Tag Archives: John Wesley

El Carácter de un Wesleyano

En estos días se está hablando mucho en mi (ciertamente muy limitado) sector del mundo sobre lo que significa ser wesleyano. En este caso, “wesleyano” no se refiere a una denominación en particular, sino a una corriente teológica más amplia que nació a través de un movimiento del siglo XVIII y que se definió en gran medida por los comentarios y sermones de John Wesley.

El propio Wesley escribió una vez un tratado llamado “El Carácter de un Metodista.” Según su definición, un metodista es feliz, lleno de amor, orante, puro de corazón, de espíritu de servicio, conocido por su fruto.

En esta época, parece importante articular más los distintivos que nos hacen metodistas. En mi propio estudio, descubrí esta fuerte reflexión sobre el carácter de un wesleyano escrita hace más de una década por Kent Hill, entonces presidente de Eastern Nazarene College. Sus pensamientos resuenan, así que los comparto como un punto de partida para su propia formación de una definición de lo que significa ser wesleyano.

¿Qué significa ser wesleyano?

Primero, ser wesleyano significa reconocer la primacía de la autoridad bíblica. John Wesley nunca dejó ninguna duda en cuanto a sus convicciones en esta área. En una carta de 1739, declaró inequívocamente: “No permito otra regla, ya sea de fe o de práctica, que las Sagradas Escrituras …” Wesley se tomó tan en serio que las Escrituras desempeñaran el papel principal en lo que pensaba y en cómo vivía, que sus sermones y cartas están impregnados de frases bíblicas. Se convirtió en parte de su propio lenguaje.

En segundo lugar, ser wesleyano significa ser consciente y orgullosamente parte de la amplia y antigua tradición de la fe cristiana. No pertenecemos a una secta religiosa que nació a mediados del siglo XVIII. En 1777, en la fundación de City Road Chapel en Londres, Wesley describió el movimiento del metodismo de esta manera: “El metodismo, así llamado, es la religión antigua, la religión de la Biblia, la religión de la Iglesia primitiva, la religión del Iglesia de Inglaterra. Esta vieja religión … no es otra que el amor, el amor de Dios y de toda la humanidad.” Si somos fieles a nuestra herencia wesleyana, no solo podemos, sino que estamos obligados a, basarnos ampliamente en la tradición cristiana.

En tercer lugar, ser wesleyano no solo permite, sino que requiere que seamos ecuménicos. Aunque John Wesley creía firmemente en sus convicciones teológicas, nunca perdió de vista el hecho de que el Cuerpo de Cristo es mucho más grande que cualquier tradición o perspectiva teológica. No barrió bajo la alfombra las importantes divisiones teológicas que existían, ni permitió que esas diferencias nublaran la realidad más amplia de que lo que tenemos en común a través de los credos es de primordial importancia. En el ecumenismo de Wesley, hubo un compromiso con una humanidad común en Cristo.

Cuarto, ser wesleyano significa afirmar la doctrina cardinal de la justificación por gracia a través de la fe. La salvación se basa en los méritos de la justicia de Cristo y se apropia por la fe, que es un don de la gracia de Dios. Wesley insistió en que debemos responder al regalo de Dios mediante actos de obediencia que fluyen de la fe. Wesley creía que los humanos nunca pueden hacer lo suficiente para merecer la salvación; sin embargo, enseñó que Dios en su soberanía nos concede una medida de libertad para responder a su gracia transformadora, y si nos negamos a responder, entonces no seremos salvos ni transformados.

En quinto lugar, ser wesleyano significa reconocer que la gracia de Dios es “transformadora” y “perdonadora.” Esto se encuentra en el meollo de lo que se puede llamar el distintivo teológico central del pensamiento de John Wesley: la búsqueda, por la gracia de Dios, de la santidad o santificación. La gracia es más que la “gracia creadora” que ha formado todas las cosas. Es incluso más que la gracia “perdonadora” que nos perdona nuestros pecados. Es la gracia “transformadora” que, por obra del Espíritu Santo, nos permite conformarnos cada vez más a la imagen de Jesucristo.

En sexto lugar, ser wesleyano significa ser apologistas efectivos de la fe cristiana. La vida y el ministerio de John Wesley reflejan una respuesta convincente al mandamiento registrado en 1 Pedro 3: 15-16: “Al contrario, honren en su corazón a Cristo, como Señor, y manténganse siempre listos para defenderse, con mansedumbre y respeto, ante aquellos que les pidan explicarles la esperanza que hay en ustedes. Tengan una buena conciencia, para que sean avergonzados aquellos que murmuran y dicen que ustedes son malhechores, y los calumnian por su buena conducta en Cristo.” (RVC) Si reflejamos una perspectiva wesleyana, cultivaremos oportunidades para usar las Escrituras, la amplia tradición cristiana, la razón y la experiencia en defensa de la fe. Y lo haremos de una manera que muestre moderación y amor frente a las críticas.

Séptimo, para ser wesleyano se requiere un compromiso con el discipulado y la responsabilidad. Específicamente, requiere de nosotros un compromiso con la importancia del discipulado cristiano estructurado. En junio de 1779, Wesley escribió en su diario: “Este mismo día escuché muchas verdades excelentes pronunciadas en la kirk (iglesia). Pero, como no había ninguna aplicación, era probable que hiciera tanto bien como el canto de una alondra.” Además de la participación en pequeños grupos de rendición de cuentas, Wesley insistió en la importancia de las devociones privadas, la participación en reuniones más grandes de la iglesia, la toma de los sacramentos, y los actos de misericordia.

Octavo, ser wesleyano significa estar involucrado en ministerios compasivos. John Wesley siempre creyó que era imperativo que un seguidor de Jesucristo estuviera simultáneamente comprometido con la relación vertical esencial con su Creador y con la relación necesaria y redentora con el resto de la Creación de Dios. Si este último no está presente, Wesley insistió en que hay algo fundamentalmente incorrecto en el primero. Ninguna posición podría estar más claramente arraigada en Cristo, quien declaró en Mateo 25 que “todo lo que hiciste por uno de estos hermanos míos más pequeños, lo hiciste por mí.”

Ojalá que en nuestros días veamos un renacimiento del metodismo con tal fuerza y ​​carácter que recupere su capacidad de acoger y hacer avanzar el Reino de Dios.

La traducción por Rev. Dr. Edgar Bazan/Translation by Rev. Dr. Edgar Bazan.

Featured image courtesy Mateus Campos Felipe for Unsplash.

Reacting to the Image of God: Wesley and Worth

I try my best not to get drawn into the hot fire of the cultural moment. One of my great fears for our moment is that we will all become reactionary, driven more by emotions than reason (or if we are religious an overarching theological perspective). We react to culture, we react to others, we react to ourselves. Reacting like this often means that we don’t take time to stop, think, pray, and discern. In seminary, a professor named Dr. Knickerbocker said, “always watch what word we use. Do we say ‘I feel’? Or ‘I think’? Or ‘I believe’?” Our feelings may be valid, and reason is just as fallen and faulty as emotion. But in a reactionary moment, I try to stay non-reactive.

As a follower of Jesus, I’ve found that Wesleyan theology animates how and why I interact with people. One of the greatest theological works ever, in my opinion, is John Wesley’s sermon, “The Scripture Way of Salvation.” In this sermon, Wesley lays out a concept you may be familiar with: his understanding of grace – prevenient, the grace that goes before; justifying, the grace of conversion; and sanctifying, the grace of Christian growth.

