Why It Matters

Mr. Wesley and I are talking about strangely warmed hearts

(picture taken by Scott Marchant in June 2017)

Despite being an elder in good standing in the NC Conference of the United Methodist Church, I have been serving as the Minister of Pastoral Care at First Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, NC for nearly seven years.  This fact never fails to raise a few eyebrows among some of my United Methodist colleagues and friends as well as among some Presbyterians.  I frequently have to answer such questions as: "Are you becoming a Presbyterian pastor now?" and "Is that a real appointment?" and "How does that even work?"  If you are interested, the answers to those three questions are (1) No, (2) Yes, and (3) under ¶344 1.d and  ¶345 of the Book of Discipline, I am appointed by the bishop and with the consent of the Board of Ordained Ministry to extension ministry with another denomination.  I am annually evaluated by the senior pastor who then reports to the bishop, I have to write up various reports for the church where my charge conference membership is, and I have to promise to attend Annual Conference.  No hardship -- I always go to Annual Conference!

It may seem overly technical and even boring to those whose lives are not as intricately bound up as mine is with such matters, and it can certainly get confusing, but I gladly submit to the process, not because I'm a masochist but because this is part of my identity as a pastor in this particular branch of the Christian family.  The Book of Discipline constitutes the doctrine and law of the United Methodist Church, setting out our polity and process for governance of the Church, and its roots go back well over 200 years to John Wesley himself.  Every four years, General Conference meets, and in the process of what Wesley somewhat optimistically called "holy conferencing," changes are made to the BOD to reflect shifts in understanding and practice.  It's an unwieldy system with lots of moving parts, and it is beyond the scope of this blog to go into much detail, but suffice it to say that it's rather like making sausage -- you'd probably prefer not to see how they actually do it.

Why am I even bringing this up, anyway?  Does it really matter?  After all, United Methodists and Presbyterians are both Christian denominations, and we have a lot in common, so what's the big deal?  Well, it matters because theology matters.  We do indeed have a lot in common as churches that worship the Triune God and hold Christ to be the fullness of God dwelling with us, but how we work all that out is often quite different. 

It's not just that we organize our church governance very differently, although that is part of it, and it's not just that Calvinists and Arminians have been involved in some pretty big arguments over matters like predestination and free will.  It matters to me because the Wesleys emphasized grace:  prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying in a way that not only makes logical sense to me but also resonates within my heart.  It matters because United Methodism became my theological home when I found that the Baptist tradition in which I had been raised had never been a good fit.  Rather like slipping on a soft shoe that conforms to your foot, it was with great relief that I acknowledged something that at least a few people saw long before I did, that I was indeed Wesleyan in my heart.

Working here at First Prez and loving these sisters and brothers as I do has done at least two things for my ministry.  It has reminded me of the reasons I became United Methodist in the first place, helping me to appreciate why we do what we do the way we do, and it has reminded me that Christ sets a table that is far larger than just my immediate family.  The Church is a mystical Body that includes a diversity of understandings and practices, and that is as it should be.  I suspect we will all be quite surprised in the fullness of time to see just how expansive that table is, and I look forward to the life to come when we gather for the heavenly banquet with our Host and see that in the end, it really is all about Love.

When You Know You're Loved

my mother holding me

In his sermon "On Love,"  John Wesley uses 1 Corinthians 13: 3 to hammer out his conviction that love is the foundation of everything in heaven and earth and that there is nothing we can do that is more important or more pleasing to God than our being filled by love and being guided by it.  In careful sentences and paragraphs he builds his case by posing questions and answering them or by asking rhetorical questions that hold the answer within themselves.  For example, after explaining that we are to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbor as ourselves, he asks:

Now, what is it to love God, but to delight in him, to rejoice in his will, to desire continually to please him, to seek and find our happiness in him, and to thirst day and night for a fuller enjoyment of him?

