Pandemic 2020

Pandemic 2020

It’s still Lent, but it feels like

we’re stuck in

an extended

     Holy Saturday,

sheltering in the tomb, 

trapped in an

     endless silent waiting room that can only be

shattered, cracked open

By

     The One

who bursts the gates of Hell

By

     The “King of glory,

Soul of bliss”

Made like him

We, too shall rise

And Alleluia will again resound

For

Even at the Grave

Especially at the Grave

We make our song

Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia

Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia

Alleluia Alleluia Alleluia

God is ...

There's a lot of fear and uncertainty right now, and not surprisingly, we're using humor to help us deal with it. A popular Facebook meme going around invites us to engage in a silly exercise -- Type “God is” and let auto fill define your theology. 

Predictably, most of the responses are nonsensical or funny, but when I did it, my auto fill came up with this: God is the one way I see you.  I don't generally expect great theology to emerge from online randomness, but that seems a powerful sentence for this and any time because our actions during this global crisis are informed by how we see each other. And inevitably, if God is the lens through which I view you, my perspective changes.

Seeing you through God's eyes means loving you; it means seeing you as my neighbor . That might mean that I am praying for you, calling or emailing you, posting encouraging things on Facebook, buying only what I absolutely need, and above all, it may mean keeping away from you physically, hunkering down at home, and connecting in a way that poses fewer health risks.  It doesn't mean irresponsibly shopping, mingling, socializing, or gathering. It means giving up my desire to carry on as usual in favor of trying to protect and care for you. 

John Wesley cared deeply about seeing people as God sees them, and this concern led him to provide inexpensive health care and remedies for people who were unable to pay for medical help.  His love for others was rooted in the love of Christ, who raised the fallen, cheered the faint, healed the sick, and led the blind, as Charles Wesley expressed it in his comforting hymn "Jesus, Lover of my Soul."

The challenges are many and great; the future shadowy and uncertain, but we have the opportunity to love each other in tangible, though non-physical ways that are literally life-saving.  Let this time of unprecedented global disease be a time of unprecedented global love! Let your vision be transformed until you view your neighbor with God's loving eyes!  Let God be the one way you see others, in a time of pandemic and always!

Believe More, Love More: You Cannot Love Enough

It’s a different kind of Lent this year.

Instead of vices or bad habits,
we’ve given up assembling in large groups and
worshipping in the flesh.

We aren’t hugging or shaking hands
if we do meet
And much of life has gone online
underground
Hidden like the grain of wheat that dies
And then rises again, a full sheaf ready for harvest.

For some, it is inconvenient
annoying
complicated

For some, it is a question of life or death
A matter
of trudging along and trying to be safe
because we have
no safety net
no health insurance

For all of us, it’s a time
to take stock of our lives
assessing and treasuring what really matters.

Of sharing toilet paper and sanitizer
Of helping rather than hoarding
Of loving by social distancing
But not distancing ourselves from love

Never distancing ourselves from love

In a letter to Miss March, John Wesley wrote,

"Receive a thousand more blessings;
believe more, love more: you cannot love enough.
(May 13, 1762)

"If it be possible for God to give us a little love, is it not possible for him to fill us with love?"

I like to use pictures in my posts on Facebook and on this blog. Images are a powerful means of getting people's attention and drawing them in to learn more. It's frustrating to me when I can't find just the right one.

Like today. I want to tell you about an early Methodist saint named Sarah Crosby, and the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church has identified this as a picture of her, but it doesn't look much like pictures of some of the other English Methodist women. But I'm no expert, so let's assume it's her.

Sarah Crosby was born in 1729, converted in 1749, quickly became a class leader known for her praying ability, and she was one of the preaching women in a circle of Methodist women closely connected with the ministry of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher.

She heard John Wesley and George Whitefield both preach in 1750, but she wasn't all that taken with Wesley's theology or his preaching at first. Like Whitefield, she was (initially) a Calvinist who believed Christ died only for the elect, while Wesley was an Arminian who believed Christ died for all people.

She read Wesley's sermon on Christian Perfection, however, and she remembered one sentence, one question, from hearing him preach about it, and it literally changed her life. They later became close friends, and she candidly told him that she had thought he preached with no power the first time she heard him but that she couldn't get that question out of her head --

"IF IT BE POSSIBLE FOR GOD TO GIVE US A LITTLE LOVE, 

IS IT NOT POSSIBLE FOR HIM TO FILL US WITH LOVE?"

