Wesley and Holiness: Faith and Life

A sermon by Ted Virts

October 27, 2013

Sonoma Ca

Theme:

Wesley was primarily concerned about developing a faith that worked in everyday living. He was in search of a "Scriptural Christianity" that was confirmed by human experience. The fact that his theology is biblical gives it a timelessness; the fact that it is confirmed by experience gives it an authenticity that theology in the ivory tower sometimes lacks. Wesley's theology has been road tested, and found effective.

To know Wesley is also to know a person of intense and meaningful discipline. Every day counted, every moment was a "God-moment."

Steve Harper John Wesley's Message for Today

Scripture: Matthew 5:13-14; 8:24-27

“You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world…” Matthew 5

“Why are you afraid…” Matthew 8

This life is surrounded in poetry, if you would let it be.

Hear me well: poetry can be as angry as war and as heartless as a machine. Poetry shifts a focus and tells a truth even when we would rather not listen. And Poetry can touch your heart as well with truth that can bring you to tears.

The same is true of Faith. This wrestling match with God, this mix of beauty and rage seems heartless, only because it matters so much, even when we’d rather not hear its call, or be bothered by its truth telling.

Did you hear the Voice of the scripture this morning?

You are the salt of the earth.

You are the light of the world.

You matter.

Did you hear the Voice of the scripture this morning?

To our cry that “we are perishing” , that things are too rough, Jesus says, “why are you afraid?” Jesus rebukes the wind, the sea, the trouble, the panic, the fear.

Can it be that our fear is rebuked by Him?

These past couple of weeks have been guided by John Wesley, the rebel Anglican priest whose “method” gave birth to our expression of the truth of Christianity.

Wesley never wrote a theology text. He preached. He wrote letters. He wrote journals. He was somewhere between avid and rabid in his understanding of what it might mean to follow Jesus.

In broad storkes, he saw this relationship, this understanding of God as an internal experience and an external expression of what Jesus was trying to explain to us through his life, death, and resurrection.

In seminary we studied a text book on Wesley called Practical Divinity. Wesley’s, and I would say Jesus’ as well, understood that faith and life are interconnected and cannot be separated.

What might that look like, this interconnection of faith and life?

Poets try to say much in a few words:

Jesus reveals the kingdom of God in parable.

We see our lives as grounded, rooted, in an experience of belonging, of being loved, as being grace-held and grace filled. Here and there and now and then that grounding is so firm that we stand, we live, on the truth of being God-based and God-formed. In those God-based/God-formed moments – whether lived, or remembered or hoped for – we move out of our fear and out of whatever holds us back and out into the world of full living.

Christianity is not detachment. It is engagement: God-based and God-formed.

From that base and formation – what does faith and life look like?

I’m going to meddle here and suggest that one way of understanding both the struggle and the hope is to look right here, in this room, in this church.

In our church, our 100 plus members, our 80-90 souls who gather for worship we hold a mix of understanding, history, politics, world view, age, education, wealth , wisdom, values, taste and preference and more.

Though our variety and diversity are relatively narrow, it is varied and broad enough to make us nervous or cautious and fully capable of getting on each others nerves. We are also capable of being afraid, that we won’t be valued, that what we cherish will be discounted or de-meaned, that if we say something “wrong” we might lose our standing with the community. We can be defensive. We can be thoughtless. We can stand off, lest we offend or lest we are disagreed with. We can tell more than ask. We can be misunderstood, of course. One person’s respect is to argue, the others is to remain silent.

And of course, we carry the baggage of our past. The way it used to be. And we carry the baggage of our present. The way it is supposed to be. And we carry the baggage of our time – fear more than hope. Discouragement more than confidence.

How does that play out in our description of sacred space? Of music that makes our souls hear God in a holy way? How does that play out in the way we see others behave – toward each other, toward their children, toward our children?

There are two truths that can carry this link of faith and life:

Easy to say and harder to live:

1) God is deeply compassionate toward you, toward me, toward us. Com-passion: to feel with; to suffer with.

2) We have the ability to fall in love if we only allow it – even with the one who irritates us, even with the one whose values we cannot imagine, even with the one who seems not to think about you, or me.

How does faith and life as one reality play out when we work for justice – no one argues with Jesus that people should have food, and clothing, and shelter and should not be alone. The argument is how. And the argument is about who the “them” is. Jesus says that there is no them, neither on top, nor on the bottom. Them is us.

What might you and I take on? What might we give up? If Jesus is right about when truth and meaning are found, how might we approach the kingdom of God?

I focus a lot on our personal choices and actions. Yes the world is big, but what might you do? What might I do? Fritz Grabe was a holocaust rescuer. He describes his formation with his mom’s question to him as refugees, the hungry and the fugitives came to his house – note it was not his mothers instructions, it was her questions: What would you do Fritz? What would you do?

Might we ask more than tell? What is sacred space to you? What is holy? What do you love about your kids? What brings you joy?

Or politics and justice: How did this become important to you? What is the value, the heart, the story, beneath your passion or your anger? What is the value, the heart, the story, beneath their passion or their anger?

Did you hear the voice in this morning’s scripture:

You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world, you matter, why are you afraid?

I don’t see the church as a tool to get across my agenda, so much as it is a combination of returning to “mom’s knee” as a toddler does and returning to the home that I cannot escape.

Here is William Blake about the compassion of God:

On Another's Sorrow

by William Blake

Can I see anothers woe,

And not be in sorrow too.

Can I see anothers grief,

And not seek for kind relief.

Can I see a falling tear

And not feel my sorrows share,

Can a father see his child,

Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.

Can a mother sit and hear,

An infant groan an infant fear—

No no never can it be.

Never never can it be.

And can he who smiles on all

Hear the wren with sorrows small,

Hear the small birds grief & care

Hear the woes that infants bear—

And not sit beside the nest

Pouring pity in their breast,

And not sit the cradle near

Weeping tear on infants tear.

And not sit both night & day,

Wiping all our tears away.

O! no never can it be.

Never never can it be.

He doth give his joy to all.

He becomes an infant small.

He becomes a man of woe

He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy maker is not by.

Think not thou canst weep a tear,

And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy,

That our grief he may destroy

Till our grief is fled & gone

He doth sit by us and moan.

Scriptural Christianity.

Practical divinity.

You matter.

God’s compassion for us.

Our ability to fall in love…

O! he gives to us his joy,

That our grief he may destroy…

Billy Collins writes about how we fall in love, if we allow it.

Aimless Love

by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,

I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse

the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,

I fell for a seamstress

still at her machine in the tailor's window,

and later for a bowl of broth,

steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,

without recompense, without gifts,

or unkind words, without suspicion,

or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,

the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door—

the love of the miniature orange tree,

the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,

the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor—

just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest

on a low branch overhanging the water

and for the dead mouse,

still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up

in a field on its tripod,

ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail

to a pile of leaves in the woods,

I found myself standing at the bathroom sink

gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,

so at home in its pale green soap dish.

I could feel myself falling again

as I felt its turning in my wet hands

and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Every day counts; every moment is a God moment

O! he gives to us his joy,

That our grief he may destroy…

Every day counts; every moment is a God moment.

I can feel my self falling [in love] again.

Why are you afraid?

The poetry of your life surrounds the world, if you would let it.