"The Character of a Methodist"
(2nd message in a 3-part sermon series)Sermon Transcript for October 17, 2004
Scripture Reading: Revelation 2:1-4
By Rev. Mike Beck
Our goal here at Grace Church is, to use the words of Scripture, that you might “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ”. We do that in a variety of ways. One of those ways is the book table just outside the office. We’ve discounted these to about half of their original price. Ron Crandall and Ken Kinghorn from Asbury Seminary both preached here during the month of June. We have two of their books. Ron Crandall’s book, The Contagious Witness, and Ken Kinghorn’s book, Gifts of the Spirit. Those are available to you. And as we study our heritage as United Methodist Christians, there are three resources there. First of all, Paul Wesley Chilcote’s book, Recapturing the Wesleys’ Vision: An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley. And then also, Steve Harper, who is a personal friend and one of my professors in seminary, a reprint of his very readable book, The Way to Heaven, originally published as John Wesley’s message for today. I had a lady want one of these on Wednesday at our mid-week program, which I invite you to Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 6:45 p.m. She said, “Reverend Mike, how much is The Way to Heaven?” And I said, “Five dollars”. And then we both kind of chuckled. This is just $2.00. It’s easy to read; but it’s filled with pictures and good information on some of the important parts of Methodism (Wesley Heritage Study Guide). And then, at the door as you leave today and also on the table in the lobby, one of John Wesley’s most famous sermons that I am going to allude to in the message today, his sermon that he preached in St. Mary’s Church in 1744 – “Scriptural Christianity”. Ken Kinghorn’s done us a great favor and translated Wesley’s 53 sermons into modern-day English. Won’t you take one of these and read it this week?
As we continue to study our Wesleyan heritage, let me stress what I say often—that I am a “Christian” first and a “United Methodist” second. We don’t preach from this pulpit “Methodism”. We preach the good news of a personal relationship with God through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. But you and I are currently attending and worshiping in a United Methodist Church. And I want you to understand and be proud of the rich heritage that is ours as Methodist Christians. The better you understand that heritage, the more you begin to understand why we do what we do. The more you understand that heritage, the more your life can be shaped by it. And the more you understand the passion of those early Methodists, the better that passion can be rekindled in you to share the Good News in Jesus Christ with those that haven’t come to know Him yet.
Last week we began by looking at the 200 years of British history that preceded the birth of John Wesley because we were reminded no movement happens in a vacuum. It is affected by what has gone before it. And then we looked at the first third of Wesley’s life culminating in his “Aldersgate Experience” in 1738. If you weren’t able to be here last week, pick up a copy of one of those sermons. They are in the rack just outside the east entrance doors to the sanctuary.
This morning we are going to look at the middle third of Wesley’s life that talked about the character of a Methodist. But to set the stage for this message, let me seek to describe in a general way the religious life of the Church of England in the mid 18th century:
· Religion had become more of a cultural than a personal thing.
· I think it is fair to say there was little life in the Anglican Church. People went to church. They went through the motions and the liturgy. They received sacrament; but it was pretty dead within those walls.
· Because of what had gone on in the previous 200 years, there was a deep suspicion and dislike for what were called “religious enthusiasts” which in general was anybody that got passionate or emotional about their relationship with God.
· And then, fourthly, across the land there was a deep decline in personal morality. It was a very secular age.
It is in that context, that Wesley understands the call of God upon his life “to spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land.” We need to remember that Wesley would remain an Anglican priest all of his life. He never intended to start a new denomination. That would happen after his death especially as Methodism spread to America. Wesley’s hearts desire was to bring reform to his church, to the Church of England, but to a church who, like the words from our Scripture today that we read, had grown cold and had “lost its first love.” And as we begin, I would ask you to search your heart, to look at the evidence around you. Is it possible that that same thing has happened all too often within our denomination? Is it present to any degree in our church here at Grace? And what about in our personal lives? Have our hearts gone cold? Do we hunger after God?
Well, if you remember, in 1738 Wesley went reluctantly there to a society meeting on Aldersgate Street, had an experience of God that change his life. His heart began to be on fire with the love of God! And Wesley began preaching everywhere he could that there was more to being a Christian than simply being baptized and then going to church on Sunday morning. He preached that one could practice a “form” of religion and yet never know any of the life-changing power that God intended for true faith. He began to preach that the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit were awesome things. And he preached that our relationship with God ought to change our lives, it ought to lead us to be people that love their neighbor, even the neighbor that didn’t love them back. It ought to result in change so that people, when they looked at our life; they saw something different from others around us. And Wesley wanted others to come to know what he had found that night, May 24, 1738, there on Aldersgate Street.
