Pentecost C        Confirmation Sunday              30 May, 2004

Acts 2:1-21, John 14:8-17

Rev. Roger N. Haugen

 

Today is a wonderful day of hope.  We are hear to encourage these young people as they affirm their baptism.  Today is the day that you, as a confirmation class, take the promises made for you at baptism by your parents for yourselves.  You represent hope for us adults because we see in you a new beginning.  It is a beginning but also an intended step toward becoming the person God created you to be.  As parents, and other people in your lives who care about you, we want you to grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus.

 

When we look at you today as parents, sponsors, mentors and friends, we see the fine young people you have become.  You are staking your place in this world, you are stepping out.  You represent hope for us because today you say, for all to hear, that you intend to live a life of integrity placing the words and intentions of Jesus before yourselves in the decisions that you will make in your life.  That is hopeful for us as adults because it also represents a new start for us.  Your promises spoken so clearly, reminds us that we have not always done as well as we might, but that we are given the opportunity of a fresh start.

 

It is also a hopeful day because today we celebrate the birth of the church on Pentecost.  We have read the story from Acts about how the Holy Spirit came upon the crowd that day with power.  It was an amazing beginning.  It was also a natural progression from the life and story of Jesus.  It was the wonderful result of God working in the world and in the lives of the disciples to bring about the Kingdom of God, to make this world more like what God intended.

 

In the Gospel of Luke we see and hear the vision of Jesus for this world.  It is a world where healing and justice are made real.  It is a world where the vision of Jesus becomes a reality.  Jesus said,

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

 

Luke spends the rest of his gospel telling how Jesus did exactly that.  Or in the words of Mary:

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

 

This was God’s hope for the world but Luke’s gospel ends with a whimper as Jesus is crucified and put in a grave with only a vague report by some women that he had risen from the dead as he had promised.  There was a hopeful appearance by someone who might have been Jesus on the Road to Emmaus but it wasn’t much to go on.  The disciples, who were once caught up in Jesus’ vision, were left discouraged and frightened.  They might have had some wonderful memories, but they were simply stories to talk about when they were by themselves.  Memories of a better time, when they had hope but that was about all.

 

Then came Pentecost -- a long fifty days later.  Suddenly the Spirit comes upon them and they have the power to achieve God’s purpose.  Suddenly, their hopes and dreams from an earlier time have energy.  The fear, lethargy and discouragement are gone and the people around know it and they want such power and hope for themselves.  People hear the message with power and their lives are changed.

 

Today can be such a day for us as well.  God’s intention for his world, the accomplishment of his Kingdom, has somehow been lost in the shuffle of busy lives, lack of cash and the overwhelming presence of lethargy and apathy.  There are Sundays when it is all I can do to pull myself up here.  In Thursday’s Star Phoenix was a list of stressors that deprive one of sleep.  The top three were work concerns, family concerns and financial concerns.  I suspect I am not alone to have all of those on my list.  But I do drag myself up here on those Sundays and I sing the words, listen to the words of the liturgy and the scriptures and I can go on for at least another week.  That is the Spirit at work, this is the power for which we pray, the hope that is ours in our efforts to make God’s vision a reality in our world.

 

Today we gather with a group of young people ready to go out into the world and make it a better place.  We gather to pray for these young people, to lay hands upon them and to ask the Holy Spirit to take hold of them and set them on fire.  As we hear the words, the promises, the prayers, we too pray that we can be touched by this power.  That the flame of hope that was so powerful at one time but may be dull now, may be rekindled.  We pray for these young people but we also pray for ourselves.

 

We read in the Gospel from John that God wants to live not just with us, but in us.  This is God who created you, loves you and now wants to give you the power to do as Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and in fact will do greater works than these.”  We are promised the same power.  What God waits for is a welcome, a hospitality which says, “Come in, there is a place for you here.”

 

What will be asked of you young people, and is asked of all of us, is to make choices in your life that speak the welcome to God.  You will be asked to make choices, because life is all about choices, some which give life and others that are life sucking.  To choose life is to choose 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,

to strive for justice and peace in all the earth

 

My hope and prayer for you confirmands is that you will be seized by the Holy Spirit as never before and be given the courage to live in God’s kingdom working to bring justice, peace and healing to our world.  My hope and prayer for you is that Luke’s Spirit led vision for the church will keep you from ever wanting to play church again.  My hope and prayer for you is that you will be leaven for all future congregations you will join.  My hope and prayer for you is that you will fall deeply in love with Lord of the church, that you will always thirst to study God’s word and discover what God has created you to be.

 

Today is Pentecost and it is also Confirmation Sunday.  We know clearly today that our hope and the hope for the world comes with having God live in us.  We pray that the Holy Spirit would seize us and the sometimes demoralized church and set it on fire.  We know that the Spirit is promised and we hold to that promise.

 

We pray for you as Confirmands but we also pray for ourselves.   We love you and our proud of you.  We have the highest hopes for you and we need your passion and enthusiasm for life.  You are children of God, a gift to our world, and a gift to us.  May you dwell in God’s presence forever.