Episodes
Sunday Jun 08, 2014
Let There Be Light - Confirmation Sunday
Sunday Jun 08, 2014
Sunday Jun 08, 2014
Confirmation at 11:00 AM service:
Dinah Benaka
Maya Bravo
Audrey Dahlkemper
Eliza Dahlkemper
Michael Delery Gervase
Cyrus Johnson
Nathan Kattapuram
Ewan Marquis
Connor McCormick
Charlie Nichols
Madison Smith
Rev. Dean Snyder
Sermon: Let There Be Light
Scripture: Isaiah 40:8
I want to say a word of thanks for everyone's prayers this past week. I spent last week in the hospital with what doctors call a pulmonary embolism. The doctors tell me that if I take my medicine and take it easy for a few weeks, I will be totally back to normal. I am on a somewhat restricted schedule. I want to say how grateful I am to our staff for picking up everything that has needed to be done, and I am especially grateful to Dawn Hand who is a great leader.
Today is Pentecost and Confirmation Sunday, and our confirmands have selected our scripture. Let me read two verses.
A voice says "Cry out!" And I said, "What shall I cry?" All people are grass; their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of The Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.
I have three ideas I want to share based on this Scripture selected by our Confirmation Class.
Life is short. I know it doesn't feel like it now. I can remember being young and wondering to myself what it must be like to be 20 or 40 or, God help me, 60. And feeling as though it would take forever to get there. So let me tell it, it doesn't. Time flies.
We are given only a few years on this planet. And the question in the Scripture we heard today is the question: What are you going to stand for? What is going to be at the core of your life? What is your identity going to be?
It is a hard question and it is a persistent question. As long as we live it is a question we are going to need to ask over and over again.
The temptation is to try to please or impress others. Our families. Our teachers. Our pastors. Our friends. Or sometimes the temptation is to show them, as in I'll show you.
Either way it is a reactive attitude. We react to others either to please them or to defy them.
Isaiah says this is a sorry way to live our lives. Because all of this is temporary. It passes away.
The one thing that does not pass away is the word of our God, the Scripture says.
In other words, beneath the passing trends and interests and passions of our particular time, there is a deeper word, a deeper truth, a deeper reality that is not merely transitory, that is not fading away.
Anybody have a favorite TV show? It will bore you 10 years from now, maybe five years, maybe two. Anybody have a favorite song? You'll have a new favorite song 10 years from now, maybe even next week. . Anybody have a favorite food? You'll have a new favorite food 10 years from now?
Your political beliefs may change. Your religious ideas may change. Your social views may change.
But underneath all this there is a word that stands forever. It is the word that God speaks.
I can't tell you exactly what that word is. Hearing that word is the work of a lifetime. The word is what God is doing in the world that persists from generation to generation, from century to century.
Searching for that word is why we study the Bible. What is it that God wants? What truly stands forever? What is the capital T truth beneath all the other truths we learn?
And the real question is what is worth standing for in my life? What is worth my giving my life for?
Pleasing others is not worth it. Showing others is not worth a lifetime. Standing for the truth of God that will not pass away is. May each of us hear the word of our God and stand in it.
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