As she prayed and reflected on those words, and as she received communion and continued reading scripture and meeting with other Christians, she became convinced that, if that was Christian Perfection, she believed God could and would do just that, even in and for her.  She felt a tremendous sense of God's presence, even receiving visions of Christ standing before her, calling her to feed his lambs.  This inner witness enabled her to begin speaking publicly to classes of both women and men, and when Wesley cautiously gave his blessing, he could never have dreamed of the vital preaching ministry she would have.

As I write my little book about early Methodist women preachers, I am captivated by that question, too.  All ordained United Methodists are asked if they are earnestly seeking and expecting to receive this perfection in their lifetime, and we answer "yes," not because we are so good but because God is so great! And in early Methodism, everyone was expected to be seeking this gift of grace, as well.

In these fractious times within and outside the Church, I have to wonder what difference it would make if every single one of us were to pray earnestly for that gift of perfect love to fill our hearts. What if we were daily reading the Bible, weekly meeting with other Christians, constantly feeding the hungry, regularly receiving holy communion, and expectantly praying for the love that fills one so completely that there is no room for sin?

With election season in full swing and as General Conference looms ever nearer, I can't think of a more important spiritual practice than this, for us to ask the Spirit to be at work in us as the Spirit was at work in Sarah Crosby, making us capable of loving as Christ loves.

What do you think? How will you answer the question?

If it be possible for God to give us a little love, is it not possible for God to fill us with love?

Dying Well with John Wesley

On March 2, 1791 after a five day illness, John Wesley died at his home next door to his chapel on City Road. During his final hours, despite his obvious weakness he surprised onlookers by singing Isaac Watts’ hymn “I’ll Praise my Maker While I’ve Breath” and by telling them at least twice that “the best of all is God is with us.”

Methodists were known for dying well, that is, for facing the end of earthly life with confidence and trust that they would soon be with Christ and the saints in glory. It’s not surprising that the friends and family at his deathbed were avidly listening to hear what last words of insight and blessing would come from his lips.

In our day, many of us avoid hard conversations  about the reality of death and pay only lip service to the joy of union with God that awaits. It’s as if we’ve forgotten Charles Wesley’s stirring words taken from St.Paul’s 15th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians — “Where, O death, is now thy sting?” and  “Ours the cross, the grave, the skies” and “Made like him, like him we rise.” But the Wesleys would remind us that though death is real, the thing that really matters is the constant abiding presence of the Spirit and the Love that never lets us go and the resurrection grace that conquers even death.

As you observe a holy Lent, remembering your sin and mortality, may you also remember that Christ Jesus came into the world to bring salvation and holiness and restoration to us and to all creation. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And the best of all truly is that God is with us!

Ashes in Asheville

Ashes in Asheville 

Today is Ash Wednesday, and because I am not serving a church right now and because this was a good time for my husband to take a few days off, we found ourselves receiving the imposition of ashes at the Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls in Asheville, NC. The service was well-attended for noontime, the liturgy was beautiful, the choir heavenly, the sermon thoughtful and thought-provoking, and the ashes were as dirty and messy as the mortality and sinfulness they represent. The priest who preached talked about the things we need to give up, calling them the things that have a hold on us. They vary from person to person, but some common ones include impatience and arrogance, greed and contempt, busy-ness and not listening.  And isn’t it interesting that the very thing that annoys us in others is often the very thing in us that needs to be eradicated?  

Ashes in all their smutty messiness are the perfect reminder that our lives are messy and that they are not our own. We didn’t create life; it’s a gift of God. We don’t always get it right, and we often don’t even realize it until someone or something points that out.  That’s one reason for observing a holy Lent with its emphasis on self-examination and self-denial and fasting and prayer and meditation on scripture. We need to be stopped in our tracks to recognize the grace of being God’s beloved children and to accept the abundant life of Christ and to breathe in the empowering Spirit  — even as we are marked with the reminder of our brokenness. We acknowledge that we are sinners who will die in order to proclaim that we are holy people who will truly live.

In his adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer, John Wesley eliminated Ash Wednesday and Lent and many of the saints’ days as “presently answering no valuable end,” not because he was opposed to ritual reminders of who we are and what God has done but because the Methodist classes and bands with their mutual accountability and emphasis on regular participation in the means of grace were already doing that —and more. For Wesley, acknowledging our sinfulness and dependence on God was only part of the story of salvation. Active participation in the Spirit’s work of transformation that results in holiness of heart and life is the other key part of the Christian journey. For us who no longer meet regularly to watch over each other in love as the early Methodists did, this day and season can and should help us to grow closer to our God and closer to one another. 

And so, ashes in Asheville seems a good way to start.  Thanks be to God. Amen.

