I cannot be
more proud of the 12 young adults that we have welcomed into our church family
this morning. During the last 8 months, I have been meeting with these students
and we have been discussing what it means to be a Christian, what it means to
be a Methodist, and what it means to join the church.
During their
last retreat at Geneva Hills, we sat around a table and planned this morning.
After they arranged the services, chose the hymns, and wrote the prayers, I
asked them if any of them want to give the message. Not a single one raised
their hand! Can you believe it! Well you all are an intimidating bunch
sometimes and it does take a lot of courage to get up here and read scripture, lead you in
prayer, and play musical instruments. So I volunteered to deliver the message
for them. However, they sure were opinionated in what they wanted me to say.
They gave me their bullet points and approved this message this past Friday
night.
The confirmands decided they wanted
me to take you through the confirmation year and share with you what they
learned and what resonated with them most during this process. Their hope was
to help rejuvenate you all in the manner that they have been.
So let’s start off at our first
retreat, last October. We stayed in the cabins at the Lancaster Campground and
met at Crossroads.
During this week we focused on the voices that
we listen to. We constantly have voices
in our heads telling us things. Good and bad things. Some of those things were
put there by others and some by ourselves. The confirmands worked at sorting
out those voices and tried to tune in to the voice of God.
In the middle of the afternoon, we
explored different types of prayer.
Traditionally when we imagine someone in prayer, we think of
someone with a bowed head. This was the first image result when I googled
“person praying.” However, we tried different postures and positions of prayer.
We reached towards the sky, we covered our faces, we laid on our backs with our
arms spread wide, and then we held our hands open and looked up into the tower
at Crossroads.
As we were spending a moment in this
position, a large brilliantly white cloud slowly crept its way over Crossroads.
The cloud whited out the windows and made the black cross stand out more
pronounced than ever. It was in that moment that some of us felt His presence
and felt tuned into the voice of God.
Later that night confirmands were
blindfolded and lead through an activity where they experienced Peter’s Life
with Christ. They experienced the disbelief when there was enough bread and
fish for 5000 people. They experienced
the terrifying sensation of trusting Christ and stepping out from the safety of
our boats and walking to Christ on the sea of Galilei. They experienced the
grace of Christ when He washed their feet. Then they experienced the gut
reaching sounds of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice for us. We finished in a catacomb worship service
where we prayed for the ability to recognize the Christ presence in our lives,
we prayed for the sight to identify the miracles in our lives, and we prayed
for the wisdom in how we can respond to His presence.
Later on in the year we traced our
United Methodist heritage back, and back, and back. The United Methodist church
is a branch on a large tree of faith that is rooted in the Jewish Faith. To
better understand where our religious ancestors came from, we visited a Jewish
synagogue and Greek Orthodox Church.
At Temple Israel in Columbus we were
met by a very welcoming group where we shared a mutual understanding and belief
that is seeded in the Torah.
A month later we traveled to the The Annunciation Greek Orthodox
Cathedral in downtown Columbus where these 13 year olds sat through a 3 hour
service with Greek being spoken 80% of the time. And no one fell asleep. The
confirmands wanted to make sure you know that Pastor Robert and Pastor Cheryl
have been taking it easy on us! In all honesty, we were all enthralled by the
beauty of the cathedral and kept spotting similarities between their service
and our own here. The confirmands were able to acknowledge that our Christian
family transcends the walls of our church and our own denomination.
During our meetings on Sunday we
discussed the many different ways that we can follow Christ. However, with most
topics we referred back to this. This
diagram is one way for us to chart the four spiritual practices of being a Disciples
of Christ.
Devotion is the private activity that
draws us into Scripture, focuses our attention on prayer, and helps us to be
mindful of God’s presence in our life. Devotion is more than just spending a
few minutes each day reading from a daily devotional guide, although these
resources have their merit. It also, includes spending time each day in
personal prayer; reading, studying, and reflecting on Scripture; and spending
time in silence and solitude.
In worship we confess our sins in the
presence of God and one another. Worship is something that has happening here
for years and will continue after we are gone. We pray for one another as we
hear the concerns of the people of God, and we hear the interpretation of
Scripture. Then we leave empowered to minister to the world.
