Confirmed Among Friends

Dear Friends,

I’d flown home for the weekend. It was towards the end of the year, and the cathedral nave was chilly. When my turn came, I nervously knelt before the Bishop. The Dean of the Cathedral leaned over and said, “You should just go ahead and ordain this one too, while he’s here.”

The Bishop didn’t ordain me then. He didn’t do it because that was my confirmation day (that came some years later — same hands, same head). Still, that confirmation day marked an important step both in my journey with God, my relationship to the Episcopal Church, and in my leadership within Christ’s Church.

There was only one problem with it. I didn’t really know anyone. I was mostly confirmed among strangers. For a whole host of practical reasons, I was confirmed in Dallas while I was living in Seattle. This works. It’s fine. Confirmation is really about one’s relationship with the Church broadly — the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” as represented by the Bishop.

But it’s not ideal to be confirmed among strangers. And on Sunday, our 20 youth and adults that will be confirmed or received won’t be among strangers. They will be among us, with whom they have shared communion, opened the scriptures, served the community, and prayed as our savior Christ has taught us. Thank God for you!

Obviously if you’re one of those 20, you need to be here on Sunday (and early). But if you’re one of the other almost 600 people on this email, come and support them in this decision to reaffirm their faith, to claim their place in Christ’s Church, and to promise to serve the world in his name. We do this Jesus-following-thing together, thank God. And Sunday will be a great day of celebration, together.

In Christ,
Fr. Andrew

PS: Sunday will also be Bishop Sumner’s last episcopal visitation with us before he retires at the end of the year, and I hope you’ll join me in thanking him for his ministry and wishing him well in what God has in store for him.