Adventure Yourselves With Him

 

On this, the last day of what has been the longest year in our lives, our thoughts turn towards the future in hopes that 2021 will see an end to the ravages of coronavirus, the beginning of less political squabbling and ill will, and the dawn of more just treatment of those on the margins.  2020 has brought heartbreak and illness and sorrow and loss to nearly everyone, but we are still people of hope and trust in the God who is with us through it all.

The above picture is of the convergence of Saturn and Jupiter as seen from my front yard a few days ago, a sight that calls to mind the Star of Bethlehem which led the Magi to the Christ Child. As we recall their journey at Epiphany and prepare for the new year, it is also a time for many Methodists to celebrate a covenant service just as the Wesleys and other early Methodists did. Whether we are able to participate in one or not, it is helpful to reflect upon Wesley’s words of instruction for the covenant service, making them a mandate for our travels into the next year.

Adventure yourselves with him; cast yourselves upon his Righteousness, as that which shall bring you to God: as a poor captive exile, that is cast upon a strange land, a land of robbers and murderers, where he is ready to perish, and having no hope, either of abiding there, or escaping home with life: and meeting at length with a pilot, who offers to transport him safely home, he embarks with him and ventures himself, and all that he hath in his vessel: do you likewise; you are exiles from the presence of God, and  fallen into a land of robbers and murderers: your sins are robbers, your pleasures are robbers, your companions in sin are robbers and thieves; if you stay where you are, you perish, and escape home of yourselves you cannot: Christ offers, if you will venture forth with him, and then he will bring you home, and he will bring you to God... ~ John Wesley (Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God)

Not knowing what lies ahead but hoping for a much better year, let us nevertheless go forth with holy boldness to adventure ourselves with Christ, remembering always that he is Immanuel, God with us.

There Are No Perfect Marriages, But There Are Perfect Moments

 

Marrying relatively late in life, Mary Bosanquet and John Fletcher were only together for a few years before his death, but their mutual love and respect and their shared ministry in and around Madeley fueled one of early Methodism's most successful partnerships.  She nursed him devotedly and after his death often dreamed of him advising and supporting her in the same gentle way he had done in life. When he died, she mournfully wrote that the sun of all her earthly joys had set, but she faithfully kept preaching and teaching, inspiring countless women and men in their Christian journeys into the nineteenth century.

Our 31st wedding anniversary is later this month, and I'll be officiating at the backyard wedding of our next-door neighbor in less than a week. It's going to be small and Covid-19 safe with me and the couple and about 8 mask-wearing guests, so not much like ours with its 150 or so guests and several attendants.  Weddings can be stressful events, but fortunately this one promises to be pretty laid back.  

I'm working on the service and plan to make some remarks though not to deliver an actual homily. Naturally my mind is focused on scripture and the Church's understanding of matrimony, but I'm also influenced by the years of wedlock I've shared with my husband. The picture above is of our hands just minutes after we became a married couple, when we were so young, so much in love, so clueless of what might lie ahead.  

And there has been plenty of stuff in the past three decades! We've moved several times, been through seminary and seminary and yet more seminary, adopted and reared two children, survived his one job and my several churches, traveled and sheltered at home, laughed, cried, argued, read and watched television, cooked and cleaned and painted and built a life together.  He's still my favorite person in the world, and there's nobody who makes me laugh or smile more. 

When I was in Divinity School, I apparently told an unmarried friend who really wanted to be married that there are no perfect marriages but that there are perfect moments. Thank you, God, for the sun of my earthly joys, with whom I've shared many a perfect moment. 💟

God hears even when we hardly hear ourselves

As Scott and I continue to wait for more information about his diagnosis, seeking clarity for our next steps, we’ve been binge-watching The Crown and various travel shows set in Scotland, even though we’ve seen all the episodes multiple times, and I am somewhat mindlessly re-reading Agatha Christie mysteries. Sometimes it’s a relief to escape into some other world instead of dwelling on our current situation, so I don’t feel too bad about this coping mechanism.

 My other main activity has been an additional devotional practice that I would have done for Advent anyway, and it has proven to be invaluable during these anxious days. I’m reading Frequencies of God by Carys Walsh, an Advent journey through poems of R.S. Thomas. His raw honesty about the silence of God and the difficulty of perceiving God’s presence resonates with my experience, and his insight into the reality that God is always with us reminds me that we are held by the very One whose presence we seek. That’s very good news indeed!

On my Facebook page, former Bishop Charlene Kammerer reminded me that not only are we held by God but that we are held by all of you who are praying for us and lifting us up before God when we can’t quite do it ourselves, and that, too is very good news. Sometimes it feels too overwhelming to form words or shape sentences, and resting in the care of those who love us is all we can do.  