Compassion represents practices of
caring for the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of others. Through
compassion, we put our gifts, blessings, and talents, to use on a personal
level, caring and extending God’s grace to individuals. Acts of compassion are
important ways in which we follow the biblical commandment to love our
neighbors as ourselves.
Justice is the corporate side of
compassion. It involves seeking peace and wholeness for all people and all of
God’s creation. When we seek justice, we move beyond meeting the needs of
individuals and look at the root causes of social ills, such as poverty,
hunger, slavery, sickness, and oppression. The work of justice sometimes means
getting involved in politics, economics, and law; and it often involves being
an advocate for those who lack the power and resources to make their voices
heard. By striving for justice, we honor a God who is just, and who desires the
well-being of all people.
These four easy-to-remember concepts –
devotion, worship, compassion, and justice – give us, all of us, structure for
Christ like living. Jesus spent much time in solitude and private prayer but
also worshiped with a community of followers. Jesus met the immediate needs of
the sick and hungry but also said that the Spirit of the Lord had anointed him
to “bring good news to the poor,” “proclaim release to the captives,” and to
“let the oppressed go free.” We kept referencing this cross and the specific concepts
throughout all of confirmation.
During class we also talked about Joh
Wesley’s House of Salvation. He used the different parts of a house to describe
salvation and God’s Grace.
John Wesley compared prevenient grace
to the porch of the house. When we experience prevenient grace, God had invited
us into the house, but we haven’t yet accepted the invitation. We are still
just standing outside, loitering on the porch. The idea that of Prevenient Grace
is the reason why United Methodists love to baptize babies. The act of baptism
is a symbol of God’s prevenient Grace. Even if we are unable to cognitively
recognize it, we still are extended the love and grace of God.
Now with justifying grace, John Wesley
calls our attention to the door of the house. When we respond to God’s
invitation and open the door into God’s house, we are right with God and have
assurance that our sins are forgiven. For many Christians this is the most
familiar form of grace. Our responsibility is to respond to God’s grace with
our participation in the ministries of the church.
Once we enter the house and pass
through the door, there are a lot of rooms for us to explore.
Sanctifying grace is the grace that guides us
when we are inside. We understand that salvation is a process, not just a
one-time event. Gradually, God transforms us into the person God intends for us
to be. This gradual transformation is called sanctification. The four pillars
of Discipleship are what we can us to help guide us in this process.
It was during the last retreat that 4 of
the confirmands were able to acknowledge God’s grace and reach out for that
door handle of God’s house. Brittani, Hannah, Kaleb, and Adam were baptized
infront of family mentors and friends. These
four were able to confirm God’s prevenient grace extended to them.
All of this and more is what has led us
here to today. This morning the twelve confirmands, and I find it very fitting
that there are twelve of them, stood before you and confirmed their faith. They
renounced the spiritual forces of wickedness, rejected the evil powers of this
world, and repented of their sins. They accepted the freedom and power that God
gave them to resist evil, injustice, and oppression. They confessed Jesus
Christ as their lord and savior, putting their whole trust in His grace. The
pledged to remain faithful members of Christ’s Holy church and serve as
Christ’s representative by being faithful participants in the ministries of the
church with their prayer,
prescreens, gifts, service, and witness.
Today we celebrate the Ascension of Christ and
Carynn / Maggie read for us the Ascension story from Luke. In this passage the
disciples were witnesses. They had seen Jesus
with their own eyes. They could testify to having seen Jesus after his
resurrection and they could also testify to seeing him ascend into heaven. These disciples were charged to go on and testify
to what they had seen. They were to tell
the story. To tell it not as hearsay, but as of their own knowledge.
These
confirmands today have not seen the risen Christ with their own eyes, nor have
they seen Christ ascend into heaven. However, they have experienced Christ in their
lives. They have confirmed their responsibility to go and tell the
story. To tell it not as hearsay, but as their own knowledge.
Along with
their vows today, we re-confirmed our responsibility to go and tell our story.
We renewed our covenant to faithfully participate in the ministries of the church
by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness so that
together WE can glorify God though Christ.
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