Sunday, October 29, 2023
Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, Lincoln, NE
Reformation Sunday
(narrative lectionary)
watch this service online (readings start around 23:23; children’s sermon starts around 26:55; confirmation/affirmation of baptism rite starts around 40:40)
Reading: 1 Kings 12:1-17, 25-29
Today was Reformation Sunday and we confirmed a couple of young women, and I took the opportunity not to write an entire sermon, haha. But I did do a children’s sermon, just before the rite of confirmation – which, in the Lutheran church, we also call “affirmation of baptism.” You can watch it (and the whole service) at the link above; otherwise, this is the rough outline of what we talked about:
The reading served up for this Sunday by the narrative lectionary was the story of Rehoboam. Rehoboam was the grandson of David through Solomon, and after Solomon died, Rehoboam became king. His father Solomon had started out as a famously good, wise king, but his heart strayed away from God in later years, and he became greedy and abused his people by demanding they pay exorbitant taxes and imposing harsh labor on them. So shortly after Rehoboam became king, the people came to him and asked him to ease up and not be such a harsh ruler as his father was. The king’s advisors likewise came and advised him to listen to the people and to be a kinder ruler than his father. But Rehoboam also went and talked with his friends, who were not so wise – they essentially told him he should act twice as manly and tough as his father and double down on the heavy taxes and harsh treatment of the people.
Unfortunately, Rehoboam chose to take the advice of his friends and went and told the people there’d be no more Mr. Nice Guy – he was going to be twice as terrible to them as his father was. And in response, the people said, to heck with all this – we don’t need to put up with this crap! And they left. Rehoboam’s bad decision split the kingdom of the twelve tribes of Israel so that Judah was all off on its own and the other 11 formed their own kingdom – with a king whose name was just as weird and hard to pronounce! This led to war not only between the two kingdoms, but with all the nations around them, as they saw the Israelites dividing and weakening. In the end, both kingdoms were conquered by other nations. By choosing not to listen, not to be kind or to treat his people with justice and fairness, Rehoboam doomed himself and all his people along with him.
It’s kind of an intense story, but it illustrates that the choices that we make matter. We too can choose how to treat other people. We can choose to act how God would want us to act, treating other people with kindness, or we can choose to be jerks.
At heart of the rite of confirmation/affirmation of baptism is a choice. A long time ago, when you were still a small, travel-sized human, your parents and/or some other trusted adults in your life brought you here, and a person wearing weird clothes like these ones I’m wearing sprinkled some water over your head, and those adults made promises for you. They promised five things on your behalf:
- to live among God’s faithful people
- to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper
- to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed
- to serve all people, following the example of Jesus
- to strive for justice and peace in all the earth
Aren’t those some great promises? Today, two members of our congregation will be choosing for themselves whether, yes! I want to continue to live this way of life and keep these promises for myself.
And we can tell so much just from the promises themselves what kind of God it is who’s calling us to live this way:
- God wants us to live in community, loving and supporting one another – like, this week I hurt my knee, and so many people have reached out wanting to help me, the quilting ladies gave me a beautiful quilt, and I just felt surrounded by love. That’s what God wants for each of us, all the time.
- God wants us to come and hear the stories of God’s love for us and of all the things that God has done for us; and likewise, God invites us to come and be fed at this table, to give life not just to our bodies, but to our spirits as well.
- God wants us to share with others the amazing stories of God’s work, not just by what we say, but by what we do.
- God wants us to live out the love of Jesus for others through service and care for our neighbor, loving them as God loves them.
- And God wants us to join in God’s work of making this world more like the kingdom of God, where all people are safe and fed, where everyone is respected and valued and has the ability to thrive and flourish.
That is the life into which God calls us, the life into which we are baptized. And it’s the life that our confirmands are choosing for themselves today.
This is the Day 