There are so many takeaways from his theology but primary to me is the understanding that God is the first and primary actor in our salvation. We do not save ourselves by anything that we can do. God is the first actor. He calls us (prevenient), saves us (justifying), and grows us (sanctifying). Our very salvation is the work of God. In fact, in a recent sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed, we looked at how our very salvation is a Trinitarian act. We are brought to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. We are saved only through God’s work.

But here is why this matters in a reactionary culture. Why must God be the first actor? Why does salvation rest on God’s action, not on ours? The reason is original sin, sometimes called the doctrine of depravity. When Adam and Eve fell, they took all of humanity with them. (Romans 5: 12, 1 Corinthians 15: 20-21) This doctrine says that when they fell, we as humans fell with them. We are sinful, corrupt, whatever term or adjective you’d like to use. We are sinful. You. Me. All of us. It is part of the human condition.

Now here is the question. What does that mean? We know all humans are made in the image of God. (Genesis 1: 26-27) But sin has entered in. What does that do to the image of God within us? One theological perspective is that the image of God is completely destroyed: nothing good is left within us. From this perspective, we are completely dead in our sins. Sin destroyed that goodness of God. Yes, we are made in God’s image, but we most certainly are not good. That view is a dominant theme within modern American evangelicalism. As I’ve heard it said, a dead man can’t crawl out of a burning house, and the only thing we deserve is hellfire.

That way of thinking is not how Wesley looked at things. Wesley understood the reality of human sin, yes; but he believed that while the fall corrupted the image of God within us, it didn’t destroy it. Ted Runyan has a wonderful book called The New Creation that covers this subject in-depth. His entire point is that the fall corrupted that image of God within us – it is in need of redemption – but is not completely gone. We humans remain of great worth, and there is the hope for salvation for all. (John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2: 3-4)

This is the reason I am so drawn to Wesleyan theology. Without a doubt, we need salvation. And we are sinful. We can’t save ourselves. But that image of God, while corrupted, has not been completely destroyed. Prevenient grace extends to us an awakening of that image that allows us to walk toward God’s offer of grace.

This cultural moment would teach us to see other people as our enemy. To see people only deserving of judgment, especially those who are not Christians or those who we may disagree with. Those who may vote differently, live differently, act differently. We could easily take on the view of sin that casts them out and removes their worth. It is tempting to harden to our sides; they are over the line, they are on the other side.

Of course, I want to be clear. I believe in sin, judgment, and hell. No one comes to the Father but through the Son. (John 14:6) Sin is destructive; it destroys God’s prize creation, humanity. (John 10:10) This is not an apology for sin. It is a call to love all people in the way that God does. Our societal moment can take from us the desire to truly see the worth in others. The worth in those who are wrong. The worth in those we would see as even our enemies. The path of Christ calls us to love even the enemy. (Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 5:10)

As a follower of Christ and as a pastor, I want to speak against racism and also never discount the potential conversion and sanctification of the racist. And if I am their pastor, I want to be able to hopefully, through God’s grace, help them grow. I want to speak against immorality and also never discount the potential conversion and sanctification of the immoral. And if I am their pastor, I want to be able to hopefully, through God’s grace, help them grow. As a fallen human, my guilt is the same as anyone I preach to. In my calling, I want to hold out hope for redemption to those of infinite worth in the same way I respond to it myself. I never want to discount the worth of people, no matter who they are, what they do, or what they believe. Because everyone is truly loved by God who wants to redeem them.

I want as many people as possible to know the love of Jesus. Some would say that because of their sin, those who do not know Jesus are hostile to him and aren’t interested in knowing God at all. Maybe. But when I read Scripture, I see a lot of people who did not know Jesus but who wanted to know him. And today, I see a lot of people who do not know Jesus and who are very hostile to the Church. But there is still a fascination with Jesus and the Church. There is a yearning spiritually. It’s not surprising; Scripture says God has written eternity on the hearts of men. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Recently, I read a tweet that caused me to think a lot. By how I love others, do I make hell a more appealing place for folks to want to be than church? I want those who do not know Jesus Christ to be drawn to him and follow him. That is my one true desire for ministry. I want folks of all kinds to know their worth to Jesus. And if I all do is extend a metaphorical middle finger or kick sand in their face, how will know they know Jesus? Because that’s what I want more than anything else: for as many as possible to know Jesus.

I don’t want to get involved in hardening my heart at others, because I want all people, all people, to know Jesus. This world is calling me and you to harden our hearts to others. To write them off. To deem them as enemies. Maybe people in the church are calling us to do that. Maybe even preachers are calling us to do that. But I don’t believe that is right, and it isn’t Wesleyan. In one recent article, the author pointed out that for the first time in history, non-churchgoers make up the majority of the population in America. This is the context we live in now. We can choose to bemoan where we are. We can harden our sides and opinions. We can see our neighbors as our enemy and give up any hope for their redemption. We can harden our opinions, shout the loudest, and condemn the most. But I don’t think that’s the way of Jesus or the way of Wesley. I want as many as possible to know Jesus.

And that starts with each of us knowing our worth in Jesus and seeing others’ worth in Jesus. Even the folks we can’t stand.

Cómo es la Providencia

A veces parece que las personas que provienen de orígenes metodistas wesleyanos tienen una relación “a distancia” con la idea de la providencia. En su nivel más básico, la providencia es la actividad de Dios que lleva a cabo los planes redentores de Dios para su creación. Es Dios elaborando un plan de rescate para la creación, y la idea de que Dios está trabajando detrás de escena sin nuestra participación o cooperación es un poco desconcertante para la sensibilidad wesleyana. Porque después de todo, ¿no somos nosotros las personas que creemos en la gracia cooperante (es decir, que hay un grado de cooperación en el que participamos cuando se trata de la obra salvadora de Dios)? Somos el movimiento que enfatiza el libre albedrío humano y nuestra capacidad para elegir o rechazar el don de la gracia que Dios ofrece. “Providencia” simplemente suena demasiado a esa gente reformada o calvinista, pensamos. Pero si miramos más de cerca, vemos que el fundador de nuestro movimiento, John Wesley, tenía una comprensión muy sólida de la providencia divina. Entonces, ¿qué debemos pensar sobre la providencia como wesleyanos?

Describamos lo que no es la providencia. La providencia no significa que no tengamos libre albedrío. La providencia de Dios no descarta la libertad humana. La Providencia no se opone a la cooperación con Dios. La providencia no significa que estemos “fuera del apuro” o que no tengamos sentido de responsabilidad cuando se trata de crecimiento espiritual. Más bien, cooperamos con Dios a medida que crecemos en nuestra fe al practicar disciplinas espirituales, o los “medios de la gracia.”

Entonces, ¿qué es la providencia?

La Providencia está en el corazón de la teología cristiana. Los cristianos a lo largo de los siglos, aunque ha habido excepciones, han afirmado que Dios no es simplemente un relojero que puso el universo en movimiento y desde entonces lo ha dejado desatendido para sus propios fines. Más bien, la providencia afirma que Dios está obrando detrás de escena, a veces de manera imperceptible, pero obrando de todos modos. Basándose en siglos de comprensión cristiana, el difunto teólogo Thomas Oden definió la providencia como “la expresión de la voluntad, el poder y la bondad divinos a través de los cuales el Creador conserva a las criaturas, coopera con lo que sucederá a través de sus acciones y las guía en sus propósitos a largo plazo.” [1] La Providencia es tanto evidencia del amor de Dios por su creación como de su soberanía.

