On May 24, 1738, John Wesley recorded in his journal “in the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." And thus, was what has become known as Wesley’s Aldersgate experience, where his heart was strangely warmed. And as we heard in the introduction to singing O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, his brother Charles had had a similar experience three days before on May 21. I can’t imagine that there wasn’t just a little bit of jealousy on John’s part surrounding that reality. And so, as we remember that experience, and Charles’ on what has become known as Heritage Sunday in the United Methodist Church we continue in our series looking at beliefs that are unique to Methodism and move onto the idea of personal holiness.
Now personal holiness in and of itself is not very unique, but we do have some unique takes on it. And before we dive into those, it’s also important to give some context to the Aldersgate experience so that we can better understand what comes before, during and after that shapes Wesley’s thinking about personal holiness, conversion experiences as well as the acceptance of God’s salvation, or God’s saving grace given to everyone, including John himself, as well as you and I. Last week I talked about John and Charles coming to the Georgia colony in 1736, which didn’t end really well for either of them. On the boat trip over, they encountered a major storm and while the Wesley brothers, and others, were fearing for their lives, a group of Moravians, who were the first protestant church, coming into existence in Eastern Europe fifty years before Martin Luther. Who were on their way to the colonies for religious freedom, and rather than being terrified of the storm, they were instead praying and singing praises to God. This had quite an impact on John, and he began to wonder about his faith, and began to explore even more other religious movements beyond the church of England. But one of the things that the Moravians told him, as did the leaders of some other pietist movements, was that he needed to have a dateable conversion experience. That without that he was not a true Christian, and he was also told that unless he was absolutely filled with joy all the time that he also wasn’t a true Christian. Some of these groups were then ones that would deny him communion because they didn’t think him Christian enough to receive it. Johnj would write, as he was headed back the London, “I went to Georgia to convert the Indians,” a task at which he failed miserably, and then writes “but who shall convert me?”
And so, Wesley was specifically looking exactly for this
experience, and was bemoaning the fact that he had not yet had one. After Aldersgate
he would write, in concurrence with what he would be told, that he had not been
a Christian before this event. Now there is no doubt that you can go through
all the actions of something, like Christian practices, not actually be that
thing because there is nothing behind them. But, when you look at Wesley’s life
it’s a little hard to believe that testimony, and later in his life Wesley will
change his position of his faith and faithfulness before this event. But what
also happened was that he found that even this heart-warming experience was not
fully enough as just seven months later his sense of self-doubt was back and he
was once again claiming that he was not a Christian. But, even in the midst of
all of his back and forth, his doubt and faith. And while I think Aldersgate is
sometimes overstated in significance it did change Wesley’s trajectory and that
of his thoughts about a lived experience of faith. A personal and
transformational understanding of grace and an understanding that faith must be
felt and lived in the heart as much as it must be felt and lived in the mind.
And this becomes a key to what Methodism becomes, that it is a religion of the
heart and the head, and these two things have to be held in tension with each
other.
Our first week in this series I said that Wesley was a genius
in many ways, and it is creating and holding things in tension with each other
that is one of his geniuses. One of the best biographies on Wesley is by Henry
Rack and it’s titled Reasonable Enthusiast, a phrase Welsye used for himself. But, if you think about it, how can
you be a reasonable enthusiast? Those two things stand in contrast to each
other. Sort of like saying they are a rational fanatic, or you want frenzied
balance. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. But what
Wesley pursued was actually having both and doing both. Of having a religion of
the heart and a religion of the head, a felt faith and a reasoned faith, and it
is Aldersgate that helps him get to that point because he had already been
working on the head part. He was an Oxford professor, or Don, as they were
called, and he had started what becomes Methodism at Oxford after Charles, who
was then a student, invited John to come and lead a small group of other
students in deepening their spiritual and religious lives, which led to
concentrated times of prayer, and study, both scripture and other works, and
then into activities helping others, which we’ll get into more next week. They
were noticed by other students for their discipline, who gave them some
derogatory names, like the holiness club, and the term Methodist also got
applied to them because they were methodical in their activities and nature. It
was a term of derision, not of favor, and it stuck and got adopted by the
group, much like the quakers and shakers did the same.
So, Wesley had a religion that was driven in rationality,
and that’s great, and for those of us who are head driven, that’s an important
thing, but the heart part was missing. Wesley could rationally accept what
Christ had done, but he had to accept it into his heart, and only once he had
it in both places could he truly not only be complete in his faith, but only
then could he truly begin to live his faith: To truly love the Lord with all
his heart and mind and soul. Later Wesley would write about faith that “it is
not a barely speculative, rational thing, a cold lifeless assent, a train of
ideas in the head; but also, a disposition of the heart.” And so, it is for us
as well. It’s easy to sway people’s emotions, and there are churches that
that’s all they do, and it leaves people missing something, and others try to
be solely rational and give all the right answers and explanations, and it too
leaves people missing something. Last week we talked about the mystery of the
sacraments, and faith has to have that mystery to it as well, that spot where
emotion and reason, heart and mind meet, and we learn to let go and be present
in the moment, and to hold those pieces in tension. And that’s really hard.
