Reflect. Be humble. Find meaning. Be Lutheran.

Today’s reading is from 1 Kings. I wonder how much that means to you.

I don’t say that to be a crass jerk, either. I legitimately wonder, because today is Confirmation Sunday; it’s Reformation Sunday. Today we celebrate the 499-year tradition of our church, started by Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Five hundred years ago Christianity entered the Reformation and emerged as a faith much more accessible to all people, claiming that all of us are priests; every one of you. But that doesn’t mean that we know that much about the religious narratives we confess. Do you really know more about 1 Kings than football? Do you really care more about 1 Kings than the presidential election? Would you rather read the Bible or hunt for deer? Do you know more about your Bible or quilting?

Again, I don’t want to be crass, because being acquainted with the Bible is only a part what it means to be Christian, but if we don’t practice our faith how are we to confess it? I see a lot of diatribes on the internet on TV and in the paper about Christian commitments, but I don’t see an equal amount of investment of time and energy into prayer, study, and discernment of what it means to be a Christian. Most of the time I feel like people go on the internet looking for Bible verses to quote to make their point without ever having spent any time struggling, wrestling, or praying over the question first.

You don’t have time. I get it. But what do you have time for in your life? What is the story you are going to chase in this life? What is going to be your north star, guiding you into your future?

I ask this today because it’s Confirmation Sunday and I always wonder on Confirmation Sunday how we prioritize our faith or not. It’s a question not just for our confirmands; it’s for all of us: Where are you going to invest your time and energy? What, ultimately, matters? If you don’t ask the question, the world is going to decide for you. It’s going to tell you that what matters is how much you contribute to the economy, or what matters is how you vote, or what matters is your carbon footprint, or what matters is your vertical or your SAT score. Maybe those things matter, but what matters the most?

This is a much harder question today than it was for your parents, because they didn’t have this thing called the internet. So they weren’t told as persistently and aggressively about all the things they were lacking. They weren’t as easily distracted by all the narratives. Instead, they had time for this thing called self-reflection that we mostly can’t do anymore. Sadly, the lack of time to contemplate is an absolute disaster for faith communities, because this is a place that requires time spent listening for God’s voice.

Today, you are potentially doing something very counter-cultural by becoming a member of a church, and yet, we all know that this is not the only place you belong. You are students, family members, you are connected by technology, sought-after by media, consumers of things. The question is: Which story is going to define you? Because faith is not as loud as consumerism. Faith is the exception; not the norm in this world. We don’t live most of our lives as if Jesus died for this moment even if we should.

Still, for now you are entering into the Lutheran church, so while I have you I want to say some things about what the future of the Lutheran church is going to be like. First of all, the future of the church is Jesus—not you. This might be obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people think they are the most important resource the church has. Believe it or not, people sometimes feel like they get to hold the church hostage with their presence or their offering money or whatever. You don’t. All those things belong to God, not you. And God will take back all your time and money and pride in the end, no matter how jealously you keep it. Secondly, your involvement in this church will depend ultimately on what you decide is important in your life. It’s possible to live without practicing your faith, but that isn’t a good life; it’s not a true life; it’s a path bereft of meaning where you end up feeling as if the world has closed in and you have no possibilities. Faith is what gives us possibilities. And, guys, girls, men, women, you desperately need meaning more than the bottom of the bottle or the other side of the bed can give you.

You might never know it, and that’s what’s truly scary.

I don’t want you to hear any of this as something you have to obey. Instead, I want you to hear my desperation that you use the life God has given you. In order for this to happen, there are a few steps you must take every day of your lives. First, you have to invest yourself in who you really are. Learn about yourself. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. Don’t hear the words, “A reading from 1 Kings” and think, “Sweet Jesus, why 1 Kings?! I don’t know the first thing about 1 Kings and it sounds SO BORING!” Instead, hear it as an invitation to a new place. It’s OK to not know everything. Believe me, I’m not just talking to the confirmands here. 95% of the people here cannot tell me three major events that happen in the book of 1 Kings. That doesn’t mean they aren’t Christians. There’s always time to learn. Please, please, don’t feel that a lack of knowledge is judgment on you. The church needs to be a place where a person can make mistakes openly without fear of judgment, and it must be a place where things are not labeled successes or failures based on immediate snap judgments, because the church must also be the place where people are freed from being labeled as “successes” or “failures” themselves. The greatest theological insight Martin Luther left for us is that you are 100% saints and 100% sinner. Not part-way. Fully both. Every day. You’re not a success or a failure; you’re a person.

Faith is not about being right; it’s about admitting you are wrong and practicing to understand all the new ways that you are wrong. To have faith is to doubt yourself again and again and again, because you do anyway. I see some of you on Twitter.

The road of the cross requires letting go of our damn egos. We have to find meaning deeper even the compliments and all the ways that our parents and friends make us feel special, because at the end of the day when has that been enough? It’s a bottomless pit. We need more and more of it. More red notifications popping up on social media. More “I love you’s.” More, more, more. No person is going to fulfill all that for you. And you are the last person capable of believing how special you are.

God doesn’t tell you that you are special. Instead, God says, “You are mine.”

But you need to practice your faith to believe it.

There are no shortcuts here. The best basketball players don’t show up for practice the first day of the season having never played basketball before. They’ve practiced. Over and over and over again. Faith is the same way; it takes those first awkward dribbles and those terrible shots that go over the backboard. You have to be willing to make a fool of yourself before you dribble behind your back. Somehow we accept this in basketball but feel ashamed of it when it comes to our faith.

Stop it.

You aren’t going to understand how to even begin to tackle the hardest questions right away. But the thing about faith that differs from school or from sports or from any other hobby is that faith is practiced every time you relate to anybody else. So, if you carry your faith with you, you might find it growing simply by virtue of becoming vulnerable with others. You don’t need to take a stance for your faith; you simply practice it. This means you’ll probably believe all sorts of crazy, blasphemous things. Whatever. It’s better to believe crazy stuff than to believe nothing at all. God can take our blasphemy, whatever it might be. We are saved not by right practice; we are saved not by understanding God as if that were possible; we are saved not by correct biblical exegesis; we are saved not by knowing what “exegesis” means; we are saved not by our ethical stances on issues or how we vote in elections; we are saved not by how expansive or narrow is our view of God; we are saved not by who we are; least of all not by our cultural heritage.

We are saved by grace.

Grace means you are free to mess up but how much better to mess up for the right reasons! When Luther said “Sin boldly” he didn’t mean go out and have a wicked weekend and then show up on Sunday morning acting like nothing happened. He meant make mistakes for all the right reasons. Love your neighbor so much that you upset some people. Put others before yourself so much that you forget about your own needs from time to time, but also be honest enough to know when others are just spewing hatred and abuse and shake the dust off your shoes and leave. Speak your deepest anxieties about your faith, your family, and yourself. Be honest in all things.

That’s what Luther meant. That’s what it means to be part of this church. And—you know what?—sometimes this church kind of stinks at putting that into practice. Sometimes we are more concerned with not rocking the boat, or with being right, that we don’t practice our faith as we should. So help us, because you are us. Show us the way. We need help practicing our faith as surely as you do yours. We are all in this together. That’s this church. Be part of it. We need you, but not as much as you need something to guide you that will stay firm even when your world shakes. Don’t be Lutheran because you should; be Lutheran because it will ground you in a world of shifting sand.

Be Lutheran because the church is always reforming and you can be part of something much bigger than anything you can do on your own. Be Lutheran because here is hope that will not disappoint, here is grace that will never let you down, and here is a community ready to catch you when you fall.