John Wesley tenía fuertes convicciones con respecto a la providencia de Dios. Con su enfoque de ambos / y, Wesley compartió una gran comprensión de la naturaleza de Dios y de la vida del discípulo cristiano a través del lente de la providencia. En su sermón, Sobre la Providencia, Wesley instó: “No hay casi ninguna doctrina en todo el ámbito de la revelación, que sea de mayor importancia que esta. Y, al mismo tiempo, hay pocos que sean tan poco considerados, y quizás tan poco comprendidos.” [2]

Mientras que los pensadores cristianos durante siglos afirmaron la omnisciencia y omnipresencia de Dios, Wesley reconoció que nuestro limitado entendimiento humano tiene problemas para comprender el concepto de la naturaleza providencial de Dios. Wesley enfatizó que deberíamos sentirnos humildes por el hecho de que Dios, infinito en sabiduría y poder, aún se preocupa por el bienestar de su creación. Wesley señaló que mientras que para Dios todas las cosas son posibles, “El que puede hacer todas las cosas no puede negarse a sí mismo.” [3] Aunque está dentro del poder de Dios destruir todo pecado y maldad en el mundo, por ejemplo, esto contradeciría La naturaleza de Dios. En particular, esto contradiría el hecho de que la humanidad fue creada a la imagen de Dios. Sin embargo, Wesley aclaró, aquí es donde la providencia de Dios entra en la ecuación. Si bien Dios permite que los seres humanos elijan entre el bien y el mal, la providencia de Dios es una obra, “para ayudar al hombre [sic] a alcanzar el fin de su ser, a obrar su propia salvación, en la medida en que se pueda hacer sin coacción, sin anular su libertad.” Wesley visualiza la providencia de Dios operando en un “círculo triple” dentro de la creación. [4]

Primero, observó Wesley, todo el universo está gobernado por Dios, incluidos los movimientos del sol, la luna y las estrellas, así como la vida animal. Más allá de este gobierno, Wesley describe tres círculos de la providencia de Dios. El primero de los tres círculos abarca a toda la humanidad. Dentro de este círculo, la providencia de Dios obra en el mundo … El segundo círculo incluye “todos los que profesan creer en Cristo.” [5] Dentro de este círculo, Dios está obrando … El círculo final y más íntimo, abarca, “verdaderos cristianos, aquellos que adoran a Dios, no sólo en forma, sino en espíritu y en verdad. Aquí están incluidos todos los que aman a Dios, o, al menos, verdaderamente temen a Dios y obran justicia; todos en los cuales está la mente que estaba en Cristo, y que caminan como Cristo también caminó.” [6] (Es interesante que Wesley argumentó que es dentro de este círculo que se realiza Lucas 12: 7: “Lo mismo pasa con ustedes, pues hasta los cabellos de su cabeza están todos contados. Así que no teman, pues ustedes valen más que muchos pajarillos.” [7] Él comentó: “Nada relativo a estos es demasiado grande, nada demasiado pequeño, para su atención.” [8] Mientras que Dios está preocupado por todos en su creación, Wesley creía que el Señor presta especial atención a aquellos que son seguidores totalmente devotos de Jesús).

A lo largo de sus escritos, incluyendo su diario y cartas, Wesley notó en muchas ocasiones el “tren de providencias” que Dios obró en situaciones particulares. A menudo atribuye palabras descriptivas adicionales como, “poco común,” “varios,” “maravilloso,” y “completo” para describir con más detalle estos casos en los que Wesley observó la mano de Dios obrando en la vida de los cristianos. Enfatizó que si bien Dios ha establecido leyes generales que gobiernan el universo, Dios es libre de “hacer excepciones a ellas, cuando le plazca.” [9] Para Wesley, el cuidado de Dios por la creación y especialmente por los seres humanos no se ve obstaculizado por las leyes del universo.

En la conclusión de su sermón, Wesley anima a los cristianos a poner toda su confianza en el Señor y no temer. La providencia de Dios significa que podemos confiar en él incluso cuando parece que nuestro mundo o el mundo entero se está desmoronando. Él no niega que enfrentaremos desafíos y dolores, sino que debemos caminar humildemente ante Dios y confiar en que “Para los que aman a Dios todas las cosas les ayudan a bien, a los que conforme a su propósito son llamados.” [10] La esperanza del cristiano es en el Señor que no solo gobierna el universo, sino que también se preocupa especialmente por los que siguen a Dios. Dios conoce la cantidad de cabellos que tienen en la cabeza. Ningún detalle escapa a su atención. La providencia de Dios nos da esperanza tanto para nuestro presente como para nuestro futuro. No se trata simplemente de decir que “todo sucede por una razón,” porque Dios no es la fuente del mal o el caos. Sin embargo, podemos confiar en que detrás de todo, Dios está obrando. No significa que todo nos irá bien, pero sí significa que Dios está con nosotros en cada paso del camino. Quizás esa fue la motivación de John Wesley en su lecho de muerte cuando pronunció las palabras: “Lo mejor de todo, es que Dios está con nosotros”. [11]

[1] Oden, Thomas C. Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

[2] John Wesley, “On Divine Providence” (1786), in The Works of John Wesley, ed. Thomas Jackson, 14 vols.,(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 6:315; hereafter cited as Works (Jackson).

[3] Ibid, p. 317

[4] This idea is from Thomas Crane in A Prospect of Divine Providence, which Wesley included in his Christian Library.

[5] Ibid, p. 319

[6] Ibid.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016).

[8] Ibid., p. 320

[9] Ibid, p. 322

[10] Romans 8:28. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016).

[11] Ken Collins, John Wesley: A Theological Journey, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), p. 268.

Featured image courtesy Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash.

La traducción por Rev. Dr. Edgar Bazan

The Surprising Call to Gentleness

There are many motifs and illustrations utilized to unpack who Jesus is and what Jesus did, but perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the life of Jesus Christ was a quiet one – gentleness. References abound to Jesus as prophet, priest, king. The Christus Victor portrait has remained strong over centuries, for good reason. Angles that peek toward Christ as suffering servant continue to comfort the weary, ill, or dying.

For centuries, theologians have written engrossing works on the nature of Christ and on a mosaic of approaches to the atonement. But the Holy Spirit won’t quite let us escape the surprising call to gentleness. To encounter Jesus is to encounter holy, powerful love. But how odd would it sound to hear someone say, “I became a Christian because I was fascinated by how gentle they are”?

In a way, that was John Wesley’s experience; he was transfixed by the gentleness of the Moravians traveling on the same ship. He knew the letter of his faith but not the love of it. His life was unraveling, his goals unmet, his relationships a mess. Terrified in a hurricane, he listening to the simplicity of hymns sung during a storm. There’s plenty of emphasis on his observation that the Moravians didn’t fear dying; but it’s worth noticing that he didn’t comment on that alone. He’d watched them on the days without hurricanes. He watched them take on unpleasant jobs without complaining; he saw them insulted or bullied by other passengers, cheerfully refusing to rise to the bait. What he knew by rote, they knew by heart. Wesley wanted the peace and assurance they exhibited.

It is one thing to sing calmly in a hurricane; it’s another to live with gentleness in the middle of disgusting, unwanted tasks or in the face of belligerent arrogance and anger.

