“Life Line”
Reformation Sunday C (Affirmation of Baptism
Luke 18:1-8
Confirmands, Parents, Sponsors, family and friends, Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We have gathered today to celebrate one of those important “events” that mark the progress along the path our lives from birth to death as members of this community of faith we call the Church.
You can see this story of lives lived in faith unfold clearly in the green Lutheran Book of Worship in the pews in front of you. Page 121, baptism. Today, page 198 affirmation of baptism. Page 202 Marriage. And finally, on page 206 the service for Burial of the Dead.
The hymn we will sing in a few minutes, “I Was There to Hear Your Borning Cry”, follows the same line of travel: birth and baptism; childhood and the growth of faith; accepting, as you confirmands are doing today, responsibility for continuing to grow in your faith or, as we will sing, to wander off to find where demons dwell. Marriage, middle and old age, death and . . . the line that always chokes me up: “I’ll be there as I have always been, with just one more surprise” -- the promise that through faith, death is not the end of the song. In Jesus, eternal life is the surprise at that has been present (often hidden) throughout story of your life.
According to your bulletin, this is supposed to be the sermon. But instead I’m calling it a “Life Line”. Now you adults out there may be wondering, “What’s he talking about? What’s a life line?” But the confirmands know.
An important part of our teaching sessions in Christ Time, the name for our confirmation ministry, was called a “Life Line”. No, Regis Philbin was not involved and no one called a friend for the correct answer. Instead, during the Life Line, Pastor Rolf or I, or another adult or young person, might get up and tell a story from our own experience with faith. They’d talk about how they experienced forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, one of the commandments -- whatever the topic for the evening was. The students heard how faith connects with life in concrete situations.There was some powerful moments of witness to the power of Christ in our lives during these Life Lines.
But it occurred to me this week, as I reflected on my experience with these young people, that in striking ways their whole time in Christ Time was a Life Line. Think about it: as sixth graders, your second Christ Time meeting was the day after 9/11. And as eight graders, one of your last Christ Time gatherings was on the evening of Garrett Buckley’s funeral. Those two tragedies bookend your time in confirmation. It doesn’t get any heavier than that. And there wasn’t a better place for you to be than in Church.
I can still remember coming into the sanctuary, right over here, where Mark Johnson and his small group were talking about watching planes crash and towers fall the day before. What they thought, how they felt, and asking how stuff like that could happen. And I looked up and saw the figure of Jesus there above the altar, arms outstretched over Mark and the boys sprawled on the carpet.
I remembered how I felt when I was in sixth grade, on a Sunday morning home sick from church, when I watched Lee Harvey Oswald gunned down in cold blood on live TV. It would have been good, back then, to have had caring adults and a place to come to talk about what I saw and where God was in the midst of the craziness of life.
I will never forget sitting in the circle as you talked about your friend Garrett. Wondering how such a thing could happen, asking questions that echoed your September 12th experience, but this time much more personally and with greater power, like a powerful punch in the stomach that leaves you gasping for breath. There was no dodging the connection with Good Friday, when Jesus died and Garrett took his life, and Easter, two days later, when death was defeated and life rose triumphant from the grave.
You have experienced first hand in these events and in the days that have followed: how the cross, the place of death, is transformed by Jesus into a sign of hope and life. That was what made that cross of I-beams pulled from the wreckage of the Trade Centers such a powerful image. That is exactly what the cross means -- life emerging out of the place and stuff of death. And these images, these stories are now part of your own life line.
You have already asked some of the deepest questions of faith. You -- and your guides-- have struggled together to find answers. You have had to come to terms with the reality that the answers are not always there. Some events, acts, experiences defy human understanding. So, over the past three years, you have known what it is to live in the mystery of ultimate things. That’s where these six words on the banner behind the altar come in.
These are Latin words. They express Martin Luther’s understanding of how we live in right relationship to God: by God’s Word, by God’s grace, and this grace makes it possible for us to have faith in this same God. Nothing less. Nothing more. It is God’s doing from start to finish.
And that is the source of our great hope. As people of faith we believe that we have nothing to prove to God. He knows us better than we do ourselves. All we have to do is believe that it is true. And God’s makes even that possible. It’s like Psalm 46, the Psalm for Reformation Day, says “Be still and know that I am God.” Or as a teacher of mine once translated it: “Shut up and listen!”
Listen to God’s word. Believe its truth. Receive the grace that God gives you every day through the people of your church, your family, and community. All of these people and places are vehicles of God’s grace and witnesses to his love for you. He has surrounded by opportunities each day to enjoy and appreciate and give thanks to God for the many good times that you experience over the course of your life line. And he has given you the Holy Spirit to call, enlighten, and keep you holy and faithful.
I began by talking about the life line that begins at birth and ends at death. Doctors call this a trajectory. It’s like an arc. It’s all up hill until about age 40 and then -- nothing by downhill. That’s medical life. The Christian life that you began at baptism and which you are affirming here today has a very different shape. Oh it has ups and downs. But because of Jesus, it is possible that joy can be found, if not in, then just around the corner from suffering.
I think the trajectory of the Christian life is more like that of the Energizer Bunny -- it keeps on going and going and going and not even death can stop it. Why? Because faith in Christ means that at what the world thinks is the end, because of Jesus Christ, there will be “just one more surprise”. That is why we have hope that there is a life line for Garrett and for the victims of 9/11. That’s why we have hope that there’s a life line for us and for the world.
And you know what? We have God’s Word that it will be so. Amen.
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