It was about six years later that Wesley was invited back to preach at St. Mary’s Church at Oxford University. The date was August 24, 1744. Having read a great deal this summer on Wesley, I wanted to make sure to walk in to St. Mary’s Church. That actually occurred on the last day of our tour. It was raining. I was on the way back to the bus and I stopped in not only to see the church, but also to get out of the rain. And I sat down there in the pews of St. Mary’s Church and looked up at the same pulpit John Wesley would have delivered this sermon. And you need to be aware of who his audience was that day. As a graduate of Lincoln College at Oxford, he had been made a “Fellow” at the university. And at what we would have called the University Chapel Services, they would periodically invite Fellow’s back to preach. So St. Mary’s Church that day would have been filled with Anglican clergy, professors, and college students preparing to be future leaders in the church. And as Wesley begins to preach, he begins to sear their hearts with questions about their personal relationship with God and their day-to-day way of living. I want you to listen to a part of what Wesley said in that sermon there at St. Mary’s in 1744.
“Do you remember the seventh day to keep it holy, to spend it in the more immediate worship of God? When you are in His house, do you consider that God is there? Are drunkenness and uncleanness found among you? Yet, do not many of you take the name of God in vain perhaps habitually without either remorse or fear? How few of you spend, from one week to another, without a single hour in private prayer? Who of you is in any degree acquainted with the work of His spirit, His supernatural work in the souls of man? In the name of the Lord God Almighty, I ask, “What religion are you of?” Even the talk of Christianity He cannot, will not bear. Oh my, what a Christian city is this? It is time for thee Lord to lie to thine hand by whom should Christianity be restored to this place?
I wager to say that no one fell asleep during that sermon. Wesley was talking to present and future leaders of the Church of England. But it was a church that was in trouble. It had lost its vitality; it had no passion. And it had lost its moral influence on the society around it. And Wesley remarked to a friend as he walked out of the church, he said he would probably never again be invited back to Oxford to preach. And he was right in that assessment. That was the last time Wesley ever got to preach in a pulpit in Oxford.
In speaking of preaching, we need to realize that at the heart of early Methodism is preaching. In fact, if you would go to a Catholic or an Anglican church, at the center of what’s going on you would find the altar, the Eucharist, the communion table. But if you would go to most Methodist churches, you would find the central thing is the pulpit. It is the preaching of the word. In fact, I remember in my first church, Greensburg, the pulpit like many United Methodist Churches, was in the center. The communion table was down lower around it. It was a huge pulpit. Dad, I don’t know if you remember the first time you went into the church and you saw that pulpit, you said to me, “Son, that’s a mighty powerful pulpit, you’d better have some powerful sermons if you are going to stand there.”
Wesley traveled; think about it, 250,000 miles riding a horse to go from one preaching appointment to another. I better never complain about having to preach one sermon three times in a week. Wesley often preached 15 times in one week. And Wesley simply spoke the plain truth of what he observed in the Anglican Church and in the society around him. And although he was gladly received by the common people, he was largely rejected by the church of his day. Now as I say that, does anybody else come to mind? Maybe a man with the initials, J.C., warmly received by the common people but rejected by the religious establishment of his day. In fact, as Wesley’s ministry began, he returned to where his father had been. The priest, in the Anglican Church at Epworth, and he simply asked him if he could assist with the service, if he could read the scripture. And the priest said, “No, John, you are a religious enthusiast, you are not welcome here.” And so a gentleman got up before the service in the back of the church and said, “Rev. Wesley asked if he could preach this morning or at least share in this service. They said he wasn’t needed. John will preach this evening at 6:00 p.m. on top of his father’s gravestone out in the cemetery next to the church.” Three thousand people showed up to hear him preach that evening. I bet there probably weren’t 300 in church on Sunday morning.
And perhaps this analogy can help us understand the reaction of the religious establishment. It’s like someone would come to me and say, “Rev. Mike, could I preach at Grace some Sunday morning?” And I say, “No, your theology doesn’t square with who we are.” And so they leave, but then on Sunday morning they come back and while we are in the church worshiping, they put a flier under the windshield wiper of all of your cars that say, “If you want to hear some real preaching, come down to Province Park tonight at 5:00 p.m.” That gives us some feel of the dynamic going on.
Wesley was once asked how he gathered such large crowds of people when he preached. And he replied, “Well, I just go out to the edge of town and light myself on fire and people come to watch me burn!” That was the passion of the man for God. That was the passion of early Methodists. That passion was to transform over time English society. But for the middle third of his ministry, it did not make John Wesley a popular man. In fact Anglican clergy often paid persons to incite a riot, to gather a mob. One time when he was preaching outdoors, they even set loose a bull in the middle of the crowd where he was preaching to disrupt. Listen to two short accounts in Wesley’s journal related to this.
Once up there, I desired to preach at Cambridge. We came into the town about eleven, and many people seemed very desirous to hear for themselves concerning the way, which was everywhere spoken against. But it could not be. The sons of the devil had gathered themselves together. Headed by one or two reggaes, called gentlemen, and continued shouting, cursing, blaspheming, and throwing showers of stones almost without intermission. So that after some time spent in prayer with them, I judged it best to dismiss the congregation. In the evening, as I was preaching at Sadias, Satan began to fight for his kingdom. The mob of the town burst into the room and created much disturbance roaring and striking those that stood in the way as though Legion himself possessed them. I would thank and persuaded our people to stand still, but the zeal of some and the fear of others had no ears so that fighting the uproar increased. I went in to the midst and brought the head of the mob up with me to the desk. I received but one blow on the side of the head.
