Jesus & church & worship & means of grace & being blessed to be a blessing to help others.”
Some may think I’m exaggerating; but the world’s indifference to or the world’s resistance to Christians practicing the presence of Christ in their daily lives has been going on for a long time. In fact, before Jesus left His disciples on their own, after three years of teaching those disciples and telling them they were to carry on & continue His ministry, Jesus knew, what kind of unreceptive & unloving world all who believe in Him would face.
I have given them your word, Jesus prayed to His Father in heaven,
and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
For the past 7 Sundays of Easter, taking my cue from the appointed Scripture readings for all seven Sundays, I have made it a point every Sunday to look at & celebrate Easter as “a new thing that is about to happen, a new thing that is not natural, not like anything we’re used to. This Confirmation Sunday, this final Sunday of Easter, one more new thing that is about to happen is continuing on! It’s not over!
When being in high school, being on your own is full of messages and people that intentionally or unintentionally say you really don’t need all that stuff about Jesus & church & worship & means of grace & being in God’s Word and being blessed to be a blessing to others in Jesus’ name, the message here, the prayer Jesus prays here for us all young & old, active & inactive is . . .
O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. (17:25-26)
The key word is “continue”.
At a recent in-town at our house dinner-table discussion with grand-children about how school was going, the question came up: was our grandson in the 3rdgrade ready to make the transition from East Elementary to C.L.Jones? After giving it some thought, he boldly announced he would consent to going into the 4th grade but after that he wasn’t sure how much more knowledge his head could hold.
The key word is “continue on”! Young/old, 3rd grade, 8th grade, HS graduate, college graduate, do we ever stop learning from our mistakes? stop growing & gaining experience? stop putting our knowledge of life & faith in God & how things work to the test?
Does the student who finally gets a Driver’s License not drive? Does the student who gets a high school diploma, not have to think, not have to do math anymore? Does a golfer stop golfing when he has a bad day & a horrible score? Do Christians stop believing if the believing isn’t as easy or satisfying or rewarding as one thought it might be?
In every age, for every generation of Christians who seek to practice the presence & love of Jesus in their lives, Jesus continues to make the fullness & richness & strength & of God’s name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit known to us in His Word & in celebrating the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The question is, the question you four will be asked in a few minutes is: will you continue on in what you know of God’s name & God’s saving grace? will you continue on in what Jesus wants YOU to share with others in worship & fellowship, in words & actions?
I ran across an interesting comparison recently where a German philosopher named Schopenhauer compared the human race, compared you & me & those sitting around you to a bunch of porcupines huddling together on a cold winter’s night. He said,
“The colder it gets outside, the more we humans huddle together for warmth; but the closer we get to one another, the more we hurt one another with our sharp quills. And in the lonely night of earth’s harsh winter and deep darkness - eventually we sinful human beings begin to drift apart and wander out on our own and freeze to death in our loneliness.”
From the very beginning, as human beings created in God’s image, God created us with a need for companionship. In Genesis 1 where it says Adam, enjoyed sinless fellowship, Adam enjoyed perfect communion & harmony with God his Creator, it also says Adam still had a desire for one of his own kind. So God created Eve & God has created institutions such as marriage & family & church & communities of faith to meet our on-going, continuing need for belonging & sharing. . .
The Jesus we believe in is well aware of our need for closeness & companionship, and Jesus is also well aware of the “sharp quills” and “loneliness” and the indifference to & the resistance to Christianity we face in the process. In His final prayer to His Father in heaven, just hours before He would be suspended on the cross, Jesus prayed for the unity of all those who believed in Him.
Jesus knew and He knows today how much spiritual, sacrificial, unselfish, supernatural help we as sinners --and the good news is God answers Jesus’ prayer and meets our need and helps us.
If there is one place where the pain & pettiness & pushiness & defensiveness & impatience & sharp-edges of life do not drive us into ourselves or away from others, let it be this place. Here every Sunday in worship, in Jesus’ Word, at this Table where Jesus is truly pre-sent, Jesus continues to make known God’s good name & and makes God’s rich grace & love & forgiveness in Christ available to us now & always.
The good news is not just that coming here on Wednesday is over for you, but that you are about to publicly confirm your faith in the living, resurrected Lord Jesus, whose triumphant victory over sin & death continues through faith in Christ every day.
May the living, triumphant, ever-present Christ abide in YOU and may YOU and all of us keep coming to and continue to abide in Him.
