Behold, All Things are Become New

What happens now?  This is a question that many United Methodists are asking in the wake of General Conference 2019.  There are dozens of websites, blogs, Facebook pages, and so forth if you want to read specifics or get a particular spin, and I see no reason to add my meager two cents worth to that collection.  My grief and sorrow and disappointment are beyond the power of words to describe.   Instead, I want to tell you a story.  It's a story about a gift and the exquisite timing of receiving that gift.

On Monday, when the eyes of everyone interested in General Conference were turned towards St. Louis, my husband drove to see his father, and while he was there, his dad gave him a wrapped package.  He had been to Haiti on a mission trip to Haiti where he met a man who handmade all sorts of things out of scrap metal, and he asked the man to make a cross and flame for me, knowing how much I love the United Methodist Church.  When Scott got home, he handed it to me as I stood in the kitchen weeping over the coverage of the Conference, and with trembling fingers I took it from him and put it on our counter.  It's still there, two days later, even though the Church it symbolizes is splintering into bits and pieces.  Thinking of my last blog post, I said, "It's beautiful.  What am I going to do with it now, though?  It turns out that the center could not hold.  I wasn't ready for this.  I really thought we might figure out some way to stay together.  I really wasn't ready for this."

Many years ago, Belton Joyner, a well-respected pastor who also served on the Cabinet as a DS and on Conference staff in our Annual Conference was asked to speak to a group of us about a moment when the Holy Spirit did something unexpected and the people responded.  He had been at a district meeting where the conversation was flying thick and fast over the question of civil rights and whether or not white United Methodist churches would open their doors to their African-American neighbors.  One after the other, people stood up at the microphone to protest, until finally, one very old man took his cane in hand and slowly walked forward.  Everyone leaned forward to listen because he was a very well-respected layperson in that district.  He looked at Belton and said, "I am not ready.  My church is not ready.  But God is ready."  And with that, he took his seat.  The entire tenor of the conversation and mood in the room changed.  Of course, that doesn't mean that it was smooth sailing from that point on, but this unlikely agent of change felt the Spirit lay something on his heart and knew that he had to act upon it.

And so, even though I still don't feel ready, perhaps the Spirit is ready for something new to come out of the old, something that may or may not be symbolized by that lovely cross and flame.   John Wesley's translation of 2 Corinthians 5: 17 reads: Therefore if any one be in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  To that, he added the commentary "Only the power that makes a world can make a Christian."  Maybe we might paraphrase that to say that only the power that makes a world can make a Church, and maybe recognizing and remembering that is the real gift received this week.  Whether the UMC sinks or swims, the work of Christ's kingdom will go on, and if we are truly in Christ, all things are indeed being made new.  May that power that makes the world and the Church be at work in and through all of us, even if we aren't ready.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" or "Let us all thy life receive"?

Charles Wesley

Since January, many of us at First Presbyterian Church have been reading and watching and discussing Adam Hamilton's book/video study called Christianity's Family Tree in which he looks at several denominations in order to highlight things we can appreciate and learn from each other.  In the final chapter, the one focusing on Methodism, he quotes Bishop Scott Jones as saying that United Methodists are people of the "extreme center."  Jones says, "The center is a very hard position to maintain because there are always people who are sniping at you from the extremes .... By occupying the extreme center, we see the value of both sides and try to carve out a position, ... that embraces the whole gospel."

This observation from Bishop Jones about the push and pull from the extremes echoes words written by John Wesley to his brother Samuel that I lifted up in my last post --

One blames him for not going fast enough, another for having made no greater progress, another for going too far -- which perhaps, strange as it is, is the more common charge of the two.  

