Pentecost/ The Holy Trinity

The Day of Pentecost (B)

Confirmation Day

May 20, 2018

Text: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

            The Rite of Confirmation is not a Sacrament.  It has no command from God.  There is no visible element.  And it does not forgive the sins of the confirmand.  It is a human rite, with an ancient pedigree.  It’s very old.  And it is good.  But we mess it up with our false notions and sentimental piety.  We either act as though Confirmation is nothing more than a rite of passage, a graduation of sorts (phew, the kids are off the hook now, and we don’t have to show up to Church anymore until the kids are ready to get married!), or we assign more to it than we should, as though Confirmation were, in fact, a Sacrament of sorts, that imparts the Holy Spirit, as our brothers and sisters in Rome and the East believe.  This is an historic occasion this morning, the first youth Confirmation class of Augustana Lutheran Church, Moscow, Idaho.  And so, a certain amount of clarity is called for.  We should know what all this is about.  What is Confirmation, and why do it?  And what is it not?  What myths do we need to bust about this ceremony?  And perhaps more to the point, what is this day all about for these five confirmands and for this congregation? 

            The Feast of Pentecost is one of several traditional days for the Rite of Confirmation, and what a great day to have this celebration.  Pentecost is all about the gift of the Holy Spirit, coming upon His Church in all His fullness fifty days after our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, ten days after His ascension.  The Jews were gathered together in Jerusalem for the great harvest festival.  For the Old Testament believers, Pentecost was a feast of firstfruits, bringing their first and best, especially of grain, to sacrifice to the LORD fifty days after the Passover.  It was also the day traditionally celebrated as the anniversary of God’s giving Moses’ the Ten Commandments, so Pentecost is a celebration of God’s Word.  Pentecost simply means “fiftieth,” as in the fiftieth day after Passover.  The first disciples, being faithful Jews, were gathered for the feast in Jerusalem, waiting together in one place, as the Lord commanded them, for the gift of His Spirit, when all of a sudden, the sound of a mighty, rushing wind (spirit, wind, and breath… all the same word in Greek, and all the same word in Hebrew for that matter), came blowing through the house, and, you know the story.  Divided tongues as of fire rested upon the disciples and they began to preach.  And what was incredible about their preaching is that they spoke in tongues, which is to say, human languages they had never previously known or studied.  That, incidentally, is what the gift of tongues is.  Not ecstatic speech or gobbledygook, but the speaking of God’s Word in a language the speaker doesn’t know.  And it’s always for a missionary purpose.  The Jews from all over the known world were in Jerusalem for the Feast, and they were hearing the Gospel proclaimed by the Apostles in their own languages.  They were hearing for the first time about this Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, but who is risen from the dead, in whom they have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.  And that is what converts about 3,000 of them that day.  Not the miracle of tongues, but the preaching of the Gospel.  Because the Spirit comes in the preaching.  The Spirit comes by the Word.  So that is what this day is all about in the Church.  The pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. 

            And here is what that has to do with Confirmation.  While the Rite of Confirmation itself does not give the gift of the Spirit to our children, it is a direct result of His being poured out upon them in their Baptism and in their continued hearing and learning of God’s Word.  Beloved, Pentecost is not a one and done event in the history of the Church.  God pours His Holy Spirit upon and into every Christian in your Baptism and in Scripture and preaching and Supper.  The means of grace are the vehicle of the Spirit.  They pipe Him in with all of His gifts.  It’s another Pentecost every time a little baby or a not-so-little adult is brought to the font, every time your sins are forgiven in the stead and by the command of Christ, every time you hear a sermon or attend a Bible study or a sit through a Catechism class, every time you come to the altar to be fed with the crucified and risen body and blood of Jesus.  It doesn’t usually happen with all the fireworks, the mighty, rushing wind, the tongues of fire and the tongues speaking, but it’s just as much a miracle, and you know it, if only the Spirit gives you eyes to see and ears to hear.  And He does.  That’s His job.  He comes on the wings of the Word to bring you to faith in Christ, to give you that faith as a gift, to turn you from yourself and from your sin to your Savior, in whom you have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.  He brings you to repentance.  He converts you.  He points you ever and always and only to Christ for salvation.  He gives you faith.  He strengthens your faith.  He keeps you with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.  He works in the Church.  That is why the Third Article of the Creed is about the Holy Spirit and the Holy Christian Church.  This is the Spirit’s arena here, in the Communion of saints where the Word is preached and the Sacraments are administered.  Here He forgives your sins.  Here He gives you life.  Here He marks you for the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting.  He is the Lord and Giver of Life.  Spiritual life now, bodily life then.  He is the breath of life breathed into Adam at creation (spirit, wind, and breath, all the same word!).  He is the Spirit breathed out by our Lord in His dying breath on the cross.  He is the Spirit Jesus breathed on the Apostles the evening of the First Easter when He instituted the Office of the Holy Ministry and said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” (John 20:22-23; ESV).  The Spirit makes the forgiveness your own!  This is why, when I say, “The Lord be with you,” you respond most properly, “And with thy spirit,” for you recognize the Holy Spirit is in the Word preached, to do these things for you.  This is the fulfillment of what our Lord says in our Holy Gospel, “he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), for in preaching and in catechesis, and in the tangible Word that is the holy Sacraments, the Spirit does all His work.  And He opens your lips to confess.  You say the Creed.  You witness.  And this morning, five of our children confess that they believe the faith into which they are baptized and as they’ve come to know it in the Catechism.  They believe it, by grace, by the Spirit’s gift.  They believe it, and, in fact, they’d die before they ever forsake it.  That is a confession you can only make if you are possessed by the Holy Spirit.  That kind of confession is pure, divine gift. 