Then he turns to the question of what it means to love others as ourselves:

For he hath commanded us, not only to love our neighbour, that is, all [women and] men, as ourselves; -- to desire and pursue their happiness as sincerely and steadily as our own, -- but also to love many of his creatures in the strictest sense; to delight in them, to enjoy them: Only in such a manner and measure as we know and feel, not to indispose but to prepare us for the enjoyment of Him. Thus, then, we are called to love God with all our heart.

Wesley states that without love, we cannot live happy lives.  The more anger, malice, envy, fretfulness, or vengefulness we feel, the farther we are from true happiness and contentment, and in fact, John Wesley says, we are already experiencing the presence of "the worm that never dieth" and are hastening our way towards "the fire that can never be quenched."

And then he comes to the point I am most interested in today.  He turns his attention to the painful subject of death and makes these observations.

Secondly. Without love, nothing can make death comfortable.

By comfortable I do not mean stupid, or senseless. I would not say, he died comfortably who died by an apoplexy, or by the shot of a cannon, any more than he who, having his conscience seared, died as unconcerned as the beasts that perish. Neither do I believe you would envy any one the comfort of dying raving mad. But, by a comfortable death, I mean, a calm passage out of life, full of even, rational peace and joy. And such a death, all the acting and all the suffering in the world cannot give, without love.

I was holding my mother's hand when she died what Wesley would have called a "comfortable" or "good" death.  She died in confidence, filled with peace and joy;  she died in "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ," as the funeral liturgy says. That is not to say that she did not suffer beforehand, nor is it to imply that she was indifferent to the grief we would feel upon her death, but there was no fear, no regret, no looking back in sorrow.  No, there was only love:  hers, ours, and most of all, God's.  She wore a look of intense concentration, almost like a marathon runner intent on reaching the finish line, and so she was.  I believe that she could see something we could not and that she was running with joy towards it rather than slipping away from us with sadness.  I believe that she saw the face of Love itself and that she ran to meet that Love in anticipation of knowing even as she has been fully known, as St. Paul says in that same epistle

Among the last words I spoke to her during those moments were assurances that we would be all right without her because she had shown us how to be all right, that she had taught me how to live and that she was now teaching me how to die, and I meant it even as my heart broke and my voice with it.  I could watch her die a "comfortable" death without trying to tether her to this world with its pain and suffering because Love was in that room.  And when you know that you are loved, when you know that you are in the Spirit's embrace, even death itself has no power over you.  And just as I was safe in my mother's arms in this picture, so she is safe in the arms of Love now, and so shall I be. 

In his hymn "Forth in Thy Name," Charles Wesley expresses in poetry some of what John preaches in this sermon.  The final verse sums up my mother's life -- and her death -- very well.

For thee delightfully employ
whate’er thy bounteous grace hath given;
and run my course with even joy,
and closely walk with thee to heav’n.

And so, in Love, she did.

What Would Jesus Have Us Do?

Picture by Scott Marchant, taken at Rodel Church, Isle of Harris

Remember back in the late 1990's when those WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets and T-shirts and bumper stickers were all the rage?  It seemed like everybody was sporting something with that slogan on it, and I remember preaching a sermon that I entitled "What Would Jesus Have Us Do?" as a way of pushing folks into not just thinking but also into acting like Jesus out there in the world with all its complexity and confusion.  I can't say that I've given that sermon much thought in the 20 or so years since I preached it, but it came back to me today as I was reading Luke 18: 35-43.

In this passage, a blind man is yelling for Jesus to pay attention to him.  Everyone around him tries to keep him quiet, dismissively telling him to pipe down, but he persists in crying out for Jesus to have mercy on him.  As I sat with those verses, I imagined myself as a woman standing near the man, as someone who also tried to make him stop shouting albeit in a gentler way.  I then pictured Jesus calling for someone to help the man come to him, and I and another person flank the man and walk him towards Jesus.  In this meditation, I could not lift my eyes to meet Jesus' gaze.  I was ashamed of having been part of that crowd that tried to silence this man in his need.  I felt the guilt of having spoken harsh and hurtful words when healing and humility were needed.  I barely heard Jesus telling the man that his sight was restored and that his faith had healed him, but as the newly sighted man excitedly leapt into the crowd and was absorbed by people marveling and praising God, I find myself alone with Jesus. 

