Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Holy Gospel reading, in particular these words of Jesus. Jesus said, "You have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."

Dear friends in Christ, Confirmation Sunday is always a joyful occasion, because it is an opportunity for all of us to remember the joyous gifts of forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and salvation that God has given to us in Baptism, when we were made disciples of Jesus Christ. The confirmands also reaffirm their vows first made at Baptism, expressing their devotion to Christ and His Word. On this day all of us should remember the vows we have made in the Lord's name, and examine how well we have done at keeping them. This is a good way of remembering not only the duties of our vocations, but also that we are poor, miserable sinners always in need of God's forgiveness of our sins.

Confirmation vows contain not only joy, but also sorrow, somewhat like wedding vows. In holy matrimony we pledge to love and remain faithful to our spouse in sickness and in health, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, as long as we both shall live. We enter marriage knowing that there will not only be joy and happiness, but also sorrow and sadness. The same is true of confirmation, but on a greater level, because we as members of the Bride of Christ, the Church, pledge our faithfulness to Christ, the Bridegroom who laid down His life for us that we may live. In confirmation we joyfully vow to cling to Christ our Savior and to His Word, but we also acknowledge that the Christian life will be filled with sorrow as we vow to remain faithful to Jesus even unto death, even if we suffer persecution for His sake.

But many people balk at the prospect of sorrow, suffering, and death in the Christian's life. Shouldn't being a Christian mean that we have our "best life now," health, wealth, and happiness? No, if we get that false idea that the Christian life is only joy, and no sorrow, then we are ignoring our Lord's words in today's Gospel reading, and we are even ignoring who our Lord is. For He is described by Isaiah the prophet as "despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). We heard those words about Jesus on Good Friday, and perhaps the biggest reason that church attendance is much higher on Easter Sunday than on Good Friday is that sinners don't want a Crucified Jesus, but only a Resurrected Jesus. Yet we don't have the option of picking one Jesus or the other, for He is both, He is only one Jesus. On Easter Sunday, the angel described the resurrected Jesus as "the Crucified One."

If we want to be Christ's disciples, which we truly are through Baptism, then as we journey toward the resurrection and eternal joys, we do so only as we bear the cross and sorrows, as our Lord did. Jesus says to us, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand" (John 10:27-28). There is great comfort and joy in those promises, but also the certainty of sorrows, because Jesus also said to us followers, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Our lives are patterned after His, with sorrow and joy, with cross and resurrection.

The Good News is that our Lord is no hypocrite, expecting us to follow Him down some road He has not already traveled. On the contrary, He is the trailblazer and has already paved the road to everlasting life for us by His own life of joy and sorrow.

During Christ's ministry, He rejoiced to do His Father's will. If you love God, then you will devote yourself completely to His will, and Jesus loved His Father perfectly by fulfilling God's Law in our place. Jesus also showed that His suffering and death for our sins and then resurrection would accomplish God's plan of salvation to the world. St. Luke tells us that Jesus "rejoiced in the Holy Spirit" and thanked His Father for sending Him to reveal the Father's love to the world (Luke 10:21-22). And the letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus willingly underwent the shame and suffering of the cross because of the "joy set before Him" (Hebrews 12:2), that is, the joy that would come from saving us condemned sinners from hell and granting us everlasting life.

But Jesus also knew this task would not be easy and always joyful, but filled with sorrow. On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, and He became sorrowful and troubled and said to the disciples, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me." And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." Three times He prayed for this cup of suffering to pass, but still He placed all His trust in the Father's plan for Him: "Thy will be done."

But the Father's answer came to Jesus even while He was speaking to the disciples in Gethsemane, for Judas showed up to betray Jesus into the hands of sinful men who would convict Him unjustly and convince Pilate to put Him to death. And so Jesus willingly drank the cup of sorrow, the cup of God's wrath against our sin, right down to the last drop. He died and was buried, dead for a little while until the third day, when He rose again from the dead on that joyous first Easter Sunday and revealed Himself to His earliest disciples as alive, never to die again, so that no one may steal from us the joy that we have as His disciples by Baptism into His death and resurrection.

A couple of weeks ago, there was great celebration at the downfall of the sinister Osama bin Laden, who was a great enemy of peace and safety in this world. People took to the streets in joyful celebration at his demise. Well, if people celebrate a victory over a worldly enemy like bin Laden, how much more should we rejoice in Christ's victory over sin, the devil, and our last enemy, death? Shouldn't we also this Easter season take to the streets in celebration, and find in Christ's resurrection our highest joy this side of heaven? Indeed, we should! Only in Christ will our joy be made full.

Of course, our joy will not be made full until the final resurrection day, when we enjoy the perfect peace of heaven. In the meantime, our lives also are filled with different types of sorrow, but our experience of this sorrow doesn't mean that God has forgotten or forsaken us. On the contrary, God knows that we need these sorrows to drive us back to Him. As our Old Testament reading says, even though God does cause grief, "he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly [lit. from His heart] afflict or grieve the children of men" (Lamentations 3:32-33). He does not afflict us with sorrows out of spite, but in order to discipline us and cause us to rely on Him alone.

I will mention three types of sorrow that are necessary for us to experience, so that our joy may be made full.

The first sorrow we must have is sorrow for sins, contrition. When we love and respect someone, for example, our parents, then we feel great sorrow when we have sinned against them, when we have failed them, when we have let them down. Likewise, our sins cause us great sorrow when we realize how our love for God has failed. But this sorrow isn't a bad thing, because it leads us to repent and trust in Christ alone for forgiveness of sins, which He graciously pours down upon us in Baptism, Absolution, and in the Lord's Supper. He went up to the cross precisely to answer for our sins, so He joyfully forgives us when we repent, and Jesus tells us that there is rejoicing even in heaven among the angels over a single sinner who repents.

The second type of sorrow that we must face is sorrow over the effects of sin in our lives, such as when others sin against us or when we experience physical pain and death. These sorrows grieve us, but our response to them must be to cry out to God and to cling to Christ's promise always to be with us and to give us strength to endure all trials on the road to life everlasting. In our Gospel reading, Christ compares our sorrows to a woman in labor. We experience great suffering now, but when we are delivered, then we have joy and we don't dwell on the sufferings. This is what St. Paul means when he says that our present sufferings aren't even worth comparing to the joys that will be revealed to us in heaven.

Finally, there is the joyful sorrow of being persecuted for Christ's sake. You heard right, I said "joyful sorrow," which sounds like an oxymoron but is really what Christ is inviting us to in our confirmation vows. We pledge to remain faithful to Christ and His Word no matter what happens, even if we are ostracized for our Christian faith, even if we lose respect in the eyes of the world, even if it costs us our fortune, health, or life. Of course, it brings sorrow to our sinful hearts when we think that we might have to suffer for Christ's sake. We all would prefer to have peace, health, and prosperity, and we should give thanks when God grants these things to us. But in fact, our highest blessedness is found in the privilege of suffering persecution for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says to you disciples, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you" (Matthew 5:11-12). My friends, Jesus invites you to the joyful sorrow of suffering persecution for His sake, as you take up your cross and follow after Him. Just as Jesus suffered sorrow before entering everlasting joy, so also do you, but "Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven." In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.