Social Holiness

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 10:25-37:

When people find out that I’m a minister I never know what to expect. Often people will project onto me whatever they think about the church, for good or for ill. Those on the right tend to instantly assume that I’m a fundamentalist, and those on the left tend to instantly assume I’m a fundamentalist. But it can lead to some interesting conversations, interesting being in all its connotations, although sometimes people don’t want to talk anymore once they know what I do. I was having a conversation once and when they found out I was a minister they then asked one of the inevitable follow-ups which is what denomination, which is part of the reason for this series on Methodism so that we can be able to say what it is that makes Methodism unique, which is not always the easiest thing, but his response was not what I expected.

He said “I grew up a Methodist, but I stopped going when they began to be interested in social justice issues,” and my response, which was definitely not what he expected, and maybe not as pastoral is it should have been was “really, you were around in 1908 because that’s when the Methodist Church published the Social Creed which laid out the church’s position on many social issues.” Although I didn’t say this part, the Social Creed called for, amongst other things, the end to child labor, safety standards for industrial workers, a six-day work week for everyone, and a living wage. Now my response to this gentleman certainly didn’t further the conversation, which was part of my hope, honestly, and it wasn’t actually fully accurate because the Methodist movements concern with social issues goes back much further than that. In fact, it goes all the way back to the beginning.

We’ve talked a little bit about the beginning Methodism as a group started by Charles Wesley and a few other students at Oxford, who then invited Charles’ older brother John, who was an Anglican priest and faculty member of Oxford, to help them deepen their spiritual lives. They met three times a day to read scripture and pray, attended the sacrament of communion as often as possible, fasted two times a week, and sought to hold one another accountable to leading an upright Christian life. They came to be known as the Holiness Club, amongst other names, including being called Methodists derogatorily for their methodical practices. One of the members, William Morgan did not think that what they were doing was enough to lead a Christian life; he said they should be going out into the city to help the poor and the needy.

On August 24, 1730, John, Charles and William went to Castle Prison in Oxford for the first time, but it was not to be their last. The group was so struck by what they found there and the conditions that the prisoners lived in that they began making weekly visits bringing food, clothing, blankets and medicine, as well as preaching and providing communion. This outreach to those in need was to become an integral part of who and what Methodism was to become. Last week we talked about personal holiness, and the need to have a personal, experiential religion that encompassed both the head and the heart and working to hold these things in tension with each other. But the other part of personal holiness is the role of social holiness, living your faith out in the world, and that these two, the personal and the social, have to go hand in hand. Although Wesley said, as this message is titled, that there is no holiness but social holiness, he was not saying that the social more important than the personal, but that the personal has to lead to the social. As Wesley would say, the only appropriate response to accepting God’s saving grace on our behalf is to act on that in the world.

And so, our social holiness comes directly out of our personal holiness, and yet there’s a catch to that. In his sermon “Almost Christian,” Wesley says that it’s possible to do all the things, both personal and social that would make people think you are a Christian, praying, reading scripture, gathering for worship, even being kind to others, so that someone can have the outward form of religion, the outward form of godliness and yet having this form still be almost a Christian because they are lacking one thing. And that one thing, Wesley says, is sincerity. “by sincerity I mean, a real, inward principle of religion, from whence these outward actions flow…. a real design to serve God, a hearty desire to do his will.” And that will, that sincerity is found, as we heard in the gospel passage today, in loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. That one leads to the other, and you have to have both. As some of you have heard my quote before, Rev. Zan Holmes said that we are called to live cross centered lives. The vertical is our relationship with God, loving God with all of our hearts, minds, soul and strength, that is the personal holiness, and the vertical is loving our neighbor as ourselves. We have to have both in order to be cross-centered, in order to live cross-centered lives.

And so, as we talked about when we discussed the Wesleyan understanding of grace, this is not works righteousness, although Methodists are often accused of works righteousness because we emphasize being active in the world. But, we believe, as do most Protestants, that we are saved by grace alone. But, once we have accepted that grace, then we have to be doing something about it. We have to be living it in the world. When Wesley was asked by someone new to the movement what it was that they were supposed to be doing, how were Methodists supposed to live, what were the rules of the group, Wesley stipulated three: First, do not harm. The second was to do good. And the third, in his language was to attend upon all the ordinances of God, or as Bishop Reuben Job said, stay in love with God. And these aren’t step by step, first do this, then this, they all work together and build upon each other and lead to one another. When we love God, we will invariably work to do good and do no harm, and when we do good and do no harm we will invariably work to love God. And this was to be played out in every area of a disciple’s life. Wesley was more concerned about orthopraxy, right practice, than he was about orthodoxy, right belief.

And really this shouldn’t be all that surprising, but we clearly see this injunction played out in scripture. Jesus says that we will be known by our fruits, or as Voltaire once said, “never trust anyone who tells you they are a Christian, because if they were truly a Christian they wouldn’t have to tell you.” Which then leads into the parable of the Good Samaritan, and while there are many, many points in this parable, which is the reason it is still so resonant 2000 years later, and part of the brilliance of Jesus’ storytelling, I want to focus on the point of about who is our neighbor and what we are called to do. And so, to understand this story you have to know that Samaritans and Jews did not like each other. Hate might be a better description. And so first, you’re not supposed to like the Samaritan as he comes down the road. Your supposed to like the priest and the Levite. And the Samaritan isn’t supposed to like the man on the side of the road, and he has been stripped naked so the Samaritan would know that the man was Jewish. But he stops and helps him. He stops and helps the man he is supposed to despise, one of them. We all know about those people. And yet the Samaritan sees him as neighbor and helps him. And after getting the lawyer to admit that it was the Samaritan, not the priest or Levite, who were doing what Jewish law required of them, and this story hits really close to home for me, then Jesus says “Go and do likewise.” Not go and think about it, not go and believe it, not go and talk about it, not go and proclaim it, not even give your thoughts and prayers. Go and DO it.

