Christianity is an inter-generational thing. From the beginning, our challenge has not been simply to keep the faith but to pass it on to the next generation. The confirmation class has spent the first weeks of our journey learning about the past. We drew a time line on the table going back four thousand years, placing ourselves at one end and the ancients like Abraham on the other end. None of us would be here this morning if any of these people had not done what they did.
All teachers are historians.
All learning is history. We don't know who we are if we don't know who we were. Several years ago I went to Washington DC with a legislative delegation to welcome some Russian legislators. We toured the government buildings and enjoyed with them the thrill of being in the important buildings of our nation's capital, arguably the most important buildings in the world. I remember distinctly being in the executive meeting rooms of the White House, where the president meets important people from our government and from around the world.