“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from
the Father, the Spirit of Truth who comes from the Father, she will testify on
my behalf.” (John
15:26)
I
was surprised to see Judy at this get-together. It was an informal gathering of
Roman Catholic young adults, mostly college-age as I was, to which my buddy
Mike had invited me. Except for the free-flowing beer, it was as wholesome a
gathering of suburban 20-somethings as one would want to find. Judy, whom I had
not seen since we both made our Confirmation together in a little LCMS[i] congregation about six or
seven years earlier, greeted me warmly with a hug. “So, Owen,” she said, “when
did you become a Christian?”
Given
that we had both affirmed our baptisms in the same ceremony, I found this
question rather odd. My most orthodox Lutheran answer, naturally, was, “I
became a Christian when I was baptized and affirmed my faith through my Confirmation.”
Judy stared at me. “You mean you were a believer then?” she asked. “Yes,”
I replied. “I wasn’t,” she said. “I only got confirmed because my parents made
me.”
I
was confirmed fifty years ago this Pentecost, but I still remember how our
pastor prepped us for the rite. He drilled us on the Apostles Creed and sternly
told us, “If you don’t believe what you’ve just said, don’t bother showing up
on Sunday.” I liked my pastor, but fifty years later I have to admit his
statement was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard any adult utter.
Of course we were going to show up—whether we believed it or not! We
were only teenagers, and our parents would make us!
It’s
a long-standing tradition in many Lutheran churches (and probably in many other
denominations as well) that on the Day of Pentecost, that feast which honors
the coming of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus’ disciples, that we hear young people
confess their Christian faith and affirm their baptisms. The pastor lays hands
on the heads of the confirmands and prays that they, too, will be anointed with
God’s Holy Spirit.
I
believe in God the Holy Spirit, so I believe she always shows up[ii]. I’m just not sure a
fourteen-year-old will always recognize her. At least not immediately. I don’t
think I did. At fourteen, you have a lot of other stuff on your mind besides
your religious faith—if you even claim to have faith.
I’ve
often, with a cynicism I’ll admit is somewhat unbecoming of a clergyman,
referred to Confirmation as “Graduation from Church.” I think we treat this
rite superstitiously. We might say to ourselves that our son or daughter has
confirmed their faith, so now we know they won’t go to hell. We’ve done our
part. We’ve appeased an angry God by having the kid go through this, and we’ve
appeased the even angrier parent by letting them see their grandchild
confirmed. Now we’ll never have to go to church again.
I
can list by name any number of families from my congregation who have vanished
after the youngest child made Confirmation. But I’m still going to pray for the
Holy Spirit to be poured out on these young people. I must believe that she
will do her work of gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying our young brothers
and sisters even if I never personally witness her active in their lives.
In
the Gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost, Year B
(John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15), Jesus promises his guys he will send them what in
Greek is called the parakletos—literally the one “called to the side.”
That means our side. The one who will be beside us. She is sometimes
called the “Comforter,” the “Advocate,” or the “Counselor.” But Jesus is
careful to remind them that this companion will come to them, but maybe not at
this specific moment. The Holy Spirit will do her work in God’s time, not in
ours. “I still have many things to say to you,” Jesus says (v.12-13), “but you
cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, she will guide you
in all the truth.” I think to be guided in the truth means to understand things
with a clear and mature vision. That doesn’t always happen right away.
Sometimes it takes time.
I’ve
been warned that one of the worst things you can say to teenagers is, “You’re
not ready for this now,” or “You’ll understand when you’re older.” But this is
true of all of us regardless of our age. There are times when we’re just far
from the Spirit of God. It happens. We may have faith and hope, but we’ll still find
ourselves waiting. In the context of the Gospel story, these guys are sitting around that table in the upper room after their Passover seder, fearing
that their friend Jesus is about to be arrested and executed and they, too, might
find themselves on the wrong side of the law. They are waiting in fearful
uncertainty. And the older we get, the more of those moments we’ll experience.
But that’s when the Spirit can do her best work and teach us about sin,
righteousness, and judgment.
The
word the Bible uses for “sin” here is hamartias. It doesn’t mean breaking
the commandments. It means “missing the mark.” The Holy Spirit gives us that longing
to get back on target and to reconnect with faith. She’ll teach us that
righteousness is clearly found in Jesus Christ, who taught us simply to love
one another as selflessly and as openly as he has loved us. And we’ll understand
judgment. We’ll see how to love the things of God and reject the things of this
world that draw us from God like wealth or prestige or power over others. We’re
all just waiting for the Spirit to do her work, so here’s an illustration of how
to wait:
In
her memoir Still, Lauren Winner recounts the story of her friend Julian. When
Julian was just twelve years old and preparing to be confirmed, she told her
father—the pastor of the church—she wasn’t sure she could go through with it.
She wasn’t sure she believed everything she was supposed to believe, at least
not enough to make a promise before God and her congregation to believe those things
forever. Her father told her, “What you promise when you are confirmed is not
that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is
that this is the story you will wrestle with forever.[iii]”
Confirmation
is far from an ending. It can and should be a beautiful new beginning. Don't be afraid or embarrassed to wait and wrestle and have faith in having faith.
[i]
That stands for Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, once the largest, most
progressive, and influential body of Lutherans in the United States. They shot
themselves in the foot around 1970 by going ultra-conservative and have never
quite recovered.
[ii]I
like to refer to the Holy Spirit as “She.” The word in Hebrew for “spirit” is a
feminine noun. We have two masculine parts of the Trinity and I like to be
inclusive.
[iii]
From Lauren Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis (New York:
Harper One, 2013) which I’m quoting from Rachel Held Evans Searching for
Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church (Nashville, TN: Nelson
books, 2015)
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