We've certainly been seeing examples of this sniping during this special called General Conference, online in Facebook groups, in comments on various blogs, and in person between United Methodists who disagree vehemently.  The very future of the denomination hangs in the balance as the Conference continues today and concludes tomorrow.  I am reminded of the grimly appropriate reflections of Irish poet W.B. Yeats in his poem "The Second Coming" --

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I don't know if the center can or will hold -- or even if it should.  I don't know if that is the best outcome.  I am not arrogant enough to claim to be sure what God's best dream and hope for us is.  But I do know this.  These are days that are rancorous enough to make the angels weep, and many of us, no matter where our convictions lie, are being torn asunder as we pray and long for God's way forward to be made manifest in our Church and in our lives. 

One of the first places Charles Wesley's hymns ever rang out, 

The New Room, Bristol

As I sit in my office at First Presbyterian watching the live stream, our church bells suddenly peal out Charles Wesley's unforgettable hymn "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," and through my tears, I find myself singing:

Come, Almighty to deliver,
Let us all Thy life receive;
Suddenly return, and never,
Nevermore Thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
Serve Thee as Thy hosts above,
Pray and praise Thee without ceasing,
Glory in Thy perfect love.

May we find our center in praying and praising God without ceasing, learning again, somehow, the way to glory together in that perfect Love.  Let us all that Life receive!

The Same Household of Faith

The Old Rectory, Epworth, home of the Wesleys (1695-1735)

A special called session of General Conference of the United Methodist Church began meeting this morning in St. Louis with delegates from across the worldwide "Connexion" gathering for a day of prayer, worship, and communion before the fighting, oops, I mean, conference business begins.  There have been pleas for the Holy Spirit to surprise us, hymns sung in many different languages, and a powerful moment in which Bishop Kenneth Carter, president of the Council of Bishops, and Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett led worshipers in looking into each other's faces and saying, “If I have done anything intended or unintended to harm you, please forgive me. May the peace of Christ be with you.” 

This followed a reminder from Bishop Wallace-Padgett that no one had yet specifically called for prayer for the LGBT members of the United Methodist Church, the very people whose ministry and life within the church is being debated so fiercely.  The Book of Discipline affirms that everyone is to be regarded as being "of sacred worth" but adds a caveat -- "The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve in The United Methodist Church."  There has been a tremendous diversity of opinion regarding homosexuality in almost every denomination, and the UMC has been no exception.  Just how are we to understand human sexuality as United Methodists, first and foremost, in light of scripture, and then in light of the tradition of the Church, reason and scientific learning, and the reality of experiencing the Holy Spirit?  How to interpret and understand this and how to hold fast within the tension has been at the heart of the struggles in the UMC for decades.  For many years, the arguments have raged, and members of the very same household of faith have hurled insults with the accuracy of daggers at each other.  Love has at times been in very short supply, even at the table of the Lord.

I ran across a letter that the young Oxford don John Wesley wrote to his brother Samuel on November 17, 1731, in which he defends himself against those who find him and his very precise habits strange.  Unlike most fashionable gentlemen of the day, John wore his own hair, saving himself the cost of having his hair cut as well as the expense of maintaining a well-powdered wig so that he might give that money to the poor.  This eccentricity along with his very serious and "singular" demeanor apparently rendered him "uneasy" in company where he was perceived as being very formal and perhaps lacking in humor.  He was often the butt of jokes and teasing of others at Oxford, but he seems to expect it and almost to take it in stride, telling Samuel that Dr. Thomas Hayward warned Wesley and the others ordained with him that in becoming priests they were "bidding defiance to all mankind" and that "whether his hand be against every man or not, he must expect every man's hand should be against him."  John writes that it was no surprise if non-Christians were opposed to those seeking to live holy and disciplined lives but goes on to lament that opposition was not confined to such as they.  Perhaps as a dig at Samuel himself for not always understanding him, he goes on to ask:

But is it not hard that even those that are with us should be against us; that a man's enemies (in some degree) should be those of the same household of faith?  Yet so it is.  From the time that a man sets himself to his business, very many, even of those who travel the same road, many of those who are before, as well as behind him, will lay stumbling-blocks in his way.  One blames him for not going fast enough, another for having made no greater progress, another for going too far -- which perhaps, strange as it is, is the more common charge of the two.  

