I don’t remember a thing my pastor said in his sermon on my confirmation day. But that was way back in 1977 — 33 years ago — so cut me some slack. So what I say to you young men in white shirts, red ties, and khakis in the next few moments today, (Jack, James, Lars, Steven, and Kevin) I hope and pray you will remember for the foreseeable future at the very least. And to help you, I just happen to have these handy-dandy little green sheets! There just happened to be five of these sermon-notetaking sheets remaining in a pile on the table in the narthex, and since none of you actually made the minimum quota for taking notes over the past two years… why let them go to waste?!

Actually, you don’t need to take notes this morning. It’s true, none of you quite fulfilled your pastor’s expectation for completing 2 of these sheets per month for the past two years because I don’t have anywhere near 48 sheets from any of you. But here is the first and primary lesson we have learned in our confirmation studies: it’s all grace. None of us could ever meet all of God’s expectations of us, none of us could ever keep every commandment perfectly, and none of us could ever be flawless enough to fulfill all the requirements for salvation. Which is precisely why God sent us Jesus, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, to save us from sin and to save us from ourselves. We don’t get it right. But Jesus gets it right for us and makes it right for God on our behalf.  It’s all grace. And the Holy Spirit, whose fiery presence and power we celebrate this day, will see to it that you keep living by grace and in grace and with grace every day of the rest of your lives.

The Holy Spirit enabled the 5 of you to hear some amazing truths over the past two years: and here are some of the things you said you got out of worship over the past couple of years. When asked to summarize the main point of the sermon, here’s what I think is “the best of” what your notes indicated: James noted: “It’s not my good works that will get me to heaven, it’s accepting God’s grace, God’s invitation.” Kevin asserted: “Jesus was inclusive.” Jack reflected: “We don’t only pray to God, but Jesus prays back.”  Steven proclaimed: “God’s Spirit will lead us through the forest.” Lars declared: “We all sin, let’s just get over it.”

Some of you also asked some mighty probing questions and made some pretty astute observations. Here are a few: Why didn’t Jesus write any of this down?  Today, the bread and wine gave me strength to be a better son. Today I heard that we become the human face of Jesus in the world.  One of you, upon hearing the parable of the widow who gave away everything she had, asked, “If we give all our money to the poor, we become poor. Can I just cut out the middle man and just give my money to the future poor me?  Today worship made me think about the environment and what I can do to help, and who were the quilts going to?  Another of you said this of our communal prayers: During the quiet time, I prayed for the people of Haiti and thought about how lucky I am to have food. And finally: worship led one of you to create this very Lutheran equation: Martin Luther = Jesus minus the miracles.

Indeed, as the prophet Joel was quoted in the first reading today from Acts chapter 2: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your youth shall see visions…”

During our interviews this week, you each had an opportunity to tell me something about what arriving at this day in your lives meant to you. You each wrote a personal statement of belief, and without fail each one of you acknowledged that you have experienced God’s grace in Jesus through this community of faith. Whether it has been in our time together in the classroom, or on a retreat at Cal Lutheran, or giving God praise and offering prayer here in this worship space, or serving on the ground in New Orleans last summer, you have each come to experience grace in community as we have studied together, prayed together, read the scriptures together, received Holy Communion together, helped to paint a school together in New Orleans or assemble health kits together for the people of Haiti.

Today is the Day of Pentecost, the 50th day of Easter and a day when we remember the story of how the Spirit of Jesus filled the very first fearful disciples with the very breath of God, enabling them to speak in the languages of all the people who lived in Jerusalem at the time, even though they had never learned the language.  But if you look at the first sentence of the first reading, there’s a very important detail about how the Holy Spirit worked on that first day of Pentecost, and how the Holy Spirit still comes to us today. The reading begins: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” You see, something powerful happens when we gather as people of the cross and empty tomb: with simple water, the Spirit of that crucified and risen Jesus comes and washes away our sins, with simple wine and bread, the Spirit prepares for us a meal of forgiveness and inclusion and transformation. And in one breath, the Holy Spirit makes us into one body, although we are many and as different from each other as our skin color, our gender, our primary language, our immigration status, our age, our sexual orientation, our spirituality or our nationality or our physical abilities or disabilities.  Whenever and wherever we gather, the Holy Spirit of God and of the Risen Christ is poured out on everybody, no exceptions.

The five of you began learning this lesson about being together from the very first time we gathered together as a class. Do you remember? That very first day, for our first lesson, we took a long stroll around the neighborhood in an exercise called a “faith walk” — looking for things in nature and in the world around us that spoke to us in our journey of faith. We were almost back at the church, coming up the alley in the back having walked about a 3-block radius around the whole neighborhood when all of a sudden we heard Steven let out a yelp and then a cry for help. He was having a close encounter with a bee out back, and had managed to get himself stung for the first time in his life. It brought us together as a class as we suffered together in community right then and there for the very first time as well. We learned the truth that “none of us are free if one of us is bound,” bound in suffering, bound in pain, bound in prejudice, bigotry or intolerance.

Yesterday for the first time in our state’s history, California (with the exception of Kern Co. Public Schools) observed Harvey Milk Day, remembering the very first gay publicly-elected official in the nation, a man who had a vision of equality for all people and who had the courage to speak out for all who suffered from oppression, resulting in his murder along with San Francisco mayor George Moscone. As he would often begin his political speeches, “I’m Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you.” More than recruiting volunteers for his campaign or the programs he was advocating, he was recruiting people to give others hope by being authentically human beings — being who they were — created in the glorious and fabulous image of God. To offer anyone hope who had ever suffered any sort of oppression due to being different in anyway — be it racial, gender, economic, sexual orientation, age or ability. “And you, and you, and you,” Milk said, “you have to give people hope.”

My brothers and sisters, when we give people hope, we are prophesying in the Spirit: speaking a word on behalf of the Living God, and living in the power of God’s holy and life-giving Spirit which promises to be poured out upon all flesh.

So guys, I’m here to recruit you this morning: to live in grace, to give people hope, and to trust in God’s promise — a promise which says you are God’s beloved sons and with you God is well pleased.

You can bet your sweet baptism on it.

Amen.