Consider words floating in our atmosphere, like soot and ash rising from the destruction of wildfire. Rage. Cancel. Fury. Hoax. Death toll. Damage. Catastrophic. Unprecedented. Anger is everywhere; and some of it is righteous anger. But how do we keep our righteous anger righteous?

When we look at Jesus, we see tremendous power restrained through the beauty of gentleness. It is tempting to find vicarious satisfaction in the flipping of the tables when he cleansed the table: but Jesus could do that with holy love and pure motive, willing also to be crucified for those same people. If I want to overturn tables and scatter people who profit off of vulnerable people, but I’m not willing to die for the people whose tables I just knocked over, I don’t have love. I may have anger or even righteous anger. But I don’t have love. I’m a reverberating gong, a clanging cymbal.

What may be more telling is the quiet presence of gentleness in countless scenarios in the Gospels.

“Let the toddlers come to me.”

“Would you give me a drink of water?”

“I’m coming to your house for supper.”

“Can you see yet?”

“Daughter, your faith has made you whole.”

“Where are your accusers? Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and don’t do this anymore.”

“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Don’t let your hearts be troubled.”

“Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

Of all the unglamorous fruits of the Spirit, gentleness is perhaps the most forgettable. Until it isn’t. Until it’s such an uncommon trait that it becomes powerfully noticeable.

Methodism exists in large part because of the gentleness of a bunch of John Wesley’s fellow passengers on a ship. Not their cleverness; not, like good Gryffindors, their bravery. Their gentleness.

We do not need to be loud to be powerful, as therapist James Perkins recently explored with leadership strategist Tristian Williams. In the middle of deafening noise, what is one more loud voice? But there is surprising power in quiet, strong gentleness.

Christians are called to gentleness. Gentleness is not lack of clarity, lack of courage, or lack of conviction. It is strength that is under control, that serves others, that bypasses the satisfaction of putting someone in their places. It is illustrated in Proverbs 15 – “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Many children have a keen sense of danger from an unstable power larger than themselves. But children were drawn to Jesus; this was a being who, like Lewis’ Aslan, was powerful but good. The fullness of God dwelled in Jesus Christ, but children wanted to play, tease, sit on his lap. To enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus said, adults must become childlike in our trust.

And one way we can build trust with others in a bitterly cynical age taut with suspicion, anger, and self-preservation, is to practice the rhythms of gentleness. There is no substitute for the clear, calm witness of Christ followers like the Moravians. No one wants to empty the buckets of the sea-sick. No one wants to let the opportunity pass by, to one-up a caustic bully. No one wants to hold their loved ones on a wooden ship without GPS in the middle of a hurricane wondering if they’ll die.

But by the power of the Holy Spirit, God cups our jagged, slicing slivers and, ever so gently, softens our razor-edges into serving trays. There is simplicity in following Jesus, but sometimes, like Simon Peter, we try to bring our weapons with us. As the Spirit of God gradually pries our fingers from our sword hilts, we are set free to live cheerfully, to serve cheerfully, to ignore cheerfully. The only weapon in the classic “armor of God” set is – the sword of the Spirit. The Word of God will shape us and arm us to love well; to love powerfully; to love gently.

It is not only in our current time or place that gentleness is surprisingly counter-cultural; plenty of civilizations have not valued gentleness. But our world starves for it now, too. Consider the impact of Mother Teresa, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mr. Fred Rogers. Notice the resurgence in popularity of quiet-toned public television artist Bob Ross or the popular craving for mindfulness techniques, meditation, or hygge. When people decry polarization, part of the unspoken weariness is weariness of roughness, meanness, meltdowns, altercations, and rejection.

We can’t be like Jesus if we ignore gentleness. To become like Christ is to soften – not into non-entity or non-being; but into a strong, Spirit-empowered, gentle version of ourselves. We hand over our weapons and let Christ fashion them into serving tools. Gentleness isn’t weakness; it’s strength with a sense of humor.

Are you bruised right now? Could you use some gentleness? The Holy Spirit is waving you over to the side of the race track to mend your injuries.

Have you lost some of your gentleness? Are you noticing brittle places emerging in your spirit? The Holy Spirit is waving you over to the sidelines, to take your hardened blades and refashion them into farming equipment.

This is the way of Jesus; there is no shortcut.

Social Media & Holiness

I’ve always been an “early adapter.”  I may not be the first person to try a new technology, but I’m not far behind.  Following the arrival of the first iPhones, I wasn’t at the Apple Store at midnight for a new release – but I’d show up sometime the next day. So I joined social media early on. As soon as Facebook opened to the public, I signed up. I started a Twitter profile.  I even tried Google+. 

By and large, I really enjoy social media.  I’ve made social media friends who became real friends; I remain in contact with old friends as they move away. Social media allows me to connect with church members and visitors; it allows folks to participate online with church activities.  In fact, you could argue that during this season of COVID, social media is indispensable to ministry.

Yet recently I decided to take a break from Facebook.  Why?  Sometimes my faith is at work when I feel something in my soul that I can’t explain, but I just know it. And I noticed that when I was on social media, I just felt – heavy. A sense of sadness. I couldn’t place my finger on it.  At that point, I decided to take a break and continued sorting exactly what it was that I sensed.

One morning while walking, the Holy Spirit gave me some insight. 

The reason why I’m a Methodist is not because I was born into it (though I was).  The reason I’m a Methodist is John Wesley’s theology.  Being a Methodist makes me a better disciple, it makes me a better follower of Jesus.  For me, the point of our entire salvation is to recover what sin has corrupted –  to recover that image of God within ourselves through sanctification, and recover it in all the world (through the eventual return of Christ).

So then, what does this new creation look like, what does sanctification look like?  It is the perfect keeping of the law of God.  Scripture tells us to be holy as God is holy.  As we grow closer to God and grow through grace, that image of God will be recovered, and we will more resemble our Savior.  Well, what does it look like to keep his law?  What does it mean to be holy?  Jesus tells us in Matthew 22: 36-40:

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

The entire law is summed up in those two commands – love God and love neighbor.  This is what holiness looks like: to allow the love of God to so consume us that our sins are driven out as we are filled with God’s love.  As I understand Wesley, he was focused more on perfect love than perfect action, because complete, perfected love will lead to unsullied intent. If I perfectly love God, I will not take his name in vain, I will honor the Sabbath.  If I perfectly love my neighbor, I will not murder my neighbor, I will not bear false witness against her. 

To talk of loving God and neighbor is literally to talk about the very goal and purpose of our salvation.  It is the very nature of holiness.  It is what we are created for and what our sanctification drives us towards.

And that was what felt heavy about social media.  In this season, Facebook was no longer a place of loving God and loving neighbor.  If we take God’s commands seriously, if we take the law and teachings of Jesus seriously, we cannot live in a way that tears down not only fellow believers, but fellow humans, day after day. 

As a pastor, each verbal attack, each biting meme, each political wresting match showed me the great need all of us have for continued sanctification.  As I thought through it, I began to see that this was not contributing to my holiness.  Social media was not helping me love my God and my neighbor better. 

While social media itself didn’t cause me to sin, it did cause me to grow discouraged, to pray less, and to worry more. It caused me to despair because so many Christians are allowing this cultural moment, rather than our desire for holiness and sanctification, to be the force that dictates our thoughts, our passions, our posts, and our words.