He looked at me, full in the face, and softly spoke.  "Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.  Look at the world through my eyes, the eyes of love and compassion, and don't be afraid to speak the truth in love.  Go now, in holy boldness, to serve God and neighbor!"  I sat with those words for a few minutes, feeling strangely as if I'd just been handed a mandate, which of course, I have.  All of us who are baptized into the Body of Christ are commissioned to be channels of grace and mercy, to be the hands and feet of Christ here on earth, so this is nothing new.  Rather, it was a reminder to me that Jesus would have me and you walk as he walked on earth, as one whose life was one of prayer and love for all people, in every time and place.  This was the vision and call to action that fired and energized the Methodist revival in the Wesleys' day, and this is the vision  and call to action that should keep us grounded and rooted in the midst of division and disunity in the Church and in the world today.  Resisting evil, protesting injustice, and speaking for the voiceless is part of the Christian's job description, but we cannot let ourselves be consumed by anger or bitterness.  We must speak and act and see in love.

My devotional for today included these words from a hymn written by Charles Wesley, part of which I paraphrased above:

Holy Lamb, who thee confess,
Follower of thy holiness,
Thee they ever keep in view,
Ever ask, "What shall we do?"

Governed by thy only will,
All thy words we would fulfill,
would in all thy footsteps go,
Walk as Jesus walked below.

While thou didst on earth appear,
Servant to thy servants here,
Mindful of thy place above,
All thy life was prayer and love.

So, what would Jesus have you do?  Maybe it's time to reflect on that and then do it.  I'm pretty sure it includes prayer and love and following him in holiness as you seek to live in peace with others.

 

What is Your Heart Made Of?

During my sabbatical, I came to see the Wesleys as real people much like us, as men and women whose lives were often quite difficult.  Just imagine Susanna giving birth to 19 children and burying most of them before her own death at 72 or trying to provide for them during those long stretches when Samuel was absent because of religious duties or because he was in a snit about something. Think of the pressures of trying to stretch each meal just a little further, of teaching her brood to read and write while also instructing them in the things of God, of somehow finding time to write in her journal or compose her deeply theological letters.  And picture her whole-hearted offering of her life to God within the only context open to her, as wife and mother, and the way she stretched those boundaries with her leadership of prayer meetings, her spiritual counsel/direction of her children, even her Oxford-educated clergy sons, and her willingness to push her husband to broaden his horizons enough to recognize her as a spiritual equal.

John was very much like his mother in personality.  Like her, he was practical and rational, playing his emotional cards close to the chest, and he was generally more subtle than Charles in his challenges to those with whom he disagreed.  But a trait that most, if not all of the Wesleys seemed to share was a willingness to take a stance even when that proved unpopular or even dangerous.  In 1787 and 1788, he took on the slave trade by preaching a fiery anti-slavery sermon right in the heart of Bristol, one of the major slave-trading ports in England and issuing his Thoughts Upon Slavery, in which he pulled no punches. 

The excerpt below piles image upon image as his questions relentlessly force the listeners/readers to see the human misery and woe arising from this lucrative, evil practice, leaving them no place to hide from his denunciation of its villainy.  These are not thoughts whose relevance is confined to the pages of history, however.  Wesley challenges us to confront the systemic evils of our day, demanding that we examine ourselves in the light of Christ and of our common humanity.  He does so in phrases and sentences that insist that we look at the abject wretchedness of all who suffer -- children, refugees, the homeless -- and recognize our culpability and our responsibility to relieve them by ending the practices that prolong their agony, not as a matter of politics but out of simple Christian love and compassion.  Perhaps you will be inspired to read the entire document, but more importantly, perhaps you will be inspired to act on behalf of the powerless, to speak for the voiceless, and to advocate for the least of these, our sisters and brothers, in the name and power of Jesus Christ.

