Confirmation Class

Coming up on Sunday June 5, the Day of the Pentecost, we’re celebrating Youth Sunday, the Baptisms of two of our students, the Lord’s Supper, and the Confirmation of the Class of 2022! It’s a beautiful and joyous day of celebration for our church! Whew! It’s a lot!
 
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. That’s all you have to say in order to be a member of the Presbyterian Church. That’s all. That’s it!
 
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. Everything else is commentary. Everything else is the journey. 
 
That’s my hope and joy for this confirmation class. Not that they have learned what to think, but they have learned how to think about it. That they have words for how to express where they are on this journey because it’s always changing and growing us, moving us forward. 
 
I love to write! I love to read. I love to read good writing. 
 
So, I’m going through a stack of stuff this week and I come across something in one of my ham radio publications that is buried in the midst of a technical article on the electronics of a piece of gear. But the author (who is a retired minister from the UK it turns out…) talks about the Greek two-fold understanding of time. 
 
Chronos, or chronology, which is a basic linear sequential understanding of time: one thing happens, and then the next, and the next, and so on as time passes.
 
Kairos, on the other hand, is the opportune nature of time. Think of kairos like good timing for action, or the sense of time we lose track of when we’re caught up in the moments. We’re having a good time, or having a good conversation, or into a book or movies or series we’re binge-watching. We get in the zone. That is when we lose track of time.
 
And when I best love to write or read or especially read good writing, I notice that I feel the Kairos sense of time. I get in the zone. Time flies. I get lost in the moments. I lose track of time.
 
So digging through the pile, I find an old Richard Rohr. This is what I hope and pray is jumping off point for our Confirmation Class. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior—now this! But look, he’s always amazing! And I saved this one because this is such a good piece of writing—so good! It’s so good that I’m stealing it for you. All of it.
 
Indwelling Spirit
A Constant Grace
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
 
The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to reveal to us the truth of our being so that the way of our being can match it. —Wm. Paul Young [1]
 
The love in you—which is the Spirit in you—always somehow says yes. (See 2 Corinthians 1:20.) Love is not something you do; love is something you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you’re going. It’s not something you can buy. It’s not something you can attain. It’s the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit or what some theologians name uncreated grace.
 
You can’t manufacture this by any right conduct, dear reader. You can’t make God love you one ounce more than God already loves you right now. You can go to church every day for the rest of your life. God isn’t going to love you any more than God loves you right now.
 
You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. Do the most terrible thing and God wouldn’t love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow is constant, total, and 100 percent toward your life. God is for you.
 
We can’t diminish God’s love for us. What we can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity’s whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance.
 
St. Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090–1153) wrote, “Inasmuch as the soul becomes unlike God, so it becomes unlike itself.” [2] Bernard has, of course, come to the same thing I’m trying to say here: the pattern within the Trinity is the same as the pattern in all creation. And when you return to this same pattern, the flow will be identical.
 
Catherine LaCugna (1952–1997) ended her giant theological tome God for Us with this one simple sentence:
 
The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth. [3]
 
That’s God’s job description. That’s what it’s all about. And the only thing that can keep you out of this divine dance is fear or self-hatred. What would happen in your life—right now—if you fully accepted what God has created?
 
Suddenly, this is a very safe universe. You have nothing to be afraid of. God is for you. God is leaping toward you! God is on your side, honestly more than you are on your own.
 
I hope you get into Kairos on this. How cool is that? I hope you get in the zone. I hope you get lost in time. 
 
Grace & Peace,
Scott
 
References:
[1] Wm. Paul Young, Trinity: The Soul of Creation, session 7 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2017), MP4 download.
[2] Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 82.5. This translation is from William Harmless, Mystics, (Oxford University Press: 2008), 55.
[3] Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (HarperSanFrancisco: 1993), 411.
Adapted from Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House: 2016), 193-194.