Confirmation – Trinity Sunday
II Corinthians 13:11-14
Did you know that there were confirmation classes in the Bible? Of course, they didn’t look exactly like ours. They didn’t have a blue book filled with a lot of “What Does This Mean’s” and “This Is Most Certainly True’s.” But even in the early New Testament times, there were catechism classes as the apostles traveled around and started churches filled with immature Christians. Back then, just as now, there were students of the Bible, and teachers who helped them grow in their knowledge. One of St. Paul’s confirmation classes was a church in a city called Corinth. This wasn’t the type of city where you would go for a family vacation. Corinth was a place with a lot of sin and a lot of temptation, so as you might imagine Paul was pulling out his hair as he tried to teach this class the truths about God. So if you ever thought you were a bad class for me during the times when you didn’t know your memory work very well (or at all), or came to class “forgetting” to bring your worksheet along with you, I just want you to know: you were a piece of cake compared to Paul’s Confirmation class in Corinth! Just read through 1st Corinthians sometime and look at the fits that this confirmation class gave Paul. But it ended well with this challenging group of students. They listened to their teacher bring the Word of God to them, and they grew. Our text is the last written words that we have from the teacher to his class. And as we look at these words today, on your Confirmation, which also happens to be Trinity Sunday, I hope to use these thoughts to encourage you to Entrust Your Time on Earth to the Triune God.
Part I
Entrust your time to the Trinity by aiming for perfection in your life. Look at the first words of our text, “Finally, brothers, good-bye. Aim for perfection.” In our classes over the past few years, we have learned that there are two powers in this world: the great, healing and forgiving power of the Triune God, and the destructive, vicious power of the devil. But because we cannot see these powers with our eyes, sometimes we forget that they are there. But they are there. In a few moments, you will make a promise to the Triune God in front of this congregation that you will abandon the devil and all his tricks. And Satan, he has a lot of tricks, but one thing he is going to whisper to you over and over throughout your life: take the easy way out! “Don’t be perfect, you’re never going to get there anyway! Just try to be pretty good. Take the easy way out.” That’s what he whispered to Adam and Eve “You want to know what good AND evil is like? Take the easy way out…just take a bite of this fruit and you’ll have it! (and don’t worry too much about how God said not to).” That’s what he whispered to Jesus as he was tempted in the desert, saying, “you don’t want to go through all that suffering and humiliation! Take the easy way out and just bow down to me, and I’ll give you the earth!” He said to these people, “God’s way is too hard! My way is a lot more easy and fun! Take the easy way out.”
And maybe the devil is right. Doesn’t God’s way seem hard: aim for perfection! God is saying, “don’t be satisfied with any sin in your life. Anytime you find yourself doing something sinful, thinking something evil, I want you to stop.” Friends will encourage you to take the easy way out by giving up many of the truths that you have learned these past few years about how God wants you to live. “Do you want to have fun by abusing your body by overusing things that will hurt it? Go ahead – take the easy way out. Don’t make yourself look like a nerd in front of your friends by saying no when they’re all doing it. Take the easy way out and join in with them just this once. Do you want the fun of marriage without the commitment of marriage? Go ahead – take the easy way out. Have fun with as many girls as you want. You’ll have plenty of time to be tied down to one person later.”
In just a few years, you 4 guys are going to be living on your own, in a college dorm room or your first apartment with a few friends of yours. Mommy isn’t going to be knocking on your door on Sunday morning to tell you to get ready for church. But you can bet that Satan will be right there, whispering to your tired self to take the easy way out that morning. “You’ve had a long week! This is your only morning to sleep in, or play golf. You go to school 5 or 6 days a week, you need to work today instead of church…God can wait until your life isn’t as busy as it is now. Go ahead – relax, take the easy way out.” You will be persuaded by so-called friends and self-made amateur theologians that if God loves you, he must want you to do the things that make you happy, even if that stuffy out-of-date Bible says it’s wrong.
