Many long for a deeper faith – but like any discipline, it takes practice. This Confirmation season, as people proclaim their faith, Bishop Hughes reflects on faith as a skill shaped over time and invites us into action: praying, learning, and sharing our faith with others. (Time: 5:15.)
Video Transcript
This is Bishop Hughes in the Diocese of Newark, and it is Confirmation season. The first confirmations, receptions into The Episcopal Church and renewal of baptismal vows will happen starting this Saturday, and we will keep doing that until we are finished with them somewhere towards the middle or end of May, early June.
I always find this an especially hopeful and joyful and loving time in the church. It’s also inspiring. It’s wonderful to see these people who’ve made a commitment to studying their faith and deepening their faith, proclaim their faith in front of, as I say, in front of God and everybody – in front of the church united, their family, their clergy, their bishop, and before our Lord – always inspiring to be a part of that. I’m still thinking about confirmation. I talked with you about this in the last blog post, and still have it heavily on my mind in part because I’m thinking of next week’s services and preparing the sermon for those.
I’m also thinking of how people long – and I hear this all the time – how they long for a deeper faith. They long for knowing for certain that they’re living out the life that God has created them to live in. They long to know that their prayers are efficacious. They long to know that the Bible is something that they can look to for wisdom, and they know where to look for that wisdom. They want to be the kind of Christian who can talk about their faith and explain to people what it means to be a faithful person. I’m talking about faith, not talking about church doctrine, but talking about sharing one’s own faith. What is it you believe, and why you believe it and why it brings you comfort and to be able to share that with others.
The missing piece I find for a lot of people is they want those things, and it’s almost like anything else in life. I want to be strong at doing push-ups and sit-ups and all of those kinds of things, but I have to actually go and do them to get stronger at doing them. I’m aware of this because after two knee replacements, one of the things I learned quickly is you have got to do the exercises in order for your legs to get strong enough so that they work well after the knee replacements. It wasn’t enough for me to just get them replaced. It wasn’t enough for me to want to be good at walking again around my neighborhood or up stairways or whatever. I really had to work at it. I had to practice it.
And I’m aware of that kind of focus and devotion that we see so much in people who have very specific skills. Writers learn how to write well by writing. Musicians learn how to play well by practicing – and not just practicing with themselves, but practicing with other people, with a teacher, with other musicians. Athletes learn how to get good at their particular sport by practicing their sport. And Christians who are given the gift of faith – it is a free gift, but the only way we get good at that faith is practicing it and living into it day by day, and with other people who can inform us of our practice and help hold us up and inspire us on to doing that work.
The thing about practicing the faith life and getting, earning a sense of excellence at parts of the faith life – that might feel like an unusual thing to hear, but it means really striving to learn what it means to feel comfortable in the Bible. Learn what it means to feel comfortable praying, out loud, words of your own. Learn what it means to share your faith with another person – and I don’t mean sharing doctrine – I mean truly talking about those things that make you who you are as a person of faith.
It is confirmation season which is not an end. It’s a beginning. People will proclaim their faith – and all of us have proclaimed our faith before, those of us who are already confirmed – but our race towards deeper faith, stronger faith, more true, faith is actually a race towards God. It’s not that we’re striving to be better, it’s that we are striving to be closer. And I will tell you this: when we stand before God and say, “Would you please help me be more faithful,” we are praying one of the prayers that God loves to answer. Then it’s over to us to actually start doing it, to start living that faith. It’s not enough to simply say, I want it. We actually have to go and do it.
