Wesleyan Grace

Some time ago I heard an hour long sermon which was filled with "oughts" and "shoulds."  It was a sermon which was filled with such despair over sin and the judgment which awaited us all that I felt like I was walking in a great darkness when I left.  As I thought about the sermon, I realized it was a sermon empty of grace.  It was not that the preacher said things which were untrue, but that the spirit of grace had no room to work.  One of the things I have learned about my changing theology is that I am more aware than ever of the way the grace of God undergirds and overshadows everything.   

My recent Wesley readings remind me that Wesleyan theology is at its core a word about grace.  In the first sermon he preached after Aldersgate entitled "Salvation by Faith"  Wesley preached, "Grace is the source and faith the condition of our salvation."  A couple of verses worthy of memorization stand under this statement.  One is Romans 5:8 which says, "But God proves His love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us."  A second is found in Ephesians 2:8, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God."     

More and more I am drawn to that verse about the over abounding and all sufficient grace of God.  John Wesley spoke a profound truth when he struck those words about grace being the source.  It is the source of everything.  What is it that I rightly deserve because of my goodness?  What is it that I have earned from all my service and preaching?  The answer is, of course, nothing.  Any blessing I have received in the course of my days is all about grace.  It is about receiving from my Creator that which can only be understood as a merciful gift.  Thanks be to God for His goodness!

Fundamentals

Some recent reading about John Wesley pointed out that he was always more concerned with preaching fundamentals of the faith than the trendy peripheral issues which tempted those who climbed up in the pulpits of his day.  It is a real temptation for preachers of the church today who want to be as current and as relevant as the morning newspaper we used to get thrown out at the house every day.  The hard truth is that we let issues guide our preaching more than the Scripture.  I remember too many times when I thought I had to expound on everything with a little spiritual twist at the end.    

One of the places where church folks often suffer is in their inability to pass a basic test on the fundamentals of the faith.  And, the reason they might get a failing mark on such a test speaks to the failure of the pulpit.  The atonement, justification, and the work of the Holy Spirit are just a few of those things which Wesley would have regarded as the fundamentals and so should today's preachers.  Instead, we tend to abandon the traditional language of the Scripture for watered down words that provide little more than a shadow of the substance being proclaimed.    

Of course, all the new versions that re-write the Scripture in easy to read language also have added to the problem.  This is not a call to go back to the King James Version, or to the original Greek and Hebrew, but simply a reminder that those big theological words we avoid may have something to declare to us that a trendy modern rendering might overlook.  Maybe it can all be summed up by saying that Wesley preached Christ which would be a good place for any preacher or seeker to start.

Advice from Wesley

While there are a lot of conflicting words circulating about Methodism in these days, everyone agrees that the word "Methodist" is almost synonymous with chaos.  Suddenly people are choosing up sides and becoming experts on John Wesley and the Methodist movement birthed by him in the 18th century.  Since choosing up sides has never really been a favorite pastime, I decided to do some reading about Wesley in order to refresh my memory and to learn more about this spiritual giant who would surely grieve over what is happening today.   

Before I retired I bought several volumes of a book series subtitled, "The Standard Sermons in Modern English."  Each volume contains some of Wesley's sermons with a brief commentary before each one.  Wesley always seemed to think of himself primarily as a preacher of the gospel.  Kenneth Kinghorn, the editor of the volume dealing with Christian Beliefs wrote that Wesley's sermons focused on fundamental subjects.  They contained sound logic and clear thinking, they spoke both to the head and to the heart, they linked theory and practice, they were easy to comprehend, they championed relational religion, and they underscored the centrality of holiness.  What Wesley always sought to do was to articulate the plain truth for plain people.    

One piece of advice given in a preaching class back in seminary days came from a Lutheran preacher and professor who said we should preach as if we were preaching to sixth graders. Dr. Brokhoff was not denigrating the intellect of the people in the pew, but trying to make us would be preachers understand that the place for egos to be placated by big words and flowery speech was not the pulpit.  He wanted us to understand that the pulpit was not a place for showing off our educational degrees, but a place for proclaiming plainly and clearly the life changing truths of God. 

Meandering in Graveyards

I have journeyed often to the nearby cemetery in these recent months of moving from deep grief to growing hope.  Today I took a longer journey to be with cousins who have grown old with me as they said good bye to a sister who had been a steadying rock in all of their lives.  The place where she was buried was just over from the graves of my grandparents and her parents.  If I had walked around those grounds for a few moments, I would have come to other stones which marked the graves of those connected to me through birth.    

It was sacred ground.  It was a ground that had been watered by tears of loss, ground that held the memories of stories never told, and ground that spoke to us all of belonging.  Just up the road a piece there is another graveyard much like the one in which I stood today.  It is filled with others who bear my name including my father who died before he had time to see his children grown with children of their own.  As often as I can, I go to that place and simply stand for a spell in the silence.  Cemeteries are places which bring us in touch with the deep memories we carry in our hearts, but they also are places where we are reminded of our hope and faith.  