            Confirmation, therefore, is not the pouring out of the Spirit, but the result of the pouring out of the Spirit.  It is the fruit of His work in their lives.  Confirmation is a big deal for that reason.  Here these five young men and women, having learned the Word God gave to Moses and all the Prophets and Apostles, offer their first and best to God on this Pentecost Day in confessing Him.  And He promises, “everyone who acknowledges,” confesses, “me before men, I will also acknowledge,” confess, “before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:32).  But the bigger deal is what came before.  Their parents brought them to Holy Baptism.  And then to Church and Sunday School.  Week after week.  And they taught them the faith at home.  They read the Scriptures to them and taught them to pray.  And they brought them to Catechism class, and for two years these kids have met with me every Wednesday for an hour and a half, learning the Scriptures and the Catechism, committing it all to memory, learning it by rote so that they know it by heart.  And they do.  They know it.  But it’s not even the head knowledge, so much, that is the point.  It’s that the Holy Spirit was in all of that, doing His thing, giving faith, giving life, giving Jesus…  And, by the way, you don’t graduate from any of that.  In no sense whatsoever is Confirmation a graduation.  Catechism class never ends.  We’re always learning it.  We’re always students.  And we always need what the Spirit has to give in His Word.  I still expect to see you in Church and in Sunday School.  Every week.  You five already know that, but they may not know that, so I’m saying this for their sake.  You know the Catechism better than they do right now, so if you still need to be here, they still need to be here.  And as I told you, when you’re all grown up and I’m a really old man, I’m coming to your house, and I better find that you still have your Catechism and you still use it and you’re teaching it to your own children, or there’s gonna be trouble.

            The other thing that is a really big deal about today that we often combine with Confirmation, but it’s not the same thing, and it’s actually a much bigger deal than Confirmation, is your First Communion.  This really is a Sacrament.  Here the Spirit really is poured out on you in your reception of the body and blood of Jesus, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  Having been instructed in the Christian faith, and confessing that faith and particularly what it is you expect to receive in the Lord’s Supper, namely, the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for your forgiveness, life, and salvation, you now are given to receive this most precious gift with us.  Receive it often.  Every week.  As often as you can.  St. Ambrose said, “Because I always sin, I always need the medicine.”  He was talking about the body and blood of Jesus.  The Sacrament is the medicine that forgives our sins and gives us the resurrection life of Jesus.  It nourishes us and strengthens us and marks us for the resurrection of our own bodies on the Last Day.  So don’t miss it.  Be here.  Be where Jesus is, right here, right now, at His altar, for you.  Giving you His death and resurrection.  Giving you Himself!  Giving you His Spirit.  Giving you to sit at His Table in the Father’s House. 

