This week we celebrate the culmination of a three-year journey for eleven of our confirmation youth and young adults.
As part of confirmation education we ask graduates to select a scripture verse that resonates with them. We then ask them to prepare a statement of faith that incorporates the verse into how they see themselves as a person of faith.
Now I never got to go through confirmation as a youth, at least in any formal way, because I wasn’t raised Lutheran.
And because of that I never got to pick a confirmation text. Which is kind of a bummer, because it’s a really neat ritual.
This text, in a way, kinda represents my confirmation scripture. Albeit two or three decades later than our confirmands selected theirs ?
Faith Unseen
Specifically, my confirmation text for you today is the first verse of Hebrews 11.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Faith is an assurance.
Faith is a hope.
Faith is a conviction of things not seen.
What a neat definition of a really abstract concept.
This is one of those verses often that pops up as a meme, complete with a visual of a beautiful forest or beach or mountain. Google Hebrews 11:1 meme some time and check out the images paired with this text to see what I’m talking about.
But, similar to many a modern meme, often we need some background to have a more complete understanding of what amounts to a short, specific quote.
I mean really, if faith is defined by things not seen what the heck is faith?
I’m a seeing is believing kind of guy. Maybe you are too.
Faith Seen
Fortunately the rest of Hebrews 11 gives all kinds of tangible, assessible ways to see faith, here, and now, and in the flesh. In it, there’s 18 sentences, out of 28, that begin with the words “by faith.” Each sentence then continues by providing examples of what faith looks like for many of the heavy hitters of the Old Testament, including Abraham, Jacob and Moses.
And in this we end up with a kind of map that details where faith intersects with our daily life. Here’s what that looks like for Abraham.
By faith Abraham set out, away from home, to receive his inheritance, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he stayed in this new land, which was foreign to him, waiting for God’s promise.
By faith Abraham and Sarah then conceived a child. Even though they both thought themselves too old.
For it was by faith that Abraham listened to God, and stayed true to where God was calling him. And this faith then led to a series of others that followed God’s call on their life, including Jacob, and Moses, and Mary, and Christ, and Katie and Marin Luther, all the way up to you and me.
How did they have the strength to follow their creator’s plan?
By faith.
Today
All this leads us back to our confirmands, and their statements of faith.
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So what does faith look like for you, new graduates? My guess is your backstory likely goes kinda like this…
By faith, you were formed, in a divine union between two people. In a plan that dates back to the beginning of time.
By faith you’ve been brought to the waters of your baptism, claimed as a beloved child of God. This weekend you’ll confirm this claim, and do so in front of hundreds.
By faith you’ve celebrated communion, eating of the bread, drinking of the wine. In this you take all that Christ has done through his life, death, and resurrection, and become one with it.
By faith you have spent the past three years learning of what was, up until then, the faith of a previous generation. From Old Testament to New to the Protestant Reformation you’ve had an awful lot to absorb and reflect on.
And, by faith, you now boldly proclaim what you’ve learned, making this faith not of others, but now your own.
And that’s that, right? Confirmation.graduation.done.clap.
Hopefully not ?
Tomorrow
Let me encourage you, new graduates, to continue to live by faith. Both now and for all your days.
By faith dive into high school. Give it all you’ve got.
By faith consider college. It is for some, but not all. Listen for the voice of God to guide you.
By faith seek out love, perhaps marriage, perhaps children. When the time is right, of course. Mom and Dad may have an opinion on when that is, I’d imagine ?
We are called to be in relationship with each other, in so many ways. Keep your creator in the middle of them all.
By faith follow your vocational call, whatever that call may be. Be open to some surprising paths. I myself continue to be surprised with where God’s called me. Aka didn’t see this one coming.
Some of you are called to be pastors, or teachers, perhaps prophets. Others healers, builders, and bus drivers too. If your call is from above you will be blessed, and bless many, many others along the way.
By faith give back to this world. A world our savior Jesus Christ loves so much. Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Right the wrongs. Love your God. Love your neighbor. This is a common call, for each of us. And an important way we live out our faith.
Close
Let me encourage you, graduating young adults, to make your faith visible. Be convicted, through faith, of things not always seen.
Make your faith visible in everything you do.
Make your faith visible in every facet of who you are.
For when you live, by faith, your journey will always be fulfilling.
For when you live, by faith, your time on earth will be as it should be.
And when you live, by faith, your journey, young adults, has only just begun.
Amen.
