A Confirmation Sermon [Feast of Pauli Murray]

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The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Galatians 3:23-29

 

A Confirmation Sermon

St. John, Massena

 

Tonight we celebrate the vibrant faith and deepening commitment of our brothers and sisters in Christ, these holy siblings who, moments from now, will bow their heads and open their hearts in expectation.  They are already baptized Christians, already called to ministry in the waters of baptism.  But tonight they are courageous enough to pray for a little more Holy Spirit power.  They are courageous enough to invite the wild influence of the Holy Spirit to undermine any chance they might have had to be ordinary, to be normal.  Instead, they are choosing to live life against the grain.  On this special occasion these precious children of God will reaffirm their allegiance to Jesus and to Jesus alone.  They have determined that their precious lives will be dictated by the demands of love, offered in service to others and in ministry to this world.  It is a big deal.

 

Tonight, on this first day of July, we also, in the Episcopal Church, celebrate the Feast of blessed Pauli Murray – a person who models for us deep commitment and Christian service.  We celebrate Pauli Murray because she took her baptismal promises seriously.  Because she followed Jesus against the grain.  Because she offered her life in service and ministry. 

 

The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray was a boundary-breaker who refused to let the world narrow her vision. Long before entering the pulpit, she embodied baptismal ministry in the wider world.  Murray was a formative force in the struggle for American justice. She authored a seminal 1950 treatise on segregation laws that attorney and eventual Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, another Episcopalian, famously hailed as the "bible" of the Brown v. Board of Education legal strategy. A brilliant legal theorist, Murray co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) and co-authored the brief that successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the Fourteenth Amendment protects women from discrimination.

 

Her faith called her to fierce activism and historic legal triumphs; that faith was formed in her beloved Episcopal Church. Drawn to its liturgical beauty and sacramental depth, Pauli possessed a vibrant spiritual imagination that looked at a fractured world and saw the unfolding household of God. She understood that human rights were ultimately a reflection of divine dignity.  She took seriously her vow to “respect the dignity of every human being” – a baptismal promise we will reaffirm tonight.

 

In 1977, her lifelong journey of faith reached an historic culmination at the Washington National Cathedral, where she was ordained as the first African American woman priest in the Episcopal Church. Offering the bread and administering the chalice, Pauli Murray embodied the very truth she preached: that Christ’s revolutionary love reconciles all things.

 

It is that love that we are called to wear into the world.  It is the love of Christ Jesus that the Apostle Paul reminds us breaks down barriers and overcomes divisions.  It is this love that claims us and commissions us.  It is the love of Jesus that empowers us to respect the dignity of every human being, that gives us eyes to see beyond the prejudices that plague our species and see instead the image of God in the face of each and every person.

 

All of your ministries, no matter what they are, will find their source and strength in love.  If you have the courage to love against the pain and hatred and violence of this age, you will change the world in powerful ways.  Every act of love, every kind word spoken, every courageous stand for justice shifts reality in the direction of heaven. 

 

When you stand today and reaffirm your commitment to the way of Jesus, when you kneel and ask for a fresh infusion of Holy Spirit power, you are placing your hope in God’s great dream for this world – a dream that we call the kingdom of God.

 

In her book of poetry, Pauli Murray wrote:

Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.

 

You leave here to sing the songs God is writing on your heart.  God is singing a love song through you that will cut through the chaos of division and the silence of injustice.

 

You have a purpose in this world.  You have a ministry.  You have a calling.  And it is love.  And it will not fail.  And so neither will you.   

 

Location: Massena, NY 13662, USA

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