Are you a man? Then you should have an human heart. But have you indeed? What is your heart made of? Is there no such principle as Compassion there? Do you never feel another's pain? Have you no Sympathy? No sense of human woe? No pity for the miserable? When you saw the flowing eyes, the heaving breasts, or the bleeding sides and tortured limbs of your fellow-creatures, was you a stone, or a brute? Did you look upon them with the eyes of a tiger? When you squeezed the agonizing creatures down in the ship, or when you threw their poor mangled remains into the sea, had you no relenting? Did not one tear drop from your eye, one sigh escape from your breast? Do you feel no relenting now? If you do not, you must go on, till the measure of your iniquities is full. Then will the Great GOD deal with You, as you have dealt with them, and require all their blood at your hands. 

Special, Just the Way You Are

This is me as a small child, getting into trouble.  

I enjoyed taking books out of the bookcase and sitting in it.

Along with just about everybody else in the US whose life has been touched in some way by Fred Rogers, I have seen the movie "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" It is a touchingly but not cloyingly sweet look at the life and ministry -- and yes, his work with children was his ministry -- of a genuinely kind man who never lost touch with the inner aches and fears he suffered as a boy.  He was able to do what so few of us are able to do as adults:  he could remember how it felt to look at the world with the eyes of a child, and he translated that into honest interactions with children around their dreams and their fears.

I didn't watch a lot of Mr. Rogers when I was a small child.  My appreciation for him came during my college years.  That may sound strange, but the same anxieties that plagued me as a girl continued to put in an appearance as I made the transition from teenager to young adult, and there was nothing as comforting as watching this slender man with the gentle eyes slipping into one of his home-made sweaters and hearing him say that he liked me just the way I was.  The acceptance and love that radiated from him was palpable and powerful.  Not in a muscle-bound, heavily armed sense but powerful in the grace-filled sense in which what the world calls weakness is actually greater than anything in heaven or earth.  Fred Rogers understood that the world is full of things that are frustrating and scary and wasn't afraid to say so.  He gave children (and by extension, adults) the permission to own their feelings, including the ones he was never allowed to give voice to when he was growing up, although he learned to channel his own adolescent anger through the keys of his piano.  By taking children seriously and giving them a sense of control over their emotions, he restored some balance to the seriously unfair world of childhood and helped to produce a better sense of person-hood in many young people.

Because he didn't fit neatly into the expected mold, he was an easy target for ridicule and mockery. He wasn't like most men on television or beyond it, for that matter, because he didn't talk down to anyone, including children, and he didn't use threats or violence to command attention.   Because of his message of acceptance and love, he was vilified by some as promoting an "entitlement" culture among children, and his funeral was protested by some who gleefully announced their belief that he was roasting in hell.  One can only imagine that he would have quietly tried to engage them in conversation to find out what in the world they were so afraid of, while standing his ground as the loving Christian man he always sought to be.  He made living like that look easy; it was and is anything but.

I was not alone in wiping away tears at the end of the movie.  I heard surreptitious sniffling and throat-clearing from others in the theatre.  The depth of emotion called up stems from a variety of reasons, some of them sentimental and nostalgic, but more than that, I think it's because Fred Rogers offers us a different lens through which to view the neighborhood of our world.  He offers us a chance to reflect upon what it really means to be a neighbor in a world that is bitterly divided, showing us that there is a better way to engage and express oneself than with the internet trolling and name-calling that have become the lingua franca of the day.  And he certainly exemplifies a kinder way of being a neighbor to the vulnerable children among us, understanding that childhood trauma is not easily healed and that little ones need to be loved and cherished and nurtured in healthy relationships within families, not tossed into institutions where their physical needs are barely met and their emotional needs not at all.

Above all that, he points us towards Jesus Christ, who didn't fit the mold, either, the One who embraced and valued children and saw in them the very essence of the kingdom of God, the One who was asked to define "neighbor" and responded by telling a story.  Fred Rogers didn't invent compassion or love or respect for his neighbor, but he lived his life as a follower of the One whose grace for each one of us doesn't depend on us earning it or deserving it, for we are all special, each and every one of us, just the way we are.  I'm glad Mr. Rogers was my neighbor.  I hope I can be one, too.

