THE REV. DR. KYLE BABIN
If you’re anything like me, you may have been full of questions as a child. I’m pretty sure that my parents grew weary of my constant queries, even though they were patient with me. I was just curious. It’s humbling to notice that as I have grown older, the questions remain, but with more defenses up and less innocence, I’m sadly less willing to voice those questions. Perhaps it’s the same with you as well. I wonder when in our lives we absorbed the implicit or explicit message that questions were not welcome or, maybe, even dangerous. In the Church, we can sometimes tiptoe around asking what needs to be asked, whether through worry about asking something “stupid” or unconventional. But the life of faith requires that we ask questions because it means that we are invested in coming to know God more deeply.
I’m so thankful that questions are at the heart of the Pilgrims in Christ formation class that I’ve been teaching on Wednesday evenings. This class is intended as preparation for Baptism, Confirmation, Reception into the Episcopal Church, or as continuing formation as a Christian. The class has over twenty faithful people in it whose experience at St. James’s ranges from a few months to over three decades. As the name of the class suggests, Pilgrims in Christ is a group of Jesus’s disciples who are on a journey. The only assumption in Pilgrims is that we will all be changed; we won’t be the same when Pilgrims ends in May as we were when it started in September.
Every week, I eagerly look forward to spending time with my fellow Pilgrims. One of the reasons I cherish our time together is that the class is full of questions. These questions are part of what it means to be on a spiritual pilgrimage. The breadth of our discussions in class comes from the breadth of experiences represented. The questions and comments of seasoned Episcopalians richly complement the questions and comments of those new to the Episcopal Church.
Our Pilgrims in Christ class exemplifies what it means to be a member of a Christian community. It might be tempting to think of membership as a formal, legalistic part of discipleship, but nothing could be further from the truth. Membership is about belonging, of being willing to exist as part of a community of people who agree to lovingly hold one another accountable in their spiritual lives. And this means that our questions are essential. Our questions keep us honest before God and one another. Our questions keep us humble, acknowledging that we can never understand God completely in this life, and yet, we persist in trying. Our questions remind us that being faithful is less about knowing the answers and more about asking questions as we allow God to teach us and mold our hearts so that we can love more fully. Our questions assure us that God is big enough to hold all our doubts and wonder because that is God’s very nature.
Whether you are in the Pilgrims in Christ class or not, I encourage you to consider what membership means for you. If you have been an official member of St. James’s for a while, I hope you still find yourself changing each day as you walk in love with Christ and continue to live into the Holy Spirit’s call to this particular Christian community, which is always changing. And if you have been around St. James’s for some time or are new and are not yet a member, I invite you to take the next step toward membership. We have recently introduced a membership covenant, which outlines clearly the expectations of membership. These expectations are not rules but, rather, guiding principles of what it means to exist with God and one another in community. If you have questions about how to become a member, you can learn more here. Of course, because I love questions, I would be delighted to meet with you over coffee or tea to discuss your questions.
To take membership seriously is to commit ourselves to something larger than ourselves, especially in a world filled with shallow commitments. It’s to say that my questions belong here, just as I belong here because God longs to be in relationship with me and God loves my questions. May your journey in faith be filled with questions, and through those questions, may you discover God’s unending love for you.