A Little Holy Discomfort

While at Duke for a week of study leave, I have been attending worship services, reading in the Divinity School library, poring over letters to and from the Wesleys in the Rare Book Room, and conversing with others here for the same purpose.  And I've been walking the halls of Duke Divinity School, a place I once knew very well, a place where I spent 7 mostly happy years, a place that has changed radically in the (ahem) several years since I was last enrolled here.

As I walk, I see all sorts of things.  The art on the walls.  The intensely colorful stained glass windows.  The church pews parked invitingly in every nook and cranny.  And I noticed this "notice" board.  It's like most of its kind in that it holds a lot of information:  invitations to eat for free, to experience a healing service, to attend the lecture of a visiting scholar -- and then there's the announcement that caught my eye in the first place, the dark blue notice in the bottom right hand space, a simple sign that invites the reader to respose, reflect, and refresh.

Some time ago, I wrote about many of the "R" words that described my sabbatical, and I included a picture from the New Room that featured a sign beckoning the passerby to reflect, relax, respond, and research.  Both the notice board from Duke and the sign outside the New Room in Bristol have one word in common, reflect.  To reflect can mean to simply shine back what is being beamed at you, but it can also mean to sit with something, to mull it over, to give it room in your heart as well as in your mind.  Reflecting isn't always easy or tranquil; it has been known to create a little holy discomfort, and that's part of what I'm experiencing this week.

And I'm in very good company, as it happens! On June 24, 1759, two decades after John Wesley first "submitted to be more vile" and preached in the open air, he noted approvingly in his journal that during the previous 2 days, he had preached to twice the number of people than could have fit into the preaching house there.  He wrote:

What marvel the devil does not love field preaching? Neither do I. I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal if I do not trample all these under foot in order to save one more soul? 

I love how real Wesley is.  I love that he's not too holy to admit that, even after 20 years of slogging through rain, snow, heat, mud, and every kind of weather in order to preach under trees, at the market cross, at the coal-face, and other undesirable locations, he'd still much prefer to be in a nice, dry, clean sanctuary with all the amenities.  Wesley was no masochist, and he didn't enjoy being reviled by mischief-makers, being regarded disapprovingly by his beloved Church of England, or being thought of as eccentric.  He was the very proper son of the Epworth rectory, Christ Church educated, and a Fellow of Lincoln College, but he didn't let personal preferences or inhibitions or rejection deter him from doing what he felt the Spirit empowering him to do.  No, Wesley took that holy discomfort to heart and he found himself, no, he put himself in situations and with people that were totally beyond his control or comfort level because he could see that doing so was bearing fruit in the changed lives of women and men who knew themselves to be loved by the God whose Son put himself in a place of holy discomfort on their behalf.

I thought about that today as I participated in a worship service that made me really uncomfortable.  I thought I knew what it was going to be like, and it was much louder, less structured, and more emotional than the worship experiences I typically lead or attend.  I found it hard to follow the unfamiliar songs, became distracted by the loud extemporaneous prayers of some of my fellow worshipers, and retreated into my head when things were at their most alien.  I knew I'd have to take some time to honestly reflect on the experience to see what was so disturbing about it and to honestly search for the fruit of the Spirit.  In doing so, I thought of Wesley.  Big shock, right?  I mean, this IS a blog called Travels With Wesley! 

I thought about Wesley, the little Oxford don who loved for things to be done decently and in order, whose carefully laid plans just kept going astray, and whose zeal for God exceeded his own desire for self-fulfillment.  When people shouted and even fell out during his worship services, his tidy, reasonable soul must have shrunk with horror, but he doggedly persisted, trusting that the Spirit might be up to something that he, John Wesley might find "vile" but which might just be an opening into the inauguration of the biggest revival movement Britain had ever witnessed.  And so, while I can't claim that I will ever feel at home with particularly emotional expressions of faith and prayer, I know that I need to live into that holy discomfort a little bit more, embracing the fact that the God of surprises is still in the business of stirring things up, whether I like it or not.