The last two years
on Confirmation Sunday we’ve read about Solomon’s Temple, which is a nice bit of scripture for
Confirmation because it provides an opportunity to talk about the difference
between church buildings and being
the church. But today we have something even better: this early story of
Solomon as ruler over Israel
is the perfect opportunity to talk about something that is sincerely lacking in
our confirmation curriculum: the difference between knowledge and wisdom.
The truth is: we
have a Confirmation problem. We have a system that does a wonderful job of
keeping youth in the building for these few years and a terrible job of
cultivating lifelong faith formation. If you look at the data, ELCA Lutherans
have a higher percentage of Junior High kids in a church learning environment
than any other major church body in the United States. 70% of our youth in
grades 7-9 are involved in Christian Education; that’s more than any other
denomination, period. Locally, we’re even higher than that. Right now, at Grace-Red River we have 100% involvement in Christian
Education amongst our Junior High kids. We can pat ourselves on the back for
that.
Oh, but there’s
one little problem. As a church body on the whole, we’re first amongst Junior High
participation, but last in
High School participation. And we’re nearly last (ahead of only the UCC) in
adult participation. This is astounding if you think about it. There’s a cliff
at the end of Confirmation where we seem to say, “So long! Good luck! That’s
all the education you’re getting until you die and go to heaven. Hope you’ve
got your books of the Bible memorized for when you get there!” We’ve done such
a good job of teaching our confirmands that they don’t have to do a thing to
earn their salvation that they have said, “OK, thanks. Bye now.” And that’s it.
Our practice has been to teach you things during
your Junior High years when studies have shown that this is when you will
absorb the absolute least amount of information of any point in your life; the
time where your hormones are raging, your bodies are changing, and your brains are
quite literally checked out. We’ve chosen that time to load you up with
knowledge about the faith. Sure, we have good reasons for it. It seems like an
appropriate time to respond to your baptism. You can finally begin to think for
yourselves (as we know all 8th and 9th graders are models
of individuality </sarcasm>). And what’s happened over time is that we
have young people who not only do not know anything about the faith (because
we’ve tried to pack knowledge into heads that can’t hold it), but they also
have no wisdom because in our hurry to pack in that knowledge we’ve had no time
to actually practice faith. Instead of faith we teach doctrine, but even the
doctrine we teach is generally shallow, so information-based, and so little
lived that we might as well have been teaching them how to cook communion
bread.
This probably
sounds heretical but I truly believe the information-based Confirmation
curriculum does not work. The only hope we have, the only hope really at all,
is that Confirmation provides an opportunity to create and strengthen
relationships—with each other, sure, but also with God. Either our education
needs to be such that it does not end with junior high and today marks nothing
like a graduation but merely a transition into lifelong learning, or we need to
abandon the idea that we are here to give our youth knowledge at all, because
they don’t have much and the knowledge they have does not include much in the
way of wisdom.
Andy Root, who’s a
professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, talks
about how he plays the game, “Of course… of course… but maybe…” from the comedy
of Louis C.K., when he has youth stand before the congregation and talk about
their faith as part of their confirmation. “Of course… but maybe” is played
like this. Example: nut allergies. Of course, children who have nut allergies
need to be protected… of course we need to be aware and keep their medication
on hand at all times… of course manufacturers and sellers need to go out of
their way to let us know when food may have come into contact with nuts… of
course we need to sanitize and protect those who are at risk… But MAYBE… maybe
if touching a nut kills you you’re supposed to die. Of course not… of course
not… but maybe if we just close our eyes for one year we’re done with nut
allergies forever.” So this is how this is played. And Root says he can’t help
but thinking this when his confirmation students stand up to share about their
faith in front of the church body and he discovers that, in spite of everything
he (a preeminent youth leadership scholar) has taught them, they have absolutely
no ability to articulate their faith. So he begins to question everything he
has done in teaching them about what it means to be Lutheran. He starts
thinking, “Of course we need to teach them about grace… of course they need to
know that there’s nothing they can do to earn their salvation… of course it is
important that they feel loved and comforted by their God… but MAYBE… maybe we
need to tell them that if they don’t believe in God they’re going to hell… But of course not… of course not.”
I see the same
thing in faith statements year after year. Our youth want to be able to say
something, but little that I teach them actually helps them to write out a
statement of what they believe. They just aren’t at a point in their life where
they can find the words to express particulars of what faith is to them. So
they say lots of general things like “my faith has an impact on how I think,
how I see people, and my overall outlook in life,” or “None of us know what the
future holds, but God has a plan for everyone.” We’ve taught them to give
answers to get by. They know how to write an answer on a test that will be good enough, but if Confirmation is just
another extension of school then we’ve already lost. There is a light at the
end of the school-tunnel. There’s a well-respected college and a good paying
job waiting for you if you just put in the work. That’s what awaits success in
school.
But what is
waiting for you at the end of your Confirmation lessons? What reward do you
receive because of your Christian Education? We’re fond of saying that the
reward of finishing Confirmation is that you get to become full members in the
church, which means you get to give the church your hard-earned money and spend
your time in committees and fulfilling obligations that take up your valuable
time. Worst… reward… ever.
But that’s not
really what today is about. Today is about the difference between knowledge and
wisdom, because knowledge will get you into that college on your choice, it
will get you that career you want, and it might even make you rich. But wisdom is
harder, especially when you’re young, and you are young. I’m young. Wisdom is
understanding that all that knowledge doesn’t mean anything without love, and
love doesn’t have a ground on which to stand without God. The famous example of
Solomon’s wisdom in today’s reading is, strangely, about love. Solomon is wise
enough to know that when he orders that they cut the boy into two, love will
win out. The mother will care more about the boy’s life than that the boy go
home with her. This may be overly dramatic, but it is true: today is about
wisdom and it is about relationships and it is about love.
If you have any
hope of growing in the faith it is because of the relationships you have that
will be nourished over time and tested by life’s crashing waves. Wisdom is knowing
that no amount of knowledge will cure your mortality or make you invincible to
pain.
I’m going to close
today with something one of our confirmands wrote, because I was harsh on them
earlier about their faith statements. In spite of our inability to really give
you much in the way of wisdom, or even knowledge, you are each capable of
incredible insights. Here are some, written by one of our confirmands:
“Faith gives hope
to people who are down and cannot see on the other side of the invisible
barrier. When people are down, faith helps them recover from the mental wound
that they may have or feel. In my opinion, I feel everyone should believe in
Jesus Christ our Lord, but sometimes reality hits and things aren’t always the
way we want them to be. I love being a true believer in God! #KEEPCHURCHWEIRD”
Now that is an insight worth celebrating,
and even more than that: it is wisdom worth cultivating. I love that I can read
things like that from our now-high schoolers on a day like today, but far more
important than that, I hope that I can hear wiser and more wonder-filled words
from them five and ten years from now when life has tested the faith they have
confessed. We have a challenge before us as a church: How are we going to
cultivate that faith? How are we going to help them learn not just knowledge
but wisdom? And how are we going to let them teach us, reminding us that our faith must be tended just the same?
I don’t know about
you, but I’m not waiting. It starts now.
No comments:
Post a Comment