The Heart of the Matter—Where Do We Go From Here?

September 25, 1994

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I think I ought to begin this morning by expressing appreciation to you. I don’t know when I have enjoyed working on a series of sermons more than on these sermons on John Wesley the past 3 weeks. I don’t know if it has been good for anybody else or not, but it’s been good for me...stimulating, challenging, rigorous... but more than anything, FUN.... AND I thank you. I’ve learned a lot about Wesley... AND I’VE LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF... that maybe time and experience, available only through participation in chronological ongoingness, have nudged me a step or two closer in the direction of classical Christian orthodoxy than I thought I stood. I’ll leave it to you to determine whether it was a nudge to the left or to the right.

It’s been fun. I’ve had rekindled a sense of the freshness and exuberance of the Christian story that is the basis for our being here. It’s so much bigger than just Methodist. John Wesley in a remarkable way was found by it, was found by that story, and I think it’s precisely accurate to speak of it in the passive voice. It wasn’t something he created, or molded, or forged, or even discovered. It was more something that discovered him.

That’s how he experienced it. It wouldn’t be stretching it to say the Gospel made him over, turned him from something of a prim, rule bound, overconscientious snob into a man who was no more MORAL afterward than he’d been before... he was NEVER immoral, either before or after Aldersgate...but he was more HUMAN, in the sense that he could appreciate without always having to evaluate, he could share without always having to calculate, he could love without always having to judge, he could care without always having to prescribe, he could be without always having to DO.... Doesn’t that sound wonderful? And liberating? It doesn’t mean he ever stopped doing. My stars....I don’t suppose anybody in the 18th Century England was busier than John Wesley.

Just reading his Journal and following his itinerary, going up and down, and back and forth, all over England and Wales, and up into Scotland, and across into Ireland...mostly on horseback...in the later years he did make concession to age by consenting to ride in a carriage...but just to follow his journeys on a map will wear you out. The man was indefatigable....

But this is the point, and the thing that becomes infectious in being around him, even when you’re separated by more than 200 years---All that activity, all that energy, all those works, all those manifestations of Christian service and piety---astounding in their sheer volume---were the RESULT of, NOT the CAUSE of his experience of being justified by faith alone. They were the product of a new center.

That is, they came out of his new relationship with the pardoning God, they were no longer an attempt to earn it. His works didn’t make him pardonable; the pardon, forgiveness, justification, new relationship, new birth---may I also use that phrase?---received with gratitude, became the motivating impulse for the works.

Now we’re moving in a line, as you can see. Wesley saw it that way, as a progression, a linear development with 3 major stops en route, or, maybe, better said, 3 way stations, because you never stop.

For those who haven’t been here for the past 2 weeks---SHAME ON YOU. No, I don’t really mean that, but if you haven’t, it probably would be helpful to say that this is the third of 3 homiletical...      somethings... peeks, glimpses, looks at what we’re calling THE HEART OF THE MATTER, the irreducible core of Wesley’s theological and evangelical proclamation....the central content of what he preached, the heart of his understanding of the Gospel message.

FIRST, there must be the honest admission of the reality and pervasiveness of sin in your life. That’s foundational and basic, unfortunately. Deny that, and you’re in no position even to hear the Gospel. The coming of the Good News is meaningless until you’re willing to admit that there’s BAD NEWS.

But THEN, when you are willing to make that admission sincerely, and repent of it sincerely, the incredible miracle is that God’s gracious deliverance is already there waiting for your acceptance. We are treated as if we had never sinned... FORGIVEN, PARDONED... the slate wiped clean, absolutely clean, because God’s own Son, has paid the price in full of our restoration, bearing our iniquity on the Cross...Emphasis ONE, and emphasis TWO, dilemma and deliverance, wretchedness and rescue, estrangement and escape, mud and miracle, hell and wholeness.

That’s the glorious Gospel of Christian redemption. As Paul put it in what became one of Wesley’s favorite texts, too... “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.”

BUT NOW, Wesley came to see, it’s at that point that too many Christians stop. It’s at that point where, for many, the Christian pilgrimage, having just begun, never pulls out more than just a few stumbling yards from the station. There’s more yet. The goal, or the climax, or the point, or the culmination of Christian experience is not simply as an end in itself, but is meant to lead on to ever maturing discipleship.

Which is what CHURCH is all about.

Why are we here? What are we in business for, anyway? IS it to foster a deeper appreciation of worship? Is it to sensitize, is it to civilize, is it to make people more conscious of spiritual values, or to lift up important causes in the community? Is it to recruit?

All of those may be worthy things, and let us hope they occur, but the Church by its calling and self-understanding primarily is in the Disciple-making business---“to offer Christ”, in Wesley’s phrase, as Rescuer from the despair and deadendedness of sin....

THEN, to nourish the rescued by feeding and equipping them...and THEN, to send them forth to share it all with others in word and deed THAT’S WHAT WE’RE ABOUT....Not to produce scholars, or planners, or debaters, or discussers...and certainly not to produce dilettantes, but to produce DISCIPLES of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is where Wesley may well have made his most distinctive contribution to theological understanding...in this area of the NOW WHAT that the baby is here following the new birth.... Post-partem developments, I’ve been tempted to call it....If you accept God’s evaluation of you as acceptable—for Jesus’ sake-Faith---then what does that imply for the “here-on-out”?

