Confirmation, The Beatitudes-- and Gandalf and Frodo

Confirmation, The Beatitudes--
and Gandalf and Frodo
Rev. Carol Luther
General Confirmation, Grace Cathedral
June 12, 2004

The Spire at Grace Cathedral Today we have gathered in this cathedral to witness and celebrate eighty five people who have said "yes" to Christ's Church. Eighty five of you have come from churches all over the Diocese of California to have hands laid upon you for confirmation, for reception, for renewal. Most of you have gone through some kind of training or discernment process. You have fed the hungry, studied the scriptures, prayed for one another. You have cleaned up hillsides and beaches, visited the sick, shared Holy Eucharist. You've done well. You've learned a lot about yourselves, about each other and about God. It's a great process. Today, as you stand at the very threshold of deepening your commitment to faith, you join with others before you who have also made this journey.

Forty years ago, when I was confirmed as a Christian, I had friends who were either Christian or Jewish, and in the name of diversity we celebrated Hanukkah as well as Christmas at school. Forty years ago I had not yet met a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim. Today, as Christians you will take your place at the table with leaders and seekers of many faiths. You will be part of a Church that speaks not only English, but Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Swahili, Yoruba, and brings to us the wisdom and tradition of many different cultures. Forty years ago, my Christian education came almost entirely from texts. The life of faith was mostly in the head: saying you believed in a set of doctrines. If there was a practice or experiences that went with those doctrines, if there was such a thing as a miracle, I knew very little about it. Now of course there were a great many interesting things going on in the Church that I knew nothing about: Thomas Merton was alive and writing, Dr. Martin Luther King was lighting a fire under the feet of the world, Buddhist monk Thick Nhat Hahn had come to the United States on a mission for peace, but all this lay miles away from my quiet neighborhood. In my sheltered world, the word "mystical" was just plain weird and only Baptists and Catholics got really excited about God.

Gandalf & Frodo But when I was fourteen years old, even in my sheltered world on the eve of my confirmation, all this was about to change. And it was about time, too, for to my fourteen year old mind, the Church, while a very good idea, wasn't an especially alive idea. I didn't want a philosophy or a series of textbooks. As a young seeker I wanted something I could passionately believe, a story that would stir my heart, a truth so marvelous that I could stake my very life upon it. And because I wanted this very badly, I found it, for God does answer prayers, but the path to faith was not at all where I expected it to be. Since I asked for a story, God gave me a story. Since I asked for a wonder worker, God gave me one. Many out there say that wizards can't teach you about Christ. I know better, for my first great religious teacher was Gandalf the Gray.

"The shadow has returned to his ancient fastness. That name even you hobbits have heard of . . . on the borders of old stories."

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

When I was fourteen years old, the shadow felt very close. In 7th grade, I had experienced the terrors of the Cuban missile crisis. The president had been killed the previous November. We were at war in Asia. Dark things lurked at the edges of the world. And as if all that were not enough, I was changing, too. I was beginning to ask hard questions. I was beginning to grow up and wondering if I would ever make it to adulthood.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. That is the essence of the life of faith, to do with the time that is given us, to choose.

No one can promise you an easy time to live in. I daresay, most times have their own unique brand of difficulty. Uncertainty is the great gift of human life. But so is choice. And all of you, by choosing confirmation, reception or reaffirmation, have made a great and wonderful decision about what to do with the time that has been given you.

And time, like faith, has a great many sides.

When I was a child in Sunday School, the Bible seemed impossibly out of date. How could books written by people who drove camels instead of cars teach us how to live? How could the creation story in Genesis inform us in the age of the Big Bang? What did Adam and Eve and the serpent have to teach a budding feminist? People who come from cultures that venerate tradition would not have trouble with this question, but I grew up in a culture that was so mad for the future that it forgot the past. I needed Gandalf to teach me that ancient lore counted. The Lord of the Rings, like the Bible, is a story that depends upon understanding the roots of things. Hidden in these old prophecies are the truths that will explain where you are at this moment and how you got that way. They matter. The next thing I knew, I was back inside the Bible, and Jesus was sitting on a mountain and he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

That blessing and each of the blessings that follows is an amazing piece of ancient wisdom that has the power to heal the broken heart of the world. Each saying is like a little door that opens into a magical kingdom. Each one is a key.

"[But] I am not made for perilous quests," said Frodo. "I wish I had never seen the Ring. Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?"

"Such questions cannot be answered. You may be sure it was not for any merit that others do not possess; not for power or wisdom at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."

Blessed are the poor in spirit. We live in a world where people tell us that the more information we control the better off we will be. Jesus tells us that holding on to our power and possessions is to be possessed by them. But to be poor in spirit, to not have all the answers gives us the power to ask the questions. To not be full of ourselves means that there is room for God. To be poor in spirit is to be open to receiving wisdom. And, I can assure you, God's wisdom is always surprising!

Blessed are those who mourn. If you can face where life has failed you, failure will never stay failure, but a field waiting to grow. Loss opens the gate to compassion.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

"O Gandalf, now I am really afraid. What am I to do? What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature [Gollum] when he had the chance!"

"Pity? It was pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy not to strike without need. . . . My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least."

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

When Jesus came to earth, he did not promise that life would be easy, he promised that life would be full of grace. He did not promise that we would never be sick or scared, he promised that we would be healed. He did not promise that life would always make sense, he promised miracles. In the century just past, Mohandas Gandhi, too, heard the very words we heard today, and in these words, he saw that peace was stronger than war, that power was not about might, it was about love. By coming here today, you, too, have chosen to enter into a story, a story that promises you, that if you keep faith with it, if you keep working on it, you will reach a point where something will happen to you that will be no less momentous than what happened to Frodo, or to Gandhi. Not all stories make it into myth or the history books, but all of them make it into the book of God.

Now, of course, your story will not happen all at once. It took three books and a lot of difficulties, doubts and dangers for Frodo to reach Mount Doom. It took a lifetime and many disappointments for Gandhi to at last perfect and teach ahimsa. Oftentimes the greatest growth takes place within us at the moments we feel most stuck -- blessed are those who mourn. And if the words and stories I shared with you today make the beginning of the quest seem like the province of the young, and confirmation a coming of age exercise, realize that we are always coming of age. Although the movies would have you believe otherwise, Frodo was 50 years old when he set out on his perilous quest. It is never too late to begin. And just as being 14 or 50 is not an end, neither is confirmation, reception or reaffirmation the end. This, my friends, is only the beginning.

Two thousand years ago, at a very perilous moment in time, Jesus sat on a mountaintop and showed us the doors that would take us deep into the country of our own souls, deep into the life of the spirit, deep into a love of others, of creation, of every person, animal, fish, tree, bird, star, child, friend, enemy, a love so great that even the tiniest glimpse of it will change you forever. Those doors are still there, just waiting for you to discover them and open them. You are part of this great story. When you come forward and the hands of your community and your bishop are laid upon you, you will receive a powerful sign that in the great quest that is life you are not alone. You are part of a great fellowship on a journey that leads not to Doom, but to life everlasting.

Blessings upon you, each and every one. AMEN