All Saints C (and Confirmation at SMLC)
November 6, 2016
Romans 6:1-14 (off lectionary)
Luke 6:20-31
Grace to you and peace from the one
who is and who was and who is to come. Amen.
Today at St.
Martin, we will witness five young people who have spent the past two years
learning about God and God’s Word and the life of faith, as they stand up and affirm
their baptismal promises – the promises made on their behalf when they were
infants, and which they will claim today as their own. I have always loved
confirmation Sunday, because it is a day on which we are all invited to
remember those promises, to consider what they mean in our own lives, and how
we are living them out. Witnessing a baptism allows this opportunity for
reflection as well, of course, but there is something about watching a young
person, someone who is just learning to understand who God is for them as an
adult, that really urges us all to do the same once again.
This year,
as I considered how to talk about this in a sermon, I was presented with an additional
challenge: the date that would work for everyone involved to have confirmation
was today, which is also the day the Church calls, the Festival of All Saints.
This is one of the highest feast days in the church year, right up there with
Easter. Over time, its purpose has changed, but today we see it primarily as a
day when we celebrate and give thanks for those who have died, who have gone
before
But this
year, due to its sharing the day with confirmation, I have been thinking about
another important aspect of All Saints, and that is remembering that for
Lutherans, you don’t have to have died to be a saint. No, in fact, we
understand that our sainthood begins in our baptism, on that day when we were
“clothed with Christ,” when we were, as the Apostle Paul writes, baptized with
Christ into a death like his so that we would also be raised in a resurrection
like his.
That’s
pretty remarkable stuff, when you think about it – that Christ would invite us
to be a part of his own resurrection! It’s stuff that Paul talks about in our
reading today from Romans. We don’t necessarily feel the same impact watching
baptisms today, sprinkling a bit of water on someone’s brow, as people might
have in the early church, when full immersion baptism was the norm. This is
much more like what Paul talks about, where baptism is more like a descent into
the tomb, just as Christ descended to the dead. In some settings, people would
be held under the water for quite some time – so long, in fact, that they were
desperate for a breath of air! When they finally did emerge from the water,
that first breath was indeed like a new birth – like a newborn emerging from
the womb and crying aloud with that first breath of real air! And so, Paul
says, when we are baptized, we are like Christ – dying to kill off that sinful
way of life, and rising again into new life. I dunno, I think that’s pretty
cool, myself!
But of
course, it doesn’t end there; baptism isn’t a once and done event. That new
life – that is something we continue to work toward, to live into, for the rest
of our time here on earth. And here, I think, is where baptism and confirmation
merge just perfectly with today’s celebration of All Saints Day, because Lutherans
use that word, “saint,” to talk about all baptized believers. Martin Luther
talked about how we are simultaneously saint and sinner: that is, in our baptism, we are declared saints in that
we are justified, declared righteous, forgiven our sins, and promised eternal
life. But even so, even though we are saints, we remain captive to sin, captive
to our human desires and inclinations, and we frequently fall short of the
glory of God. And so on All Saints Day, we also
It is a
difficult dichotomy, being both saint and sinner: on the one hand, we have a
pretty good sense of what living a Christian life looks like, and we
desperately long to live into that… but we are also painfully aware of how far
we and the world around us are from that hope and expectation. All around us is
pain – death and loss, fighting and brokenness, disappointment and judgment. We
need look no further than the election taking place in just two days, in which
we will elect one of two people who are by and large the most despised
candidates we have ever had. The build up to this day has been wrought with
ugliness, and I fear that won’t stop on November 9, as we deal with the
aftermath of whatever happens on Tuesday. How can we look at how all of this
has turned out, and still embrace that we are all saints of God because God
told us so in our baptism? How do we live like saints in the world when there
is so much hatred and division?
These are
the sorts of questions we must continually ask ourselves – when we witness a
baptism, a confirmation, or even just go about our daily lives. Being a saint
in this world is not to be taken lightly. It is a call to confront injustice
with a word of peace, to reach a hopeful and gracious hand out to those who are
poor and hungry now, to comfort those who weep now, to have compassion on those
who are hated. It is a call to be the heart, hands, and voice of Christ in a
weary world. It is doing all those things we talk about in every baptism, and
which our confirmands at St. Martin will commit to by their own volition this
morning. It is a hefty commitment,
being a saint in this world!
I hope that
all Christians understand this, and in particular today, I hope that our
confirmands understand this. When we stand up each week and profess our faith
in the creed, when we come forward to this meal, when we stand around and
promise to pray for the newly baptized – these are regular promises we make to
live this life of sainthood, through thick and thin, come what may. It means
being a saint during a particularly painful election season. It means being a
saint after the election, whether you’re pleased with the outcome or not. It
means sitting with the lonely person at lunch. It means giving from the heart
of our time, talents and treasures. It means caring about the things that Jesus
says in his famous sermon we heard today from Luke. It means taking the word of
God, and especially the teachings of Jesus, very seriously, and considering how
they can be enacted in the world – whether that is in how you cast your vote on
Tuesday, or how you interact with your colleagues at work, or how you serve God
through this church.
And there is no finish to this call
as long as we are on earth. Sometimes people think of confirmation as a sort of
graduation – from Sunday School, from Church, I don’t know, but you notice a
lot of people get confirmed and then we never see them again. (I know this will
not happen
with any of you, right??) I have a colleague who likes to say, “We
do have a graduation in our church life, but it isn’t confirmation. It is your funeral.”
For it is in our funerals, in our deaths, that all that we have lived and worked
for and believed has reached its purpose.
 |
| 2016 St. Martin confirmands |
We had such a “graduation” yesterday
at St. Martin, for a longtime and well-loved member. One of my favorite parts
of the funeral liturgy is right at the beginning, when we drape a large pall
over the casket. As this is done, we remember that we were clothed with Christ
in our baptism, that we put on Christ’s own righteousness. We live our lives of
faith striving to grow into those clothes – we go to Sunday School, we read our
Bibles, we go to church, we pray, we serve others and do our best to live a
godly life. But all of that comes to its culmination at the moment of death –
for it is in that moment that all of the promises made in baptism suddenly come
to their final expression. We finally, as Paul writes in our lesson from
Romans, leave this sin-sick world and move on to a place where grace is
sovereign, move on to a new life in a new land, where we live by and bask in
Christ’s light and love.
Until then, brothers and sisters, we
do our best. We do our best to live into our saintly nature, to keep those
promises made in baptism, to look to the word of God to guide us and to trust
the light of Christ to light our path. We bring up our children with the
knowledge and assurance that Christ has made all things new. We come to this
meal for the sustaining reminder that we are not in this alone – that indeed we
are in it with all the saints in light from every time and place, as well as
the saints who sit beside us in our pew. Most of all we do it with the promise
of our loving God, with us all along until we, like those we named this
morning, take our place in the nearer presence of God amidst all those who have
died in faith. Thanks be to God!
Let us pray… Gracious
God, in the gift of baptism, you extended to us an important call: to be saints
in this weary world. Give us strength, courage, and wisdom to reach out to
those in need, to speak up for those without a voice, to work toward your
heavenly kingdom until we take our place with all the saints in light from
every time and place. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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