This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Festival of the Reformation with the Rite of Confirmation, Oct. 31, 2010.
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Readings
Jeremiah 31:31–34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19–28
John 8:31–36
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Prayer
Place the hands of your Holy Spirit upon us, O Father, and guide us to follow your Son in faith, so that our lives may witness to your grace and bring you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
Our hands say so much about us.
They tell who we are and how we have lived.
Here is the scar on my thumb.
It reminds me of a time when I was in third grade.
I was cutting out Mark Trail comic strips
from the newspaper to take to school
to give to Mrs. Harris, my teacher.
For some reason, I’d decided a scissors wasn’t the right tool for me.
So I used the paper cutter in my Dad’s darkroom.
I had the strip all lined up with the cutter’s grid.
I held it in place with my left hand
as I brought the cutter down onto my thumb.
These were the days before paper cutters had safety guards.
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There’s a hand in a photograph of a quilt
in this year’s Thrivent calendar.
It’s posted on the bulletin board in the hallway.
The hand has a distinctive shape to the wrist.
That tells us the hand belongs to Grace Otto,
a faithful member of Holy Cross Church
who has given so many hours
making quilts for people in need all over the world.
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We use our hands to serve meals at Warren’s Table.
We pull the weeds in the church’s flower beds.
We make blankets, assemble newsletters,
carry food to people confined to their homes,
pass the peace of our Lord, hold hands to offer comfort,
play the drums and the guitar and the organ,
and receive the bread of heaven and lift the cup of salvation.
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Our hands say so much about us,
just as the hands of our Lord speak eloquently about him.
They show us how he cares for his people.
His steady hands opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah
as he announced his ministry in the synagogue.
His soothing hands reached out to a leper and wiped away his disease.
His healing hands touched the eyes of a blind man and gave him sight.
His giving hands took, blessed, and broke loaves and fish to feed the five thousand.
His artistic hands drew in the dust
as he waited for a woman’s stone-wielding accusers to disperse.
His strong hands carried his heavy cross to the hill of crucifixion.
His wounded hands embraced the nails hammered into him on that cross.
His raised hands blessed the disciples as he ascended into heaven.
These are glimpses of the stories, the true stories of our Lord.
Our forebears have handed them down to us.
Then we hand them on to our children.
That is the definition of a living Tradition.
But as the years go by,
these stories can become familiar and rote.
Before we know it,
we have lost touch with the ways our Lord reaches out to us.
It becomes hard for us to feel our Lord’s hands
in so much of our life together in his Church today.
We have lost a sense of those strong carpenter’s hands—
hands that embraced the broad shoulders
of young and burly fishermen.
And yet, beneath the committees and the papers,
behind the meetings and the announcements,
beyond the controversies and the contentions,
the hands of our Lord are at work.
We might be tempted to say,
“Oh, that’s just a figure of speech.
We like to say our Lord touches us with his hands.
But he doesn’t really have hands.
He doesn’t really have a body
that we can touch or that can touch us.”
It’s tempting, but it’s wrong.
Our Lord is embodied in this world as truly as are you and I.
He has hands with which he touches us,
just as surely as we touch one another
when we exchange his peace.
Where are they?
They are here, at the ends of your arms and mine.
The Church is our Lord’s body in the world,
and that makes our hands his hands.
That means that when we touch others,
and in turn are touched by them,
in the name of our Lord,
then he touches us through these hands,
young and old hands,
smooth and rough hands,
strong and shaky hands.
Our Lord always has worked among us,
using his hands naturally as a manual laborer.
We just tend not to notice how he touches us.
Jeremiah, for example, reminds us in our reading,
that our Lord says to his people that things soon would be different,
not like the days when he “took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” (Jeremiah 31:32, NRSV).
That reminds us of how fathers and mothers
lead their children by the hand to guide them and keep them safe.
Then the Lord promises to touch his people—
Israel and the Church—in a new way.
“I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV)
His hands inscribe his law upon the hearts of Israel and the Church,
upon your heart and mine.
And when we read Psalm 46,
we pray together these words:
“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.” (Psalm 46:9, NRSV)
His almighty hands destroy our feeble weapons.
He imposes a ceasefire in which his peace can appear,
a peace that passes all understanding.
In the Gospel of John,
Jesus tells his disciples and us,
that “if the Son makes you free,
you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36, NRSV)
His hands break the bonds of our captivity,
liberating us from slavery to sin
just as he liberated Israel from bondage to slavery in Egypt.
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The hands of our Lord say so much about him.
His hands touch us, leading us along the path to new lives,
giving us his blessed peace, freeing us from the bondage of our sins.
This morning, in just a few minutes,
we will see hands at work once again—
both our hands and our Lord’s hands.
When Dillon and Kyler and Cutter
stand before God and in our midst,
they will make a commitment.
Their promise is one we all share,
one in which we all lend our hands,
joining in common labor and service.
To bind themselves to their commitment, their promise,
they will say, “I do, and I ask God to help and guide me.”
At the same time, we can all recommitment ourselves
to the work of our Lord’s manual labor,
the hands-on tasks of the Church our liturgy outlines for us:
+ We promise “to live among God’s faithful people,”
touching one another with our Lord’s love.
+ We commit “to hear his Word and share in his supper,”
holding the Scriptures and breaking the bread and tipping the cup.
+ We vow “to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,”
using our hands to show and tell others about our Lord.
+ We resolve “to serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus,”
giving food to the hungry, bandaging the wounded, and consoling the lonely.
+ And we pledge “to strive for justice and peace in all the earth,”
breaking down barriers and turning swords into plowshares.
After they make their commitment,
Cutter and Kyler and Dillon will kneel here before God
and in the presence of you and me, their sisters and brothers.
Then these hands will rest upon their heads.
And just as your hands are the hands of the Lord in your labors,
these hands will become for them our Lord’s hands,
touching them as we pray,
“Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake,
stir up in them the gift of your Holy Spirit;
confirm their faith, guide their lives,
empower them in their serving,
give them patience in their suffering,
and bring them to everlasting life.”
This is our hands-on prayer for confirmation.
But it is also our prayer for the Church,
here and throughout the world,
embodied in these three young men and in you and in me.
It is our prayer for reformation, for re-formation,
for a renewal in the faith,
for a new life lived out together under the hands of our God. Amen.