Category: Wesley

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The Final Secret

Going through my email inbox today, I found these words of wisdom and hope from the late Frederick Buechner:

“The Final Secret, I think, is this: that the words ‘You shall love the Lord your God’ become in the end less a command than a promise. And the promise is that . . . we will come to love him at last as from the first he has loved us.” [1]

I’ve shared this quote with you before. But re-reading it today, it occurred to me that John Wesley had expressed the same sentiment. I heard it in seminary in a lecture on John Wesley’s theology by Dr. Hal Knight. I looked it up and confirmed that two centuries before Frederick Buechner, John Wesley wrote:

“‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,’ is not only a direction what I shall do, but a promise of what God will do in me.” [2]

Christ not only commanded us to love God and neighbor, he promised us the power to do so. Ultimately, it is not so much that we have to love but that we are allowed and enabled to do so. That indeed is good news.

[1] Frederick Buechner, The Final Secret, June 19, 2017, http://www.frederickbuechner.com.

[2] John Wesley, “A Plain Account of Genuine Christianity” cited in Henry H. Knight , “The Promises of God,” Catalyst Resources, accessed November 16, 2023, https://catalystresources.org/the-promises-of-god/.

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Financial Advice from John Wesley

“You will have no reward in heaven for what you lay up; you will, for what you lay out. Every pound [dollar] you put into the earthly bank is sunk: it brings no interest above. But every pound [dollar] you give to the poor is put into the bank of heaven. And it will bring glorious interest; yea, and such as will be accumulating to all eternity.” [1]

[1] John Wesley, “Sermon 89 – The More Excellent Way,” The Wesley Center Online, accessed October 11, 2023, nbc.whdl.org.

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Voice of the Day: John Wesley via Hal Knight

One of the things I love about Wesleyan theology is the primacy it places on God’s love. In Hal Knight’s new books he sums it up succinctly:

“The centrality of love in Wesley’s theology can hardly be understated. It governs both the character of God and the content of salvation. While many of Wesley’s Calvinist contemporaries made sovereignty central to the divine nature, Wesley instead insisted that ‘God is often styled holy, righteous, wise but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract, as He is said to be love: intimating that this is . . . His reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all His other perfections.’” — Henry H. Knight, Anticipating Heaven Below

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John Wesley on Salvation for Animals

Given that the Coffeyville Friends of Animals held a very successful chili feed in Fellowship Hall, it seems an appropriate time to consider the salvation of animals. John Wesley addressed this issue in his sermon, “The General Deliverance”. He argues that in the end:

“The whole brute creation [that is, the animals] will then, undoubtedly, be restored, not only to the vigour, strength, and swiftness which they had at their creation, but to a far higher degree of each than they ever enjoyed. They will be restored, not only to that measure of understanding which they had in paradise, but to a degree of it as much higher than that, as the understanding of an elephant is beyond that of a worm. And whatever affections they had in the garden of God, will be restored with vast increase; being exalted and refined in a manner which we ourselves are not now able to comprehend.”

The whole sermon can be found here and a summary by Allen R. Bevere here.

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Consider Wesley: God is Love

“God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract, as he is said to be love; intimating that this is … his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.”

— John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, 1 John 4.8

I’ve long known that Wesley considered love God’s reigning attribute, and on a gut level, I’ve always agreed with him on that., Now I have a reason to believe it not only in my gut and in my heart, but also in my head.

A tip of my hat to Hal Knight for pointing out the above quote and for the title of this series of posts.

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Consider Wesley: The Law and the Gospel

One of the issues that Christians often debate is the relationship between the law and gospel. Often times Christians get caught in what might be considered a false dichotomy that places the two in opposition. John Wesley instead saw the two more as opposite sides of the same coin. He believed that the grace of God is given to us not only to pardon the guilt of our sins but also to enable us to live as faithful disciples who fulfill God’s commands. Wesley also believed that anything that God commanded of us, God would give us the grace to accomplish. The best summary of this can be found in Wesley’s sermon, “Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse V”:

There is therefore the closest connection that can be conceived between the law and the gospel. On the one hand the law continually makes way for and points us to the gospel; on the other the gospel continually leads us to a more exact fulfilling of the law … We may yet farther [sic] observe that every command in Holy Writ is only a covered promised. … God hath engaged to give whatsoever he commands. … He will work in us [the] very thing [that is commanded]. It shall be unto us according to his word.

In the same vein. It is easy enough to reason out that because we have been made free to live Christ-like lives, we also have a commitment to live Christ-like lives. I once heard a recorded speech by Albert Outler, the noted Wesleyan scholar, in which he summarized this position by saying (and here I’m paraphrasing from memory) that every command of God is a covered promise and every promise of God is a de facto command.

