Hewn From The Rock

This year we celebrate the 250th year of freedom. Since world war II, we were known for being a land of grace, goodness, kindness and protection. We should be proud of our heritage.

However we all know we are going through an age of collective dementia just like the people of Israel. That’s what we heard in the first reading.

Prophet Isaiah stood in front of a people who had forgotten where they came from, and he pointed them back to that quarry. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn,” he told them, “and to the quarry from which you were dug.” He wasn't talking about stone. He was talking about them. He is talking about us. He was talking about where we all come from and what we are meant to be.

Because here's the thing about a life. Every one of us begins in the dust, and every one of us will return to it. Scripture doesn't hide from that. But dust is not the whole story — it's only the ending, not the beginning. Before the dust, there is the quarry. We are hewn, not merely formed. We are cut, with effort, from something strong and heavy and lasting. Whatever this day holds, whatever the years ahead hold, this is where you started, dear my children. Not scraped off the surface of things, but dug out of bedrock that has held the world steady since it began. That is what you are made of. Don't ever forget it.

Now let us take that into what Paul is saying to a struggling small church in Rome, just like a small struggling church in Idaho. Paul knew people who had lost sight of the quarry — who had started living as if they were only dust. So he told them something simple: offer your whole selves, body and mind, to God: a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is true worship.

Somebody always hears that and asks the obvious question. Bishop, are you saying that we are not to laugh? No glass of wine on a summer evening, no slow ride through the park with someone I love? No. It means none of that. Living for God was never about shrinking your life down to something small and sour. It's about remembering whose you are while you live it. Having fun, and eating well, and being a little silly with the people you love — none of that is against God. What's against God is forgetting the quarry. Living as if you were only the dust, and not the rock underneath it. Because we are not, the psalmist says, merely dust. You are made “a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor.” Not someday. Today, now.

Let me take it a little further still, to a road near a village called Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus turned to his friends one afternoon and asked a question to those who were following him, just like you and me: “Who do you say that I am?” Not what does the crowd say. Not what have you heard. Who do you say. He asked the whole group, and he asked every one of them standing there, one heart at a time. Peter, impulsive, unfinished, not yet the man he would become, answered for all of them: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It’s the personal and corporate confession of what he believed about Jesus. Jesus didn't correct him. He affirmed it, and then turned to invite everyone else standing there into that same recognition.

That is not only Peter's story. It is our story — the quarry, the letter to Rome, the psalm, the road to Caesarea Philippi. Every piece of it points toward the same question, asked of you and me today, right now: who do you say Jesus is? That is to have a personal and corporate understanding of “Who Jesus was and is” to us. And underneath that question sits another one, just as important: who do you say you are?

Which brings the story to us, now — to this room, to this rail, to you. Because a confirmation is not a graduation. It is not a certificate that says you finished something. It is a recognition, out loud, in front of witnesses, of exactly the truth who we are and how we need to live going forward. You are not simply becoming a member of a church today. You are being named a living part of Christ's own body — his mind, his heart, his hands in the world.

Henri Nouwen, those of you have read him know who I am talking about, if not I invite you to read his works, spent much of his life trying to convince people of one thing: that we are, each of us is the Beloved, and that forgetting it is one of the quiet tragedies of being human. Brené Brown said almost the same thing in different words, decades later, in language plain enough for anyone to carry home: “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.” She's right. And the psalm goes even further. You are not only worthy. You are crowned.

So here, what am I trying to say in so many words? Remember the quarry. You were hewn from a rock of salvation, a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory, and grafted into a family that stretches around the whole world God loves. Don't go back to living like you are only dust. Live like what you actually are, a child of the greatest King there is, the true Lord of the universe. Not a subject of the petty leaders and politicians this world keeps propping up in his place, with their crowns that rust and their kingdoms that fall. You were never meant for that. You were hewn to stay strong and tall, like the child of a great king. We are cut from that quarry of grace and love.

Amen.