            Confirmation is not in the Bible, and God doesn’t command it.  It does not impart the gift of the Holy Spirit.  But it is all about the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And for that reason, though it is a human rite, it is a good human rite that we should by all means retain and celebrate.  What Confirmation is, when you get right down to it, is the ceremony that brings together all the important things God does for us by His Spirit here in the Church.  It is a celebration of your Baptism, faith, catechism, and the Supper.  Jesus doesn’t command Confirmation, but He does command Baptism and Catechism class.  You five know the verse well now, by heart: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).  Baptism and teaching, Baptism and Catechism, the two always go together.  You can’t separate them.  And in this way Jesus says, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20).  And He is.  Really.  In His body and blood.  Which is where those who are baptized and catechized are now fed.  The Spirit gives you birth in the water.  He leads you into all truth.  And He brings you to the altar.  And that is the whole Christian life.  Not just for these five, but for every one of you.  Jesus has been breathing on you, Holy Spiriting you, throughout the Divine Service this morning, from the first word of the opening hymn.  And He’ll do it until the last word of the closing hymn, and in every encounter you have with His holy Word throughout the week, until He gathers you back here around the altar to do it all over again.  That is the pattern.  And that is Pentecost.  The Word of God is Jesus’ breathing life into you, which is to say, His breathing the Spirit into you.  Confirmation is simply your hearty “Amen” to that.  So let’s do it.  Let’s say it, like we mean it, Lutherans: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.     

     

The Holy Trinity (B)

May 27, 2018

Text: John 3:1-17

            On this Feast of the Holy Trinity, our Lord Jesus is speaking to us about Baptism.  That should not surprise us.  For it is in Baptism that our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, brings us into the ineffable mystery that is His Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity.  He puts His Name on us.  He marks us as one of His own, chosen and precious, purchased for Himself by the blood and death of God the Son made flesh.  He writes His Triune Name on us for the same reason you write your name on anything.  Because He doesn’t want to lose us.  Because we belong to Him.  Because he would not have us belong to anyone else.  This is an adoption into the family and life of God, into the love and communion of the Holy Trinity.  In fact, it’s more than an adoption, it’s a new birth.  It is the love between the Persons of the Trinity for one another, flowing forth to fashion a new object of that love, holy believers in Jesus Christ.  You.  You are His child.  Therefore Jesus speaks to Nicodemus and to us this morning about Baptism, the means by which God makes us His own: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5; ESV). 

            And Nicodemus is absolutely baffled.  He is as baffled by Baptism as we are by the teaching of the Holy Trinity.  It doesn’t make sense to him.  Now, when it comes to understanding the finer points of theology, Nicodemus is no slouch.  Remember who he is.  He is a member of the Sanhedrin, a man of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews.  He’s a rabbi.  So it’s not that he’s intellectually incapable of thinking through a complicated concept.  When he objects to the idea of being born again, asking Jesus whether a fully grown man is supposed to climb back into Mom’s womb and come out again, he knows he’s being ridiculous.  He is not a literalist.  He’s being sarcastic.  It’s a rhetorical device.  He’s telling Jesus that the whole idea is ludicrous.  And this is instructive.  It is not that Nicodemus is incapable of understanding the meaning of the words Jesus speaks, or even the concept.  It’s that he can’t believe it.  Literally, he can’t.  He’s incapable of it.  He cannot believe something so foreign to his own conception of reality, his own reason.  He cannot believe something that depends so little on him.  Think about this.  You were born through no decision or work of your own.  And Jesus is saying it’s the same thing coming into the Kingdom of God.  You are born into it, apart from your will or your good behavior.  In other words, by grace.  It’s God’s work, not yours.  And Old Adam will have none of that.  Which is precisely why Old Adam must die.  Your sinful nature must die.  And you must be born anew of water and the Spirit, water and the Word. 

            Jesus says it right here in our Holy Gospel.  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6).  Why can’t Nicodemus accept what Jesus is saying about Baptism?  Because of his unbelieving, sinful nature, inherited from Adam.  He’s born of the flesh.  He has not, as yet, received the new birth of the Spirit.  St. Paul riffs on this in his first letter to the Corinthians.  He says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14).  Well, no wonder we have so much trouble with the things of God.  It shouldn’t surprise us that Nicodemus is incredulous, and it shouldn’t surprise us that so many people don’t believe.  As we are born according to the flesh, in our father Adam’s sinful nature, we cannot and will not believe.  We are born spiritually blind, dead, and enemies of God.  To come to faith in Him, He must kill us and make us alive.  He must bring us to new birth.  By His Spirit.  Through water and the Word.  By grace.  That’s what He does in Baptism.  And when He does that, when we are born of water and the Spirit, our blind eyes are opened, we are raised to new life, and reconciled to God.  And the things of the Spirit we now see by faith to be true. 

