Confirmation 2023

Galatians 5:22 God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, 23 gentle, and self-controlled. There is no law against behaving in any of these ways. 24 And because we belong to Christ Jesus, we have killed our selfish feelings and desires. 25 God’s Spirit has given us life, and so we should follow the Spirit. 26 But don’t be conceited or make others jealous by claiming to be better than they are. CEV

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,[h] to be with you forever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. NRSVUE

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Lorelei, this message is for you. You are here today not because your parents forced you to come, but because you have decided that you are a Christian and you want everyone to know. Or maybe you are here because your parents forced you. I like to think the former is true.

We have sat together with members of this congregation through lessons and discussion about the nature of God, about the truthfulness of Scripture and about why we believe what we do.Your participation was often limited to eye-rolling, but because you were surrounded by people who love you and because you have been nurtured in this space, we are recognizing that you are mature enough and wise enough and knowledgeable enough to make some promises today.

At this point in your life, you are ready to fast forward four or five years so that you can get on with your real life. You have great plans. You want to help people. That is why I chose John 14:15 for your Confirmation verse: If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” To keep a commandment, to keep a rule, is to obey it, right? Keep. Is that asking too much? Jesus condensed the Ten Commandments of Exodus to two: Love God. Love your neighbor. Those are so general that we can ignore them in the minutiae of every day life.

It’s tempting to frame our actions around what we think is best for ourselves. We can throw in a token good deed or a token prayer now and then and have the commandments covered.

But that’s too easy and being a Christian, a follower of Jesus is not easy. To keep the commandments means the opposite of breaking them and we have all learned from our Sunday rituals that we do break commandments right and left. So to keep the Commandments looks great on paper, sounds great during worship, but in real life?

Yet keeping the Commandments in real life is what makes real kind, just, beautiful, bearable. 

What a lovely idea—-and yet, each of us will leave here today and return to a world that is filled with people who are not kind, who are not just, who are not beautiful—who are downright mean and selfish.

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” 

If you love God, Lorelei, or at least respect God, you will keep God’s commandments. What a difficult life lies ahead of you. 

One of the challenges of Christianity is that the words of Scripture were not originally written in English. The Gospel according to John was written in Greek. No two languages can be translated word for word. We won’t go into examples here, but I ran across a commentary on this verse that I find helpful.

Diana Butler Bass wrote in her blog on May 14, 2023 about this verse.

According to her reading, the word for “keep” in John 14:15 doesn’t mean “obey.” It means to continue in, to watch over, attend to, guard, or observe. Listen again:

“If you love me, you will attend to my commandments.”

“If you love me, you will guard my commandments.”

“If you love me, you will watch over my commandments.”

“If you love me, you will preserve my commandments.”

“If you love me, you will care for my commandments.”

 Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care. 

 “Obey” is easily dismissed because it is impossible. What’s the use?

Obey, under the thumb of punishment. 

Obey, anticipating failure. 

Obey, without situational ethics. 

On the other hand: 

Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care for the commandments. Love God. Love people. Love God above other idols. Love people by attending to them, guarding them, watching them preserving them, caring for them. That is how we love God. Not by signing a piece of paper, not by reciting a creed, but by loving what God created. 

There is so much more to know about our faith. We spend a lot of time talking about sin and forgiveness. The term for that is “atonement theory.” I took two semesters of Systematic Theology, trying to understand why God sent Jesus to earth, why Jesus had to die, what his death and resurrection mean for us, a couple millennia later. Lorelei, you don’t need to worry about how or why Jesus died. You just have to accept it. Because of that, you can spend less time regretting the ways you hurt people, hurt yourself. That was taken care of by Jesus. We Christians also talk a lot about eternal life; sometimes we treat eternal life as a reward for following Jesus. We have no control and little proof over that concept. 

We do have control over keeping the Commandments.

Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to. Lovingly guard. Lovingly watch. Lovingly preserve. Lovingly care. Cherish the commandments because they will be the best guides you can get for making decisions, for building relationships, for achieving goals. You can’t avoid people, so relationships will define most of your life, mos of you joy, most of your struggles, most of your success. 

Attend, guard, watch, preserve, care. Lovingly attend to people. Lovingly guard people. Lovingly watch over people Lovingly protect people. Lovingly care for people. I know that will often be a challenge for you, but we also believe that God, in ways we don’t understand, gives us the wisdom and the courage and the comfort to persevere. Galatians 5 says it this way: God’s Spirit makes us loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled. 

You’ve got this, Lorelei. You have the best preparation we can give you, not because the members of this congregation have all the answers, but because we have shared with you what is most important to us: our faith. Amen. 

Eulogy: Aunt Helen

An era has ended.  I speak as a niece of Aunt Helen.  I speak for her children, and for my cousins.

An era has ended. It is not just the end of a generation for us. It is the end of our childhood. It is the end of an ethos that was carried by the generation born in the first quarter of the twentieth century. 

Some historians call this generation the “greatest generation.” This term often has a military connotation, bringing to mind men and women in uniform, tasked with winning battles on land,  on sea, in the air. 

But this greatest generation, in our expereince, is great because of how they raised us.

Aunt Helen is the last of the “Big Eight”—the children and spouses of Hilda and Chris Stange. Helen was married to Ray.  He was the youngest of the four siblings. Oldest was June, who married Clarence Pries. Next was Anita, who married Burdette Davis.  Then Don, who married Shirley Kemp.  Together–and I mean together—they raised twelve children:  Steve, Mark, Dianne, Dean, Johnny, Sarah, Craig, Bobby, Scott, Randy, Sue, and Danny. [At this point, I had each stand as their name was said.]We knew we were loved and watched over by all eight.We also knew we were accountable to all eight. Parents, aunts, or uncles—we were surrounded. 