Wesley said in typical Wesleyan terminology, “Justification implies Sanctification”...terribly big and forbidding words, but what he was getting at, and seeking to convey very concisely is that in response to what God has done, already, in declaring us all right, and treating us in a new and redeemed way, we are set free to employ our energies, and talents, and time, and possessions for HIS glory...and if it’s real for us, with His help, WE WILL, AND WE’LL KEEP ON GOING.

Justification is what God does. Sanctification is what we do, or better, what we allow God to do in us. Only God can provide justification. Sanctification is a joint project.

Justification happens instantaneously, upon the exercise of faith, surrender, saying YES.

Sanctification happens over time, with God, upon the exercise of intentionality and discipleship.

Justification, the first step, means to make just; the next step means to make Holy.....or we could say, to make whole, to make complete, to make human.

The new life in Christ that BEGINS by faith alone for salvation, is just that, a BEGINNING. Now you’re turned loose to grow, and all that energy, and zeal, and effort that before was being spent on trying to prove yourself worthy to God, justification by sweat alone, can be unleashed for God’s sake, and for others. It’s no longer needed to earn points for yourself. So it becomes a flowing out of, a continuum, a stimulus based now on gratitude rather than on obligation. “We love (why?) because He first loved us”, Wesley liked to quote from First John.

Now if you think this is just old 18th Century stuff, just old theological prattle from a bygone day, look around. AND LOOK INSIDE.

Too many of us---I’ll make it personal, if I may---too many of us in our Christian walk are trying either to grow without ever having been born, or, having been born, somewhere back there, maybe when we were children or youth, have not been willing to grow since.

Wesley insisted that either of these is a Christian aberration, and not only that, an ABOMINATION.

Nothing was ever FREER as far as he was concerned than the Gospel gift of God’s gracious welcome. “Come home...the door is wide open.” Yet nothing called for greater self-discipline than the life that followed forgiveness.

It’s startling to realize today, and this probably says something about our requirements for membership: It was very easy to get into the Methodist societies that Wesley organized everywhere he went to preach and invited people to the Lord.

It was simple—confess, repent, believe and come in.....justification by faith alone. You didn’t have to do anything. All you had to do was say you wanted in.

It was easy to get in. What was much harder was to stay in. Mr. Wesley insisted that the societies form classes of a smaller, more manageable number---ideally 12, like the disciple group around Jesus, in which they would exercise spiritual oversight on each other, and inquire pointedly how you were putting your professed faith into practice.

“How is it with your soul, Brother Smith? Sister Jones? Is your faith manifesting itself in witness, in service, in giving, in growth? How? What specific evidences are there of fruits? Well....!

That sort of thing can be done in the spirit of Pharisaism, of course, and maybe sometimes that happened, but if done in the spirit of benevolent structured guidance by competent caring leaders, it can make a positive difference, and it began to, all across England.

Wesley recognized that even the best intentions are helped along by group support and encouragement. Weight Watchers knows the wisdom of that principle...

And so does Alcoholics Anonymous. I’m not suggesting that Wesley is the father of those movements, too, but he knew, very practically, that even a good beginning, without disciplined reinforcement, is probably already halfway to stagnation.

I’ve asking myself, and I’d challenge you to ask yourself how well you’d fare as a member of one of Mr. Wesley’s class meeting groups?

I think there’s no doubt that the man was an organizational genius. He was a good preacher, though many thought his brother, Charles, was better, and nearly everyone agreed that George Whitefield could outpreach them both.

But Whitefield, though passionately eloquent, didn’t have the lasting impact on people Wesley did, because when he moved on, the fervor he stirred up gradually subsided...the fever went down and nothing much really changed. With great sadness, Wesley called Whitefield’s legacy “a rope of sand”, whereas what he left when going on elsewhere was a structure, a plan, a design, dare I use the word a “method”...he left an organization, committed to a discipline to maintain the spirit and zeal.

Studying Mr. Wesley has emboldened me to have the nerve to say to you...the Church....

just within the family....that a disappointment to me and to the active leaders of the Church is the too high percentage of people who come into the congregation through the front doors of reception that are available for entrance, only for some reason, or several, after a while to slip quietly out the back door, never to be seen again.

You can’t help wondering why it happens. For most it doesn’t, thank God, but for too many, unfortunately, it does. Is it because there was never a birth in the first place? Perhaps in some instances that’s it. Perhaps there never was that moment we talked about last week that moment of acceptance when they said YES to God’s overture, that moment of acquiescence and commitment to God’s incredible gift of a new relationship.

The great Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood used to say that the biggest mission field in the world is the Christian Church itself.

Maybe a big chunk of our problem here is prenatal in nature.