When I stand there I remember the words the angels spoke to the grieving women on Resurrection Sunday, "He is not here; He is risen."  (Luke 24:5)  So it is with all of those whose graves I stood before today and yesterday.  There is no way to measure the loss we feel when we are separated in death from someone we love, but as the grief begins to loose its hold, we come to a place of seeing what we cannot see and we find gratitude rising up in us that the Risen Christ has prepared a glorious eternal home for those who have shaken the hold of a failing body.  

The Mercy of God

After worship today I stopped by the home of a friend and neighbor whose older brother's death was reported at church.   A heart broken man told me his 91 year brother who had been sick for a long time took his own life when he was released from the hospital.  The last words he spoke were from behind a closed bedroom door.  His daughter heard him praying aloud, "God, forgive me" and then he was gone.  My friend was heart broken over the death of his brother, but his broken heart was bleeding even more because of Christian friends who spoke of their sorrow that his brother was dead and was in hell.     

I cannot think of any moment that made me so angry at others who see themselves as Christians.  How someone could say such a word to a man grieving over his brother is beyond comprehension.  With a voice broken by tears and anguish, he asked me what I thought.  I told him not to listen to those folks and to know that God's heart had enough mercy and grace and love to take his brother into the arms of the One to whom he breathed his last words in prayer.   

I long ago came to a place of not judging others.  I have enough stuff in my own life which disqualifies me from that role.  None of us can walk in another's shoes and none of us can know the hurt, or the heart of another.  What we can know is that God knows and that God looks at us with a merciful heart and not a judgemental spirit.  In that moment I wanted to shake some sense into some people who see themselves as saints, but instead, I asked my brother if I could pray for him as we stood there together weeping in his backyard.  

The Power of Calling

Given the salvation which took place in the Nile River when he was a baby in a basket, Moses should have figured that God had something in mind.  No doubt he heard the story from his birth mother, his sister, and the Egyptian woman who adopted him as her own.  But, sometimes stories told become stories forgotten.  Though raised with a silver spoon in his mouth and all the advantages of being an Egyptian instead of a Hebrew, he ended up in the wilderness a murderer and a fugitive from the justice of Pharoah.  He must have breathed a sigh of relief after a few years of safely tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro.     

His sigh of relief was a short one because the Lord came and spoke to him from a burning bush that burned but which was not consumed.  When he put his sandals back on and left that holy place, he knew the road was going to take him back to Egypt and a confrontation with Pharoah.  It was a word Moses surely did not want to hear and he did everything he could to get out from under this word of God, but the God who called was also an unrelenting God.     

There may be some who are born with a desire to stand as a spiritual leader for the people of God, but most of the ones known over the years did their best to persuade God to get someone else.  When I knew that God was calling me to ministry, I also knew it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do with my life.  It took God six months of speaking to me from the shadows of my experiences to bring me to a  point of relenting and saying "Yes."  It was not something I remember wanting to do as much as something I remember as something I was compelled to do.  If I was to live in obedience to Jesus, I realized there was no choice.  After much running the other way, I finally came around to the calling of God.  It is not something I have ever regretted and has always been something for which I have been grateful.   

Spiritual Leadership

Most of us have read the Exodus story so many times we take for granted the task before Moses.  It was quite a feat to move so many people such a long distance, to keep them together, to provide food and water for them and all the livestock, and to remain the leader of a people who never seemed to be satisfied with anything.  Few spiritual leaders of today's church could have handled the many tasks given to Moses and retained their whole hearted commitment to God.   

Of course, the Scripture makes it clear that there is no one like Moses.  Aside from the Christ who showed up in Bethlehem, no spiritual leader stands taller than this man who would have rather tended sheep in the wilderness for his father-in-law than going toe-to-toe with Pharoah.  He managed to keep his face facing God and was confident enough in who he was to receive guidance from Jethro, his father-in-law (Exodus 18).  The story of Moses reminds us that a spiritual leader is one who practices a listening kind of leadership.    Too many times our spiritual leaders in the local church as well as leaders such as Bishops and Superintendents practice an autocratic type of leadership which gives lip service to servant leadership.  

Those of us who have been entrusted at one time or another with spiritual leadership know how easy and desirable it is to surround ourselves with those whose counsel will always speak the "Yes" we want to hear.  Spiritual leaders have a tough role to hoe.  Like Moses the people who claim to be supporters often wander, the way forward seems to be filled with needs greater than resources, and when things go crazy, the faithful disappear.  No spiritual leader can hope for success and inner peace if he or she tries to go it alone  Prayer and truth speaking people are often the only thing which keeps the spiritual leader on the course God has set in place out there in the distance at the beginning of the journey.