We began the Sunday service by singing
“Castillo Fuerte” (“A Mighty Fortress”). Then I explained why
I was wearing a red stole and pectoral cross, and why the altar
paraments were red.
First, because the Holy Spirit appeared
as fire on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:3), and also the Scriptures
say, “he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire”
(Mateo 3:11, Luke 3:16); and “our God is a consuming fire”
(Hebrews 12:29). So the color of fire symbolizes the force and energy
of the Holy Spirit, active among us through the preaching of the pure
Word and the administration of the sacraments as our Lord commanded.
Since no one can confess Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit (1
Corinthians 12:3), on Reformation Sunday we recognize the continuing
work of the Holy Spirit in the public confession of the blessed
Martin Luther, who stood before the powers of the world and declared
his consciences was captive to the Word of God. Thus began the
Reformation, which we accept as proof that the Spirit still guides
the Church and keeps it in the true doctrine, not by new revelation,
but rather by reaffirmation of the faith once delivered to the
saints.
I preached on the appointed Old
Testament lesson, 1 Samuel 3:19-21), explaining that in the context
of this chapter, Samuel was a small boy, dedicated by his parents to
the service of the Lord's temple in Shiloh where he lived and worked
as the servant of the high priest, Eli. But Eli and his sons, the
priests of Israel, were worldly and corrupt, and there were no true
men of God to preach the Word of God to the people, and the people
lost sight of God's will and drifted into unbelief.
But the Lord called audibly to Samuel
while he slept, and the boy, thinking it was the high priest calling
him, interrupted his master's sleep. Understandably irritated, Eli
said that he had no called and told the boy to go back to bed. This
happened three more times before Eli figured out that perhaps
something unusual was taking place, and told Samuel the next time to
answer the voice directly and immediately. This Samuel did, and
received the first prophetic message that he was to deliver in the
name of the Lord: To pronounce a judgment of death against Eli and
his sons.
Of course, Samuel was afraid to do
this, but since he realized he could not change the Word of the Lord
and dare not disobey God's command, he did so anyway. Eli did not
punish the boy, but, because of the remnant of faith left in his
heart, recognized God s judgment as just and accepted it. The Lord
continued to bless Samuel and as he mature, made him into a mighty
and faithful prophet.
The application for us today is that as
Christ has won for us salvation and eternal life through His death
and resurrection, we must live by this truth and confess it publicly,
even if it does not win us any popularity contests and even it means
risking the loss of our lives. For we must love and obey God rather
than men. “Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before
men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God:
But he that denies me before men shall be denied before the angels of
God” (Lucas 12:8-9).
This story of the boy Samuel was
especially appropriate as the sermon text, because following the
sermon, Luz Maria's granddaughter, Oriana Montoya, came forward for
confirmation. At nine years of age, she is the youngest person who
has been confirmed as a member of our mission congregation.
Oriana was born and baptized a few
months before I arrived in Venezuela in 2003. I suppose that I can
say that I have known her all of her life, and that she cannot
remember a time when I was not a part of her life and her
grandmother's life.
There was no rite of confirmation apart
from the sacrament of baptism in the early church. Unlike baptism,
confession and absolution of sins, and the sacrament of the altar,
“confirmation” was not instituted or commanded by Christ. It
emerged as a separate ceremony and eventually was declared a
“sacrament” in itself by the western Latin-speaking Church. In
Eastern Orthodox churches to this day, both
infant children and
adult converts are baptized, anointed with the laying on of hands
(“chrismation”), and communed on the same occasion, in unbroken
succession.
The Lutheran Reformers decided to
retain the rite of confirmation, while denying that it was a divinely
appointed means of grace, and against infant communion. This is
because while the Scriptures place no reservations on who may receive
the blessings of baptism, there are stern warnings against receiving
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper “unworthily.” In order to
participate in the sacrament of the altar, one must be able to
examine his or her conscience and repent of sin (1 Corinthians
11:28), and discern the presence of Christ's body and blood in the
sacrament (1 Corinthians 10:16; 1 Corinthians 11:29). The Reformers
accept the western tradition of age 7 as the minimum age at which
this level of understanding was possible, and 16th Century Lutheran
church orders specify ages 7 to 12 as the optimum range for preparing
children for first communion.
Later, in the 17th Century, under the
growing influences of Calvinism and rationalism, the typical age of
Lutheran confirmation was raised to 14 to 16 years, as confirmation
came to be viewed more as a rite of passage into adulthood and the
“completion” of a process begun with baptism.
Theologically speaking, however,
baptism is the point of entry into the communion of the saints, and
it isin baptism that one is covered with the righteousness of Christ,
adopted as a child of God and receives the full promise of eternal
life. There is no need to “complete” this process. On the other
hand, it always has been the Lutheran understanding that catechesis,
or instruction in the faith, is something that is a necessary part of
sanctification (the Holy Spirit's work of molding us into the people
God wants us to be), a process which is not complete until death.
Therefore, catechesis should not stop at age 9, 12 or 16, but rather
continue throughout adult life.
Therefore, having instructed and
examined Oriana, and knowing of her desire to receive first communion
with all of her friends and family as witnesses, I welcomed her into
communicant membership in our mission.
As we prayed for Oriana and all those
who had been baptized and confirmed at La Caramuca Lutheran Mission,
I thought of another girl that I had known from birth through
confirmation: my niece, Ashley Baltazar. I had stood up as a sponsor
at her baptism, but at that moment I was particularly reminded of her
confirmation at Zion Lutheran Church in Matteson, Illinois.
It was a congregation of mixed ethnic
background in a similarly mixed community, and Ashley was confirmed
along with young people of Caucasian, African and Latin American
ancestry. Since Ashley's father, Mark, comes from a family that is
Portuguese, Irish and Filipino, but mostly Filipino, the confirmation
dinner consisted of traditional Filipino food. For me, mixed with the
joy of Ashley's confirmation was a vision of what could be, a
foreshadowing of Revelation 7, with a great multitude of all nations,
all tribes and all races gathered around the throne of the Lamb. And
it got me to thinking about the overseas mission field.
So at that moment I prayed for Oriana,
for Ashley and for all who had made their vows of faith, that the
Lord might keep them always in the true faith, strengthen them and
call them back if they might stray. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment