From Baptism to Confirmation

  

Sunday was a delightful day for my wife and me: our godson was confirmed in the Christian faith.

 

The day was dark and rainy, actually rather gloomy; but the confirmation brightened every part of the day. What happened with Brent is what should always happen after baptism: his parents and his church community nurtured him in the faith, so that on Sunday, he claimed for himself the faith of his baptismal day. We were so proud of him and happy for him and his family.

 

He knows this is not the end, but a really big step along the way with lots of steps still ahead. We listened to him express his faith in his own words – with a smile on his face! We heard his mom tell with pleasure that he’s been the reader of Scripture lessons at worship– frequently. We saw him surrounded by Christian family and friends who care about him.

 

Not everyone has what Brent does – a caring, Christian family and a small, close-knit congregation. That’s why too many children who have been baptized never make it to church worship, Sunday School, and confirmation classes. What could be assumed a generation or two ago – that a baptized child would be brought up in the faith – is no longer the case.  A sad situation. The reasons are many – and challenges for all of us who believe in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. But today’s not the day for that discussion….

 

Today we give thanks for Brent, his faith in Jesus, and all who surrounded him and led him to take another step on the journey of following our Lord. Best wishes, Brent. As the lines of an Irish prayer have it: Christ on your right, Christ on your left, Christ before you, Christ after you…May Christ always be your companion.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, April 9

   

On the commemoration calendar of the Lutheran church (ELCA), today we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian. On this date in 1945, he was hanged on Nazi gallows for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

 

A pastor-teacher in Germany in the 1930s, Bonhoeffer has been my ministry’s inspiration. His writing on grace and baptism in The Cost of Discipleship almost 75 years ago, for example, set me a long and continuing course of lifting up baptismal spirituality, beginning with a master’s thesis at Luther Seminary.

 

Mindful that Bonhoeffer’s pastoral ministry took place while Hitler consolidated power and went to war, I offer a few of his words that first stirred me (and many others):

 

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

 

Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacrament; grace as the church’s inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs….

 

Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways….

 

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord’s Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ….

 

[Costly grace] is costly, because it calls to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live…. Above all, grace is costly, because it was costly to God, because it costs the life of God’s Son…. [Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4, Discipleship, pp. 43-45]

 

Let that be enough for now, the right note to sound here in Holy Week which is truly about costly grace.