I am also encouraged by remembering John Wesley’s gentle, reassuring lines to Mary Bosanquet when she was struggling with her spiritual journey and was apparently finding it hard to pray.  He wrote:

It is certainly right to pray whether we can or no.  God hears even when we hardly hear ourselves.  ~ John Wesley (letter to Mary Bosanquet, March 26, 1770)

What a practical and deeply scriptural word of encouragement! I’m reminded of chapter 8 of the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans in which he confidently attested to the intercession of the Spirit on our behalf in sighs too deep for words, and for a moment my sorrowful soul is able to rest.  It doesn’t matter if I fumble with trying to tell God how I feel or what I want because the One who created, gifted, called, and sustains me hears the cries of my heart even when I scarcely know what I am saying. While that doesn’t make our uncertainty and grief go away, it does remind me that we are constantly in the loving presence of Immanuel, God-with-us, and that truly is the best of all. 

You are Held

The last few weeks have been something of a blur as our plans for Scott to visit me in England had to be canceled in order for him to undergo various medical tests, and the anxiety of awaiting results from those tests was nightmarish.  Upon receiving the unwelcome diagnosis of cancer, we immediately made plans for me to return home to be with him as he undergoes further tests, has meetings with the oncologist and medical team, and waits to learn more about where we go from here.  We know more than we did, which is helpful, and the news that this particular cancer is slow-growing was better than we had feared, but we still have the next couple of weeks of testing and consulting with the medical team ahead of us as we begin to come to terms with this new and unwelcome visitor in our lives.  We thought 2020 had brought quite enough grief into our lives, thank you very much, but hey, presto! there's this to contend with now.

As I write this, it is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, and if this were a tear-jerking Hallmark movie, this would be the cue for me to be writing about the overflow of thanks we are giving because of the better-than-feared news.  I'd be waxing lyrical about God's grace in the midst of our fear and our sense of the presence of the Spirit even as the storm rages.  Well, this isn't a movie, and I certainly don't feel sentimental about the fact that it's Thanksgiving and almost Advent, but I do indeed feel a deep sense of gratitude.  I am grateful that the doctor who was checking something completely different decided that Scott needed a biopsy.  I am grateful that it was scheduled quickly and that we got the results relatively soon.  I am grateful that it is not the kind of swift killer that takes one's life almost before the diagnosis is made.  I am grateful that the people at American Airlines went out of their way to be kind and compassionate in their efficiency of getting me home quickly so I could be with him.  I am grateful for the outpouring of prayers and the dozens of cards, social media messages, emails, texts, and calls that we have received.  I am grateful that I have been able to look my beloved in the eye and tell him that we are not alone, that God in fact IS with us.  I am grateful beyond words, beyond measure, beyond belief. 

But.  I'm still scared.  We're still anxious.  Incurable cancer, no matter how slow-growing, alters everything.  We are still trying to assimilate the knowledge that this unwelcome visitor has shown up, still trying to figure out how to balance that awareness with a desire to live as normally as possible, still trying to neither ignore nor deny the reality but also not giving into the fear and obsession of thinking of nothing else. And it's hard, friends, it's really stinking hard.  

It's hard.

But.  I am grateful that all the years of praying, of reading scripture, of singing hymns, and of trying to follow Jesus have given me a vocabulary and a foundation for gratitude and for hope even as the waiting continues.  And yes, we're almost into Advent, that season of waiting with intensity, that time of yearning and desiring the active in-breaking of God into human life more than anything else.  With the prophet Isaiah and the children of Israel, I have been crying out for the heavens to be rent open, the skies to be ripped apart, the veil between heaven and earth to be torn to shreds and for God to be right here, right now.  With Charles Wesley, I am prayerfully singing as I beg for the long-expected Jesus to come, to release us from all fears and sins, to be strength and consolation, to bring rest and joy to our longing hearts.  And with John Wesley, I find myself affirming dozens of times a day the glad tidings that lie at the heart of Christmas, the Incarnation, which means we can confidently trust that the best of all really is that God is with us.  

Affirming those things does not banish the dark clouds, nor does it bring immediate calm and peace to our anxious spirits.  Affirming those things does not act like some kind of magical incantation that hypnotizes one into denying the reality of the hurt and the fear and the uncertainty.  But affirming those things does reassure us that we're not in this alone, that the same God who entered human history as an infant some 2000 years ago is the same God in whose loving arms we are held, and that the words I wrote weeks before any of this happened are true --

You are held fast by the One whose steadfast love endures forever. You are held by the God who is always with us. You are held by the One who has been in the deepest pit and emerged victorious. You are held.