Father, forgive me if I ever complain! You may talk about me at lunch, but none of you have ever thrown stones at me. Friends, what would we do if people were pelting us with rocks, writing derogatory and untrue things about us in the newspaper? What would we do? We would probably quit; throw in the towel. But here is another of the characteristics of a Methodist – perseverance. And Wesley eventually wore out his opponents. He outlived many of them. And revival came to England.
Wesley asked the Methodist preachers at one of their Conferences what was their purpose? And here was his answer in terms of what the Methodist movement was all about. He said, “We are to be about reforming the nation, and particularly the church, and spreading Scriptural holiness throughout the land.” This is the character of a Methodist. We are revivalists. We are a people that are about the transformation of lives and society. These three things were of the highest priority for Wesley. In fact, it is interesting; I met in the lobby today two members visiting a family here in Franklin this weekend, who are members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. And I said, “You’ve heard this sermon before; it’s a little more abbreviated fashion. They only give me 25-minutes to preach here at Grace. At the Church of the Resurrection, Adam gets about 35! But that church that has grown from a handful of people to, I believe, 7,000 in worship now and almost 14,000 members, they understand that their purpose is to reach non-religious and nominally religious people with the gospel. That was what Wesley told his preachers they were about. He said, “We are to influence the morality of the society around us and we are to reform the church and renew its passion for God.”
Friends, with the track record in our denomination as a whole of 40 years of decline, has perhaps the United Methodist Church lost sight of our purpose? In fact, I remember hearing the story of a gentlemen in one of our agencies that asked the church over in Africa if they might come and do a seminar for them related to church growth. And the African leadership replied, “It kind of seems to me like maybe we ought to be sending people to you to do a seminar on church growth.” The church is exploding there while it is in decline here.
Decades ago, we Methodists were referred to as “shouting Methodists”. Do you know how many refer to us today? They call us “God’s frozen chosen”! How did that happen? Acknowledging that I’m over-simplifying the answer to a complex question, here’s what I think happens not only to the church but to any institution. It starts out as a “movement” and has passion and energy. But then the movement becomes an institution in order to keep up with its growth. But then a third thing begins to happen slowly, the institution begins to turn in upon itself and it forgets what it was all about in the first place. Like the Church at Ephesus that John wrote to, perhaps we need to return to our first love. Friends, renewal often begins when we stop for a moment to “remember” who we are. In fact, it’s been interesting, in learning more about our history of the early Methodist, in visiting the new room at Bristol, this character came out as John Wesley to talk to us about the new room. And as I’m sharing this story with you please be aware I have nothing against pews. But there were pews in the room and Wesley said; “Now these pews weren’t here when I preached. In fact, I dislike them because they are permanent. We couldn’t afford that. For we used this room during the week for a school, for a place to dispense medicine, for a library for the poor. We couldn’t afford a room used only a couple hours a week, locked in place with pews.” Sometimes people will say, “I like to sing the old hymns.” How old? They are usually talking about the hymns of the 19th and early 20th century. Are we talking about second century hymns? Tenth century hymns? Charles Wesley, who wrote 6,000 to 9,000 hymns said, “Music in the church today is dead. We’ve got to come up with some tunes that capture peoples imagination.” In fact, I think it was Charles who said, “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?”
See, we have to be careful that we don’t begin to worship tradition. Sometimes what we call “tradition” isn’t truly a part of our heritage. We have to refocus our priorities so that “the main thing is the main thing”. And we have to be open to prayerfully and humbly allow God’s Holy Spirit to breathe renewal and revival in us. Here is an important point that I want you to take away from this message. That is “the church is constantly in need of renewing itself.” And the same thing is true for us as individual Christians. Which is why we encourage people to share in small groups, in retreats, that the passion in their spiritual life might be rekindled.
In closing, I want you to listen to an entry from Wesley’s journal in which he describes what a Methodist is and what a Methodist is not. Listen.
The distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his opinions of any sort, his assenting to this or that scheme or religion, his embracing any particular set of notions, his espousing the judgment of one man or of another. I will quite wind up the point. Whosoever, therefore, imagined that a Methodist is a man of such or such an opinion is grossly ignorant of the whole affair. He mistakes the truth totally. What then is the mark? Who is a Methodist according to your own account? I answer, “A Methodist is one who has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him. One who loves the Lord his God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his mind and with all his strength. God is the joy of his heart and the desire of his soul which is constantly crying out, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee my God and my all. Thou are the strength, my heart and my portion forever.’”
Did you hear what Wesley said? He said we, as Methodists, are not offering the world some new belief system. Methodists simply believe the classical doctrines of the church that emerge from Scripture and, in fact, were part of the Church of England in Wesley’s day. Unfortunately, they’ve been relegated to a book on a dusty shelf. Wesley simply challenged the church and individual Christians to live out what they said they believed. To not only talk the talk, but to walk the walk!
Wesley and early Methodist believed that Christianity was more than just going to church. Instead it was a constant pursuit after God that God might change them and by changing individual lives, change the society around them. That thought is expressed so beautifully in the closing hymn written by John’s brother, Charles. It is one of our favorites, “Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling”. Let’s stand together.
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