SPEAKER_00: Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: To him who loves us and has washed us clean from our sins with his own blood and made us to be a kingdom of priests to serve God and his Father.
SPEAKER_00: To him be all honor, glory, and dominion forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day to all those wonderful women who God gave us to love us and care for us and watch over us.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord continue to grant them strength to always point our hearts and our minds to Jesus and his gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And also the Lord grant us hearts willing to hear them and to love them faithfully in return.
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of love, our Lord tells us today in his gospel, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
SPEAKER_00: We have a tendency to talk about love as an emotive-based expression of our feelings towards someone or something, like our husbands or wives, like our girlfriends or boyfriends, or even that lost puppy that we found.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about love as warm, overwhelming emotions that make us feel good and quite honestly do silly things.
SPEAKER_00: But if we're going to talk about love and loving Jesus, well then we need to talk about love in the right way.
SPEAKER_00: God's love is not that kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: Nor is this the description that God gives us for love in his word.
SPEAKER_00: God is love.
SPEAKER_00: And his love is most clearly expressed in the giving of his son in our place that we may have eternal life through him.
SPEAKER_00: That is love.
SPEAKER_00: That is sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: True love is sacrificial, and God's word and work of salvation bear witness to that as the true definition of love.
SPEAKER_00: The same apostle who wrote the Gospel of John that you heard this morning also wrote in his first letter, 1 John, we love because he first loved us.
SPEAKER_00: So then our ability to love only comes as a result of God loving us first.
SPEAKER_00: Our love for God can only come through Christ, who is himself the Word of God made flesh.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we love to say, oh, I love the Lord, but then we're really quick to say, but God doesn't expect me to be perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe as Lutherans, we'll excuse ourselves by saying, But who can keep God's law, Pastor?
SPEAKER_00: It seems we much rather excuse our words and our actions when we should just really be repenting.
SPEAKER_00: But if we as Christians say we love Jesus and love his word, well then why don't we cherish it and all that his word gives?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we treat one day out of the whole week as though it takes up too much of our time?
SPEAKER_00: And why do we treat those two hours of that one day as something that gets in the way of our extracurricular activities?
SPEAKER_00: Because God will understand?
SPEAKER_00: But do you, dear beloved baptized Christian, ever stop to consider Jesus' word when he's battling Satan in the wilderness?
SPEAKER_00: Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_00: If we believe such words from Jesus' own mouth, well then maybe we'd stop our silly self-justifications and savor every word that comes from the mouth of our Lord as though our life actually depended on it?
SPEAKER_00: And if we believe that every word that proceeds from the Lord's mouth actually gives us life, well then why don't we bring ourselves to the very place where he gives out life with the utmost certainty?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we not go to the place where the Holy Spirit promises to speak out loud to us when we hear his scripture read and preached and the words of Christ each and every Lord's day?
SPEAKER_00: What else does this tell the unbelieving world but that we're foul weather Christians and we give God our time when life gets difficult, or worse yet, when it's convenient?
SPEAKER_00: What does it confess to the unbelieving world when we say, ah, it's okay when we miss what the Lord is giving out to his people?
SPEAKER_00: Forgiveness, life, salvation?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we not devote ourselves as the earliest Christians did in Acts 2.42 to the hearing of the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and to the prayers?
SPEAKER_00: It's the simplest depiction of the divine service that you all are a part of today.
SPEAKER_00: If you want unbelievers to know about Jesus, nothing speaks more a bold confession of faith to the unbeliever than when the Christian shows up every Lord's day to receive Christ in his word preached into his ears and his holy sacrament given into his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe if we realized our frailty and we see ourselves the way the Bible actually describes us, like grass here today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, well then maybe we would not treat the Word of Christ nor the reception of his gifts indifferently.
SPEAKER_00: But go to where the Spirit of truth speaks to us most emphatically.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth, because Jesus is the truth.
SPEAKER_00: And where else is the Holy Spirit promised to come to us with certainty than in baptism?
SPEAKER_00: St.
SPEAKER_00: Peter speaks boldly of the promises of baptism in Acts.
SPEAKER_00: Be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And this is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, remember the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, as Jesus tells us, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you can't make a decision for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit must be the one to convert the hearts and minds of people, because the world does not naturally receive him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, that which is born of the spirit is spirit, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus taught, if we are not born of water and spirit, then we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And where else is a Christian born of water and spirit than in baptism?
SPEAKER_00: For therein lies the command and the promise of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is why we so boldly as Lutherans teach from Luther's Catechism.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or call on him, but it is the Holy Spirit who calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps me in the true faith.
SPEAKER_00: But you, you do know the Holy Spirit, for he dwells with you and is in you as a result of your baptisms.
SPEAKER_00: He is the reason why you three can make a good confession today before God in this congregation.