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Holy Adulterers

John Wesley preaching John Wesley preaching at a meeting house in Nottingham, England, in 1747. Note that his listeners are separated by gender which was customary at the time.

Had not the bulletin already gone to print, I would have changed the title of the sermon to “Holy Adulterers” in reference to the preface of the 1739 edition of John and Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems which reads, in part:

Directly opposite to this [a solitary religion] is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness. “Faith working by love” is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection. “This commandment have we from Christ, that he who loveth God love his brother also;” and that we manifest our love “by doing good unto all men, especially to them that are of the household of faith.”

The point is that you can’t be a Christian by yourself. For John and Charles Wesley the heart of the Christian Gospel of love of God and love of neighbor. You cannot learn to love either alone, a community of faith is necessary.

You can find a copy of Hymns and Sacred Poems and many other materials from John and Charles wesley online at The Duke Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition.

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"Wesley" the Movie

From United Methodist News Service (UMNS):

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)—A Moravian preacher is bringing the film “Wesley” to a movie theater near you. The two-hour movie that is slowly building a platform in theaters across the United States brings to life the story of the founder of Methodism. The Rev. John Jackman, 53, pastor of Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, N.C., says he got into the movie business as a way of telling stories of redemption, and John Wesley’s story has enough action for several films. “I wish I could have made this into a mini-series,” Jackman says. “There is enough great material here to make an eight-hour film.”

I’m hoping (but I’m not confident) that this will be as good as the movie “Luther” from 2003.

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Voice of the Day: John Wesley

John Wesley saw very well the need to balance God’s power with God’s preservation of human integrity. God does not override human free will to effect human salvation. As Wesley summarized in a sermon titled “On the Wedding Garment”:

The God of love is willing to save all the souls he has made … but will not force them to accept of it.

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Why Do We Worship?

bluecross

I try to keep up with the blogs of several of my clergy colleagues. One of the issues that has been much discussed lately is worship. Mores specifically what is worship and why do we worship. At first glance it seems like an easy question, but coming up with a compact, coherent answer is quite difficult. I’ll begin by saying that I really resonate with much of what Anglican Bishop and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright said in his chapter on worship in Simply Christian. Wright observes that “when we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven’t yet really understood who he is or what he’s done.” Wright asserts that “reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he’s done.” I would summarize and assert that worship is, first and foremost, a natural celebratory reaction to who God is and what God has done in the creation, redemption and final consummation of all that is.

Others have different definitions and that does not surprise, nor particularly disturb me. What does surprise and somewhat disturb me is the complete lack of any mention of the third general rule. I believe that worship is primarily a celebration of who God is and what God has done, but I also want to talk about other aspects of worship as well. My desire to do so is rooted in my Wesleyan heritage. John Wesley gave the early Methodists (and by extension United Methodists today) three general rules: 1. do no harm; 2. do good; and 3. attend to the ordinances of God. The ordinances of God included worship, the public reading of scripture, preaching, and the Eucharist. Clearly, public worship is a large part of the third rule. In all these things Wesley believed (and I still believe) that we encounter the presence of the living God. But the ordinances of God are not ends in and of themselves they are means to an end. That end is summed up in Bishop Reuben Job’s rephrasing of the third rule as “stay in love with God.” I believe that staying in love with God is an important reason, sufficient in it’s own right, to worship God.

So although God is the primary focus in worship, that focus affects those who are worshiping. When we worship, we encounter the presence of the living God—by the Spirit’s power, and not any intrinsic power within the means or the worshiper. Worship is therefore the celebration of who God is and what God has done and has the result of helping us encounter and remain in love with the God we celebrate.*

Now, in my never-resting mind, this is still not completely satisfactory, because—as the content of the psalms (ancient and holy hymns) reminds us—vital worship has long included the lifting up of our sorrows, concerns, and woes to God. But perhaps we need only expand the definition of who God is and what God has done to encompass the understanding of God as the God who hears our cry and responds in mercy.

*A caveat in line with a Wesleyan understanding of the means of grace: I need to state that we do not necessarily encounter God every or even most Sunday mornings. God is sovereign, free to work or not work within and without of the means of Grace.

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The Best of All

johnwesleyThe last words of John Wesley were, “The best of all, God is with us.” I just got back from visiting at the hospital and the longer I live the more I believe that John Wesley was absolutely right. No matter what we go through, no matter what we endure, no matter what we suffer (and likewise, though we tend to take less notice of this point, no matter how well our lives may be going, no matter how well the world is treating us at present, no matter how many blessings we can count), the best thing about life is that God is with us … always.

*More pictures of the Wesley’s can be found at: http://gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/.