Dear members and friends of Zion,
Pentecost once again saw a great festive bilingual service with confirmation. We as a congregation, the people of God called Zion Church, recognized that Phoebe and Matthew are on their way to becoming an adult. But confirmation is no graduation. They and us will always be children of God. What we have been doing in class and in the service, is to be regarded as a seed. It needs to be cultivated in years to come.
In our confirmation rite, we ask the candidates: “Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism?” This is what Mark Hanson, our presiding bishop of the ELCA, a couple of days ago at our synod convention called the principle bass cord of our Christian vocation: the covenant God made with you in holy baptism. God comes first. His grace always precedes our response; he has always found us before we found him (this is why we baptize infants, after all) – and yet: he does wait for a response from us. So what does this respond look like? The first is: “to live among God’s faithful people”. The Christian faith is no private equity. We have received it in order to share it. And we need each other in order to truly live a life of faith. We need to come together both for praise and for service. The principal expression of our common faith is: “to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper.” This is where we are constituted as the body of Christ. In a famous phrase from the early church: we receive what we are in order to become what we receive: the body of Christ. We need to hear the word of God, and to explore it in all its richness. The verses we chose or were given at our confirmation often help us in this; they have spoken to us in a personal way, and will continue to do so. It is the hallmark of a good verse that it will come back to us throughout our lives, offering new insights as we grow with it.
For Martin Luther, baptism has an ordination quality to it. That’s why we include: “to proclaim the good news in Christ through word and deed” in our confirmation commitment. We are actually, truly commissioned to be Evangelists – all of us. The proclamation of the gospel is entrusted to all. Of course there are different ways of doing it – and if you will want to do it professionally, yes there is some more studying and seminary and all that – but in principle, the task is given to all, and we are asked to find a way to live out that proclamation in and through our lives, our words and deeds.
And finally: “To serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth” will be the outward sign to the world that we believe in him who made this world and all that is, who redeemed it and who wants to transform it by that Holy Spirit we celebrated and prayed for at Pentecost.
See you at your Zionskirche (remember, we are air-conditioned!); have a blessed Summertime!
Eine gesegnete Sommerzeit wünscht Ihnen Ihr
Pastor Dr. Holger Roggelin
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