As most of you might guess, I’m good at the head part, but I
struggle with the heart piece, and even as I talk about the importance of the heart,
I feel like I’m missing something. It is something that I have to work at, and
John did too, but I have had moments in my life where it has come and
overwhelmed me, where I have been in the presence of God, where I knew that
God’s grace was given even for me. That my brokenness was not what defined me,
my guilt or realizations of where I had fallen short did not define me, that I
was worthy because I am a child of God, and what defined me, what made me, was
the reality that God loved me. That moment of realizing and knowing God’s
prevenient grace and accepting that grace on my behalf, and to live a full life
in Christ, to be a new creation in Christ, to be transformed in Christ, to live
into Jesus’ commands to be loved and to love, I had to accept that in my heart
and my head. And I had to know that for myself. It has to be a personal
religion. It cannot be the testimony of others, or the faith of others, they
can lead me to it, or point me to it, but we have to accept it ourselves.
In the story of Jacob in Genesis, at the beginning he talks
about and to the God of his father. But it’s not yet his faith, or his God.
It’s not until he wrestles with God that God becomes his God, that it’s his
faith, and the same thing has to happen with us. and its not just an assent of
the brain and its not just an assent of the heart, it has to be both. To love
the Lord our God with heart and mind and soul and strength means that we have
to have all of it involved. Heart and head, and that’s what Aldersgate does for
Wesley, and for the Methodist movement of changing it into a religion of reason
and experience, enthusiasm and rationality, passion and logic. And there was a
keen recognition then that we are all on our own journeys of faith, and God has
specific things for us to do. Why were Methodists amongst the first to have
first female exhorters and then preachers? Because of the women’s testimonies
of a divine call to preach, and the experience and reality of the fruit that
was generated through their preaching. Plus, John and Charles’ mother Susanna
also played such an important role in their faith. But there is one other piece
that Wesley adds to this as well, that also has to be held in tension with the
personal.
Who here knows anything about George Whitfield? Whitefield
was known as the Grand Itinerant, and he was a rock star of his day. He was an
original member of what became Methodism at Oxford and was the one that
introduced John to preaching in the fields in order to meet people where they
were, as well as to be able to reach larger numbers. When Whitefield came to
America, we have hundreds of people’s personal journals, including Benjamin
Franklin, relating traveling for days in order to go so him preach. He preached
to crowds in the Boston Common that were estimated at 25,000. The were the
largest gathering on the common until the anti-Vietnam protests in the 1960s.
Like I said, he was a rock star. But how many churches do you know of that hold
Whitefield as their founder? That would be zero. Because he could preach up a
storm, and get people convicted, but then they went home. And so, part of
Wesley’s genius was to get people who have had this moment of conversion,
although we also recognize that while some people have this moment, sometimes
called the experience of saving grace, that for others it is a gradual process
over time. But all of that has to be done in community. Wesley said, “Christianity
is essentially a social religion; and… to turn it into a solitary religion, is
indeed to destroy it.”
And so just like with head and heart, we also have to hold
the personal and the social, or the individual and community in tension with
each other as well, while recognizing that we have to do this thing called
faith together. I know I’m about to paint with a large brush here, and it’s not
true for all, but I think one of the copouts of those who say they are
spiritual but not religious is that then they don’t have to walk the journey
with others, which means they never have to be challenged by others. They can
believe whatever they want, and do whatever they want, with no real repercussions
to come from it, which often also means not a lot of growth. It’s really easy
to seek perfection, or to seek holiness as we are told in the passage from 1
Peter today, if you are doing everything by yourself. It’s a lot harder when
you are doing it with others, not only because others will frustrate you, and
others will believe different things then you, but also because others will
push you and challenge you and cause you to grow.
But the other piece they miss out on is the support that
comes with that, and that support can also come even in the midst of the
challenge. Because what Wesley did, what the early Methodist movement did, was
to bring people into relationships with others through what we would now call
small group ministries. And they took several different forms, but they were
all ultimately spiritual support groups, and one of the questions that would be
asked was “how is it with your soul?” and that is a very different question
from how you are doing. There was mutual accountability surrounding all aspects
of people’s lives, heart and soul and mind, and holding people to their faith
journey and help people to hold those things in tension with each other. And we
can talk more about this when we talk about connectionalism, but I think the
Methodist church got intro trouble when it stopped being a movement, and that
was when we stopped emphasizing these accountability groups, but that’s a
different message.
We are a religion of the heart and a faith that emphasizes the personal. And we are also a religion of the head and a faith that emphasizes the communal. And you cannot do one without the other. If we are to move from the front porch of faith, or prevenient grace, into the doorway of faith, or justifying grace, in order to be seeking to become perfect as our faith in heaven is perfect, or to be holy as God is holy, or more specifically to love the Lord of God with all that we are, that has to include heart, soul, mind and strength, and that then leads us to also loving our neighbor as ourselves, which we will get to next week in looking at social holiness, which cannot be separated from personal holiness. We are called to become a new creation in Christ, to be transformed in Christ, which means having the experience of this transformation, the experience of not just knowing about God’s grace, but about excepting that grace into our lives, and then seeking to live it out in our lives and showing that we love Christ by keeping his word in mutual love with one another, disciplining ourselves in his work and grounding ourselves in the hope that Christ gives. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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