Let me be clear: I’m not calling for a dispassionate, milquetoast existence with no beliefs or morals.  Far from it.  If you read Wesley, he shared quite strong opinions in his writing, about poverty, slavery, and even the American Revolution.  This is not a call to ambivalence on moral matters.  But it is a call to the path of Jesus, who calls us to love not just our neighbors but to love even our enemies.  If we follow the commands and teachings of Jesus, we have no choice.

I’ve been teaching on the book of James during my online Wednesday night Bible study. There is a passage that stuck with me. 

“You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  James 2:8

It prompts me to consider legalism.  Think of all the things we tend to be legalistic about in lives.  Maybe it’s your language, what you eat or drink, what you watch or listen to.  To put it one way, as Christians, many of us have legalisms in our lives; to put it another way, many of us have moral codes. 

What if we were legalistic – about keeping that royal law?  What if we were legalistic – about love?  What would happen?  I logged off social media for a season because participating led me to be a law breaker.  It was not helping me keep God’s royal law of loving my neighbor as myself; and through God’s grace, that is really what I most desire to do.  I desire to keep God’s law.  I desire to be holy.  Will you join me?

Featured image courtesy Unsplash: Photo by Elijah O’Donnell

Talking about Jesus in A Complex World

World Methodist Evangelism (WME) is proud to work with partners around the world to train indigenous, front-line evangelism leaders to talk about Jesus in a complex world. Usually lasting one week, these evangelism seminars provide laity and clergy in the Wesleyan Methodist family the opportunity to explore the nature and practice of evangelism in a cross-cultural environment.

Pastors and laity from the United States are encouraged to join with international church leaders in learning, worship, and mutual growth. We have three seminars in 2020: Indonesia, Fiji, and Romania.

These unique learning opportunities address topics important to Christ followers in these respective locations. Some topics include:
–Ministry in migrant communities
–Faithful creation care
–Providing a faithful witness under the pressures of an increasingly secular society
–The role of healing in evangelism and discipleship
–Addressing local and global poverty from a biblical perspective
–Ministering in places where folk religion is being mixed with Christian teaching

These issues are of increasing importance and provide helpful insights for leaders around the world. In addition, these seminars provide an arena for the World Methodist family to meet together for sharing, learning, and preparing for evangelism. Teaching is led by local church leadership as well as pastors and scholars from the United States.

These experiences are perfect opportunities to grow as leaders and faithful followers of Jesus, and to encounter the wonderful things God is doing in the church around the world. Additionally, continuing education credit is available while experiencing evangelism and church leadership in these exceptional environments.

Upcoming Opportunities:
– Indonesia
– Fiji
– Romania
To learn more, click HERE.

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Omar Al-Rikabi ~ Being a Waffle House Church in the Storm

“A terrible screaming began among the English,” John Wesley wrote in his journal, “But the Germans calmly sang on.”

Sailing aboard The Simmons from England to the American Colonies in 1736, John Wesley found his ship overtaken by storm after storm. Ironically, the ship sailed in October in an attempt to dodge hurricane season, but now here they were, with the wind and sea tearing the main sail in two and water flooding the boat.

Wesley, a minister starting what would be a failed missionary trip to Georgia, was scared of drowning and found himself in a crisis of faith, “ashamed of my unwillingness to die.” But also on board were 26 Moravian missionaries from Herrnhut, Germany, and as he worried they worshiped.

It’s fitting that the founder of our movement hoped to avoid hurricanes, because today the United Methodists are facing their own category 5 storm: General Conference 2020, which will make landfall in May and determine the future of our denomination (and for good measure, we’re also facing the other hurricane of General Election 2020) .

The thing about hurricanes is that we can see them forming out at sea a long way off, days away. The anxiety builds when the weather reports put all the different “spaghetti model” forecasts on the tv screen showing all possible trajectories, turns,  landfall locations, wind speeds, and flooding.

But no one really knows where a hurricane will hit and how bad the damage will be until it actually gets here. And if you’ve ever been through a hurricane, it doesn’t matter how much you prepare or even if you’ve been through one before, when they hit they’re still a shock and they do some kind of damage. The issue is how much, and what it will take to recover.

No matter what “side” you’re on in General Conference (or the General Election), we see it on the map, and anxiety is building. There will be shock and damage. But nobody knows what will actually happen until it gets here, and so we’re left with doomsday forecasts for months.

So what are churches to do while we wait, and who are we going to be in these storms?

What’s our plan? Breakfast. Our plan should be breakfast. Stick with me on this.

In Acts 27, the Apostle Paul sets sail for Rome, and along the way “the weather changed abruptly, and a wind of typhoon strength (called a ‘northeaster’) burst across the island and blew us out to sea.” (Acts 27:14, NLT) The crew panics and starts heaving cargo overboard to lighten the load. They lower the lifeboats, but Paul convinces them they’ll all drown if they jump ship, so they cut the boats loose. They can’t see the sun or the stars, so they can’t navigate. And in dramatic fashion, the Scripture says, “at last all hope was lost.”

All fear and no hope. Sound like anything some of us hear from the pulpit or the pundits?

Finally, after two weeks of fearfully trying to outlast the weather, Paul’s had enough and offers them…breakfast: “Just before dawn Paul urged them all to eat. “For the last fourteen days,” he said, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head.” After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. Altogether there were 276 of us on board.” (Acts 27:33-37 NIV)

Did you catch it? It wasn’t that the sailors couldn’t eat because the storm left them with no food. They had plenty of food but were too afraid to eat because of the storm. And what did Paul serve first? The Eucharist. Holy Communion. The body of Jesus Christ: “[he] took some bread, gave thanks to God before them all, and broke off a piece and ate it. Then everyone was encouraged and began to eat.” That’s the Lord’s Breakfast he started with right there, and the crew had so many seconds and thirds that they were throwing food overboard!

As our hurricane approaches, how do we do the same? How can pastors and congregations learn from and lead like the Apostle Paul?

By looking at the “Waffle House Index.” The Waffle House Index is an informal metric FEMA has used to determine how bad a storm is and how long recovery will take. You see, the folks at Waffle House have a whole system for keeping restaurants open in a storm. They know how to do natural disasters. The index is three colors based on what they can offer: green means Waffle House is still serving the full menu; yellow means they’re serving a partial menu because there is no power or water; red means no menu and the restaurant is closed, so you know the damage is bad – really bad.

We need to be a “Waffle House church,” first offering people the body and blood of Jesus Christ, then offering a full menu of the faith even in the midst the storm.

How? Well first, we need to know our menu: the full story of Scripture and the robust depth of our theology, not just our favorite orders (the items we like to pick and choose). How do we learn (or re-learn) it? Maybe we need a congregation-wide confirmation class, a deep dive into the Apostle’s Creed, maybe a renewed form of class meetings and banded discipleship. Whatever a Holy Spirit imagination gives us for preaching and teaching, we can’t know our menu just for the sake of more information, but for the sake of transformation into being like Christ.

Second, we need to become better customers. Yes, there’s a lot of talk about how Christians shouldn’t be consumers, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. If you’ve ever waited tables, you know customers are most known for one thing: complaining. Maybe it’s because “the customer is always right” even when they’re wrong. I get it, because if you feel left out of the preparation process (not in the kitchen, so to speak), or your expectations haven’t been met (“This isn’t what I ordered!”) it’s easy to become disenfranchised. But we’ve got to move away from all the grumbling, criticizing, and fear-mongering. In other words, we’ve got to stop screaming.