When It's Stuck in Your Head

I did not create this meme and have no idea who did so. Hopefully I'm not violating any kind of copyright or intellectual property law because it really says it all!  It's that time of year when churches are either holding Vacation Bible School or have already had their VBS -- and since we had ours a few weeks ago, this meme hit the nail on the head.  Those songs from "Shipwrecked VBS" are still popping up on my internal CD player, sometimes at the craziest times.  Popularly known as "ear-worms," they are, quite literally, stuck in my head.

Music has the power to call forth emotion, to summon up old memories, to make new information easier to remember, to change the way we think, even to bring us into the very presence of God.  Music can lull a child to sleep or provoke a warrior to strike.  If you don't believe me, try putting a baby to bed to the sound of bagpipes or re-enacting Braveheart to the tune of Brahms' lullaby! 

Furthermore, the perfect marriage of lyrics with tune is a potent reminder of experiences and events in a person's life, calling forth the heartache of loss as well as the joy of falling in love. To a person suffering from dementia, a long-cherished line of a song can reopen the doors to half-forgotten thoughts and even to speech.  You see this again and again in care facilities and at bedsides.  One of my church members who does a lot of visiting frequently engages the folks she sees with a familiar hymn or two.  More often than not, the person will at least attempt to sing along or at the very least will smile or try to mouth the words.

The early Methodist revival was a vehicle for and recipient of the power of hymn-singing, especially through lifting up the poetry of Charles Wesley through familiar tunes.  Like his father Samuel and his sister Hetty, Charles had a gift for expressing the heights and depths of human experience through his poems and hymns.  Whenever I'm visiting a church, I like to flip through the hymnals to see how many times his name shows up.  You will be hard pressed to find a Protestant hymnal that doesn't include "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," "O, For a Thousand Tongues," or "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."  In his lifetime, he is estimated to have written upwards of 6000 hymns, so that barely scratches the surface of his output or of his influence.  

Christianity is a religion of the Word -- of Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh, and of the Bible, so it is not surprising that so many of Charles Wesley's words live on.  Very few of his sermons have survived the years; many of his poems have achieved immortality.  The combination of sharp intellect with warmed heart was and is a hallmark of Methodism, meant to be used to spread the good news of God's love in Christ to all people, encouraging them to allow the Spirit to create in them "holiness of heart and life."  

Interestingly, the British and American tunes for some of Charles' most well-known hymns are quite different.  I had to really pay attention last summer when we were singing "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," for example.  To my joy, Sagina, the tune used for "And Can It Be," is one that we share, and singing that with a group of American and English Methodists at Wesley Memorial in Epworth was one of the highlights of my sabbatical.  I only learned this masterpiece of a hymn 20 years or so ago, and only after singing and listening to it repeatedly was I able to remember the words.  But once the tune and the words were so intertwined that I couldn't think of one without the other, I found that this poem was so deeply ingrained in me that hardly a day passes without me reflecting on some phrase or thought from it.

Because, you see, when it's stuck in your head, it gets stuck in your heart, too.  And only then can the Spirit really get to work, transforming your innermost being into the likeness and image of Christ, the One of whom Charles penned these exultant words:

He left his Father's throne above 
(so free, so infinite his grace!), 
emptied himself of all but love, 
and bled for Adam's helpless race. 
'Tis mercy all, immense and free, 
for O my God, it found out me! 
'Tis mercy all, immense and free, 
for O my God, it found out me! 

When it's stuck in your head, it's stuck in your heart, and in your soul, and in your life, and nothing will ever be the same again as you are being changed by God's immeasurable mercy and compassion.  Even the angels cannot explain or understand God's infinite grace, and so perhaps in his wonderment and gratitude Charles says it best --

Amazing love! How can it be 
that thou my God shouldst die for me?

Thanks be to God!