How great a stumbling block are we Methodists laying in the way of those who look to us, expecting to see love and grace and compassion among us but find instead broken relationships, self-righteous banter, hostility if not downright hatred, and a conspicuous lack of holiness of life and heart?  We who have been of the same household of faith have vilified each other and torn each other down rather than building each other up in love for far too long.  I don't know what the results will be of this special called General Conference, but I do know that we are falling short of the glory of God when we fail to look at each other and see in our sisters' and brothers' countenances the very image of God.  It would behoove us (good archaic word there) to reflect upon these words written by Charles Wesley and make them our prayer for our dealings with our fellow Methodists and indeed, with all people who on earth do dwell --

Help us to help each other, Lord,
Each other’s cross to bear;
Let all their friendly aid afford,
And feel each other’s care.

Help us to build each other up,
Our little stock improve;
Increase our faith, confirm our hope,
And perfect us in love.

Up into thee, our living Head,
Let us in all things grow,
Till thou hast made us free indeed,
And spotless here below.

Detours on God's Way Forward

On Wednesdays, I attend the noon Eucharist service at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.  When I was first appointed to a church in Fayetteville almost 20 years ago, I wanted a place where I could worship from time to time without having to be one of the preachers or liturgists, and the time of their service fit neatly into my schedule.  Over the years, my attendance has waxed and waned, but for the past two years, I have been able to be there almost every week.

Because traffic is unpredictable and there always seems to be a train or two coming through downtown, I try to leave First Presbyterian around 25 minutes early, and today was no exception.  To my annoyance, every road I tried to take between where I was and where I wanted to be was either closed, under construction, or packed with a long line of cars because of all the detours.  I kept turning into street after street and having to do a U-turn because there was no way through.  Add to that the rainy weather and my innate dismay at arriving late anywhere, and you can just imagine my frustration and irritability.  I even said out loud to myself,  "You are really going to need Jesus by the time you get there!"

Not surprisingly, by the time I arrived, my nerves were frayed, and I blew into the sanctuary as if all the devils of hell were chasing me, only to discover that the rector wasn't even there yet.  As I sat and tried to catch my breath and collect my thoughts enough to compose myself for prayer, it occurred to me that this was a great metaphor for the way the spiritual life goes sometimes.  Things may be going along in one direction, and we think we have a clear sense of what comes next, only to be blown off course by road closures of one type or another.  Maybe the perfect job we always wanted turns out to be a bureaucratic nightmare. Perhaps we discover that someone we idolize has an all-too-unheroic side, or maybe we realize that we don't have all the answers and that all our best-laid plans may not line up with God's best hopes and dreams for us.  We run right smack into the detour zone and try as we might, we just can't seem to get where we intended to go, and frustration builds.

It also occurred to me that the current situation in the United Methodist Church is a bit like that.  Since 1972, the denomination has been roiled in discord over the role of our LGBT sisters and brothers in ministry, and every General Conference has seen an increase in anger and much less common ground, with the result that a special General Conference was called and will begin meeting on Saturday, February 23 to settle the issue once and for all.  No one knows what will happen when all the delegates gather, but there is a grim sense that this will mark the end of the Church, an outcome heartily desired by some and grievously unwanted by others.  It seems a foregone conclusion that whatever the decisions reached, we are witnessing the fall of what has been a place of nurture and spiritual growth for many but which has also been a place of pain and exclusion for many, as well.  The rector at Holy Trinity always offers worshipers an opportunity to receive anointing and a prayer for healing, so today, I asked him to pray for the United Methodist Church in this season of change and uncertainty.  He marked my forehead with the sign of the cross and prayed for us with these words (among others):  "Work through them, speak through them, and most of all, love through them."  "Most of all, love through them."  It was a very Wesleyan thing to say.

