Friday, October 28, 2022

A letter to our 2022 confirmands

Dear Confirmands,

Today is confirmation Sunday! Today, we confirmed eight of you 9th graders in your faith! You, dear confirmands, have experienced a lot of bumps in the road the last couple of years.  School has been stressful. You’re involved in so many different sports and clubs and activities, and there have been some really hard moments for some of you where the bottom has dropped out of life. 

Last Wednesday, a big group from the church here got together to talk about who we are as a church, what we care about. Some of you youth showed up too. In my particular small group we talked two (of the many) sides of faith. We discussed how faith is: 1. a place of rest and comfort and 2. a place of challenge that calls us change and grow.  Some of you may have heard this before: that church is a place to comfort the afflicted (St. Paul said that) and afflict the comfortable.

I’m going to wager a guess that in the years prior to confirmation, especially the years when you were much younger, church was often a place of comfort and rest. It has been a place of peace. Many of you have come here with your parents. You sit together year after year in the pew.  You sing familiar song and you hear familiar stories. Church is a place that comforts us, that calms us, that brings us peace. But, the other side of the coin is that church is a place that challenges us.  And, I’m going to guess that if you haven’t started thinking deeply about God, or taking a closer look at what Jesus values compared to what the world values, you will. 

Following Jesus is a way of life and when we keep our eye on the path, it will bring friction into our lives. 

We hear the word “friction” and we think it’s a bad thing—is it some sort of conflict? What friction technically is, is a force that opposes motion.  It slows something down. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Friction is the reason that tires on a car have traction and don’t fly off the road.  Or, it’s the reason why our basketball sneakers make that squeaky noise on the gym floor and stop us instead of slide out from under us.  Friction slows us down. 

In the case of our faith, friction asks us to take a closer look and to reflect. Take today’s gospel reading.  There is an easy way for me to just ice skate (friction-free) through this parable of Jesus without thinking too hard.  For me, a face value interpretation of this story would read like this:

There are 2 men: The Pharisee is a Jewish leader, he’s proud and boasts about his good works.  The tax collector is humble and humility is the most important thing that matters here. The tax collector is the one who ends up being cool God.  Better luck next time Pharisee. We should all be humble like the tax collector. The end.

Now, obviously, humility is important and we could talk more about it. There are many ways to reflect one day about humility and pride. However, given that the parables of Jesus are supposed to stop us in our tracks and turn us upside down, I’m going to offer 3 points that make me think twice about this story and challenge me today.

ONE: What if I tell you that St. Luke, who wrote this story down is always describing Jewish leaders like pharisees in a negative light and tax collectors--despicable as they may be--as sort of darlings. You can go back to scripture and see it for yourself.  Have you ever heard the word "Pharisee" and immediately felt suspicious about how they're messing something up or "not getting it" in the bible story? We’ve been taught that in the Christian faith.  

Luke wrote these stories almost 2,000 years ago. The original people who Jesus was talking to would have thought of pharisees as good, compassionate and merciful Jewish leaders.  And, they would have thought of tax collectors as people who worked for “the man,” cheated folks out of money and were despicable. Luke is showing that tax collectors can be good people, religious leaders can be flawed. Thing is, those categories and their stereotypes aren't engrained in our contemporary daily lives they way they were in Luke's time.

TWO: What if I pointed out that this Pharisee is giving a full 10% or more of his income to the temple. He is exceptionally generous.  He is going above and beyond what the law requires of him.  

Take a moment to think about your family income, or ask your parents about it.  Or consider this, if you make money babysitting or some other after school job.  Imagine that you gave slightly more than 10% of your gross income to church or to charity.  Take a second to think of how much money that would be... Maybe some of you are there and give this. Maybe some of you aren’t. If you do give this, or if you did give it, there is a chance you might feel a little proud of yourself, too. This is generous!

Yes, perhaps your pride is not the best character trait and is would be your growing edge, but do you still roll your eyes in the same way at this pharisee who is proud of his generosity?

THREE: Finally, What if I pointed out that where it says the tax collector was the one who was “cool with God” (or justified) rather than the Pharisee, that the word “rather than” (para in Greek) could also be translated as “along side of.”  This would have the verse sound like this: “A tax collector was made cool with God right along side of the Pharisee, not rather than the Pharisee.”  It sounds different right? (1) For some reason, perhaps some anti-Semitism, translators have favored one translation over another. 

