Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

In the tradition in which I was raised, the sign of salvation was the emotional explosion which represented a conversion from unfaith to faith. It was likened to be being born again. The intensity of the experience was an indicator of the authenticity of the event. The trigger for this event was the human decision to decide to trust in Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

Now there were many days in my youth when I would be in those dark moods as I groped along through life. I would very much want to be on top of the world, to be happy, to be confident in my sense of self. But that did not happen at the snap of a finger. I found great hope in my religious life. Thinking that in someway I would discover the secret to turning on this faith which the church promised. Still the confusion would often prevail.

I would try to turn that key and give my heart to Jesus, but such decisions did not result in those dramatic transformations that I sought. I tried everything offered to me by my religious tradition, even volunteering to be a missionary. None of this worked.

Finally, I became older, a little more mature and gained skills in critical thinking. As events turned out, I actually did volunteer to be a student missionary during the summer. I was sent to the Philippines where I found myself in an alien world. There was very little in the mountains of Luzon or on the plains of Mindinao that would support me in my illusions of control or that I had mastered anything in life. If anything, I was bewildered by all that I was experiencing.

I was most fortunate that the missionary to whom I reported was a well educated theologian. Jim Slack invited me into the world of basic theology, and I began to read. The Baptist missionary put into my hands a Lutheran pastor’s book. It was entitled, How to be a Christian without Being Religious. The book effectively taught me that there was nothing I could do to make faith happen. Faith was a gift, an absolute gift.

The author of the book convinced me that there was nothing I could do to get God to love me or to forgive or to bring meaning to my life. My efforts to bring about confidence and assurance based on my acts of faith–even my efforts to give my heart to Jesus–were not the way.

Up to that point in my life, I had believed that faith depended upon me. Up until then, every time I found myself to be in a cul-de-sac of life, I thought it was my job to do the religious things in order to get God to come to the rescue. The problem was that I found myself manufacturing the religious effects of faith but without the religious substance. Suddenly I was reading the words of a pastor who comforted me with the good news that I did not need to do those things. Rather, I needed to hear the word that God loves me because it is God’s nature so to do. God forgives me because God is moving to make all things holy.

I must say that that day in my life in the dark Philippine night was a great day that flooded me with a whole new understanding of life and of God. I began to realize that my only hope lay in a lifetime of hearing the word of the gospel proclaiming the promise of God.

Later I discovered spiritual masterpieces like Paul Tillich’s sermon, “You Are Accepted.” And, yes, as I found my way to the Lutheran Church I discovered Martin Luther’s masterful declaration of what it means to believe in the Holy Spirit. Luther quotes the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit . . .” Then he explains it’s meaning with the following words:

I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith. (Luther’s Small Catechism)

Luther in effect says, “I believe . . . that I cannot believe.” He thereby invites the Christian not deny or ignore our doubt and anxiety. No, we are to acknowledge the doubt and the anxiety. We are not to turn on our best efforts at coping with them. Rather we are to realize that the glory of creation, the mystery of redemption and the power of the Holy Spirit rule in our lives.

Dear brothers and sisters today we celebrate the true origin of the church which is none other the effect of the preaching of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus Christ that we see the Father. It is in Jesus Christ that we come to rebirth whereby we are no longer determined by a life of accomplishment and achievement. We are now determined by the transcendent relationship to God. That relationship is not established by our decisions, but founded upon God’s decision to create us and to share with us this life under finite conditions, and still to draw us into the divine life by sending Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Christ into all the world.

It is appropriate that today we recognize our teachers who prepare the children and youth for life by teaching them godly play and the stories in the Bible and the music of the church; that we use the gifts God has given us to establish a stronger camp for use by all people, and that we recognize our graduates for their accomplishments and pray that they will continue to grow in the faith.

We celebrate the birthday of the church on this Day of Pentecost. With all Christians everywhere we declare with Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon in the Augsburg Confession:

It is also taught that all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel. (The Augsburg Confession, Article VII)

Without this word we are left to our own devises and one dead end after another. With this word we are invited not to fear and flee death, but to realize that God continues to be “the Lord, the giver of life.” Even our prayers now change as we rely on the promise of Christ to his disciples:

I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14: 25-27)

Amen.