The Wesleyan Way, Part 3: Knit Together in God’s Love
The Wesleyan Way, Part 3:
Knit Together in God's Love
August 18, 2024
Ordinary Time
Mark 3:32-35
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I've titled this third sermon in our Wesleyan Way series "Knit Together in God's Love." We've seen how John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed that God's love is meant to fill us and then, through us, to liberate others. Today, we're going to explore his approach to organizing Christians in community.
In her small book about group spiritual direction, the Roman Catholic writer Rose Dougherty describes "the bond of spiritual community" as "a common wanting to do the will of God. Those who gather with [Jesus] in this seeking are his family."[1] In other words, the force that 'glues' us together is a shared desire to say Yes to the Spirit. Bound together by, as Dougherty says so beautifully, "a common wanting."
Being a part of the Church means sharing a will with others. And since the prayer of the Church is the one that Jesus taught us: "Thy will be done," we're left to ask: What does God will?
Well, we can describe God's will, God's own desire and intent, in general terms: healing and wholeness, belonging and justice, forgiveness and freedom. Pastor Duane Anders from First UMC in Boise texted a quote by the Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio to a group chat this morning. "To follow Jesus is to be a wholemaker, essentially to love the world into new being and life." That gets to the heart of the matter. Being part of the Church means sharing God's project of making all things whole.
As an individual who is a part of the Church, I can only perceive and respond to the way that I in my particularity am being called to perform God's will from a posture of prayer. And in that vulnerable, intimate space, it is very helpful to be among others who can help me see and lay claim to truth, just as I can help others see and lay claim to their truth.
Jesus' first followers were Jews, as he was. After the resurrection, non-Jewish people, known by Jews as Gentiles, began responding in force to the apostles' preaching about Jesus. Jews considered Gentiles unclean; it was improper to associate with them, especially to enter their homes and eat from their tables. But here they were, responding to the Gospel, believing in Christ, and wanting to learn to live like him. Here they were, joining the Jewish Christians in that posture of prayer, walking up beside them on the same Way. Brought together in that "common wanting."
The wanting won the day. Desire abolished distinctions. Jews and Gentiles joined together, and their love of Christ took such precedence over what had previously divided them that Paul could at one point in his ministry write, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
This is why we cannot say to anyone: "You do not belong in the Church. You're the wrong kind of person." If someone has joined us in seeking God's will, they have as much right to be here as we have. By virtue of their desire for God and God's way, they have become our siblings, friends, and companions in the Spirit.
Jesus really pressed this home when he redrew the lines of his own family early on in his public ministry. Things happen very quickly in Mark's Gospel, and by the mid-point of chapter three, Jesus has already aroused the ire of the Pharisees by criticizing the established religious institution and by drawing large crowds from all over Israel to hear his teachings.
Earlier in the chapter, in verse 21, Mark writes, "But when [Jesus'] own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, He is out of His mind" (NKJV).
His own people... Family? Friends? Neighbors? His own people, presumably from Nazareth in Galilee, go to find him either to rebuke him, to shush him, or to outright restrain him and bring him home. When his mother and brothers arrive a little later, it seems plausible that they, too, for a time at least, thought that Jesus was "out of his mind." Or if not, they had come to warn him that people back home were starting to talk.
When Jesus hears that his mother and brothers are standing outside the house where he's teaching, he says, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” ...Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:32-35).
There are clear resonances here, again, to the Lord's prayer. When we pray, "Our Father... They will be done," we are entering into the special relationship with God that Jesus had. In John's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples: "Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.” And in Ephesians, Paul writes, "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." Wholeness. Crossing familial lines and cultural divides. The will of God to make whole.
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"The bond of spiritual community is a common wanting to do the will of God."
The authenticity and vitality of the Church must be renewed every day. It's not enough that we did the will of God yesterday. It's not enough that we plan to seek God's will tomorrow. The Church is where people are together in the present moment wanting what God wants, doing what God does, being who God says we are.
If we simply come to Church to come -- perhaps to be comforted, to be seen, to be useful, or to do what we've always done -- our lives may be enriched, but we won't be going with others into the depth of things, into the free and unpredictable streams of the Spirit. It's good to pray for the grace to want what God wants. God is so kind that we can even pray for the grace to want to want what God wants -- and God will help us. "God, give me a hunger for you, a hunger to seek your way and do your will." And because, when we pray that prayer, we find ourselves joined to others, it becomes plural: "God, give us a hunger for you, a hunger to seek your way and do you will." It is always 'Our Father,' always a prayer prayed by the many who, by praying it, become one.
