Children reach an age where they no longer want help. “No Daddy, I can do it myself!” It’s one of those bittersweet moments. In
some ways we long for it, because we don’t really want to cut the ham or turn on the water, but on the other hand, we’re proud when it comes. This weekend we will welcome our Bishop for his annual visitation at which point he will confirm three persons and receive another six into the Episcopal Church. Confirmation is, for all intents and purposes, the moment in our life when we stand up as adults, and say, “I can take it from here.”
This does not mean that the adults we are confirming are just now functioning like adults! Confirmation is, rather, the symbol of adult profession of faith. Those who have not made an adult profession of their faith in another tradition are confirmed. Those who have, are instead received. Twenty years ago we only received persons confirmed in specific traditions beyond our own; now the language of our canons states that we receive any baptized person who has made a mature affirmation of the faith in another Christian tradition. That mature statement of faith is key. Up until that time we operate as a full member of the Body of Christ, to be sure, and yet that public statement is an essential part of a mature faith.
In some ways Confirmation is a sacramental rite in need of a theology once again. The Episcopal Church is one of the few denominations that reserves confirmation for the pastoral ministry of the Bishop. In most other denominations it is the local presbyter who confirms, just as they baptize. It used to be that Confirmation was requisite for full membership in the parish – that your baptism wasn’t complete until you were confirmed. The Church’s theology is no longer in that place and hasn’t been for the vast majority of my lifetime. We recognize Baptism as the sole requirement for membership in the Body of Christ, a World Council of Churches assertion that all Christians share now. So if Confirmation is not required for full membership any more, what is it for? Such is the matter for whole books to address! (And the do!)
At its most simple, as our Catechism says, “Confirmation is the rite in which we express a mature commitment to Christ, and receive strength from the Holy Spirit through prayer and the laying on of hands by a bishop.” For an active Christian who finds their life enlivened by participation in the Episcopal Church, it is the logical next step to proclaim that faith in the context of community. It is a sign of a mature and self-aware faith, and one that recognizes the benefit of standing before the community and allowing the community to stand with them and celebrate them as the community promises to support them in their life in Christ.
For adults being confirmed and received, it is not as though they have had a childlike faith until now, requiring spiritually soft foods and special help understanding the teachings of the church. It is, instead, that they have realized a grace and a joy in their faith and want to express it through this sacramental act, asking the Holy Spirit to aid them in living out the baptismal covenant that we so often recite.
I hope that you will join us as you are able at 11:15 this Sunday to stand with our confirmands and those being received. If you are interested in this rite for yourself, we will teach our EC 101 class again later this spring – just let me or Deacon Becky know of your interest. If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen any young folks getting confirmed in recent years, it is because I’ve pushed the age back to 15-16 years of age to make sure that the confirmation discussion is a bit more mature than it is with 12-year olds. I don’t know about you, but when I was confirmed at 12 years old, I don’t think maturity played a very large role!
As we pray at weddings for those couples who witness a new couple exchanging their vows, I hope that this weekends liturgies and events will help put us all in mind of our own mature statement of our faith and our need to live it out every day.
Tom
Almighty God, we thank you that by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ you have overcome sin and brought us to yourself, and that by the sealing of your Holy Spirit you have bound us to your service. Renew in these your servants the covenant you made with them at their baptism. Send them forth in the power of that Spirit to perform the service you set before them; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.