GOSPEL: Luke 18:1-8

1Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4For a while he refused;… (Read the whole passage)

So confirmands… the scariest part of today is over. You have stood before us and shared with us a glimpse of your thoughts and experiences of faith. Of what all this God stuff means in your life. And that is not easy. Being vulnerable enough to talk about your faith is something that many adults would rather get a root canal than do what you have done today. So job well done.

Now some *hashtag* real talk… even though we asked you to figure out something to say about God and your faith, the reality is you haven’t got it figured it out yet. God and faith and what this all means for us is something we don’t ever truly figure out. As soon as it feels like we have got a hold of something, it all slips through our grasp. That is the weird thing about faith… it is not easy to make sense of.

In fact, even here on confirmation Sunday, you might not be fully sure what is going on. Confirmation is often a vague and hazy thing to describe. Your parents told you had to go, confirmation teachers and pastors spent a lot of time talking about how important the bible, church, and God are… and yet parents, teacher and pastors don’t always clearly explain just what is actually happening as you are confirmed. But don’t worry because most people who have been confirmed for decades might not be totally sure yet either.

So here is a little secret… you are, in fact, already confirmed. You were confirmed the day you were baptized. After the pastor washed you water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he or she laid hands on your head and prayed that you would be blessed with the sprit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, the spirit knowledge and fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in God’s presence.

That is confirmation. Laying hands on your head and praying that short blessing.

Today, we are going to repeat that very same laying on of hands and blessing, with the hands of your mentors and family blessing you. And the hope is that today it will become a blessing imprinted in your memory and that you can take with you into the rest of your lives.

Now, of course that action of laying on hands and blessing is rooted deeply in 2000 years of tradition, and it is a public symbol and sign that you have been welcomed and blessed into the faith of the Church. Something that the church has been doing in various ways for millions, if not billions of people.

But there is also all this other stuff that we have been doing during confirmation. Learning and growing in faith together through weekly confirmation classes. Because today is also about this new stage of faith in your lives.

Yet the end of classes isn’t a graduation from church. And nor is this you taking ownership of your faith. Faith is not something we own… if anything it owns, or holds onto us.

Rather today, we are welcoming you into the practice of your faith. That’s right practice, kind of like how you practice hockey, or math times tables or piano. Today you are being entrusted with the practice of your faith.

And it is that word practice that connects us to this strange story about a widow and an unjust judge that we heard earlier. This weird story that seems to be about the uncaring and self-important judge (think warrior king in this context) who is hounded by a lowly widow demanding justice. She makes herself such a nuisance that the judge gives her what she wants. It sounds like a story about how to get what you want out of God, but it is not that.

It is a story about practice… about coming back again and again to something. Kind of like here at church. We do the same thing over and over again, week after week… not because we are unimaginative and boring, but because we are practicing. We practice our faith on Sundays, so that we can live out faith the rest of the week.

But the story is also a reminder of who God is, by telling us who God is not. God is not the uncaring and merciless judge. God is a loving parent, the merciful Messiah who is constantly seeking us out. The Christ who names and claims us in the waters of baptism.

Jesus is the one who meets us in this strange story of widow and judge, meets us week after week in the words of confession and forgiveness, and then again in the Words of God that inspire faith in us. Jesus meets us in song and prayer, in the faces of our siblings in Christ sitting here in the pews with us, and in the Bread and Wine, the Body of Christ for the Body of Christ.

And Jesus comes week after week to our practice of faith, meeting us again in those things. Jesus keeps coming kind of like that widow who persists. Jesus keeps coming after us, keeps seeking us out in faith.

And the judge who isn’t like God… well, there is someone who he is like. Us.

This why we need to practice. We need to be constantly reminded of who we are and who God is.

Martin Luther once said about the practice of faith, “Every week I preach justification by faith to my people, because every week they forget it.”

Our inclination is to forget, to think we know it all, to believe we don’t need reminding… And yet Jesus reminds us again and again, that we are named and claimed in baptism and again in confirmation, that we are forgiven in confession, that the good news of the God’s Word is for us, and that we need to be fed with the Body so that we can become the Body of Christ.

So remember how I said the hard and scary part is finished… well that wasn’t exactly true. Confirmation classes and now sharing your faith, that was the easy part… the hard part is just beginning. The hard part is finding out today that Jesus is going to persistently seek you out for the rest of your lives like that persistent widow. And like that judge, we are annoyed by it… we might even try to walk away or hide… but Jesus will keep coming to us, no matter how much we dislike it.

Jesus is persistently here, ready to meet you week after week. Jesus knows we need the constant reminder of what faith is. A reminder that the promises of forgiveness, life and salvation of baptism, and repeated again today are the real deal. And that the hands placed on you in blessing are the hands of 2000 year of practicing this faith in community, in the church.

Jesus reminds you and us again that this blessing and these hands are the Body of Christ welcoming you home, again and again and agin and again.