            Remember we’re talking here not about intellectual understanding, but the understanding of faith.  There’s a big difference.  Nicodemus understands perfectly well what Jesus is saying.  He just can’t believe it.  We believe it, but this does not mean we intellectually comprehend it.  Who can?  How can water do such great things, like give us new birth in the Holy Spirit and saving faith in Christ?  We confess that it’s not just the water, but the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word.  That’s a wonderful and true explanation.  But how does that work?  Well, God’s power is in the Word.  Okay.  But do you really understand it, intellectually, how all of that works?  Of course not.  You believe it, because Jesus says it.  And that is enough.  God’s Word is enough.  You’ve gotta get over this idea that you need to rationally comprehend everything God does and says.  You’re like a child, always asking his father, “why?”  Sometimes it’s enough that your Father in heaven simply says, “Because I said so.”  God doesn’t owe you any more than that.  And that’s not the understanding you really need.  The understanding you really need is faith.  And that’s what God gives you when He gives you new birth by water and the Spirit. 

            So the teaching of the Holy Trinity.  Who can comprehend it?  Who can wrap his mind around it?  You can’t.  Not rationally.  Only by faith.  Only as God has revealed Himself in Christ and in Scripture.  One God, three Persons.  Three Persons, one God.  “And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.”  Even in the Athanasian Creed, we struggle to say clearly what we cannot comprehend, but can only believe.  There are not three Gods.  Just one.  But He is three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we must not confuse the Persons.  The Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit is not the Father.  But they are of one essence, one substance.  The Father is not a part of God.  He is God.  He is not the Son, and yet the Son is God, and they are not different Gods.  Somebody pass the aspirin.  Don’t try to work it all out.  You’ll be wrong.  Although Dr. Winfree has a very intriguing theory about the number e (the number, not the letter) being a good illustration of the Holy Trinity.  He should have you over to dinner sometime and unpack it on the white board for you.  You’ll be riveted. 

            But see, you don’t have to work it all out.  Just believe what you’ve been given.  That is the catholic faith (which, remember, doesn’t mean Roman Catholic, but literally “according to the whole,” the whole doctrine, the teaching, believed at all times and everywhere by the one, holy, Christian Church).  That faith is a gift.  It’s your inheritance.  It’s your birthright.  It is given to you in Baptism.  And in preaching and Scripture and Supper.  It is the Name written on you by the stylus of the Spirit.  And it is that which looks to Christ crucified for your sins and lives.

            The love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not of such a nature that it can be bottled up and hoarded within the Trinity.  It is always love directed outward.  It is love poured out in the coming of the Son into our flesh, eternally begotten of the Father, born in time of the Virgin Mary, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.  God loves us in this way, that He gives His only-begotten Son.  He gives Him to us.  He gives Him for us.  He gives Him into death, the death of the cross, as the sacrifice of atonement for our sins.  Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and the Israelites suffering the mortal snake bites could simply look at that serpent and live, so the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, has been lifted up on the cross.  And we, bitten by the serpent, our wicked foe, Satan, justly perishing in our sins, look to Jesus on the tree.  He is suffering our death, there.  He is paying for our sin.  The serpent’s fangs pierce Him.  And in this way, He crushes the serpent.  And we live.  To know that is not to rationally comprehend it.  It is simply to know and trust that it is for me.  Whoever believes that will never perish.  He will not be condemned.  The Son has not come to condemn you.  No, He comes to give you life.  By His death.  In His resurrection.  And you are baptized into that.  Born anew of water and the Spirit.  And it is all His gift.

            The Father gives the Son.  The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  The Spirit gives you faith in the Son who reconciles you to the Father.  It is the Holy Trinity in action for your eternal salvation.  Don’t worry about how one God is three Persons, Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the substance.  Just believe that it is so, and know what this Triune God has done for you and continues to do for you.  He gives you His Kingdom.  And know who He is for you.  He is the Father who made you and loves you as His own child.  He is the Son who became flesh for you, suffered and died for you, lives for you and calls you friend and brother.  He is the Holy Spirit who gives you new birth in the water, your Lord and Giver of Life who works in the Word and the Sacraments to forgive your sins and keep you in the one true faith unto life everlasting, who will raise you bodily from the dead on the Last Day.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity.  He is your God.  He is for you and not against you.  His Name is on you.  His Name is yours to call upon at all times and in every place, as you trace the mark of your redemption upon your body and say: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.