In this week’s video message from our Bishop he quoted from David Sedaris the comedian author, whom I love, who said, “your character is based on how you treat the people that society generally allows you to mistreat.” Who is our neighbor? Everyone, and we are called to respond in kind. And so, the Methodist movements response of practicing social holiness is long and deep. Wesley started free hospitals and pharmacies. They established homes for widows and orphans as well as schools. The Sunday school movement largely came out of the Methodist church not as a time to teach children about faith, but to provide them an education, to teach them to read and write and it took place on Sunday because that was the only day that the kids had off, and we’re not talking teenagers, we’re talking children who were staring to work in mines and factories at the age of four. They were just freeloaders until that point.

The Salvation Army came out of the Methodist Church. Goodwill industries was begun by a Methodist church in Massachusetts. The Mother’s Day Movement, which was not only to honor mothers, but also an anti-war movement, came out of the Methodist church. Many schools and colleges and hospitals in the United States were all initially begun by the Methodist church and then later spun off as independent, because we wanted to start these programs where they otherwise wouldn’t be, but we didn’t want to run them once they were successful because then we could be off doing other things. And then there is the United Methodist Committee on Relief, UMCOR which responds around the world not just to natural or manmade disasters but is also working on issued of poverty and education and microfinancing and well drilling and hundreds of other projects all around the world. And that’s just to name a few of the ways that we have responded to the call to love our neighbor and to go and do.

We are called to participate in the Kingdom of God, not to be passive witnesses, but to be active contributors, to make a difference in the world for God and because of God. The world should be different because we are in it and working. And we do this because of what God has already done for us. Again, this is not to win bonus points, it’s not about getting extra credit that we hope will push us over the top to God’s honor roll. We do it because we respond to the love of God by being love in the world, by accepting God’s saving grace we have to respond to that. God’s love compels us and drives us, and it’s not easy. But it goes back to that sincerity part that Wesley talked about. He says, “Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Can you cry out, ‘My God, and my All?’ Do you desire nothing but [God]? Are you happy in God? Is [God] your glory, your delight, your crown of rejoicing? And is this commandment written in your heart, ‘That he who loveth God love his brother also’? Do you then love your neighbour as yourself? Do you love every man, even your enemies, even the enemies of God, as your own soul as Christ loved you?” If you do those things then they will be evident in how we live, and how we love.

Last week the United Women in Faith, which is the new name for United Methodist Women, held their annual conference in Orlando, and several of our women attended. Julie said that one of the groups present there was trying to raise greater awareness of native women who are victims of violence or simply disappear. Did you know that since 2016, 5,712 native women and girls had been murdered or simply disappeared? Their loss does not go unnoticed by their families, but their disappearance is ignored by the greater public. The US department of Justice missing persons database only lists 116 of these women.

Native women are also more than two times more likely to die than white women in pregnancy or child birth, and African American women are almost three times more likely to die. Were you aware of that? 2021 was the deadliest year for transgendered persons being murdered, and most of those killed were persons of color. Monkeypox has recently been in the news as cases have now developed in Europe and the US, but doctors, health workers and epidemiologists from Africa wonder why we are only concerned about it now, rather than for the past two years while they have been battling it. Do we only care when it affects us? And of course, news of Monkeypox was overcome by Tuesday’s incredibly tragic and senseless killings. Did you know that the number one killer of children age 1 to 10 is now guns? It used to be automobile accidents and now its guns. I knew some of those wounded and killed in the shooting at the Clovis library, because I used to spend a lot of time there. That’s one degree of separation. A clergy in this conference went to seminary with a woman whose mother was killed at Mother Emanuel AME Church, that’s three degrees of separation, and of course the theory is that we are only six degrees of separation from anyone anywhere in the world. And so these are not just things happening out there, these are things that are happening to our neighbors even if our neighbor lives in the next state, or the next country or around the world.

One of our core values of this congregation that we will be engaged in service and mission. That’s not just a tag line to make us feel good, because we do a good job. There is always room for growth, and obviously the last two years have been hard. But we do this not because it’s the right thing to do, although it is, we do it not just because we are called to do it, although we are. We do it because it’s how we respond to what God has already done for us. The only appropriate response to accepting God’s saving grace into our lives is to act on that, to go and do likewise as Jesus says. When our hearts have been set on fire with the Holy Spirit, something we return to next week, the only thing we can do is to live out that transformation in the world by being transformation in the world. The social creed of 1908 didn’t begin our social holiness, it simply continued it because it has always been a part of who we are as Methodists. That we hold head and heart religion in tension and we hold social and personal holiness in tension, although perhaps that’s not the right way to look at it because, to use another religion’s expression, they are the yin and the yang of a life of discipleship. We cannot have one without the other, they feed off of each other, and build off of our each other, that our loving God leads us to loving neighbor, and loving our neighbor leads us to loving God, they are how we live cross centered lives. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.