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THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

The Five Second Confirmation

John 15:9-17

Do you know who Father Guido Sarducci is?  He is an old Saturday Night Live character who is still doing a stand-up routine.  He has a bit called Father Guido’s Five-Minute University that my brother showed me on Youtube.

            Father Guido’s idea is based on how much the average college graduate remembers after five years.  For instance, at the Five Minute University , you can take whatever language you want.  If you take Spanish, you learn to say, “ Como esta usted?”  (“How are you?”)  And the response is, “Muy bien.” (“Very well.”)  That is the Spanish that the average college graduate remembers five years after graduation.

            You can take economics – Supply and Demand.  The business course is – Buy something for less and sell it for more.  He’ll even pull out a sun lamp and give you a glass of Florida orange juice for your spring break.  It all costs only $20 and that includes the cap and the gown and the graduation picture.

            What I like is that you also get to study theology.  (Father Guido is a priest after all!)  Where is God?  God is everywhere.  Why?  Because he likes you.  It’s a combination of Disney and Roman Catholic philosophy.

            This has gotten me thinking – maybe I should start Pastor Chris’s Five Minute Confirmation Program.  I could survey students five years after they were confirmed and ask them what they remember.  My guess is that what they remember probably amounts to about five minutes of teaching.  It would save us all a lot of time and trouble.

            Now I’m sure the confirmands are thinking, “Why didn’t he think of this before?  l wrote all those sermon reports!  I sat through all those classes!  I memorized all that stuff I’m probably just going to forget!  Five minutes sounds way easier!”

            I do believe, however, that there are things that are taught – or at least conveyed – in confirmation that are not easily articulated.  There is the time spent together in class.  There is the time spent in worship, listening to sermons.  There is the idea that the Christian faith is more caught than taught, and that in itself takes time. 

            I would also say, whatever you don’t use, you’ll lose.  In the next five years, if you do not use what you have been taught or caught during confirmation ministry, you are much more likely to lose it.  If you don’t pick up a Bible in the next five years, you’re more likely to forget the names of the books.  If you don’t attend worship, you’re more likely to forget the Apostles’ Creed.

            I would say, finally, that, if you are going to remember anything from confirmation, Father Guido’s theology is not a bad thing to remember.  Where is God?  God is everywhere.  Why?  Because he likes you. 

            I think I could go one better though.  You might call it, “Rabbi Jesus’ Five Second Confirmation.”  It is this – “Love one another as I have loved you.”

            I know that may have gone by pretty fast, so let me say it again – no extra charge – “Love one another as I have loved you.”

            This is the last thing that Jesus says to his disciples.  He now calls them, “friends” and gives them their final instructions before he leaves them – “Love one another as I have loved you.”

            Now you could treat it as one more useful piece of information that would be handy to have memorized so that you can call on it when you need it.  And it will help you do good in the world.

            You could treat it as a command, or, in the language of Star Trek, a prime directive.  This is how you are to live your life.  And it might help you to boldly go where no one – except Jesus – has gone before.

            But I think Jesus means it as more than either of these.  It is more than a useful piece of information.  It is more than a command.  It is a way of living in communion with him and with God.

            How is this?  You have been made in the image of God and, if God is love, then you have been made in the image of love.  And when you love, you are living the life that God made for you from the beginning.  It is the life that God has always intended for you.  And when you love as Jesus loved, then you learn who you really are and who God really is.

            And because that is the way you are made, that is something that is already in you.

            There is a poet from ancient Persia (13th c.) named Rumi.  He has written about two different kinds of intelligence.

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world. 
You get ranked ahead of or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information.  You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablet.

            You know a lot about this kind of intelligence.  You live in this world day after day in school.  It is your daily bread in school – receive information, retain information, report information.  This is also the kind of intelligence we expect in confirmation.  And much of your life in the world is based on this intelligence.  It is good intelligence.  It is useful intelligence for living in this world.  But it is not the only kind of intelligence, according to our poet:

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you. 
A spring overflowing its springbox.  A freshness
in the center of the chest.  This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate.  It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

This is a kind of knowledge you’ll likely never hear about in school.  You’ve had only intimations of it in confirmation.  But it is real nonetheless.  It is not something you have earned.  It is not learned.  And it is not something that you can lose.  It is the intelligence called love.

For you have been made in God’s image.  And if God is love, then you have been made in the image of love.  You have been made out of love by God.  And so you are loved by God.  Not only this, you have been made for love.   And when you love others as Jesus has loved you, you will know the love and peace and joy of God.