Sermon: Confirmation Sermon

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Confirmation Sermon

By Tom Reiber

June 2, 2002

the end-of-the-year Deacons' meeting the other night Al MacRae pulled me aside and said some encouraging words about my preaching debut today. After some kind words of encouragement he sighed and said, “Yeah, I don't know how you do it, two hundred people all staring at you, all very critical of your every move.” Thanks, Al, I needed that. Actually, this is a great congregation to preach for and I know you meant well, Al.

This year's confirmation class is a great group as well. I've had several reminders of that over the course of the past year. The first came while I was teaching a Sunday School class on dreams for our Confirmands. Lucy Wells mentioned in passing that Rosa Parks comes to her in her dreams. I thought to myself, “What kind of youth am I working with here?” I got another glimpse of the caliber of kids I'd be working with back in December when we made our annual confirmation BRIDGES run. We were milling around in Lile Hall after preparing the meals when Dan Rufolo asked if he could play the piano. I said sure, thinking he's play chop sticks or something. He sat down and blew us away with a composition he created himself, much like what he played for us all today as a prelude to the service. On our way into the City I asked him how long he had been playing. He said nine years.

“Wait a minute,” I said, “you would've been three.”

“Well, I didn't actually start playing then,” he admitted. “I started with theory.”

I just turned thirty-nine and as Wayne can tell you, I've yet to start on music theory!

I feel a little like Robin Williams in the classic film, The Dead Poet Society. Williams plays Mr. Keating, an English teacher at a private, boy's school he once attended. Now he's come back to teach. His students do a little research and find out he was a bit of a hell-raiser back in his student days, one aspect of which was the founding of a group called the Dead Poet's Society. This group would steal away in the night to a cave out in the forest (not unlike the earliest Christians), where they would recite poetry, woo women, and, quoting Thoreau, suck the marrow out of life.

In keeping with the passions of his youth, Mr. Keating turns out to be a, well, let's just say “unconventional,” teacher. He flaunts the traditional teaching methods of the school, not to be a troublemaker, but rather because he believes in the kids. He wants to help them see past the artificial boundaries of their social world, to open to their creative potential. It's in that spirit that he has them tear out the introduction to their poetry textbooks. He doesn't want them to learn how to analyze poetry; he wants them to learn how to write it. He wants life to become the blank page upon which they write the poetry of their lives. He isn't so much intent on filling their heads with knowledge as he is committed to freeing their gifts. More than anything he wants them to discover that there's more than one way of looking at the world. To prove that point he gets the students to stand on his desk, one at a time.

One of the real gifts of place like Christ Church is the opportunity to see things from a new perspective. This is true in the most general sense of an alternative to the way of the world. The world says some people matter and some don't, some are expendable and some aren't. But the Gospel offers a perspective in which everyone matters, in which each person is imbued with a God-given dignity. This affirmation is not the final word on religion, but rather the first step; from there the challenge is to come to a mature and modern understanding of the Bible, of historical Christianity, and of what it means to be a Christian today, right here in Summit, NJ.

In order to explore that, we've talked about the religious continuum. We drew an imaginary line across Lile Hall and talked about the difference between the religious right and the religious left. I explained that the farther to the far right you go the more the Bible is viewed as the perfect word of God, without any trace of its human authors. All the way out on the left the Bible is viewed as a fallible literary document produced by human beings. I then had the Confirmands aligned themselves on the continuum and I have to say, it was pretty interesting. Of course the point of the exercise wasn't to say one position is right and another is wrong, but to point out that there are many perspectives from which to think about the Bible, the divinity of Christ and other central precepts of Christianity.

And while the goal wasn't to brainwash anyone, I think it is important to be able to say something meaningful about what it is we believe and value. Over the past few months I've been thinking about that in relation to both the Christian tradition and our faith community here, at Christ Church. As today's reading about love reminds us, the Christian tradition is, at its core, about putting others before ourselves. When you make the conscious effort to become aware of the needs of those around you, you've taken the first step in the direction of community. And while the ultimate reach of the Gospel is to the human community worldwide, we've got to start right where we are, and that's here in Summit, New Jersey.

In the wake of the September 11^thterrorist attacks we came together as a community through the service on the Green. We've also seen some powerful examples of community here in this sanctuary. We've had a lot of losses this past year and we've grieved them here in this sacred space. And as hard has these losses have been, when we've all gathered together there's been a strength there, a presence of God and a feeling of church that for a moment puts even our deepest grief in perspective.

And we've come together to celebrate our joys. We've had baptisms and weddings and there was the recent celebration of Wayne's 40th anniversary at the church. I'd venture to say there have been a lot of annual meetings at churches across the country that sounded more like an empty gong or a clanging symbol. But that celebration of Wayne was pure love pouring from the heart of God, through this church to that gentle angel over there. If you Confirmands learn anything about becoming an adult in this place, I hope you learn that part of putting others before yourself is cherishing the special people in your lives and celebrating their accomplishments.

Community is a place that allows and encourages you to cultivate new perspectives. When everything goes according to plan, your special gifts and the ideal of community come together. So you take the enthusiasm and energy of a Michael Keane and you have him hand out socks on a BRIDGES run. Then when he runs out of socks and a homeless friend asks for the socks he's wearing, he doesn't hesitate. He sits down, takes off his socks and gives them away. That's what can happen when community is shaped by the spirit of God.

Or take, for another example, what happened at the Holy Apostle Soup kitchen in the City. This is an operation the feeds about one thousand homeless friends a day, utilizing the volunteer effort of about fifty people. Before hand the coordinator spends a little time getting to know the day's volunteers, then hands out your various assignments. When he got to the end of the list the day we were there he bellowed out, “And Mr. Rufolo: you're on the piano.”

I wish you could all have witnessed the transformation that took place. As about a thousand homeless friends shared a meal, Mr. Rufolo was jamming to his heart's content. With each mellifluous wave of sound the place was transformed, from a soup kitchen to the Blue Note, then to a church, and then to a fleeting glimpse of the kingdom of God.

At the end of the Dead Poet Society, Robin Williams gets fired from the school. He comes back to his classroom to gather his belongings to find the principal filling in form him. The principal is a stern, authoritarian man, pretty much the opposite of Mr. Keating. It's actually kind of funny, because the principal is trying to have the students open their textbooks to the introduction on how to analyze poetry, only Mr. Keating had them rip it out so it's not in their books.

Mr. Keating offers to come back later, but the principal says to just get his things and be done with it. While he's gathering them up, one of the boys who's been kind of shy throughout the film suddenly gets an inspiration and stands up on his desk. The other students get it and soon they're all on their desks, standing in silent protest. The principal is running around yelling at them to get down, but they're listening to a higher voice. Mr. Keating stands there, smiling, and says simply, “Thank you boys.”

Maybe that's what happens when you succeed in empowering people to think for themselves. You become a community which can hear that higher voice above the din of the world. You may hear it in the words of the Bible. You might discover it embedded in the celluloid of the Matrix. Or maybe it'll be the voice of Rosa Parks calling to you in your dreams. May you each hear it in your own way. Blessings on your way.

Amen.