In a few moments, you are going to promise not to listen to those lies of the devil. Why would you want to listen to him anyway? Don’t you remember, what a loser he is? He went head to head with Jesus and lost, big time. And now he’s looking for more losers to join his gang. Satan acts like your friend, but he doesn’t care at all about you. He just wants to drag you down to hell with him. I sure don’t want to see any of you in his loser club! Because you, by God’s grace, are a winner! Jesus died to take away the devil’s power over you, and he lived to make you perfect. In a sense, you already are perfect. When the Triune God looks at you, he no longer sees failure. He no longer sees all the times you have succumbed to the devil’s lies. When you were baptized years ago, God knocked the hell out of you and replaced it with Christ’s robes of righteousness, robes that you wear even now, robes that you will wear forever in heaven. The Robes of Perfection are the uniform that we on the winning team proudly get to wear.
And now, Paul says, since you are on the winning team, “aim for perfection.” When you take a test in school, how do you get the highest grade possible? By just trying to pass the test, or by trying to ace it? The higher you set your standard, the higher you will achieve. This works in all areas of life. What running back in the NFL says, “I hope I can be 4th string, hardly ever play, be a backup my entire career, and be paid as a backup”? I guarantee that someone like with an attitude like that will never become a star running back in the NFL. And if a Christian says, “perfection is too hard, I’ll be satisfied being a Christian most of the time or some of the time,” they are setting the bar so low that they guarantee they are going to be a weak Christian unless that standard gets set higher. So to say thank you to the Triune God for making you his holy child, set the standard way high in your life: aim for perfection!
Part II
And there’s one more thing you are promising this morning…that you will remain faithful to Christ’s Church. So entrust your time to the Trinity by being a faithful worker in the church.
One thing about the church in Corinth, it was filled with cliques. Do you know what those are? Cliques are this group of people not liking that group, and neither of them liking a third group. You’ve seen cliques in your classrooms at school. How well do you think cliques work in the Church? Unfortunately, because we Christians don’t always strive for perfection in our attitudes, cliques can happen in church, and they always have a negative effect. And so Paul says, “Listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send their greetings.”
You will probably be relieved to know that your confirmation vows do not involve a holy kiss. I like the four of you, but I am not going to kiss you today. I am not going to ask you to kiss each other. We don’t do as much kissing as they did back in the culture that Paul lived, and we might think that’s a good thing. But we still do have expressions of love and peace. You might not get kissed a whole lot today except from moms, aunts, and grandmas, but a lot of people will be shaking your hand. When we do that in church, it’s much more than just the thing two guys do before they say goodbye to each other. It is an expression of love, peace, and unity. In a few moments, you will make your promises, receive a blessing, hear your confirmation verses, and then I will shake your hand. When I and others of the church shaking your hand today, we are saying, “now we don’t consider you a little kid anymore, instead, we welcome you as a communicant member of our church and your synod. We respect the knowledge you have gained through your studies, and because of your promise to give up the devil and follow the Triune God all the days of your life, we consider you our Christian brother.”
We have the joy of welcoming you to the Lord’s Supper today. You understand what Jesus offers you in Holy Communion. You know how to examine your spiritual life. And like the other communicant members of this church, you are going to confess your unity in the doctrines that are taught by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
In the next few years, you will be encouraged by the church to serve Jesus more than you have up till now. Today you are a young adult. It is the prayer of this church that you keep maturing in your faith and knowledge of the Trinity. And we look forward to seeing you as mature Christians helping to lead the church. I have no doubt that the 4 of you will find yourselves on Church Councils, as Elders, working with Outreach, Bible Study leaders, and on other church boards and committees. In this way, you will directly help others learn about the Trinity.
Conclusion
Today, we honor you. But I hope I don’t take too much wind out of your sails by reminding you that first and foremost, we honor the Triune God who brought you here. As some of you mentioned in your biographies, it was God who cared enough about you to give you a Christian family. Many children have parents that don’t give a hoot about God, and so they grow up not caring about the Lord either. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live on this earth, knowing that one day I was going to die, but not having any idea of what’s going to happen to me after death. The Triune God has given you that knowledge, and so you also have peace instead of worry. And so let us close with the familiar blessing, these are words that you have heard hundreds of times, but listen to the blessings you are given by each member of the Triune God. In the past three years, we have studied and dissected words like “grace,” “love,” and “fellowship.” Those are blessings from the Triune God to you on this, your day of Confirmation. And so let us close with the very last words Paul wrote to his confirmation class: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Amen.
sdg
