June is a time of transition. There are a lot of graduations, June brides, confirmation and other personal transitions. For these people it is a time of profound change, the movement from one stage of life to another. We have a tendency to look at some of these events as ending and yet others like a wedding are definitely beginnings. The factors that seem to determine the way we think about these events are the elements of accomplishment and risk or uncertainty. When a person graduates from High School or college it is an accomplishment and so we look at it as an ending. You no longer have to complete assignments or worry about grades. All of that is behind you, your goal has been reached and the diploma is firmly in your hand.

With a wedding all of the challenges are yet to come. It is a big risk to commit your life and your heart into the keeping of another person.

All of these celebrations, whether we see them as beginnings or endings, mark major transitions in our lives. The true difference in the way we see these transitions is whether we are looking forward or backward in time. Marriage is a beginning because we are looking forward, yet it is also an ending as well. It is the end of our time as a single adult. Graduation is the end of school, but college graduation is also the beginning of our productive life as a working adult. There is celebration but there is also uncertainty. Not everyone who graduates is totally secure about their future.

Transitions always have an air of insecurity about them. They represent change, the natural movement of life. Although it may seem tempting to choose not to move forward into the uncertainty of a new phase of our life, choosing to hold on to what is known rather than face the future is not a good option.

Think of the movement of your life like the fresh flow of a mountain stream. It rushes from pool to pool bubbling over rocks, through the riffles and over falls. Yet if the stream could choose to remain in a favorite pool it would totally change character. It is the movement that keeps the water clear and fresh. That gives it the characteristic that the people of Israel called living water. The standing water of a pool with no movement in or out quickly becomes stagnant and eventually dies. If we try to hold on to a particular stage of our life, to pretend that we are twenty when we have seen twice that many years we become stagnant as well.

Our faith life is filled with transitions as well. Confirmation, which we will celebrate for six young people this June, is one of the major transitions in the life of a person of faith. Pentecost, the day we normally celebrate confirmation, represents the coming of age of the Church itself. It is the movement from a people who know about God, to a people that by the power of the Holy Spirit experience the life of God within themselves. We hope this same transformation is taking place in the lives of those who are affirming their faith in Christ. Yet this is one transition that is often wrongly interpreted leading to a stagnant faith life for many people. Confirmation is not a graduation, it is a commitment. It is not the end of a course at school, all of the teaching that is done is an attempt to prepare these young people for the new relationship that God offers them by strengthening the Holy Spirit within them. This makes confirmation classes more like premarital counseling than school where there, you may pass or fail. Like marriage the relationship with God that we willingly enter into as we profess our faith when we affirm our Baptism can only be judge by the love and quality of life that flow out of the relationship.

In a graduation ceremony you put the year of school behind you. Sadly many people put learning about God and deepening their relationship behind them at confirmation in the same way. Think about how sad it would be if a person entered into a marriage and then stopped trying to learn anything new about their spouse. Even thinking that gives me the willies. As we celebrate all of these transitions this June I urge each one of you to think of your own confirmation. Was it an ending or a beginning? Just remember, no matter what choice you made then, God is always trying to draw us into a deeper more loving relationship with him. Like Jesus said: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:11) If you leave the discovery and the relationship behind at confirmation, you leave the joy behind as well.

Pastor Jim Bliss
June 2006