If all goes according to plan, my youngest will move in to their dorm room Tuesday to start their freshman year next week; my own classes will start August 24; and my oldest will start in early September. The nice thing about working at or attending a college is the rhythm of it: the sense that everything starts fresh in the fall.
This year is different from all previous years in ways too numerous to mention, but the same in one big way: young people around the country, and around the world, are beginning not only a new academic year, but also a new chapter in life. Each academic year is a different stage in the process; there’s a qualitative difference between starting your freshman year and starting your junior year.
I am also the advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which is a member of the Campus Ministries Association. Common Call is a progressive Christian ministry sponsored by my church, Christ Episcopal, and Hope Lutheran (ELCA). CMA is a collaboration among many ministries of various denominations, ranging from Catholic (Newman Center) to Assembly of God (Chi Alpha) to Mormon (LDS Student Association). We all have very different theology. I think my church would recognize the baptisms given by most (except LDS), but most would not recognize ours. Yet it’s important for us to work together, to visibly display the unity that is in Christ.
My hope, my prayer for my own children, for the students in Common Call, for all young people, is that they find a path to God. The mark of maturity is when you convert the received faith of your youth into your own faith—maybe the same, maybe different. I grew up United Methodist, and the rest of my family is still United Methodist (including my sister, a pastor whose church we’ll be attending shortly). When I was in college, I drifted away, for various reasons but mostly because I didn’t think I needed God. Some years later, when my kids were born, I realized how much is beyond my control, and how much I do in fact need God. When I ultimately re-joined a church, I ended up Presbyterian—different from my youth, but not so far removed.
Do I think my own kids, and students I encounter, should be Presbyterian? Sure. But if they end up Episcopalian, United Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, or Buddhist, so be it. We each have God inside of us, the Holy Spirit dwelling within that connects us to all humanity across time and space. Despite God’s immanence, we are ultimately unable to fully understand the divine. Our human institutions and explanations are approximations, limited views of the infinite.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
The closest we can come to understanding God is to love. Love ourselves, love our family, love our friends, love our community, love all humanity. I pray today that young people everywhere will know God by knowing God’s love, and that I can do my part in sharing that love with those I encounter. Amen.