Yeah, right, Jesus

This coming Sunday is All Saints,  a holiday that is sometimes ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood among Methodists (and others).  In his journal on November 1, 1767, John Wesley called it "a festival I truly love." Elsewhere he called it "a day that I peculiarly love" and a "comfortable day."  There is a fairly predictable lectionary reading for Sunday from Revelation, but perhaps not so obvious is the inclusion of Matthew's version of the Beatitudes, verses we've all heard, read, said, and sung until we don't perhaps grasp their radical message anymore, but it makes sense that we read them for All Saints because they serve as a sort of "job description" for everyone striving to be a saint.

I just participated in an online lectio divina in which these verses were read three times, once from the NRSV, once from the NIV, and once from The Message, and the leader prompted us with various questions.  In lectio divina, the first thing you do is listen for a word or phrase that jumps out at you and ponder it in various ways with successive readings/ hearings of the passage.  

I kept circling around the idea of "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," partly because Charles Wesley's hymn "Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild" got stuck in my head and partly because that word "meek" is understood so pejoratively in our time.  It's become identified with the idea of being taken advantage of while gamely smiling all the time or of being humiliated or abused but taking it on the chin because of some great future reward being dangled in front of you.  The leader of our meditative reflection suggested we think of a sermon title or a heading we would give the Beatitudes, and when she said it need not be a "religious" or "pious-sounding" title, my immediate thought was, "Yeah, right, Jesus!" 

I wonder if the anonymous saints (or the famous ones, for that matter) that we will remember this coming Sunday felt blessed when they were faced with day after day of being ignored, being underpaid, being persecuted, being discriminated against, being humiliated, being denied justice, etc., or did they think, "Yeah, right, Jesus?!"  What about that descriptor, "meek?"  How might they have understood it? How has the word's meaning changed throughout the ages?

I looked at John Wesley's commentary on the passage, and I discovered that he rendered that verse as "Happy are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."  He called the meek the ones "that hold all their passions and affections evenly balanced," and defined inheriting the earth as having "all things really necessary for life and godliness."  He went on to say that they would enjoy whatever portion they received from God here and now and that they would "hereafter possess the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."

Reading that changed my view of the idea of meekness.  The prospect of having all my passions and affections evenly balanced is pretty appealing, particularly since I struggle with both depression and anxiety.  I quite like the thought of being on an even keel despite whatever circumstances I find myself in.  That would be reward enough, especially with the promise of having everything that is really needed for life and godliness right here but of course, there is also the hope of a future in which to enjoy a new and righteous earth as my home.  

So maybe I won't be calling the Beatitudes "Yeah, right, Jesus" after all.  Perhaps I will instead see these verses as a description of the way in which God redeems and reclaims all things, even challenges like anxiety and depression. They offer hope to all of us ordinary saints, toiling away in our hidden little lives, not because we seek recognition or honor but simply because we really do want to be like the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who looked upon a little child and saw in that little one a symbol of the kingdom of heaven itself.

Insiders/Outsiders: Reflections on a Few Days in Oxford

 

The British Methodist Church suggests that ministers take three days off each quarter in addition to the usual weekly day off, and I just took advantage of my first "quarter days" by spending a few days in Oxford.  The idea is that we take a real break from the pressures and stresses of ministry in order to relax, renew, and restore so that we can return  to our circuits rested and ready to be more effective leaders and pastors.  I didn't realize how much I needed this until I hopped aboard a bus to leave town, but the feeling of relief I experienced after just a few hours in Oxford was palpable.

When I travel, I always enjoy glimpses into ways of living that are different from my own, and I sometimes let my imagination run wild as I consider what it would be like to inhabit a particular house, follow a different profession, or even live during another era altogether.  Rambling around the canals and streets while staring up at the "dreaming spires," it was easy to give free rein to all sorts of thoughts and impressions.  Spending four days there in no way makes me an expert, but I was struck by a feeling of being a definite outsider in what appears to be a very charmed and charming world of academic privilege, one limited to those with membership in an exclusive club. Many popular sites were either off-limits to tourists or had extremely limited access because of coronavirus, so there were literally closed doors everywhere I looked.  I felt like a stranger in a strange land.  I am a graduate of some fine institutions of higher learning, though not in the same league as Oxford or Cambridge, and I can also remember moments of looking around those campuses and wondering what I was doing there, and when I might be unmasked as an interloper who clearly didn't belong there.