Give To the Winds Thy Fears

Give To the Winds Thy Fears

About 100 years ago when I was a student at Duke Divinity School, we had our own seminary newsletter called “The Between Times.”  I never really thought much about it being called “The Between Times” until a non-seminary friend asked me why it had such a weird name.

And then it hit me.  Oh, yeah.  I guess that is a little odd.  What does that mean, the between times?  Well, it means liminality, being in the middle part of a transition, being on the threshold, not really where you once were but not having fully arrived at the place where you’re going to be.  It’s waiting for the next stage.  Holding your breath during the not quite there yet.  Living in the "not yet" that connects what was and what is yet to be. Being stuck in The Between Times.

This photograph I took while wandering around Iona strikes me as a good illustration of that idea of the liminal. You can stand on the sand and look out at the ocean, and there is a certain point at which the water and the sky seem to meet.  The horizon blurs into a blue-grey haze, and you can't see what lies beyond.  You may trust that you won't fall off the edge of the world if you keep going forward into the sea, and you may know intellectually that eventually you will see land if you get out there far enough, but you can't quite see it for yourself just yet.  It's exciting.  It's invigorating.  It's scary.  It's unsettling.

We live in a time of tremendous change, of social upheaval, of political unrest, of uncertainty, of division, of transition.  In obstetrical terms, transition is the shortest but hardest stage of labor.  It is nearly always painful; it is always intense.  A woman in transition relies heavily on her support person to remind her to breathe as she experiences strong contractions.  She may feel as if she cannot do the hard work of bringing another human being into the world.  She may fear that she and the baby are going to die.  But when the midwife/nurse/doctor/coach reassures her that she can and will deliver the child, breathes with her and encourages her to focus on her own breath, the laboring mother feels a power surge and a renewed sense of determination to bear down and give birth to her new, long-awaited gift of love.

I am currently on transition leave in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. It is a curiously liminal state of being in which I alternate between delight and excitement about my coming appointment with the Methodist Church in Britain and moments of sheer panic when I wonder how I will learn to drive in the UK and ponder how hard it will be to adjust to so much that is new and unfamiliar.  Seeing the sea touch the sky and not being able to quite see the other shore is enough to freeze me into inertia, into throwing my hands up and glibly saying that God will provide. But abandoning any sense of my own responsibility and agency is not the answer, just as trying to do everything all on my own is not a solution.

John and Charles Wesley encountered Moravians on the ship Simmonds on their way to the colony of Georgia, and they were impressed by their faith and courage during the nasty storms that roiled the Atlantic Ocean during their crossing.  During one particularly vicious bout of high winds and mountainous waves, John Wesley observed them singing a hymn, and after the storm had abated, he asked if they had been afraid.  To his surprise, they replied that neither the men, women, nor children feared the sea's fury because they put their lives into God's hands.  In his journal, Wesley recorded his own fright at what looked like certain death and his longing for that same strong faith.

Upon arrival, the brothers embarked on a largely disappointing ministry. Charles became too ill to remain and returned home after only a few months.  Emotionally scarred and spiritually depleted, John returned to England 2 years later where he endured months of transition, wondering and waiting and watching as God's call for his particular ministry began to unfold.  Along the way, he found his faith renewed and his heart "strangely warmed" as he lived into God's will for his life and the birth of his "child" called Methodism.

Having become fluent in German during his time in Georgia alongside the Moravians, he had translated several hymns from that language into English, including one called "Give To the Winds Thy Fears."  It has been suggested that he learned the first stanza during that stormy voyage to Georgia and that it brought him comfort.  At any rate, sixteen stanzas of the hymn in English were first published in his 1739 collection Hymns and Sacred Poems in Charlestown (now Charleston), South Carolina.  It has brought peace to the hearts of many who have faced their own storms and anxieties during the between times.  During this liminal time of my life, as I look ahead, I, too want to give the winds my fears, trusting that God is taking into account my sighs, tears, and doubts, replacing them with hope, joy, and commitment.  If you find that your heart is anxious right now, may you be blessed by pondering these verses as you, too, live in the between times.

Give to the winds thy fears,
hope and be undismayed;
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears;
God shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and storms,
He gently clears the way;
wait thou His time, so shall this night
soon end in joyous day.

Still heavy is thy heart,
still sink thy spirits down?
Cast off the weight, let fear depart,
and ev'ry care be gone.

What though thou rulest not,
yet heav'n and earth and hell
proclaim, God sitteth on the throne,
and ruleth all things well.

Let us in life, in death,
Thy steadfast truth declare,
and publish with our latest breath
Thy love and guardian care. ~ Paul Gerhardt, translated by John Wesley