SPEAKER_00: For Christ has asked his Father on your behalf, dear Christians, and you have received the Spirit of truth in your baptisms.
SPEAKER_00: He points your hearts and minds to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He points you to where Jesus shows up for you, even right here, in word and spirit and body and blood, the whole Jesus for you.
SPEAKER_00: So then those who are covered with Christ in our baptisms and have been given his Holy Spirit, well let us turn in love toward the Lord, and love him with all our hearts and our soul and our mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves, for this does sum up the commandments.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore it's a great day to be here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a great day for us to gather in the Lord's house today because in keeping with Christ's mandate in Matthew 28, these adult catechumens, forever students, have been baptized and catechized according to what Jesus commanded.
SPEAKER_00: Today they are confirmed in their baptismal faith before God and in front of all of you.
SPEAKER_00: But remember, confirmation is not graduation.
SPEAKER_00: It never was.
SPEAKER_00: These people are not graduating as though they're tested on some book knowledge in order to get a diploma or degree.
SPEAKER_00: They're forever catechumens, forever students, forever growing in the knowledge of truth who is Jesus Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Forever growing in faith in him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: There is no change or variation in him.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the author and the perfecter of their faith and of yours.
SPEAKER_00: He has established their faith in them by the Spirit of truth and in you.
SPEAKER_00: And in turn, these catechumens will confess before you openly the faith given them in their baptism.
SPEAKER_00: And they'll pledge never to fall away from it.
SPEAKER_00: They can't help but open their mouths and confess the word of faith according to what was handed down by the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, I think it's good for you to know that the rite and the ceremony of confirmation is rich with meaning.
SPEAKER_00: It has its roots buried deep in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Unbeknownst to some, the rite of confirmation has its beginnings in the early church, not long after the Acts of the Apostles.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not some trite ceremony generated by the medieval church, as some think, to raise money or to ensure church attendance.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why this rite was also recognized by our Lutheran church fathers.
SPEAKER_00: But in the ancient church, baptism and confirmation often occurred together at the same time because a vast majority of those being catechized were adults or elder children, one after the other at the same evening on Easter Vigil, the evening service before Easter Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: After three years of catechesis, the catechumens would then enter the waters of holy baptism, confessing their faith before their pastor to be sealed by the name of the Holy Trinity and the Holy Spirit, while receiving the Holy Cross on their foreheads and on their hearts, marking them as ones redeemed by Christ the crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Immediately following this washing of water, they would be led out of the baptistry into the midst of the congregation and be confirmed in the faith that was given them just then in their baptism, just moments before.
SPEAKER_00: Now confessing their faith before the entire congregation in preparation to being united to the very body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Those confirmants were so confident in what had been done to them, Christ bonding them to himself in water and word, and not just brought into a community of believers like yourselves, but being united to Christ together with his own body and blood, that they were willing to undergo the most terrifying of persecutions, because they knew nothing could separate them from their unity to Christ, which they had just experienced.
SPEAKER_00: The catechumens back then had experienced, had witnessed with their own eyes, their own bodies and their own mouths, the joining of Christ to themselves through his gifts of word and sacrament.
SPEAKER_00: And nothing, and I do mean nothing, could take away that reality from them.
SPEAKER_00: They knew that they had life and salvation because they had been forgiven of all their sins and united to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And their love for their Lord and one another overflowed from all their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Those who are forgiven much love much.
SPEAKER_00: And those who truly love Jesus want to be where he has promised to come near them in word and spirit and body and blood.
SPEAKER_00: So now I encourage you to hear the words of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and have confidence this day what you three are about to receive in his name.
SPEAKER_00: Trust our Lord's word.
SPEAKER_00: No one comes to the Father except through me.
SPEAKER_00: You have been baptized and catechized according to the Lord's command in Matthew 28.
SPEAKER_00: You have been covered with Christ and sealed with him in your baptisms.
SPEAKER_00: You have received the Holy Spirit and will confess Christ with both your mouths and actions today.
SPEAKER_00: Today you will receive the fruit of his sacrifice on the cross in the body and blood of our Lord at this altar.
SPEAKER_00: Hold fast to Luther's exhortation.
SPEAKER_00: He is worthy to receive this sacrament who believes these words, given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.
SPEAKER_00: And to all the saints gathered here today, as you receive this holy meal with these confirmants, as you leave here today from experiencing heaven on earth, you will go out into the world of unbelievers, where sin and the devil seem to reign for a time.
SPEAKER_00: But remember what the Lord has done to you.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that he has united you to himself.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the words of Saint Peter, but even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed and always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you.
SPEAKER_00: For he alone says to each of you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
SPEAKER_00: He will do it.
SPEAKER_00: Now depart in peace, all of you.
SPEAKER_00: Your sins are forgiven for Jesus' sake.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.