Finally, we need to move from being customers to being waiters. Theologically speaking we’re supposed to be “servants,” because Jesus says things like, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life.” (Mark 10:45, NLT) And of course, one of our mandates is to have the same attitude of Jesus Christ who took the position of a servant. (Philippians 2:5-7)

Consider a story from last November of a Waffle House in Birmingham, Alabama. Because of a glitch in scheduling, just one cook was on duty after midnight to manage about 30 hungry and inebriated customers. He couldn’t keep up, but then one customer got up, put on an apron, and started washing dishes. Another started cleaning tables and serving coffee. With the two customers-turned-waiters at work, the lone employee could keep cooking.

To be this kind of servant in the storm evokes what Wesley wrote about later in his journal at sea: “There is something special about these Germans. They are always so happy! And, they do the menial jobs on this ship without protesting.”

Remember, we’re not a bunch of inebriated customers at one in the morning, we’re servant people filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). This means our storm might give us the opportunity to creatively step up and serve the souls of some hungry and angry people (aka “hangry”). But like Paul, we’re serving them Jesus in the middle of the storm because Jesus is the one who created the very wind and waves (Colossians 1:16) and then later spoke to the storm and told it to calm down (Mark 4:35-41).

And isn’t it interesting that when he was in the storm at sea Wesley asked himself, “How is it that thou has no faith?” which is the same thing Jesus asked his disciples in their boat? Jesus is asking us the same question now. “You have one business on earth – to save souls,” Wesley said.

What does that business look like in our churches in this season of storms? It looks something like the way late chef Anthony Bourdain described a Waffle House: “Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation, is welcomed. Its warm, yellow glow, a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered all across the south to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes. It is always faithful, always there for you.”

Eventually, Jesus will return and there will be no more storms (literal or metaphorical). And when he does we know that, “The servants who are ready and waiting for his return will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, [Jesus] will seat them, put on an apron, and serve them as they sit and eat!” (Luke 12:37, NLT)

Until then, we might as well set the table.

Here is the Church

By Rev. Dr. Robert Haynes

When I was a child, my grandmother taught me an old saying, a little rhyme that she would act out with her hands. It went something like this:

“Here is the Church”

(She interlaced her fingers, hiding them inside a two-handed fist)

“Here is the Steeple”

(She pointed her two index fingers upwards to make a steeple”

“Look inside, there’s all the people”

(She turned her palms upwards, revealing her wiggling, interlaced fingers)

With all due respect to my loving grandmother, is it fair to divide the church and the people that way? What does the Bible say about what, or who, the church is?

The New Testament gives no formal definition of the church. However, looking at contextual clues for the church’s own understanding of itself provides important insight. From its origins, the church understood itself as a gathered group in, and for the sake of, the world. The term used in Acts to describe the gathering of Christians, the church, is ekklesia. At the time of the writing of the New Testament, the term was already in common use to describe the gathering of the people of the city at the bidding of the municipal leaders. Ekklesia is a term that was used in Ancient Greek to describe the assembly called by the town clerk. It was the role of this clerk to call the people to assemble for his purposes: to make an announcement, dictate a policy change, or conduct some business. The gathering, the ekklesia, was called together by their leader for the purposes that leader wanted to fulfill.

However, the early church was not just a gathering of people to fulfill a political purpose. Rather, they were the gathering of the people at the request of the Highest Authority: a Christian community proclaiming that God was calling all believers for his purposes. Such a bold proclamation said that Jesus’ lordship is over all aspects of life. As such, they were publicly declaring all other religions and societal structures as inferior to God, Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of God. Even the government and its leaders were to be molded and shaped by the teaching of Scriptures and lived out by the people gathered and scattered—the Christians, the church. What made the members of the early movements of Christianity distinct from the world was that they saw themselves as not just a gathering of people, rather as the gathering of the people of God.

By choosing to call themselves ekklesia, the New Testament church desired to be a group gathered among the whole city and desired that they could, one day, be a gathering of the whole city. Christians, from the very beginning, were a movement of people launched into the public life. They lived in such a manner that the social, political, and economic structures would reflect Christ’s teaching. They expected others to be transformed by Word: the teaching of Scripture, Deed: their acts of mercy and service, and Sign: the divine works of the Holy Spirit. They did not leave this work to a select few, what we today might call the “clergy.” Rather, they understood this to be the work of every Christian.

John Wesley understood this at many levels. For Wesley, the empowering of the laity in ministry was the way that God’s Kingdom is demonstrated through a community of believers demonstrating the love of God and neighbor, therefore fulfilling God’s commandments. Wesley sought to revitalize the church by re-energizing the laity in the Christian faith they seemed to profess, but failed to demonstrate. The early Methodists exemplified the lesson that the laity embodies the church, visible in the world. The Wesleyan Methodist movement continues to thrive where this is embodied today.

It is important to remember, that from the earliest foundations of the Christian movement, the church is not first a building or the clergy leadership. Rather, the church is just that, a movement of people who have been transformed by Christ and are inviting others to experience that transformation as well. The church is not merely the building, nor is the church merely the clergy. Rather, as another old saying goes, “If the building burned down and the preacher left town, what you would have left is the church.”

Dr. Haynes is the Director of Education and Leadership for World Methodist Evangelism and the author of Consuming Mission: Towards a Theology of Short-Term Mission and Pilgrimage. He is an ordained member of The United Methodist Church. He can be reached at rob@worldmethodist.org.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_facebook][vc_tweetmeme][/vc_column][/vc_row] [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Andrew Thompson ~ Reaction in Relationships: The Power to Forgive

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That is Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. It explains how birds fly and fish swim. Jump on a trampoline and you’ll experience the third law firsthand: You force the bounce mat down, and it springs back to throw you up into the air. Newton’s law applies to actions and reactions in the physical world. But we can also see a similar law in human relationships. When you act emotionally toward someone else, he or she will always react back toward you.

Offer love to another, and you expect to receive that love back again. But lash out in anger, and the response will be different. Just as with Newton’s law, the character of the emotional reaction is determined by the initial act itself.

This isn’t so much the law of motion as it is the law of the heart. We’re made with it stitched into our souls. Human relationships work on an action-reaction dynamic. So wouldn’t it be great if we always acted out of love? And wouldn’t life be simpler if our loving acts were always interpreted as we meant them to be?

Unfortunately, the analogy between the law of motion and the law of the heart does have a limit. A bird’s wings beating against the air or a body’s weight on a trampoline are impersonal forces. There is no moral quality to motion.

Human relationships are very different. With us, the impersonal becomes very personal! Every one of our relationships has a moral character to it. We don’t, in fact, always act as we should. Even when we do, our actions and attitudes are not always interpreted as we mean them to be. The sinful and broken reality of life intrudes on every relationship we have.

Instead of love, we act in anger. Rather than gratitude, we experience greed. Given the opportunity to show compassion, we show cruelty instead. The clarity we wish existed in person-to-person interactions is missing; in its place we find the fuzziness of mistaken intentions and plain misunderstandings.

The law of the heart—as it turns out—is more like the law of the broken heart. The presence of sin within us ends up affecting our interactions at every level—a vicious cycle of hurt and revenge. Husbands and wives experience it in marriage. It thrives both in the workplace and the marketplace. Politics is rife with it. It’s the reason wars are fought in every age.

