Sermon for All Saints-by-the-Sea, Wednesday, May 14, Confirmation
by The Rev. Rob Fisher

Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 12:1-8; John 14:15-21

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – Amen.

Being able to connect with others is a very important thing in life.

Good communication is like air or water. We need it more than we realize.

And in those moments when we find that we cannot communicate, it feels like suffocating. It feels like being cut off.

It feels so good to be understood, and it feels so bad when people can’t or don’t care to listen.

***

Right now Sarah and I are watching as our daughter, Zoe, is learning to communicate.
We were really sad when her first word was not “Mommy” or “Daddy.”
It was “cat.”

And her second word was “Hi.” Actually, it was a pretty good choice on her part. If you only have two words, and one of them is “cat,” you can get an awful lot of mileage out of the word “Hi.” You can say it in a million different ways and connect with people everywhere you go.

Now that she is almost 20 months old, she knows a couple dozen words at least, and she uses them to communicate what she is thinking. Often we can’t understand what she is trying to explain to us, and it is frustrating to her. I sometimes think it’s like having a foreign exchange student living with us.

***

So think for a moment about how we communicate with God.

Think of how we pray.

Often we think of prayer from our side of the equation. It’s not too often that we think about what prayer might feel like for God.

I wonder if God feels sorrow and loneliness when we pray with overly careful words, rather than speaking the true words that are in our hearts.

I wonder if God often wishes we could be as natural and close in our prayers as we are in our conversations with our closest friends, or with our families.

No matter what, God pours out love to us nonstop, and stands facing us with arms open. We, on the other hand, get awfully distracted with the many things going on in our lives. We don’t turn away from God because we want to look away, but because we have to just do one more email or send one more text message before we can look upward and give our undivided attention.

And then sadly, for us and for God, we find at the end of a busy day we have forgotten to pray.

***

With God it is especially hard because God is so really, really big, and we are really, really small. We can’t always hear God’s voice. We don’t always know where to look to see God in the world.
God knows about this challenge, and promises us the Spirit, which will be able to help us.

In the Gospel of John, which we just heard, Jesus promises his friends that they will be able to remain close with him even after he is gone because of the Spirit. He calls it the “Spirit of Truth.”
And he says an interesting thing here. The world cannot hear the Spirit because the world does not know the Spirit. The world is too distracted to notice the working of the Spirit.

But Jesus’ disciples are different from the world. They have been given a special gift.

Jesus has introduced them to the Spirit, and they have opened their hearts so that the Spirit actually lives in them. The Spirit abides in them.

It is the highest form of communication.

In the book of Jeremiah, we hear of a similar thing: God will be writ on your heart.

It is a really beautiful image. The day is coming, some time in the future, when no one will need to be taught about God because we will be so close that God will live in our hearts. We will know God. All of us will, from the least to the greatest.

Have you ever had a friend who was so close that you could practically read his or her mind?

This is something like what the scripture is talking about. We have already had a taste of this wonderful communication. It’s finding a oneness where we experience love, when we lose track of where we end and the one we love begins.

It only comes with openness.

A very wise and prayerful man named Henri Nouwen wrote that we can only pray when our hands are open.

He did not mean it literally, though I usually keep my hands open to remind myself that I have to keep my heart open in order to truly pray.

If you are clenching your fists in a tight grasp, holding on to your image of how the world and your life should be, you will not be able to receive what surprising gifts and blessings God has to offer. How can you receive them if your hands are closed?

***

Ultimately, it is the most simple thing in the world.

With Zoe, even though we can’t communicate with her very well with words, we can communicate with just a look. We know all we need to know in those moments.

When she opens her tiny arms, and gives us a hug, wrapping her little fingers around our shoulders, that is the most profound and fulfilling communication of all.

God reaches to us with open arms, and wishes we would turn toward God with our arms open, too – even in those times when we don’t have words for prayer.

***

The prayers tonight, which we are about to read—which were written by the inquirers class collectively—shows how thoughtfully you have approached this. It shows that you are coming to know the blessing of praying with your whole heart.

To be confirmed is a way of turning with open arms towards God and receiving the promise of God’s love.

As young men and women, you are able to make the choice for yourself to call yourself a Christian, a child of God.

It is like turning away from all those things that distract us, and instead turning directly toward God and saying:
“Yes, I know you love me.
“Yes, I want to receive that love.
“Yes, I want to live in a way that I know will please you.
“Yes, I want to be free from the distractions that get in the way of our communication.

“Yes, I want to learn to love others the way that you love every single person.” – Amen.