This Sunday at 11:00 we will gather in the Glenn sanctuary to worship, sing, pray, preach, and fidget, except this Sunday will include a service of confirmation. Some seventh-graders will answer questions, then we’ll place hands on their heads and speak some traditional words. Then we’ll take pictures and go out to celebrate with family and friends.
Simple enough, but perhaps I should elaborate just a bit:
This Sunday, the 21st of May, in the year of our Lord 2023, a congregation of Christ’s disciples will gather in the Glenn sanctuary, a space made holy by their gathering, and seven young people will step forward, each of them held in the prayers and love of family and church,
And a portal in the space-time continuum will open,
And all the saints of all the ages will pass through that portal to surround those confirmands,
And the songs we sing will echo through the heavens,
And a passage from the Letter to the Ephesians will be read to the gathered church as they were read 2000 years ago to the gathered church in Ephesus,
And a very human preacher, joining a long line of very human preachers, will interpret the epistle’s words,
And there will be fidgeting, as in Ephesus and every church since,
And questions will be asked about essential tenets of our faith, and the confirmands will answer, boldly perhaps or quietly,
And the hosts of heaven will join us in rejoicing as our confirmands profess their faith before the church,
And the apostles of old will stand with the clergy of Glenn, and we will lay our hands on heads, as hands were once laid on ours, and speak anew the old words of confirmation,
And you, the Church of Jesus Christ, will welcome our newest members as they take their places beside you,
And the Holy Spirit that stirred the primordial waters and birthed the church and even now moves where it chooses, will make of us a tapestry of testimony and a living word of witness for the world.
Then we’ll take pictures and go out to celebrate with family and friends.
I hope you will pray for these confirmands, also known as middle-schoolers still finding their way, also known as saints of God who, like all saints, are still finding their way.
I hope you will pray for the church they are joining. The church is God’s own people, called to love one another and God’s world; the church is the temple of the Holy Spirit; the church is the living Body of Christ. And right now, right here, the church is us.
In Christ,
Mark