If I were to list all the famous leaders and brilliant minds who boast the colleges of Oxford on their resumes, that alone would take up this blog post, but it won't surprise you that my interest was mainly on two particular graduates of Christ Church.  Even though the college is  currently closed to tourists, people desiring to worship are welcome to the cathedral, and I attended Evensong one night.  For a cathedral, it is a curiously intimate space, and it wasn't hard to imagine the large numbers of people who have worshiped there down the centuries sitting shoulder to shoulder with the rest of us.  As I listened to the glorious music, bowed my head in prayer, and discreetly looked at the beautiful interior, I began to feel that sense of being an outsider ebbing away.  Here in this sacred space, my nationality and status didn't matter.  Here in this place, I was as much an insider as anyone else who has ever stepped through those heavy wooden doors because we were all the same in our need of spiritual solace and comfort.  

That would have been gift enough for a lifetime, but to my surprise and delight, when they discovered that I'm a Methodist minister, I was led to the stone in the floor that honors John and Charles Wesley, graduates of Christ Church and leaders in the Methodist revival.  Because I was carrying my knitted John Wesley, I took a picture of him on the spot, and then I was invited to stand in the lofty pulpit in whose shadow that stone memorial lies, and one of the officials took the picture of me and Mr. Wesley that appears above.  You can easily imagine how excited I was about this wholly unexpected turn of events!  I am sure they don't just allow any and everybody to do that, so that made me feel pretty special, like a real insider.  

But to dwell on that is to miss the real point which is that ALL are welcome in the house of God, no matter what their earthly qualifications or privileges are.  ALL people are God's beloved, and ALL are invited to pull up a chair at the Lord's table.  In the light of the ways that the most vulnerable (the elderly, children, and the poor) are suffering from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, it makes me reflect on the responsibility we all bear in making sure that they do not remain outsiders but that they have access to economic support, health care, and most essentially, to their daily bread.  The current upheaval has revealed gaps and cracks in the systems many of us have taken for granted or ignored, and we must open our eyes, our mouths, and our hands in order to see, speak, and serve those most in need.   

Arising from his deeply-held Christian faith, John Wesley spoke firmly, even harshly about those who ignore the plight of the poor and who plead ignorance of their needs because of their deliberate avoidance of them, and he poured his energy, time, and resources into relieving their poverty and desperate circumstances.  He did so because Jesus spent his earthly life seeking out and drawing in the outsiders, turning the order of things upside down, lifting the downtrodden and broken and honoring them as children of God, as inheritors of the kingdom, as those whose deepest hunger and thirst will be satisfied by God.  We are called to do the very same, and shame on us when we do not.

An unexpected takeaway from my "quarter days" spent amongst the dreaming spires, and one I shall not quickly forget ...

18th Century and 21st Century Laptops

As we all continue to adapt, pivot, change, whatever you want to call it, because of coronavirus, it's amazing how creative some people, churches, and other organizations have been in coping and carrying on.  I must confess to an unholy envy of some of the imaginative solutions some of my colleagues and friends have come up with.  I'm not nearly as good at lateral thinking or seeing things from a different angle as some people, which is frustrating, but at least we're sharing our ideas and talking about how things have worked (or not, as the case may be). 

If alive today, John Wesley would likely have been on the cutting edge of figuring out how to carry on the task of sharing the gospel with the maximum number of people safely.  After all, he was almost infamous for the ways he pushed the boundaries, bent and even broke some of the accepted rules, and boldly tried and/or adapted new methods in the 18th century evangelistic revival.  He made use of the best tech of his day in order to preach, teach, provide medical care, offer spiritual counsel, and live out his call as a minister of the gospel, calling people to experience the gift of salvation.

Wesley broadly defined salvation as far more than going to heaven or eternal happiness.  Rather, he understood it as a present blessing, insisting that the words "You are saved" could properly also be translated as "You have been saved."  He beautifully writes, "So that the salvation which is here spoken of might be extended to the entire work of God, from the first dawning of grace in the soul till it is consummated in glory."  

The people behind the scenes at the Museum of Methodism and John Wesley's House in London have been doing their own version of pivoting, utilizing the power of YouTube in order to share the wealth of artefacts with the wider world during this time of restriction due to the pandemic.  They recently showcased a fascinating little lantern belonging to Wesley and the lovely travel writing table pictured above, featuring all sorts of 18th century state-of-the-art compartments for his quill pen, ink, and paper.  It's made of oak but stained to look like mahogany, and it would have been a rare and possibly expensive piece even when new, which probably indicates that it was a gift from someone to Mr. Wesley.  

In many ways unlike today's laptops which have the ability to do everything except make you a cup of tea, this humble but ingenious bit of wooden technology was nevertheless a powerful tool in the hands of a committed Christian who lived his life to do the most good to the most people every day of his long and fruitful ministry. With that kind of example before me, even though I'm not the most creative person around, I hope that, with my modern laptop and along with the members of the churches in my charge, I can find some effective and innovative ways to connect people and invite them to experience the joys of salvation, reminding them that, even in the pandemic, the best of all is that God is with us.