It's About Relationships: Acts 2:1-4 - Day of Pentecost / Confirmation Sunday

During class, I regularly asked our students these questions:

What is the bible about?

What are the Ten Commandments about?

What is the Church about?

What is confirmation about?

To answer to these questions, and many more, correctly, you had to speak just one word: relationships. 

If you were to ask, “what is Pentecost all about,” I’d give you the same answer: relationships. A large crowd of people from many walks of life, from many nations and tongues, suddenly became part of one community. 

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The Holy Spirit came upon the crowd of people as a mighty, rushing wind. Suddenly, the people began to speak to one another in languages that were not their own. What they spoke was the life-transforming Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that these were tongues of fire shows that these weren’t empty, dull words, but words which carried divine power. Not only did the Gospel ignite faith in the believers, it made them one Body. They now shared a common identity and a common purpose. That purpose can be summed up in your own confirmation vows:

“to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear his Word and share in his supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”

But why is it so important that you do these things? I answer once again: relationships.

One may wonder why the believers at Pentecost, together with thousands more who came after them, so eagerly embraced the Christian faith and were baptized into a new life which bore no resemblance from the life they left behind. 

The answer was that they hadn’t really been living so much as they had been dying.

The first believers inhabited a world not all that different from our own, in that wealth, power, and the pleasures of the flesh were the most important things one could attain. In other words, the more wealth and power you had, the more of the world’s pleasures you could enjoy. Yet a life of privilege was not equally available to everyone. You had to belong to the right family, you had to belong to the right race; you had to worship the gods of Rome, and you had to be male. 

In other words, you had to be Roman. It was more than just an identity; it was a way of life. 

In class, we spoke a lot about how much value our world puts on wealth, material possessions, power, privilege, and beauty. We spoke a lot about how this world devalues people due to race, religion, wealth, social status, and outward appearances. That’s how the world works. The consequence of this is that you’re constantly questioning yourself if you have what it takes to be somebody; questioning your self-worth when everything you do from academics to music to sports to the brand of phone you carry or the clothes you wear amounts to a competition.

The most important lesson I want you to learn (and all people to learn) is that none of this matters in God’s eyes. God certainly wants you to do your best and be your best in all that you do, but God’s love does not depend on you being the best. Your value in God’s eyes depends not on your grades or your popularity. If ever you feel worthless because you didn’t get the ‘A,’ make the team, finish first in the competition, or have a date for the prom, you are not. You are a person of value because of the life Jesus gave for you. If you’ve done wrong, you’re forgiven, and you can start over again. God has a plan and a purpose for your life, and even if you don’t know exactly what you want to be doing ten years from now focus on doing what you can to make the lives of the people around you better.

You’ve completed confirmation. But you’ve only just begun to taste and see your new life in Christ.

Your church is here to help you fulfill God’s purpose for your life and become everything you were created to be. When you take your confirmation vows, you will be doing so in the presence of people who are proud of you. This may be your confirmation, but we are here to confirm God’s love for you. And we will keep confirming God’s love for you throughout all of life’s ups and downs: graduations; careers, marriage, children, sickness, death, struggle, pain. Life is not so scary when you know that you are part of a family that loves you unconditionally. No matter where you go in life, whether you’re right or wrong, you will always belong.

You don’t merely go to church. You are the church. Today, you become full members of the church. Today, the torch is being passed to you to carry on the work that your parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have done over the years to make this house a home for all God’s people, a refuge for the downtrodden, and a light for all who wander in darkness. 

So keep up the good work, keep the faith, and keep being you. And God will keep being faithful.