How do these three points make me think differently about this story?  (Remember, Jesus’ parables meant to provoke and challenge us and even make us feel uncomfortable.)

Here’s how this parable could sound in today’s day and age, (I’m taking this entirely from a Jewish scholar named Amy Jill Levine who spelled all this out with this fantastic analogy which I am paraphrasing): Imagine a group project at school. In your group, you’ve got 
1. The smart one (or the over-achiever), 
2. the creative one, 
3. the one who invites everyone over to work on the project and brings snacks, and, 
4. the slacker. 

The first three group members do their fair share. Actually, they do more than their fair share because they’re covering the slacker’s part, right? The slacker shows up to the group meeting and might be 100% friendly and great in the moment but effectively contributes nothing. The project gets an A. The three who contribute are “justified,” they get an A. The slacker also gets an A. She’s also “justified.” The end.

Who reading this finds the scenario unfair? 

I do. 

Have you ever been the over achiever and felt smug about it?  This is what is happening in today’s parable. 

<<says with a hint of sarcasm>> “Hi, overachieving pharisee, thank you for making our world a better place. We know you’re awesome and you kind of want a medal or a prize. Feel free to tone it down a little....Hi, slacker tax collector, you are a little slimy and not exactly embodying God’s love but you’re trying. And we are trying to love you for it but it’s a little hard.”

What if, in this parable, Jesus is telling me that my sense of what’s fair and what’s unfair is off? What if Jesus is telling me that I am being tight-fisted with my generosity? 

Maybe the slacker, who I called lazy, did what she could. Maybe she knew she was slacking and she got all the tense text messages in the group chat, but she trusted the system and she slacked her way through the project. Maybe she had something going at home that we never knew about.  Maybe she sincerely didn’t care and for real just checked out. Was I a fool for doing her work?  Was it dumb for me to be so generous?

What if Jesus is telling me that living in community is actually a kind of group work because not everyone is always their best in community?  And if our good deeds help a sister out, why not just celebrate it instead of begrudge her?

Oh, that’s a hard lesson.  

I just read an article in a business journal about how people who help too much don’t actually get ahead (whatever that means) and Jesus is asking me to help more. This is the kind of challenge that this parable tosses to me today. It’s uncomfortable. It’s irritating. There’s a part of me that wants to fight with it.  

Dear confirmands, the life of faith that you are stepping fully into today needs friction in it.  This goes for all of us.  Some of you are thinking, “Thanks. I’ve got enough friction in my life at the moment, Pastor Lindsay,” and I hear that, some of you do. Friction in life ebbs and flows. How God shows up in our life (as a comforter or an agitator) also ebbs and flows. 

When we put the teachings of Christ into conversation with our own lives, we will be challenged.  There will be times when church or God makes us uncomfortable. So be it.  

But we do not go it alone. Part of what is true in the life of faith is that we need companions on the journey. We need friends, coaches, sparing partners.  We need people who will help us learn how to become more generous in our daily lives. People who will help us identify the places where we’re kind of jerks and how we can take the next step to change. We need people to hold us accountable,  and we need people to bring us a casserole when things fall apart.   God both challenges us and supports us through the community and the congregation. Faith in God is a team sport. 

So, Jesus comforts us, Jesus challenges us, and Jesus does one more thing consistently in scripture…

Jesus celebrates!

He’s constantly throwing parties, inviting folks to dinner, turning water into wine, savoring life, and telling stories about celebrations! His joy is infectious! And this why we celebrate our confirmands today.
God bless you, dear confirmands in this wild and precious life. May your journey with God open your hearts and bless the world around you. To God be the glory!



(1) Jewish New Testament scholar, Amy Jill Levine discusses this at length. She acknowledges the two legit translations of 1. instead of, 2. alongside of. However, she also offers a 3rd fascinating (imo) translation that suggests that the word can also be translated as "because of" rendering an idea that "the tax collector is justified because of the Pharisee's generosity. This third suggestion is even more of a mind-bender for me.

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