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! 💖
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