Today we celebrate the rite of confirmation. There are a few directions I could take a sermon that would be misguided.
I could consider the sermon to be like a commencement address at a graduation. I could congratulate them on meeting this milestone, and for completing all the requirements and hard work of the confirmation program. I could try to be inspiring and tell them that they are now equipped to move on into the world and do better and greater things. But this would be a mistake. For confirmation is not graduation. One never completes the task of learning and growing in faith until one dies. Instead of saying people have a funeral when they die, perhaps we should say they’ve graduated when they die. That would be a more appropriate understanding of life.
I could take a sermon in the direction of reminding our confirmands that today they become adults in the eyes of the church. From here on out they have full voting privileges. They can serve in any office of the congregation except treasurer, and that is a matter of having a legal minor in charge of finances. Confirmation is, after all, publicly accepting the promises their parents made on their behalf at baptism. Neither of these boys could talk when they were baptized. They had no say in the matter. Their parents and godparents did the speaking. God did the promising. And so today they take self-ownership of those promises.
Along those lines I could remind them not to follow the path that many confirmands do – that is to stop participating in the life of the congregation. Indeed it had been the norm that churches have Sunday school programs with little children in them. Parents make good on the promises they made at their child’s baptism and do bring them up in the way of faith. Then at confirmation the parents’ obligations are met and their child takes ownership of their own faith; and then they stop attending.
Technically accurate as this may be, it would still be a mistaken path for a sermon at confirmation.
I could draw on our gospel reading from Luke 11. There the disciples asked to teach them how to pray. He responds with what you recognized as the root of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus then goes on to teach about being persistent in prayer. I’ve always loved the idea of bugging God about something. The idea is that if you are like a persistent and annoying teenager you’ll be able to wear your parents down and they’ll give in. That’s not the image Jesus uses. He talks about asking a friend for bread in the middle of the night, but I think it fits.
Of course there is a problem with that teaching. It makes it sound like all you have to do is hound God long enough and God will give you whatever you ask for. The problem is that you don’t always get your prayers answered. Oh sure, we can easily say that if you persistently pray to God to give you a Ferrari or a yacht or a mansion, those are all pretty selfish things. Similarly if you bug God through prayer asking for injury or death to happen to someone who is your enemy, that is hardly an appropriate prayer too. We could say that God will only answer prayers made in love.
But then what happens when we pray for a loved one who is struggling with cancer or dementia or who is severely injured in an accident? Are those not loving prayers made with purity of heart? What about all those people who have lost family members and friends because of war or gun violence or accidents?
Ah, but we could be clever. We could give God an out for not answering these prayers. We could say that what Jesus meant by being persistent in prayer is not that God will actually give you what you want. That would, after all, compromise free will. No, what you are really doing with your persistence is considering the situation in prayer with God over and over again and allowing faith to be a part of the struggle. Yes, that is a very appealing approach. It lets God off the hook and still makes us feel like we have some control.
Indeed I say we could take any of these directions for a sermon on a Sunday when we have confirmation. I say that because I have in fact taken each and every one of those routes. But while each has its merits, each also is misguided and has its flaws. I hope I have not done too much damage with those paths in the past.
We are taking a different approach. At the Rite of Confirmation our two confirmands will be examined by me. A couple generations ago some churches would allow the pastor or even congregational members to ask the confirmands questions in public during the worship service. The confirmands were expected to be able to answer. I’m sure it was terrifying. I certainly would be. How would they respond if I asked them about why St. Augustine’s understanding of Original Sin is fundamentally flawed? They did actually cover that in class although I’d be shocked if they remembered!
No, they will have an examination. And they will have the answers right in front of them. They will be examined by being asked three very strange questions:
Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?
Do you renounces the powers of this world that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?
And they will respond, “I renounce them.”
Now there’s a phrase I doubt you’ve ever heard a teenager say! Parents how many times have you heard a child say, “I renounce them!” You ask, “Were you out with that group of kids that damaged the playground last week?” And they say, “I renounce them!”
Or your child has her science homework done very early in the evening and you ask, “Are you sure you didn’t get the answers from one of your friends?” “I renounce doing that!”
No, we don’t renounce things. In fact we don’t even really know what renounce means. My trusty old Webster’s Dictionary defines renounce as, “to give up or put aside voluntarily” (my emphasis added)
It is a choice. It is a decision. It is not forced or coerced.
Now exactly how voluntary their renunciation will be is questionable. They are, after all, following the script given to them. I don’t know exactly our confirmands perfectly, but I’d be shocked if they, all on their own, would come up with the word “renounce”! But still, it is quite a public statement about how they intend to direct their lives.
“Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?”
“Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?”
“Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?”
While things like: the devil, the powers of this world that rebel against God, and the ways of sin that draw you from God, may all seem like old fashioned concepts from the superstitious past, I would argue that they are not.
There is something in this world that drives most people to have a mindset of fear, scarcity, and shame. God provides goodness. God provides enough for all. God provides wholeness. But all too often fear and scarcity drive people to greed. From the greed comes scarcity, division, and competition.
I am not so foolish as to think that as our confirmands make their renunciations that they will substantively change their lives. And yet, with what they have learned in confirmation class, and in Sunday school, and from their parents, siblings, teachers, and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, they know God’s wisdom is behind the renunciations they make. And they know that just as God chose them in baptism, God will be with them today. And God will be with them tomorrow.
Jesus talked about the need to be persistent in prayer. Yes indeed. But God is also persistent, relentless in fact, in pursuing us too. Our confirmands are loved by God and God simply will not let go of them. Whether they live by - or totally fail to - renounce the things they renounce, God is with them.
I started the sermon by saying what I should not preach. I will end with what I should preach. God doesn’t ever let go. God never fails to see - and want to build upon - the goodness and beauty that God created a person to have. God simply likes us.
To renounce the things is not hard. It is simply to say you’re not going to get in the way of letting God do what God loves to do. That is to journey with us through life: equipping us, rejoicing in us, crying with us, maturing us, and ultimately bringing us to fullness of life.
Blessings to our confirmands. May they always feel God at work in them. May they always feel like the miracles that they are!
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