We don’t have to be convinced that love should be met with love, and anger with anger. We just don’t seem to know how to choose love rather than reaction consistently. Sometimes we don’t even know how to interpret love when it comes our way. We act out of anger and hate and resentment, and we react in those ways when others provoke us. And so we feed a monster whose appetite is endless.

From Reaction to Forgiveness

Our dilemma is that we ought to act and react in love; but instead, we find ourselves doing the contrary. The Christian faith has a solution to the cycle of hurt and revenge, though, and it lies at the heart of the Gospel. That solution is found in forgiveness.

We first must realize that there’s nothing natural about forgiveness. To practice it, we have to react to others in ways that are not equal and opposite to the actions upon us. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love,” the Prayer of Saint Francis puts it, and this is exactly the counter-intuitive commitment that forgiveness requires. It’s so difficult that we cannot do it on our own.

The need for forgiveness to be at the center of human relationships is demonstrated by the fact that forgiveness was at the very center of Jesus Christ’s ministry. He came into the world claiming the power to forgive sins. It was this very act that caused the religious authorities to oppose him saying, “It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7)

We see in the crucifixion how the Son of Man who came to forgive sins finally becomes the agent of forgiveness through his own body. His sacrifice upon the cross mediates God’s forgiveness to the whole world. As the Apostle Paul puts it to the Corinthians, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are all called to receive Christ’s forgiveness. We come to know it through a sure trust and confidence in him and the power of his atonement for our sin.

Learning to forgive is the only path to truly loving relationships with others. And Jesus shows us that to acquire the forgiving heart which allows us to forgive each and every day, we must first come to know what it means to be forgiven.

Forgiveness and Sanctification

We are reconciled to God when we receive forgiveness in Christ. That is a monumental spiritual experience! But we haven’t fully overcome our problem just by being forgiven. We need both pardon for sin and the power to overcome its corrupting effects as we move forward in our lives. Without the power added to the pardon, I could hear the message of the cross with joy as it pertains to God’s forgiveness of me, while going right ahead and dealing out vengeance on all those I think have wronged me.

So where can any of us find that power?

John Wesley’s account of how the power of forgiveness is conveyed into the lives of believers is helpful on this point. Wesley’s view on the power of forgiveness is full of deep spiritual insight—especially as it is related to the way that forgiveness can transform us inwardly. Take for example the familiar story of Wesley’s experience on Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738. Sometimes we can sentimentalize Wesley’s “heart strangely warmed” and confine its importance it to a moment of his personal spiritual journey. But Wesley’s narration of the Aldersgate story in his Journal makes a statement about the profound importance of forgiveness within the experience of salvation for all of us. Here’s how he describes what happened to him that evening:

“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.”

Wesley is sharing one of the primary convictions of heart-warmed Christianity in this testimony: God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ is meant to be received personally by every child of God. This is what it means to know God as Father, and it is the way we are adopted into God’s family. The reconciliation we find in forgiveness is such a dramatic experience that it gives us new birth.

In Wesley’s view, though, the power of forgiveness extends beyond the moment of our reconciliation to God. Forgiveness is a part of our ongoing spiritual growth as well. To be redeemed—fully redeemed—means to be transformed by the love of God.

So when the Apostle Paul writes to the Colossians that Christ Jesus is the one, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14), Wesley writes in his New Testament commentary, “forgiveness is the beginning of redemption, as the resurrection is the completion of it.” He links the pardon of the cross with the power of the resurrection, not wanting us to diminish any part of the fullness of redemption.

On the other hand, Wesley also understands that forgiveness continues to work in us as a special kind of power, forming the very virtues that will nurture a forgiving heart. Later in Colossians, Paul says we should embrace compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience—and finally love. And in the midst of that counsel, Paul emphasizes the need for Christians to forgive one another. “Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you forgive” (Col 3:13), he writes.

Wesley adds in his New Testament commentary that those who have been renewed by Christ’s forgiveness are none other than the elect of God. He writes, “holiness is the consequence of their election, and God’s superior love, of their holiness.”

So God’s forgiveness begins a renewal—a healing—in the soul. And the character of that renewal is a soul filled with God’s love. This is what it means to be made complete, as Wesley points out using the New Testament’s language of “perfection”: “The love of God contains the whole of Christian perfection, and connects all the parts of it together.”

The power of forgiveness is rooted in the fact that it is an act of God’s love. So forgiveness cancels our sin and then begins to heal us of that sin entirely, all the while enabling us to begin forgiving others. Forgiveness, in this sense, is the very rhythm of redemption – our redemption and the redemption of all our relationships.

“We love him because he first loved us,” Wesley tells us in the sermon, On Family Religion. That love is, fundamentally, the “love of a pardoning God.” It’s a love that “may admit of a thousand degrees” (for not all of us are at the same place in our journey).

But it always makes us thankful for Christ’s gift to us and compassionate toward all others for whom Christ died. “Gratitude to our Creator will surely produce benevolence to our fellow-creatures,” Wesley tells us. “If we love him, we cannot but love one another, as Christ loved us.” Then he goes on: “And toward all the children of God we put on ‘…kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven us’.” We learn to forgive in love, because the loving forgiveness we have received makes us into new creatures.

While life in this world makes it easy for us to react to others with a hard and self-centered temper, the forgiveness we receive through Christ teaches us a better way. Knowing mercy, we are made merciful. Having been forgiven, we learn to forgive. And then we are welcomed into the company of Jesus’ true friends, where we begin, “steadily walking in all his ways, [and] doing his will from the heart.”

This is the power of forgiveness—the power that will save us and the power that will ultimately transform this world.

A version of this originally appeared on Wesleyan Accent in 2014.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ What Is A Wesleyan Theology of Sanctification?

What comes to mind when you think of the word “sanctification”?

If you’re online trying to find a local mechanic to align your tires and somehow ended here, let’s back up.

Lots of people are atheists or agnostics or follow any number of religions. Christians are theists – we believe in God. In particular, whether we’re Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or another tradition, Christians believe that God in God’s nature is Trinity: three persons, one God. Historic language for this is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, not because two/thirds of God is male, but because to approach God is to discover the tightly knit interconnectedness of how three persons relate in one unity. I promise this connects to the question, “what is the Wesleyan theology of sanctification?” Also, your tires might need rotated or balanced, too.

Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Coptic and other Christians also believe in the Incarnation: the second person of the Trinity, like the Gospel of John tells us, became flesh. The Word became flesh, and dwelled among us, or as Eugene Peterson poetically painted, the Word “moved into the neighborhood.”

Why the “Word became flesh” through the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ is where you begin to find some different emphases among Christian traditions. For centuries, some Eastern Orthodox believers have been universalists, believing eventually everyone will have full union with God in the afterlife. Western Christianity (St. Augustine from Africa, the eventual Roman Catholic Church, and many Protestants) has always placed focus on humanity’s tendency to self-destruct. Curved inward with disordered love of self over God and neighbor, humans have repeatedly chosen to reject God’s love in favor of self-will. (Sometimes this is referred to as “original sin” or as “sin” in general.) Humans continually fall short of the profound goodness and love of God; Jesus moved into the neighborhood, so to speak, to redeem the situation, to show us what God looks like with skin on, and to bring new life and hope to people in need of both. The Word became flesh to bridge the gap between the Creator and the creation.