In his sermon "On Love," Wesley draws an intimate connection between love and true happiness, pointing out that ongoing thoughts of revenge and feelings of anger only serve to make us miserable, urging his listeners to cultivate gentleness and patience and love instead. The Holy Spirit, Wesley says, stands ready to renew our hearts and fill them with the love of God, leading us into present and eternal happiness.  Whatever else happens at General Conference, my deepest desire and hope is that love will abound and that even if separation ensues, we can move forward without vilifying each other and making each other and ourselves so bitterly unhappy.  Maybe GC 2019 will prove to be one of those detours that is actually leading us in God's way forward.  O Lord, may it be so!  O Lord, love through us!

First, without love nothing can so profit us as to make our lives happy. By happiness I mean, not a slight, trilling pleasure, that perhaps begins and ends in the same hour; but such a state of well-being as contents the soul, and gives it a steady, lasting satisfaction ...; and the more you depart from it, the pain is the greater .... The more the opposite tempers -- anger, fretfulness, revenge -- prevail, the more unhappy you are. You know it; you feel it; nor can the storm be allayed, or peace ever return to your soul, unless meekness, gentleness, patience, or, in one word, love, take possession of it. Does any man find in himself ill-will, malice, envy, or any other temper opposite to kindness? Then is misery there; and the stronger the temper, the more miserable he is. If the slothful man may be said to eat his own flesh, much more the malicious, or envious. His soul is the very type of hell; -- full of torment as well as wickedness. He hath already the worm that never dieth, and he is hastening to the fire that never can be quenched. Only as yet the great gulf is not fixed between him and heaven. As yet there is a Spirit ready to help his infirmities; who is still willing, if he stretch out his hands to heaven, and bewail his ignorance and misery, to purify his heart from vile affections, and to renew it in the love of God, and so lead him by present, up to eternal, happiness.

Happy Valentine's Day, John Wesley!

A genuine Christian is one who "is peculiarly and inexpressibly happy in the clearest and fullest conviction: "This all-powerful, all-wise, all-gracious Being , this Governor of all, loves ME.  This lover of my soul is always with me, is never absent; no, not for a moment.  And I love him: there is none in heaven but thee, none on earth that I desire beside thee.  And he has given me to resemble himself; he has stamped his image on my heart. And I live unto him; I do only his will; I glorify him with my body and my spirit.  And it will not be long until I shall die unto him, I shall die into the arms of God. And then farewell sin and pain, then it only remains that I should live with him forever. ~ John Wesley (Plain Account of Genuine Christianity)

Today is Valentine's Day, one of the biggest retail seasons of the year. Cards, chocolate, flowers, and wine all feature heavily in the celebration of human love observed today.  There is no doubt in my mind that John Wesley would have been highly critical of the whole enterprise, considering it a waste of money that would be better shared with the poor and finding it strange that anyone would make romantic love the focus of one's attention for even a day.

That doesn't mean he was uninterested in love or sexual expressions of it.  Far from it. Attractive to and attracted by women, John Wesley fell in love easily and almost giddily, but his strong passion for the opposite sex warred with his conviction that it was far better for clergymen and the Methodist lay preachers, male and female, to remain celibate so as to devote 100% of their time and energy to the work of spreading the gospel.  He struggled most of his life with his very natural enjoyment of the company of women and the strong call he felt to the single life.  It is tempting to speculate on how his life and ministry and indeed, the whole trajectory of the Methodist revival might have been had he been able to marry the love of his life, Grace Murray.  Would he have been less of a workaholic and more understanding of human frailty if he had been a father?  Would Methodism have been even more egalitarian if his life's companion had been working right by his side in ministry?  Or would the spread of the Methodist societies have stagnated had he experienced marital bliss?

Impossible to say, of course.  Late in life, his own understanding was that things had probably worked out for the best, musing that a happier home life would have made him less useful in his itinerant ministry.   Equanimity and calm acceptance of the way things were came very slowly over the years of an unhappy and disappointing marriage, but his relationship with Charles was forever changed.  Though he forgave the shattering blow of his brother's betrayal at encouraging Grace (by telling her falsely that John no longer loved her) to marry the other suitor for her hand, detailed in a heartbreaking and painfully honest poem of despair, they were never as close as they had once been.

