May 28, 2017 (Confirmation Sunday) – Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11
Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11
In Baptism, God’s Mission becomes Our Mission
Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 28, 2017 – Confirmation Sunday
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
It’s too bad it’s not Thursday because I have a throwback.
The picture I’m about to show you was taken almost exactly 37 years ago.
It’s me! On my Confirmation Day!
Are you ready?
Here it is!
Isn’t it HUGE? Like: why is it BIG?
And just look at me: look how little I am! Hahahaha!
I love my hair and my glasses!
On my right is my Dad, and on the left is Pastor Craig, who was also a pastor at our church.
We all look very happy.
I remember that day.
It was beautiful and warm outside, and I remember affirming my baptism.
Like everyone who is confirmed, I didn’t really know where affirming my baptism would lead.
But it’s been a great adventure, with many ups and downs.
But through it all there has been one constant in my life, and that has been Jesus:
Jesus giving me love, and Jesus sending me with love.
Anyway, I love this picture,
because really confirmation day was the beginning of a great adventure,
when I publicly affirmed my commitment to God’s mission.
One thing that affirming my baptism has recently lead me to is a committee.
Now that does not sound very adventurous.
Nor is its name very sexy: I have been appointed to the “Faith, Order, and Doctrine” Committee
of our National Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
Nevertheless, I love being on this committee.
We dream on this committee, we think on this committee, and we act.
It is lovely and I get to work with some very smart and lovely and engaging people.
We wrote a study for our church last year,
and in the writing of it, one of the things we came up with was this statement:
When we are baptized, God’s mission becomes our mission.
I just love that: When we are baptized, God’s mission becomes our mission.
When we are baptized, God’s mission to love, bless, heal, and feed this whole world and
every person in it becomes our mission.
We are baptized into God’s mission.
It’s about that simple.
So what are we doing today? On confirmation day?
These seven amazing people are publicly affirming that
the mission they were baptized into all those year ago is something
they are publicly committing themselves to today.
They are publicly affirming that God’s mission to love and bless this whole world and
every person in it is also their mission – and they are committing themselves to it:
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,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
That is Christian life.
To live, to hear, to share, to proclaim, to serve, and to strive.
You’ll notice how it all begins with community, how the foundation is living with and
among God’s people: Christian community and gathering for worship week by week
is absolutely essential for participation in God’s mission.
For here you are given love freely so that you will have love to give away just as freely.
Here you are given gifts of love and life and forgiveness that you can give away when you go.
Here you are strengthened and encouraged and reminded that you are making this day special
just by being you. – you are enough!
Here we strengthen and nurture each other.
So that we can then go out and serve all people, just like Jesus.
So that we can strive for justice and peace in all the earth, which is, let’s face, a tall order.
But you do not do it alone.
You can see how the affirmations begin in Christian community and then
flow out into the world.
In baptism, God’s mission becomes our mission.
In the story from Acts today, it is 40 days after the resurrection.
Jesus has been with the disciples in a way similar to how he was before the resurrection.
He has a recognizable body that still eats and drinks.
But he goes away – in Luke’s telling he ascends into the sky.
It is Luke’s way of articulating the experience of the early Christians:
Jesus was no longer with the church in the same way as he was with the disciples in
his earthly life.
So what was the church to do in the meantime?
Were they to look up at the sky with their mouths open, and just wait for him to return to
finish his work of loving this world and every person in it?
No! He tells them what they are to do: they are to be his witnesses in the city where they live
and to the ends of the earth.
They are the ones to carry on his work: in baptism, God’s mission has become their mission.
And Jesus promises to send them his presence in a different way to strengthen them and
energize them and encourage them: he will send them his Spirit on the day of Pentecost,
and that Spirit will be with them always.
In the Gospel reading, too, Jesus is praying for his disciples on the night before he dies.
In the portion of the prayer we heard a few minutes ago, he acknowledges that
“he is no longer in the world.” He is going away, just like Luke told us in story form.
