The worship video for these sermon is cued at the end of the manuscript or the entire video can be found on YouTube.
A few months ago a conversation started in a Facebook group for Presbyterian leaders about one pastor’s struggle to get a mouse out of the church kitchen. The church didn’t want to use poison near food. They didn’t want a trap that might hurt the mouse. The exterminator was too expensive. And on and on and on. One witty, and maybe even tired, colleague suggested, “Just baptize and confirm it. Then you’ll never see it again. At least that’s how it works at my church.”
That’s one of those sad-funny ones, isn’t it?
One of the things I have been known to say is that even though the timing aligns with the end of a school year, even though it feels like a culmination of study, even though there is ceremony and some degree of pomp and circumstance – confirmation is not a graduation from church. I admit that it can have that sort of feel which is why I like the practice of some congregations that start confirmation with the start of the calendar year and end at the beginning of the school year. Confirmation then feels like the commitment to a new beginning, and that aligns much more with what it actually is.
In the book of Genesis from which we read today, Jacob is the grandson of the matriarch and patriarch, Sarah and Abraham, with whom God made an important covenant that promised three things – land, descendants, and blessing and redemption. The land part came as Abraham traveled from Ur to Canaan. The descendants were a little tricky, but eventually came to fruition with both Sarah and her handmaid, Hagar. And the blessing and redemption Abraham and Sarah knew throughout their relationship with the divine.
Jacob, when we meet him in Chapter 35, has been through a lot. Having struggled with his twin brother even in the womb, in his young adulthood he left the family home to create some space between them and find a wife. Next, the trickster who stole a blessing from his brother was tricked by his father-in-law into marrying the wrong daughter, so he stayed in that region well longer than he planned in order to earn the right to marry her sister. Eventually, well into their adulthood, the two brothers reconciled, and then finally after that celebration and another tragedy that struck the family, God tells Jacob to get up, go to Bethel, and settle there.
Settle. Exhale. Finally.
Maybe.
Because upon his arrival, God appeared to Jacob and reminded him of the name God had given him recently. “Israel shall be your name.” A name that means “The one who strives…”. It’s not exactly a passive name for a passive person. And neither is the blessing that follows.
The covenant of his grandparents that first passed down to his parents, now becomes his own covenant. The promise of land and descendants and blessing is repeated as Jacob hears God tell him that not only one nation, but a company of nations shall come from him. Kings will be born among his descendants. He and his offspring will be responsible for the land. This isn’t a handshake and reward of quiet retirement, but a call to even deeper commitment.
That’s how it works with God’s blessings and covenants. They aren’t lavish gifts bestowed for the sake of living in luxury, but generosity rained down for the purpose of shared responsibility. A blessing from God, a welcome into covenant, is a call to partnership, a call to nurture neighbor and stranger as God nurtures, a call to care for community and creation as God cares. It’s a call Jacob accepts, signified by the offering he pours out on a pillar of stone he builds to mark the occasion. As God has poured out goodness on the one who has and who will strive for God, Jacob pours out his offering, makes his commitment, to live into God’s blessing and purpose.
Confirmation in the church where I grew up was not held on a Sunday morning, but on a Thursday night. Although, not just any random Thursday night, but Maundy Thursday. The Thursday before Easter. The Thursday on which we commemorate Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. The Thursday when he spoke the words we heard this morning from the gospel according to John. In fact, we heard these words this year in our Holy Week worship just a few weeks ago, but I’ve brought them back around again anyway.
Confirmation during Holy Week always brought on a little grumbling in our church because we lived in one of those school districts that lined up Spring Break with Holy Week. If your family had confirmation to celebrate it meant you didn’t get a full Spring Break. But with hindsight and a love of liturgical seasons and observances, this timing makes a lot of sense. It’s really quite beautiful – this picture of the disciples and Jesus on Maundy Thursday and how the church begins to form in a new way that night.
Gathered in an upper room, in the midst of a pastoral crisis I pointed out last week, they are sharing a meal together around a table. All of them – the good, the bad, and the ugly – you might say. Peter who loves to blurt out professions of great faith, but who will soon deny even knowing Jesus. Judas who has been with Jesus for years, but is about to turn him over to authorities to be crucified. Philip who wants to know the way. Thomas who has questions. They are listening to Jesus’ teaching, receiving his cleansing, preparing themselves, and being prepared for all that is yet to come, not only in the immediate days ahead, but in the next year or two years or five or ten. They are the church being formed through word and bread and cup. They are the church being called for a purpose.
A very specific purpose, and that is to love. “This is my commandment,” Jesus says, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” With full heart, with full voice, with full attention, with full commitment, Jesus’ disciples are called to love. With care for each other, with openness and authenticity, with shared knowledge and shared leadership, Jesus’ disciples are called to love. Within the room where they are called together, and, now this is an important part to remember, and well beyond it, Jesus’ disciples are called to love.
Like Jacob who was given blessings to use for a purpose, so the disciples are called together, are formed into community, not so they can be card-carrying members of the “Jesus loves us” club and hang out in the upstairs room for the rest of eternity. Instead they are called together to live with love for those within the room and beyond it, because Jesus is very explicit that he is passing on to his disciples the responsibility to “go and bear fruit.” The church that is formed in the upper room on Maundy Thursday, in crisis, in grief, in worry about what the future holds, that church is not to stay in the upper room, but is sent out of it into a world full of crisis, grief and worry to bear the fruit of love.
Whether we join a congregation like four of our young people are doing today or whether we’re talking about the church universal, the Body of Christ that transcends membership rolls – being a part of the church, those whom Jesus calls friends, is being a part of this community that both comes together and goes out. Bringing the worries, the fears, the news on our minds, and the aches on our hearts, we come together to listen for the Word of God, the leading of the Spirit. In covenant community we both give and receive the comfort and love of Jesus through the love of friends and fellow disciples. And then we go out. We leave. We return to the world, a messy world, a world in need of all that we experience together in this place… We return to that world renewed in faith, refreshed in grace, and revived for service in the name of the one who calls us friends. We return to share the love we have received with the world that is in need.
For the blessing of community and cleansing in Jesus’ name that we know and celebrate with confirmation comes with responsibility. It isn’t the summer break at the end of the school year. It isn’t a graduation with a diploma signifying completion of studies. It isn’t a retirement with a gold watch and a pension. It is a calling to greater responsibility, to covenant living, to commitment to bear fruit in the world that will feed the world with the love of God in Jesus who loves us.
This morning we will share in joyful celebration of witnessing how the good news of Jesus has been passed down not just in this church, but in the great cloud of witnesses of saints in the light who have followed his command to love, going all the way back to that upper room where the first followers of Jesus broke bread, and shared a cup, and cared for each other, and prayed in community. From disciples to disciple, within families and beyond them, one generation to the next, the blessing and responsibility has been shared, “As I have loved you, so you also will love, going and bearing fruit that will last.” As these young people pick up that blessing and commit to carrying it forward in their own faith and their own lives, may all of us recommit ourselves to doing the same.
Amen.
For Some Reason 