Graduation Vespers 2022
***This sermon was given for the graduation of Immanuel Lutheran School 2022***
We've had many conversations regarding our feelings over the past couple of years, haven't we?
Life is full of emotions and feelings. Some of you probably experienced butterflies, some joy, and some laughs even as you prepared to process into the sanctuary this evening.
Tonight is a big night. It's a night you've been looking forward to, whether with excitement or dread, you've been looking forward to tonight.
When I was your age (And I still do this), I would listen to music that matched my "desired" emotional state. The Black Eye Peas had a song some of you might still know. It began like this:
I got a feeling
That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good night
That tonight's gonna be a good, good night
Well, tonight is going to be a good night.
But, tomorrow will also have a mix of emotions, too – joy along with a bit of sadness. At least I know I’ll be sad tomorrow. Sad to see so many of you attend your last day of school at Immanuel.
These days mark the end of a chapter in your life and begin focusing on the next chapter, high school. And guess what, some of the feelings you experience today, you’ll have again around the end of August as you prepare to begin the new academic year at a new school with new friends, new teachers, and new uniforms.
You can’t escape this.
However, you can remember through all of this who gave you the ability to possess feelings and emotions in the first place. Do you remember what we learned in the First Article of the Creed?
“I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.”
Your Heavenly Father gave you the gift to experience sadness as much as joy. However, He did not say to be solely led by this joy and sorrow, but rather that He “Still takes care of them.”
C.S. Lewis wrote,
Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior.
So, C.S. Lewis writes that your feelings and emotions are not who you are but something that happens to you. Or one may also say, something that becomes manifest through you.
The question then is this, “Who are you?”
Immanuel Lutheran Church and School taught you what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful. But, when you depart the doors of this school, most of all, you should be able to confess in this world and life who you are by saying, “I am a child of God.”
This is who you are, and because you are God’s child, you have access to your heavenly Father.
Our verse of the year is your verse:
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.” (Psalm 50:15)
What is trouble?
Trouble lies in the things of life that bind you up, distress you, or give you emotional trials – like being nervous about a new high school, becoming overwhelmed by your studies, or even feeling isolated from friends and family as you go through transitions. Or, for your parents, this idea of trouble may manifest itself as they watch you grow up tonight, asking the question, “have I done what I’ve been called to do for this sweet child God has placed into my care?”
Again, the answer to these questions resides in the verse of the year,
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.” (Psalm 50:15)
The Father says, “I will deliver you.”
Your deliverance from the things that bind you rest, not in how you feel, but in your heavenly Father, as you learned from the First Article of the Creed, “He richly and daily provides [you] with all that [you] need to support this body and life. He defends [you] against all danger and guards and protects [you] from all evil.”
And He does this “out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in [you].”
He does this by sending His only Son, Jesus Christ, to die upon the cross for you, deliver you from your sin, death, and all the many ways the devil works to confuse and mislead you.
And this is really the point I want to get across to you tonight, your emotions and feelings are a gift from God. And while they help to process the many changes of life and even celebrate your many accomplishments, you must remember to always be faithfully led by the cross of Christ Jesus.
And should life’s journey overwhelm you, then pray the words of the hymn of the year:
To God the Holy Spirit let us pray
For the true faith needed on our way
That He may defend us when life is ending
And from exile home we are wending.
Lord, have mercy!
Keep these words close. Remember how prayer is the voice of faith, how this faith brings glory to God and how He will defend you, and ultimately, how He is the one who will bring you into His eternal and loving care. +INJ+
