By Pastor Devlyn Brooks
My ultimate aim in teaching our Faith Lutheran confirmation class is to make the lessons as applicable to our student’s daily lives as possible.
I think it’s imperative to their longer faith habits that they understand that church isn’t about an hour on Sunday and 90 minutes Wednesday night. After all, that’s what’s modeled by too many for our kids in their daily lives. The rest of the week? … Forget about it! That’s for the “real” world, not church!
Way back in the fall when I planned out the confirmation year, I had now idea how serendipitous it was that I scheduled a lesson about “Confession and Forgiveness” for the Jan. 18 confirmation class. I had no clue how meaningful it would become to me!
In fact, as I taught the lesson, and conversed with the students about the importance of “Confession and Forgiveness” in the Lutheran faith, I felt more and more that the Holy Spirit was divinely involved in making that lesson happen on that specific night.
Here’s the context …
Over the course of months, in my newspaper job, I had been talking with my staff about their annual raises they could expect. Several times I provided my team with incorrect information about how the raises would be paid out. And it wasn’t until the afternoon of Jan. 17 that I realized my error, basically on the eve of the first paycheck they would see those raises.
It ended up being a long, fitful night of sleep for me, as I knew I had to communicate my error to my team. It was the right thing to do. And I knew the incorrect information that I had provided might have adverse effects on some of the team members. It was an awful feeling, to say the least.
I arrived at work the next day with a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I dreaded each conversation that I needed to have. There are 25 people on my team, and I had to reach all of them in small groups, a few at a time. That meant that by the end of the day, I had to have the same remorseful conversation six times before I was able to reach everyone. And each of the in-person visits, phone calls or video calls made me feel that much more terrible.
By the time I had arrived at the church that night to teach the confirmation lesson about “Confession and Forgiveness,” I was feeling pretty bad for myself. Predictably, some of my team took the message in stride, and said, “No big deal.” Others understood it as the mistake it was, and said, “Let’s move on.” … But then there were a few in which my apology didn’t matter. They were upset, and they wanted me to know.
It was hard to harbor any ill will given that it was my mistake, and my error may have contributed to financial decisions they had made. So, they wanted to extract their proverbial pound of flesh out of me, and managed to make me feel pretty low by the time I had left work.
But something divine happened that night in our confirmation class, as I taught the lesson about “Confession and Forgiveness.” Through the 45 minutes of lecture and conversation, my own words started to sink into my own psyche, and by the end of the class I wasn’t treating myself as harshly as I was at the beginning. I started to remember that being an infallible human didn’t make me a bad person, and it didn’t lessen my stature in the eyes of our caring God. Regardless of how some of the team members felt, God had forgiven me as soon as I set out to apologize and correct my mistake.
That is the beautiful thing about God’s grace. It’s freely given, and it’s understood that as humans we will make mistakes. However, those mistakes never separate us from the love of God, who already knows about them and has forgiven them the moment we confess and ask for forgiveness.
I wish that there would have been some time between the day when I had to have all of those awful apologetic conversations with my team members, and when I had that particular lesson scheduled for the class. It would have made for a dramatic faith lesson for the students if I could have shared this faith lesson in my own life. Unfortunately, on that night, the incident was just too raw for me to process and comprehend the lesson.
Sometime this year before class gets out, though, I will revisit the lesson on “Confession and Forgiveness” with our students, and I will share with them what was going on behind the scenes that night. After all, I think it’s important for them to know their pastor makes mistakes, even big ones! But, maybe even more importantly, that their pastor learns from them because he tries to incorporate important faith lessons throughout the week, and not just for an hour on Sundays and 90 minutes on Wednesdays!
Peace to you Faith Family! … I hope that you feel inspired to continue to live out your faith life every day outside of the four walls of our beautiful church too! And I would also encourage you to share your valuable faith lessons you learn along the way with your loved ones. After all, you might be the most important teacher they have in their life!
Blessings to you all! See you in church!
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