Monday Morning Sermon (Notes)

Those of you who were with us on Sunday witnessed six young members of our church affirm their baptism after having completed two years of confirmation classes.  One of the high points of the service was hearing them read statements of faith that they had written, talking about their perception of God and his work in the world and their lives.

Several folks pointed out how wonderfully confident and brilliant these young theologians sounded.  I agree, but I wasn't that surprised.  I've been hearing them for a couple years now.  All of them have expressed their deep thoughts at one point or another.  In fact their curiosity and prowess influenced me to change confirmation this year, just for them.

One of the requirements for confirmation is filling out sermon notes:  reflections on the gospel and the message of the day.  Each year they're in confirmation they have to turn in 16.  They have a sheet to fill out each time.  You've probably seen them doing so.

This year I changed the requirement to only 12 sermon notes.  But only 9 of those were from the normal sheets.  I asked them to do 3 sermon notes where they went home and reflected on the message, then wrote a page about how it affected their lives.  At first they were like, "Whoa!  What?  That sounds too hard!"  But all of them did it and man...was I blessed to get to read their thoughts!

So this week, instead of sharing my own thoughts, I'm going to share excerpts from the sermon notes of our confirmands.  I've agreed to keep the actual quotes anonymous, as some of them are personal.  But I wanted you to see how these young folks think...how they process sermons and life and God.  Keep in mind, now, these are 14-16 year old kids.  In many places nobody would be listening to them, let alone asking them to share or teach their thoughts.  Read the posts this week and see if you don't think we should listen to them more!  Part of the experience is you getting a look at what we do in confirmation, but part of it is also realizing that these kids really do think deeply about God and life...and wondering why the rest of us don't do it more often.

Here's our first sermon note excerpt:

God is here or not here.  He is with us or not.  I say that to myself all the time.  God is with me but he must not be with that person because they are not like me!  But if I become friends with that person, they are holy and a part of God and he loves them.  But then as soon as we have a fight, God is on my side.  For me, people are godly and then not so fast that I can't even keep up with it.  But that isn't the right way to think about these things.

Calling myself "right" or saying that I am the only one that is near God doesn't actually MEAN I'm near God.  It actually puts me farther than those other people I've been telling myself are away from God.

Understanding this sermon was really hard for me because I do so many of the things that you gave an example to.  I tell myself they're right.  So when you said they were wrong, I was like, "WHAT?"  And so I told myself that the people believing you were wrong.  Then I would get confused and switch again.  And again.  And again.  I was afraid my head might explode.

A few days after Sunday, probably about Wednesday, I was in school and somebody talked up and the teacher didn't yell at him.  This triggered the same reaction I had to the sermon.  He was not right to do that.  I would never do that.  Just because he does it and doesn't get in trouble doesn't mean that I won't.  That isn't right.  It drove me crazy.  And then the sermon actually sunk in.  And I was like, well, I'm not going to do that thing, but just because he did doesn't mean he's without God and that he's a totally miserable person.  And that was that.  No more arguing with myself in my head!

I'm very judgmental.  People get on my nerves and, in my mind, they are the DEVIL.  But they aren't.  And now that it all has sunk in, or at least most of it, I've been trying to see the good in everyone and make myself believe that they are part of God too.  They are part of God's vine.  They too are the branches.

I read that (a slightly longer version, but still) and I went, "Wow."

Personal reflection here:  Reading this pretty much made me cry.  I mean, not that I'm the crying type, mind you.  I'm a big burly manly-man pastor!!!  Rrrawwwrr!  But we big burly manly-men pastors (and the other types too) seldom get feedback on anything we say.  I preach a sermon and pray that the Spirit will wing its way to everybody and help translate it into something meaningful and useful.  But you never know.  I pretty much preach into a void.  Other than the occasional, "Nice sermon, Pastor" I never know the effect my words have.  It requires a lot of trust and faith to get up there and preach under those conditions.  It's also pretty lonely...like you're eternally saying the most important things you can think of and you're not sure anybody hears.

So all it took was this student saying, "A few days after Sunday, probably about Wednesday" to make me say, "Oh my gosh!  Somebody thought about one of my sermons on a non-Sunday!  Somebody heard something from the gospel and used it!"  Hey...even if it was just an assignment, I'll take it!  Right there I misted up.  But then I re-read the whole thing top to bottom and thought how magnificent it was that somebody squeezed that much meaning out of scripture and married it to their own life in that moment.  It's the kind of thing you pray for, and yet here it was spelled out on paper...the wonder and beauty and struggle and triumph of life with God distilled into one sermon and a few minutes in class.  This is the way it's supposed to be.

I hope you feel as privileged to read those reflections as I did.  And they're not done!  We have many more pearls of wisdom from our young theologians this week, so stay tuned!  And congratulations and thank you to all of our confirmation students!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)