Affirmation of Baptism Sermon

Confirmation: What Was That About?

Pr. Paul Cannon

John 15

 

Grace and Peace Bethany Lutheran!

And to all of you who are about to complete your Confirmation experience.  Congratulations!

For many of you, this has been a long and confusing two years.  Over your time, we’ve tried to teach each one of you what Lutheranism is about – what Christianity is all about.  So we’ve talked about the Apostle’s Creed.  We’ve talked about the Lord’s Prayer.  We went over the ten commandments and talked about Baptism and Communion.

And I’m sure that we veered off on quite a few tangents as well. 

In fact, some of my favorite time that I spent with all of you was when we went off on a tangent, talking about the things that you wanted to talk about in our small groups. 

I would be talking about the Lord’s prayer, when somebody like Jarrett would raise his hand and ask some great question like “Can Muslim’s go to heaven?” or Luke would raise his hand and ask how dinosaurs fit into the creation story. And then we would be off on that seemingly random topic for the rest of the class. 

It’s funny because most of the time, when you brought up these excellent questions, I would throw it back at you and say, “Well, what do you think?” I know – not very helpful.  But that question is my favorite question to ask whenever I have a group of kids like you all, because more often than not, you all give as good of an answer as I could. 

Even though you might not have known it, you were being theologians. And we have a lot of different types of theologians in the group. Robbie would raise his hand to say something and then Ethan or Morgan would raise their hands with a different perspective. 

I loved to hear the diversity of opinions you all would share. You asked really good questions – about God, and life and how everything fits together.  You became Theologians.  You talked about God and wrestled with your faith and what it means to you.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you’re experts.  If you are like me, you take a test or you write an essay and immediately afterwards forget every that you just learned.   Can anybody tell me what the parts of the Old Testament are?  I didn’t think so!

So I’m sure that some of you are now wondering after two years, with all that learning slipping away already – you’re wondering what this whole Confirmation thing has been about.  Why did you go to classes every single Wednesday night for two years?  What were you supposed to get out of all that?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Confirmation is the process of making something ridiculously simple – really complex.  Because I can pretty much sum up everything that we learned into one word.  All those theological discussions,  all the tests and essays that I had you write – all the sermon notes that you took and service hours that you put in can be summed up in one little word – Love.

In fact, the student who summed it up the best in his faith statement was Caleb Smith who wrote simply “I believe that God loves everybody.” 

If that is the one thing that you get out of Confirmation – that God loves everybody – then I will be a happy pastor.  That’s why I chose our Gospel text from the book John today, because Jesus says it straight out, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” 

Love is a simple word – that is amazingly hard to do sometimes. When you see the sinner come out of somebody, and they hurt your feelings, it makes it hard to see the lovable saint.

And I’m proud to say that I’ve seen glimpses of the saint in each one of them as they have learned to love their neighbor and love God. Not perfectly – the way that Jesus has loved us – but in fits and starts.  In the last year I’ve spent with these students, I’ve seen glimpses of them learning to love like God loves.

That’s why we want to have all our kids go to camp.  Most of them arrive not knowing each other (let alone loving each other), but by the end of the week they are exchanging phone numbers. When we took kids to Lutherdale over the summer, it wasn’t so much about getting on the high ropes course, or doing the Bible Studies or even playing gaga ball - it was about our kids learning to love each other.

And we saw that!  Kendall, Sarah, Logan, Caleb and Tyler might not choose to use the L word – because they would call it awkward – but they were figuring out how to love each other - How to live in a community - What friendship really means.

And even more than that, these kids learned to love through serving their community and their church.  Meghan, Jarrett, Chase and William have all been spending the last few weeks as helpers for our Sunday School program as a part of their confirmation project.  And I know the teachers love having them as much as the kids love having them to look up to.

Then there is Ryan and Nathaniel who sewed together a few dozen backpacks and filled them with school supplies for kids half-way across the world.  That’s loving your neighbor without even knowing who they are!

In class, the students learn that all of us, are 100% sinners.  And yes, at times all of you have done your fair share of it.  But they also learned that through the loving act of Jesus on the cross, a gift of grace given to us through baptism, we are also 100% saints. 

It’s one of Martin Luther’s famous paradoxes.  And while it’s easy to look at any person and see the sinner, all these kids that are affirming their baptism, have been proving their sainthood through all the acts of love that they have shown.

What’s it all been about then?  All the rules you have to follow for confirmation, all the sermon notes you had to take and service hours that you have to fulfill – what’s it all been about?

Let me answer that, finally, with Jesus words as we heard in our reading today, “ I am giving you these commands,” he said, “so that you may love one another.”

That’s what it’s all about.

Thanks be to God,

Amen.