In the end, as John himself  would have been the first to admit, his deepest passion and most ardent love was for the One both he and his  brother called "the lover of my soul," finding in Christ the most abiding love of all.  Many of us today struggle with balancing our family or marriage with the demands of ministry, finding it hard to meet the often unrealistic expectations placed on us by others. Not surprisingly, I doubt we look to his example for inspiration since he was never able to resolve that tension in a healthy way, though it was not wholly his fault since he and his wife Molly were so completely unsuited to be marriage partners. Still, his ability to wholeheartedly abandon himself to the love of God IS a model for our lives, challenging us to trust implicitly the One into whose arms we fall, into the perfect Love that will never die or leave us to our own devices.  And so, a very Happy Valentine's Day, Mr. Wesley, from your spiritual descendants! 💖

Faults, Foibles, and Failures

While John Wesley revealed less about himself in his journal than one might have expected, his letters show a side of him that is altogether more human and more approachable or at least more "real."  In his letters, he addresses topics as wide-ranging as the physical and spiritual health of his recipient, the latest crisis among the Methodist preachers, his quarrels with his wife, and his opinion on just how far to go in extending the benefit of the doubt to someone.

His marriage to Mary "Molly" Vazeille was a notoriously unhappy failure. They were entirely unsuited and had unreasonable expectations of each other from the very beginning -- and their life together was a disaster. Just as we might, Wesley freely unburdens himself in letters to certain trusted friends, always assuming that he is in the right, of course!  He sounds like any disgruntled husband trying to enlist his friend's support against an unreasonable spouse.  Here he concludes a letter of complaint about his wife to his banker friend Ebenezer Blackwell with words that might have stayed his hand from writing in the first place had he had heeded his own advice!

The more we know of our own faults and the less of other people's, the more will the work of God prosper in our hearts. ~John Wesley (Letter to Ebenezer Blackwell 2 March 1759)

A few years later, in an entirely different context, he writes to one of his preachers who is encountering some obstacles in his ministry, warning him against being impatient and making snap judgments.  Perhaps he was mellowing a bit as the years passed and wanted to pass along his hard-earned wisdom and experience.

Sammy, beware of the impetuosity of your temper! It may easily lead you awry... The longer I live the larger allowances I make for human infirmities. I exact more from myself and less from others. Go thou and do likewise!-- I am, with love to Nancy, Your ever affectionate friend and brother. Take nothing, absolutely nothing, at second hand. ~ John Wesley (Letter to Reverend Samuel Furley 25 January 1762)

In this last example, we see Wesley engaging in a theological dispute with an unknown opponent via letters in the London Magazine.  As one trained in logic and debate, we see him at his most testy and yet at his most polite as he moves in for the kill --

Permit me, sir, to give you one piece of advice. Be not so positive; especially with regard to things which are neither easy nor necessary to be determined. When I was young I was sure of everything. In a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before. At present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to [humankind]. ~ John Wesley (reply to a letter signed "Philosophaster," addressed to him in the London Magazine of 1774, in London Magazine)

Sometimes it is distressing to discover that one's heroes have feet of clay.  The illusion is shattered, with the result that we scramble to make the pieces fit together again in a new way.  But I am strangely encouraged by these glimpses into the foibles and human frailties of John Wesley.  Seeing that he was just as prone to being self-righteous in arguments as we are and just as eager to tell his side of the story first makes him a believable companion on the Christian journey.  Here is no saint with a perfectly burnished halo but a human being with blind spots, prejudices, and rough edges, and yet God raised him up to be an instrument of revival, transformation, and hope.  What might Christ be able to do with you and me if we are as open to doing God's will?  Where might the Spirit take us?  Are you willing to find out?