Bible Text:

“The Lord guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”                                                                (Isaiah 58:11)                        

Today we are confirming 37 youth into full membership in the church. The class is a little smaller than the last two years. Maybe 1989 was a slow year for some reason (!) 

Confirmation is a “marker” on the road toward Christian maturity. I was confirmed at the age of 12 on a Palm Sunday afternoon at the Mt. Lebanon Methodist Church. I remember the day fairly well. There was a large crowd. Those of us in the class had met a half dozen times or so with the minister. It was a modest time of preparation, but we were ready and we were eager. 

I was taught that Confirmation was a marker, a special place on the timeline of my walk with Jesus, a special place on the continuum of discipleship. Confirmation is not a beginning, or an end. It’s a marker. Actually it’s one of several markers. 

Baptism is a marker. Marriage can be a marker. Learning your spiritual gifts is a marker. Experiencing some kind of call from God in your life can be a marker. Joining a CBS group or a Covenant Group can be a marker. Confirmation is a marker.

 I found the text today from the book of the prophet Isaiah, which can describe that marker experience. The text reads this way: “The Lord guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.” Isaiah describes what might be called ideal growing conditions.

 He talks about “parched places.” I think he refers here to growth in the midst of struggle and uncertainty. When you stay with God, you get through the dry periods. You even thrive.

 We all have dry periods, do we not? Confirmands may be too young to understand this yet. The older you get, the more you know this truth. There are times when God seems remote or distant or even absent. There are times when prayers seem to bump against the ceiling and fall back.  

Parenthetically, someone gave me a list of alternative meanings for words, found in the Washington Post a few months ago. For example, “flabbergasted” means you are appalled over how much weight you have gained. “Bustered” means a very rude metro bus driver. “Coffee” means a person who is coughed upon. But this is the one I like the best… “Frisbyterianism” is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. Some people believe their prayers go up on the roof and get stuck.

 There are times when devotions seem a drudgery, or an empty duty. There are times when we don’t know why we continue.

 Someone once said that Christopher Columbus didn’t know where he was going. When he got there, he didn’t know where he was. When he got back, he didn’t know where he had been. Sometimes a little chaos and parched spirit can be helpful. 

There is a book in my personal library by Martin Marty entitled A Cry of Absence. The subtitle is “Reflections on the Winter of the Heart.” I read it about two and a half years after I came to Christ Church—early in 1983. That was a very dry time in my sense of call. I was experiencing what Marty calls a “wintry sort of spirituality.” 

But wintry spirituality can produce good growth. I turn again to the story of Nelson Mandela in South Africa as told by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mandela was in prison for 27 years. Part of that time he worked in a limestone quarry. His eyesight was actually damaged during that time. Bishop Tutu writes about those years in this way. 

Such utterly futile drudgery could have destroyed lesser mortals with its pointlessness. Everything had been done to break Mandela’s spirit and to make him hate-filled. In all of this, the system mercifully failed dismally. He emerged a whole person. Those 27 years and all of the suffering they entailed were the fires of the furnace that tempered his steel, that removed the dross. Nelson Mandela emerged from prison, not spewing words of hatred and revenge. He amazed us all by his heroic embodiment of reconciliation and forgiveness.[i] 

Good Christian growth does not come only during periods of “summery spirituality.” Sometimes a cry of absence, a winter frost, a dryness can help.

 I have vegetable plants growing under lights in our home. (Elaine laid down the law this year; I could not start them on the dining room table. I had to find another place.) All of the instructions for starting plants indoors contain the same specific recommendation: “Be sure to harden off the plants outdoors for a while before planting them in the garden.” Plants needs to experience the outdoor air, the wind—even a bit of cooler air. When they do so, they will be healthier and sturdier in their growth. 

Years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer was a marker in his life, but also a clear point of growth. In a kind of journal letter that he wrote to the family one year before his death, he said this: “As a Christian, I feel that I walk stumblingly hand in hand with Jesus. I can, with his help in strengthening me, face whatever life blesses or swats me with.” 

Sometimes your best growth will come after a season of parched places. Someone has said God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage.

 Isaiah also refers to the strong bones. “The Lord guide you continually… and make your bones strong.” The bones to which Isaiah refers are the spiritual structure to your life.

 This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to have some bone density screening because of some work that was being done with our Triple A luncheon group. I happened to get an excellent rating. But what about the spiritual structure that promotes good growth?

 All I know to do is to use the tools given for building strong spiritual bones. I spoke to some of those tools during Lent—tools like prayer, Scripture, communion, and fasting. Most of our Confirmands have had a session on prayer with Mrs. Osborne. Most of our Confirmands received Bibles as third graders, five or six years ago. Most of them received Communion with their families last Sunday, and some of them received Communion with their mentors during the period of the Confirmation training.

 Use the tools that God gives, promoting good growth. Keep at them, no matter what. Somewhere I came across this little bit of doggerel poetry which seems to apply here. 

   Two frogs fell into a deep cream bowl,

   One was an optimistic soul;

   But the other took the gloomy view,

   “I shall drown,” he cried, “and so will you.”

   So with a last despairing cry,

   He closed his eyes and said “Goodbye.”

   But the other frog, with a merry grin,

   Said, “I can’t get out, but I won’t give in!

   I’ll swim around until my strength is spent,

   For having tried, I’ll die content.”

   Bravely he swam until it would seem

   His struggles began to churn the cream.

   On top of the butter at last he stopped

   And out of the bowl he happily hopped.

    What is the moral? It’s easily found.

   If you can’t get out—keep swimming around!

 Keep at those things which build strong spiritual bones.

 Dr. Robert Chesnut retired as the pastor of East Liberty Presbyterian Church last Sunday, after 14 years of leadership in that congregation. In his book, he describes how they build the congregation with an acronym known as SEEDS: Search, Enlighten, Enthuse, Deepen, and Serve. Here is another way to grow strong spiritual bones, another means to achieve ideal growing conditions.

 Finally, Isaiah says that the Lord will guide you. For us that means let Jesus be your guide. 

I read a story about a father who was being pestered by his young daughter while the father was trying to read the newspaper. Finally, with some exasperation, he tore a sheet out of the newspaper with a printed map of the world on it. Tearing the map into small pieces, he gave it to his daughter. “Go into the other room and see if you can put it together,” he said.

 She was back in three or four minutes, the picture put together perfectly. “How did you do it so quickly?” he asked. “Oh,” she said, “on the other side was a picture of Jesus. When I got Jesus in place, the world came out all right.”

When Jesus is in place, life thrives—even in difficult times.

 Here at Christ Church we try to provide ideal growing conditions for all who would enter. We try to provide blessed assurance even in the parched places. We try to provide encouragement in the disciplines that build strong spiritual bones.

 And always, we are centered on Jesus, the master of your soul.

 As we mark this day of Confirmation, get in touch with the ideal growing conditions.

 I close with this wonderful quotation from the movie, “The Rookie,” where Dennis Quaid plays the real-life story of baseball pitcher Jim Morris. At one point in this remarkable story, Jim Morris’ dad quotes him a line from Jim’s grandfather. It goes something like this: “It’s okay to think about what you want to do, until it’s time to start doing what you were meant to do.”

 What were you meant to do? Today answers that question. You were meant to be a follower of Jesus. That’s the sum and substance of what this weekend is all about. May it be a marker for us all.