Yes, you say, having finally found the right tire place on Google maps, but what of the Holy Spirit? What about “Wesleyan” and what do you mean by sanctification? These are great questions to ask in or out of a mechanic’s shop, and the longer you wait while your car is being worked on, the more you’ll need the Holy Spirit and sanctification. Or, put another away, the longer you wait, the more opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work sanctification of your soul after you’ve flipped through an old People and watched the clock practically go backwards.

The Holy Spirit pours out the power of God in a variety of ways that always reveal Christ, point to Christ, and empower believers with the love and power of Christ. Christians may point to the Holy Spirit inspiring the formation of scriptural texts or the Holy Spirit being active in varying practices of ordination (the setting aside of specially called, trained, anointed ministers). Some believers affirm the Holy Spirit’s activity in the Eucharist or Mystery or Holy Communion, transforming simple bread and wine or juice literally (if you’re Catholic) or mystically into a grace-filled experience of the body of Christ. Within these various traditions also lies a very real, often impostered, frequently misunderstood reality. The Holy Spirit continues today to surprise us in tire stores or churches or huts around the world with supernatural phenomena inexplicable solely through reductionist materialist scientific inquiry – healing, signs, strange things we can’t comprehend but that always, only reveal Christ and point to Christ and the invisible reality that is as real as a chipped coffee mug next to a stale-smelling Keurig machine. To greater and lesser degrees, and through a variety of means, believers also affirm that the Holy Spirit works to transform our outer behavior and our inner lives and loves so that we aren’t stuck in the same self-destruct patterns forever.

And this is where we intersect the original question: what is a Wesleyan theology of sanctification? Sorry, we’re out of time, we’ll have to look at that later.

Kidding! Kind of. There’s a lot to say and we’ve already condensed 2,000 years of church history and Trinitarian theology in ways that will have pastors, priests, and especially academics clearing their throats and raising their eyebrows and wanting to clarify or redefine everything I just said.

Wesleyan Methodists, or Wesleyans, or Methodists, are a group of Protestant Christians with a particular set of theological emphases from English brothers John and Charles Wesley, who lived in the 1700’s. “Wesleyan” derives from their name, obviously, and “Methodist” began as an insult because of their persnickety adherence to, yes, methods. While I say Wesleyan Methodism sprang up because of two brothers, if you read a basic biography you’ll soon see we wouldn’t have it today without their remarkable mom, Susanna.

Though John and Charles started what would become this movement, the seeds of Methodism grew while they were at Oxford University. Though they had sisters, women weren’t allowed admission at Oxford at the time, so while the mechanic comes over to tell you that instead of alignment, you need four new tires, you can sit and muse about how the movement might have looked had the Wesley sisters been allowed to attend Oxford.

The Wesley kids primarily were raised by their mom, but their father was a clergyman in the Church of England, which matters but we won’t get into why right now. The main point is that the Church of England at the time was nothing to write home about; and the brothers’ zeal for spiritual growth and formation was in stark contrast to the snoozing pulpits of polite civic religion of their day. Thus they were given the snarky brand of being overexcited “Methodists.”

The notion of sanctification doesn’t belong to one Christian tradition; it doesn’t belong solely to Wesleyan Methodists. You can find it in different terminology scattered across church history, through various traditions, and around the globe. But the Wesleyan Methodists were really organized about focusing on it, pursuing it, and living it individually and in community. The impact on real daily lives was astonishing. Child labor was confronted, illiteracy tackled. John Wesley’s most popular writing during his lifetime wasn’t his pile of sermons, it was his little practical, common-sense pamphlet on health, 250 years before Web MD. There were many very tangible outcomes to something that could sound abstract or removed from real life – sanctification and holiness. But for the Wesleys, sanctification was never about traveling to a remote cave to get away from the mundane or insidious. It was about real life, today, given all the less than ideal circumstances that come our way.

“Sanctus” means holy; sanctification simply refers to being made holy. We struggle though with how to define holy: you might say sacred or set apart or pristine or consecrated. Christians call God “holy,” but what do we really mean by that? Pure? Transcendent? Other-than? Monty Python delightfully skewered the weight and the difficulty of applying the word in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in a comedic scene about divine commands on how to use the “holy hand grenade.” Obviously, you can agree to call any object holy or sacred but that doesn’t make it so even if you treat it like it is. You may ask your mechanic if she’s using the ancient holy wrench on your car to be charged this much for new tires, and she may say, “yes, this here is my holy wrench,” waving it around while both of you know there’s nothing holy about this grimy dented wrench or her impulse to whack you with it or your impulse to be rude and impatient.

Holiness must be derived from something holy in and of itself. Where God breaks in, there is holiness. We don’t strain and strive to become our version of holy – John Wesley tried that, it didn’t go well. Painting a hammer gold and calling it holy doesn’t make it holy.

But as we follow Jesus, we open space to pursue and receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit, to be transformed so that, while you are still fully you, you are also more like Jesus in your thinking, will, desires, and choices.

Different traditions within Christianity describe a couple of odd phrases: imputed and imparted righteousness. To impute righteousness is to ascribe or assign righteousness to something that doesn’t have it inherently (rather like the “holy hand grenade”). It’s a position you occupy whether or not you bear the reality within yourself. Say a country with a monarchy has a revolution and they want to install a new king or queen. With a great deal of ceremony and ritual, they name someone as monarch who may have no royal family heritage. (That’s how monarchies began. “He is king now.” “But five seconds ago – ” “HE IS KING NOW.” “Long live the king!”) Everyone agrees to that position while knowing that one person’s DNA is not inherently set apart as “royal.” You are assigning a reality onto something.

To impart righteousness is to give righteousness; imparted righteousness is given and received in a meaningful way so that you are not just assigning a position or title or state of being. Righteousness is actually grown into; it is lived out. Say a kid starts taking vocal lessons and is fairly mediocre. But as they internalize their training and mimic the habits and disciplines of their teacher, their skills genuinely change and improve. Someone who begins as a novice singer transforms into a skilled vocalist. In that scenario, a teacher is imparting skill, passion, discipline, advice, correction, and affirmation.

Imagine then if the teacher could reach into their own throat and share a portion of the clarity of their tone, their perfect pitch, their love of music, and infuse their student with those qualities. That is imparted righteousness. It’s a transcendent music teacher not only demonstrating but sharing their own qualities with the student, as the student also exercises their will to show up for lessons, practice at home, and hone a love of singing.

And that – in part, please don’t email nasty remarks about how I’ve butchered a beautiful tradition – is what a Wesleyan theology of sanctification is: it is the belief, practice, discipline, and lifestyle of showing up to voice lessons with a desire to sing like our Divine Virtuoso, and our Cosmic Music Teacher sharing a portion of their own tone, pitch, technique, power, and passion back with us, so that whether or not we occasionally croak, crack, or drop a word, our intent is complete harmony with the Master Vocalist: the aim of perfect love.

More can be said about the nuts and bolts of this pursuit: the value of practicing this together in Wesley’s discipleship bands; the tangible way this works out in pursuit of justice where there is discordant exploitation, poverty, and abuse; the means of grace as a kind of practicing the scales and showing up for lessons; Scripture as a pitch pipe that reveals and tunes.

Your tires are finally ready, by the way. And where ugly attitudes or impatience or self-centeredness threaten to lead you off-key, leaning into the voice of Jesus Christ happens when, with humility, you can see your tired mechanic, make eye contact, smile, love her, and ask her how you can pray for her today. That is the Jesus way; that is what we mean by holy.