 They were the greatest generation because they loved us unconditionally. They were the greatest generation because they believed in God as defined by Martin Luther and they were the greatest generation because they did not doubt themselves. They knew we weren’t the greatest generation—we were a bunch of kids who had a lot to learn. Thanks be to God, they were not only willing, but eager to teach us.

As one of three girls among us lucky dozen, I knew I seldom met Aunt Helen’s expectations. Aunt Helen exemplified grace and good manners and great skill in the art of homemaking.  I was a mess. Still, she had hope for me. The first “adult” gift I ever received was a little flower vase, filled with a bouquet of Aunt Helen’s extra-double, extra ruffled petunias. With that gift, I realized I would not be a kid forever. Eventually, I became a source of joy to Aunt Helen. I never got over being surprised that she was happy to see me.  I was no longer a problem to solve, but a source of joy.  

When I think of Aunt Helen, I think of flowers. She raised those ruffly petunias and dahlias and pansies.  Those choices are significant.  Petunias had to be replanted every year, as did dahlias and pansies. To me that symbolizes the hope that, though nothing can live forever,  we can try again.  Those flowers symbolize, too, the fragility of Aunt Helen. Her health was never perfect, but she was always blooming, if you will, living life as if everything were perfect. 

When I ask people for memories of Helen, the first thing that comes to mind is food.  Scotcheroos.  Crescent rolls—-she always let you know how hard they were to make—, round steak, lemon cake, Chex mix, mint chocolate brownies, and chocolate chips cookies, chocolate shot cookies.  Her grape-cranberry salad.  

She had many occasions for displaying her cooking expertise.  Three meals a day, of course, every single day of the year. 

Kim is the one who mentioned round steak.  It made me wonder. Did Dad and Ray sell the filets and sirloins on the black market?  I don’t think we ever had any kind of steak except round steak, but, obviously, that was fine, because we loved it.

And cookies—-if you stopped by the house, there were always cookies—-always homemade cookies put on a plate for you.

If you were lucky enough—or forced to—bale hay on hot summer days, there was a thermos of lemonade or iced tea and a pan full of blonde brownies brought out to the field.  

And then there was church.

Aunt Helen was a church lady.  It went with being a woman in that era and with being a member of the Stange family. 

Church potlucks were the March Madness playoffs of religious life.  Part of your reputation was based on what you brought to the table and what was acceptable for the church cookbook.  Aunt Helen’s recipes appeared in eight out of the ten sections in the 1950’s Zion cookbook, including some pretty challenging recipes, like sponge candy. (Does anyone still have some stuck in their teeth?) Some of us have our own personal copies of recipes, too, written in the beautiful cursive of that generation.  

Church was more than potlucks for Aunt Helen. Church was faith.  She—and the rest of the Big Eight—modeled faith for us, not by reminding us that we had just broken another commandment, but by simple, everyday devotion to the lessons we learned in Sunday School and Church. Our aunts and uncles laid a foundation that helped us to be disciples of Jesus Christ in the most subtle ways. We all “got” Matthew 25 and our children do, too. 

Aunt Helen was always in the vanguard of style and current trends, at least among the aunts.  When I think of her, I think of excellent taste in home decor and in clothing.  She made all of her clothes and Sue’s clothes.  They weren’t flashy, but they were perfectly constructed.  My favorite was the yellow satin dress she made for Sue, who always got to be the flower girl because she was the cutest. 

But Aunt Helen wasn’t always dressed up. Helen the Homemaker wore the ugliest brown oxfords with anklets, in the summer with a sleeveless blouse and Bermuda shorts.  Her legs were so pale that they were almost luminous.  But she knew when and how to make a good impression and was, as always, a great role model for us young women.

There was a Helen before she became Aunt Helen. She was editor of her high school yearbook, The Auroran.  That is pretty impressive.  And there was an adolescent Helen at a Luther League basket ball tournament. She was in junior high, but she noticed a handsome basketball player who played on the Luther League high school team.

Of course, they married, and their first home was at the Lutheran Homes, where Ray was the farmer for the self-supporting enterprise.  One of those orphans is here today. Ask him about the influence Ray and Helen and the rest of the clan had on his life. Eventually they moved to “the home place,” complete with a herd of dairy cows. And pigs.  And chickens.  Some of us still have nightmares about trying to get eggs out from under a vicious hen.  

Aunt Helen and Uncle Ray were rewarded, after getting us cousins raised,  with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  The grands received special attention in the form of care packages filled with—of course—cookies. 

Our family legacy is one that Aunt Helen did not take for granted. She expressed to one of us how much she appreciated the strong sense of family created by Chris and Hilda. She created that own sense not only among her own children, but among all of us.  That sense came in the from of chocolate cake with ice cream at birthday parties. That sense came in thoughtful conversation and in sharing the joy of confirmations, graduations, weddings, births, and baptisms.  

 So, Steve, Mark, [Dianne,] Dean, Johnny, Sarah, Craig, Bobby, Scott, Randy, Sue, and Danny. Here we are, descendants of eight amazing people. She loved us, she believed in us, she was proud of us, or at least relieved that we hadn’t embarrassed the family. And to those of you who don’t share our royal bloodline, you, too, know the caring and love and thoughtfulness of Helen. We are all here because we honor her and we are thankful for all she gave to us out of her natural goodness and generosity.  Thanks be to God for the quiet, powerful life of Aunt Helen.