Text: Luke 2:41-51 (Jesus at age 12 in the Temple) * Video of complete service * Order of service (PDF)
Confirmation is the second of the seven Catholic sacraments that I am discussing as part of my preparation for retirement this spring; and it challenges me more than the others.
When I was confirmed as a member of the church in 1971 at age 14 in Knox United Church in Cornwall Ontario, I had lost most of my interest in the church, although I didn’t talk about this with my father. He was the minister of Knox United and the one who led our confirmation class.
In 1971, the United Church received 18,000 adolescents as full members through confirmation. This is more than ten times the number of the most recent figure the United Church has released, which is from 2019, and which states only 1600 people were confirmed in the United Church across Canada that year. But it is less than half of the 40,000 who were confirmed in 1957, the year I was born.
When I returned to church in 2001, I knew the church was smaller; and it also seemed more appealing. For one, the church was less puritanical. When I was born, the United Church was opposed to alcohol and dancing. But over the ensuing decades, it not only came to accept and sometimes embrace these two so-called sins; it also allowed women in ministry to be married, and it approved of abortion rights and queer lifestyles.
The large church into which I was born was central to Canadian culture. But the smaller and more marginal one I rejoined 20 years ago was highly engaged in public issues. Partly this was the result of social changes, like the terror attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the growth in awareness of environmental concerns, and the economic development that has raised hundreds of millions out of poverty in places like China and India.
The United Church had tried to respond to big cultural shifts in the 1960s and 70s. More than other denominations, it sought to speak meaningfully against American imperialism during the War in Vietnam, to welcome the decolonization of Africa and Asia, and to respond to Quebec nationalism and to the rise of “sex, and drugs, and rock and roll,” which turned the greyness of the 1950s into the kaleidoscope of the 1960s. But even with these efforts, it seemed easier for the huge ship of the United Church to lose most of its members than to turn quickly enough in the face of these and so many other cultural changes.
What I had needed in my childhood and adolescence was what anyone needs: help in establishing one’s ego in terms of body, emotions, and desires. While the church gave me a bit of that in intellectual pursuits, I found it to be a mostly irrelevant or negative factor in many of these areas.
I remember hearing today’s reading from Luke when I was 12 years old. As with Jesus’ impatience with his small town of Nazareth, I was impatient with the small city of Cornwall in which we lived and anxious to engage in discussions in the Temples of our time – which were in big cities like Montreal or Toronto. But like Jesus, I obeyed my parents, stayed in our little Nazareth, and bided my time until I could escape to the bright lights of the big city.
I believe I might have found the text more useful if, instead of discussing ideas in the Temple, Jesus’ parents had found him on a soccer field wowing sports celebrities with preternatural talents. As I entered adolescence, I needed positive physical experiences more than affirmations for the mind.
But to be frank, I don’t remember learning a lot about Jesus in church. I do remember polishing my Oxford shoes every Saturday night and wearing uncomfortable clothes to Sunday worship.
Like most children, I suffered from at least some neglect, boundary-crashing, and bullying; and church, though central to the life of my family, seemed like an impediment to dealing with these problems.
I needed help to find a stable place in which I might be able to respect myself despite familial dysfunctions and terrifying social problems like the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I needed help to develop a trusting faith in life, family, and world despite small or large problems. Unfortunately, this was not my experience.
I wish our confirmation class had found a way to enhance our ability to assertively express our feelings and desires, and to both rebel against and to embrace the culture of our families, church, and society. I was pleased that the class included a weekend retreat where we spent time listening to the album “Jesus Christ Superstar.” But it struck me as too weak and too late to be of much relevance.
I went ahead with confirmation, but I had already put my attention into areas outside of church. Eventually, these other passions helped me to overcome some of the wounds of childhood and adolescence; and by the time I left home to enter university, I rarely attended church anymore.
When I returned to church just over 20 years ago, I found paths I could pursue that helped rather than hindered the work of binding up childhood and adolescent wounds. These included singing in the choir of Kingston Road United Church in east Toronto, participating in an annual male spirituality circle at the church’s Five Oaks Centre, which I last attended just before the pandemic began two years ago, and six summer experiences of canoeing, portaging, and camping in Algonquin Park, between 2002 and 2010.
Because of these experiences, I felt better equipped to engage in confirmation, and I appreciated the two confirmation classes I led in 2012 in Saskatchewan and in 2014 here at Mill Woods United.
But at the same time, the shrinking of the church has made confirmation more challenging. Every index of church life is drastically smaller than when I was a child – from weddings, to funerals, to numbers attending Sunday services. But no index has crashed more than confirmation. The 2019 figure is less than 5% of the 1957 figure even as the Canadian population has nearly tripled; and I imagine when the pandemic is finally over, this number will continue to decline.
Church decline is painful for us to acknowledge. Still, I wish this pain had not blocked us. When I first read the United Church’s Statistical Yearbook in 2010, I was both alarmed and excited to see that the church was mortally wounded. I thought it meant that the denomination might live into its credo of death and resurrection and so help us rise the next stage of spiritual life, which would be founded upon the death of existing denominations. These hopes were amplified by the creation of The Comprehensive Review Group at the United Church of Canada’s 2012 General Council. But I was disappointed by the discussions the group led over the next three years, and I was dismayed by its final report, which was adopted by the General Council in 2015.
I am not opposed to the 2015 changes to our church, which were finally implemented in 2019, but I found the project to be inconsistent with our faith’s central reality of death and resurrection.
And now, nearly seven years after the end of the Comprehensive Review Group, I am focused on other examples of death and resurrection that loom before us and which seem more important than the impending death of once proud, but not yet humbled denominations like the Anglican, Presbyterian, and United ones.
Death and resurrection remain central to us all, I believe, something I will reflect on next Sunday when the focus is on communion. But a denomination that can’t face its own plainly evident death is not one I believe will be of much help in confronting the pain- and joy-filled developmental stages that life throws our way.
I expect Mill Woods United to prosper long after I am gone. I look forward to what a new minister will develop in concert with you: changes to the order of service, greater opportunities for discussion and action by lay leaders in the congregation, different sources of inspiration in alternative readings and videos, new ways to reach out to the neighbourhood, and so on.
I will continue to engage in church as we confront the difficult crises facing our world. I also hope I have overcome enough of my childhood and adolescent wounds to be of use. Specifically, I hope I can humbly respect myself despite living in a troubling time of infinite potential.
My confirmation in 1971 didn’t seem to be of much use in this struggle. But like all the sacraments, confirmation is only a ritual. Just as our lives provide us with innumerable moments in which we can be baptized by fire, so they provide us with innumerable moments in which we can assert our right to be present despite the family or time into which we have been born. Regardless of perceived strengths and weakness, we have a path of faith, hope, and love to walk and fellow pilgrims to help us stumble in joy towards what is next.
May it be so. Amen.