John Wesley's great gift as an evangelist was the way that he organized people to continue growing in their faith so that their ministry could be sustained for the long haul. Many revival preachers of that time, George Whitefield among them, would blow through town, gain converts, and then leave for the next place without giving the people any structure or guidance for what to do next. People who responded eagerly to the message of salvation easily slipped back into their old habits and patterns of belonging. Wesley, on the other hand, lingered in the places where he preached. In each place, he set up large group gatherings called societies, and, within societies, he chose leaders to oversee small groups of about a dozen persons each, called classes.
The purpose of the society meetings was for Methodists to join together for "fellowship, preaching, prayer, and hymn-singing. ...Members [also] agreed to follow three General Rules: avoid evil, do good, and employ the means of grace God gives for spiritual growth."[2] Societies were basically a second weekly church service, because Methodists were still encouraged to attend Sunday worship at their local Anglican parish to receive the Sacraments. They were also hubs for organizing the Methodist's local service to their communities.
Classes, those smaller groups, also met once a week "for spiritual conversation and guidance. Members spoke about their temptations, confessed their faults, shared their concerns, testified to the working of God in their lives, and exhorted and prayed for one another to be more faithful. ...Every Methodist was expected to attend class meetings."[3]
So after Wesley came to town, people had these three concentric circles of Christian community. The widest circle was membership in the Church of England, primarily for the purpose of receiving Communion. The next circle in was a more energetic, spiritual, and personal worship gathering in the Methodist society. Finally, once a week, each Methodist would meet in their class meeting and share about the wellbeing of their soul from an intimate, sacred place.
I experienced something similar to this as a young person. When I first joined a Methodist church back in New Jersey as a teenager, these concentric circles of belonging were provided for me. I went to worship with the whole community on Sunday mornings. I attended a large youth group on Wednesday nights. And when I reached high school, I began participating in a Monday night Bible Study with some peers who were hungry for more depth of prayer, study, and conversation than we could get in youth group. It's not the way things have to be done, but I will say that I felt, even as a young person, like a vital part of that community. I could be with the whole church for worship, prayer, and teaching, and I could be with a few trusted friends as I began exploring my own soul for the first time. My whole self offered, my whole self loved. And also a sense of the whole Gospel -- God's love at work in the community and at work in me.
Wesley's system of organization placed a premium on the development of local leaders, men and women who, while not ordained clergy, exhibited profound spiritual maturity and wisdom. Wesley's system of organization also emphasized the preciousness of every individual person who joined the movement, many of whom came from the working poor class. As one writer has put it: "Wesley had gathered his new underclass where they were and had gathered them into new social groups in which each person found acceptance and a new sense of dignity" (17).
It was as if, by placing everyone in a society and a class, Wesley was saying, You are family now. You belong together. You all are wanting to know and do God's will in a realer way than before, so you are now on the journey together. The local organization of the revival is what, more than anything else, gave Methodism its staying power. It is why, even today, United Methodists are called to form lay-led churches, and to create what the Book of Discipline calls "a culture of call," a culture in which every person, through their mutual relationships with the others, realizes that they have a place and a purpose in what God is up to here and now.
A few hundred years on from Wesley's diligent attention to God's desire for wholeness, we should be wary of being on autopilot when it comes to our relationship with God and how that's expressed in our congregational life. Remember the words from Revelation? “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth" (Rev. 3:15-16). It's harsh, but it puts an exclamation point on the urgency to not let our wanting to be stifled or ignored for too. long. One set of questions you might ask is, "What is my posture toward my own spiritual hunger? Am I curious about it? Scared to consider it?" And here's a corresponding set of questions, without which the first questions mean nothing: "What is my posture toward the spiritual hunger of others? Am I curious about what's going on in my brothers and sisters in the pew? In the hearts of folks in my neighborhood?"
It makes me wonder if it's time for our own congregation to get a bit more organized. I know that many of you get together in smaller circles of belonging throughout the week or month. But I wonder who is falling through the cracks, how well the "whole" congregation is being attended to. When someone new comes through our doors, we don't have clear pathways for them to enter into steady and deep spiritual relationships within groups. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this, but I would be curious to know what you all are sensing and wanting in terms of formally organized spiritual community beyond Sunday morning worship.
As we consider this, perhaps the most important thing we can do is to celebrate the bonds of love that we have forged here because of our unity in Christ, bonds which we wouldn't have naturally forged if we had followed the logic of the world. Who do you love because of this place, because of God's love, who you would never have expected to love?
These stories of friendships born of God's desire, they are such a powerful witness in our world where everything is divided, where politics and profits thrive on division, and where Christians are some of the worst perpetrators of division. May we renew our commitment to God and to one another as wholemakers, as we allow ourselves to be knit together in the love of Christ.
Amen.
[1]Rose Mary Dougherty, S.S.N.D., Group Spiritual Direction: Community for Discernment (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995), 7.
[2]Charles Yrigoyen, Jr., John Wesley: Holiness of Heart & Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 17.
[3] Yrigoyen, Jr., John Wesley, 18.