Shocking Revelations about John Wesley

As part of an ongoing commitment to share my sabbatical insights with folks, I recently had the opportunity to do a Wesley presentation for the senior adult group of a United Methodist church in North Carolina.  It was a lot of fun for a variety of reasons:  good food, good fellowship, catching up with a clergy friend/ colleague, and talking about -- what else? -- the Wesleys.

After eating deviled eggs, ham, and a zillion desserts, we opened with singing a couple of verses of "O, For A Thousand Tongues" and then I talked them through a short version of my Power Point. One of the first pictures I showed them was a variation of the statue of John Wesley seen above.  I asked if they knew who it was, and nobody said anything, so I told them and suggested that they guess "John Wesley" from then on if I asked them to identify someone.  Obediently, when I showed them the picture below, they called out "John Wesley!"  But of course, I had tricked them because this one is actually of Charles!



In a lightning quick tour of early Methodism, it's hard to figure out which high points to touch upon and which ones will have to wait for a later date, but I tried to go for a mixture of things they already knew and things they had probably never heard.  With that in mind, I showed them a picture of John Wesley's electrical device --

I reminded them that the 18th century was an age of scientific inquiry and discovery and that John Wesley, like Benjamin Franklin, was interested in the potential of electricity to benefit human life.  Wesley bought a few of these devices that use static electricity to deliver a mild shock as a part of his campaign to provide cheap, effective medical care to the poor.  He wrote an entire book entitled Primitive Physick that lists all kinds of cures and folk remedies for various ailments, including rubbing one's head with an onion to reverse baldness and tending to a toothache by electrifying it.  We may smile condescendingly at Wesley's naivete (as seen from our 21st century standpoint), but in doing so, we must not lose sight of his underlying goal -- sharing the love of God with people in all aspects of their lives, including their physical as well as spiritual well-being in his sphere of concern.

Wesley knew that God is the God of all creation, a God who desires wholeness for all of creation, and in everything that he did, Wesley sought to carry that message to those who needed to hear it most.  In some small way, by telling bits and pieces of the stories of early Methodism, I am trying to do the same thing, to share a message of grace and redemption and hope and yes, even perfection in love, with everyone I encounter.

But I probably won't offer to shock you or cure your baldness ...