He will no longer be in the world in the same way as he was but, he affirms,
“they are in the world.”
And their mission is to love this world that God so loves.
Their mission is to love this world and every person in it in the same way that he loved it with
the help of the Spirit he gives them: without limits and without conditions.
And then he prays that God will protect them while they do this.
And what does he pray that they be protected from?
It is not the devil, or Satan, or the evil one – as we might expect.
Mark this very clearly: he prays that they will be protected from being divided.
He prays that they will be protected from being pulled apart as a community.
He prays for their unity – he prays that they will stick together through thick and thin.
Because he knows – just like in our affirmations – that mission begins in a community of love.
The church is a community that is love, that gives love, that nurtures love,
so that we can be sent out into our communities and schools and workplaces
with this love in order to transform the world.
For in Holy Baptism, God’s mission to transform the world with love becomes our mission.
Confirmands, today you are making this affirmation in a community that is
a true community of love.
And I am asking you – and I am asking every single person here – to not take this
community of love that is First Lutheran Church for granted.
It is a very special place, full of welcome, full of inclusion, full of hospitality.
It is committed to the care and love of one another.
And it is committed to the transformation of this neighbourhood through its mission:
through its weekly food banks, through its community meals, through its
programming for children in this neighbourhood and through the
relationships that these programs foster.
It is not perfect, but it is a rare place: it is a community of love.
Today you are committing yourselves to its unity, to sticking together with it,
through thick and thin, so that we can be the people God is calling us to be at
Sargent and Victor, so that we can be people of God’s mission.
You have tremendous gifts, each of you.
You can make God’s love available to others: in this congregation, in this community,
in your homes, in your schools: wherever you go.
And that goes for every single person here this morning: whether you are young or old.
You can make a difference: you can make this day special by just being you.
My Dad affirmed his baptism in about 1935, over 80 years ago, at Redeemer Lutheran Church on
Arlington Street in Winnipeg, not too far from here, which is kinda weird now that
I think about it.
On that day, he affirmed that in baptism, God’s mission became his mission.
Throughout his life, he nurtured and in turn was nurtured by
some very loving Christian communities.
Most of you know he died in December and that his funeral was two weeks ago in Vernon.
At his funeral, one of my sisters told a story that sort of summed up my Dad at his best.
My Dad was not perfect, as none of us is perfect. He had his limitations, as we all do.
But he also had his strengths – as we all do – and one of his great strengths was
communicating love and grace to people in very brief interactions.
The story my sister told was this.
A month or two before he died, my Dad was in the hospital accompanied by my sister.
He was walking down the hallway, and he saw a woman on a gurney there,
about to be taken into surgery.
He just saw her – he just noticed her, the way Jesus noticed so many whom others did not see.
And he went over to her, and he said to her, “You look like you’re in a lot of pain.”
And she said to him, “Yes, I am.”
And then he touches her shoulder very gently, looks into her eyes, and says to her,
“I just want you to know that I’ll be thinking about you today.”
And then he just wandered away.
My sister, who saw all this, said this woman’s eyes just filled with tears because
this 94 year old man had noticed her, had acknowledged her pain,
and told her he would hold her in his heart that day.
Jesus says: You will be my witnesses, witnesses to my love.
Jesus says: I am no longer in the world, but you are in the world.
Live among God’s faithful people,
hear the word of God, share in the Lord’s supper,
proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
serve all people, following the example of Jesus,
strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
Confirmands: may this day be the beginning of a great adventure you can’t see the end of.
May you bear the light of Christ here in this community of First Lutheran Church,
and may you bear it outside these walls in this neighbourhood, in your schools and
in your homes.
May the one constant in your life be Jesus giving you love, and Jesus sending you with love.
May we all remember our baptisms on this day and commit ourselves to these things.
We are in the world, and we are witnesses to the love of Jesus for all people.
For in baptism, God’s mission to love and serve all people becomes our mission.
So together, let us commit ourselves with these confirmands today, and let us say “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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