But I suspect, as Wesley saw so clearly and addressed so rigorously, that an equally serious contribution to premature exiting is because we either haven’t made available sufficiently, OR PEOPLE HAVEN’T AVAILED THEMSELVES SUFFICIENTLY OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHALLENGING GROWTH AND TRAINING.

Part of the blame can no doubt be laid at the feet of leadership---not enough Bible studies, not enough prayer groups, not enough service projects, and so on... activities that stretch people and are inclusive and caring. The bigger the congregation the greater the need for small, intimate groups.

Yet I hope I’m not being defensive---remember the fellow who said, “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get me.” .... I hope I’m not being overly defensive to suggest that some blame can also be assigned to those who are content just to coast along on the placid sea of “getting by”....assuming joining is the end, not the beginning of the journey....attending when it’s convenient, giving when they have something extra, participating when there’s nothing better to do. Maybe it’s no wonder people like that eventually go out the back door.... The tragedy is that we let them go without even noticing their absence.

Wesley said FIRST, birth...then, GROWTH....not either/or, but both/and. In a way, it’s a bringing together of the old conservative/liberal tension, another of Wesley’s creative synthesis insights.

Growth without birth makes a cut flower...without rootage and without longevity. But birth without growth makes a corpse....without any chance for flourishing life at all.

Do you know the other name Wesley gave to sanctification, the growth part of the Christian experience continuum? He actually used several terms. He called it “holy living” “holiness of heart and life”, and he liked to use the frequently misinterpreted term “Christian perfection.”

That phrase got him into trouble because people mistakenly thought Wesley was arguing that people could become perfect, that it was possible to reach a state of perfect completion, that a person could achieve such a state of character as to be without blemish in both action and thought.

WESLEY NEVER MEANT THAT, never intended that, never believed that, and had to defend himself against that interpretation. Christian perfection for Wesley was not something you could accomplish, it was a PROCESS. It was a PERFECTING, a continuing spiritual growth in the direction of perfection. It ought to happen in the life of every Christian. You’re either progressing, regressing, or standing still and in spiritual matters no forward movement IS regression.

Among the questions asked of candidates for ordination in the United Methodist Church— every Methodist preacher has to answer these and the only correct answer is in the affirmation----among the questions the Bishop asks before he lays hands on your head are these that come straight tout of Mr. Wesley’s no-nonsense original words: Do you have faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection? When occasionally some of the brothers, and now brothers and sisters, would pause or hesitate before giving their loud and enthusiastic affirmation to the perfection question, Bishop Moore would look down and scowl over his glasses, and say, “Well, then, what are you going on toward?”

It meant for Wesley that you’re never through, that there’s always more, It meant that God hasn’t finished with us yet, and any claim of personal perfection as an arrived state is prima facie evidence that you still have a way to go.

Really, the Wesleyan teaching on Christian Perfection is more a statement about GOD than it is about human beings. Christian perfection as Wesley proclaimed it means DON’T PUT A STRAIT-JACKET ON GOD....There is no limit to what God can do in a human life if that life is genuinely turned over to His control.

The only thing standing in the way of God’s making us perfect is our refusal to let Him do with us what He wants. Isn’t that exciting? “Be ye perfect even as your heavenly Father is perfect” is not a demand. It’s an INVITATION. Let Him work on you.

And of what does perfecting, sanctifying, holy living consist? Does it mean a life of renunciation, sour face, self-repudiation, a life characterized by frowns, ulcers, constipation and heavy-handed gloom? How has “holy” acquired those connotations?

It means exactly the opposite. Wesley said going on to perfection at the very least included these characteristics---these were the marks of the truly holy person---love... of both God and neighbor, trust... in Christ and the sufficiency of His grace, and---are you ready?---JOY... JOY upwelling in the heart through the indwelling of the Christ Spirit.

That’s holy living... that’s going on to perfection... something God does in us and wants to do even more of, beyond just pardon, if you can say just and pardon in the same breath.

The striking thing about Wesley’s depiction of holiness, especially in the light of his own propensities toward being reserved, and dignified, even formal---he was not naturally a “wild and crazy guy”----is how full of exuberance it was.

It was the same exuberance you see in the Gospel portraits of Jesus Himself... I am come that you might have life and have it in all its abundance.... Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be complete.”

That abundance, that fullness, that overflowing zest, in life and in Christ, is what Wesley saw as true Christianity. It’s the very opposite of some kind of moldy, pinched piety. Albert Outler points out that in his sermons there are 54 quotes where Wesley explicitly pairs off happy and holy... 54 times, and the correlation is constant throughout his work and his career.

How strange it is, or is it, that for most of us words like “sanctification” and “holy” have such an other-worldly and negative flavor. They are off-putting somehow and embarrass us to talk about. Yet we can talk about happy and unhappy with no uneasiness at all.

We rarely say we want to be holy but we often say we want to be happy, and we don’t know how. WESLEY KNEW HOW, and in spite of his never completely effaced primness, that sense of JOY permeates nearly everything he wrote and did.

Happiness and holiness go together and when we learn that we’ll learn what real life is all about. No one can be truly happy, really happy, bone marrow deep happy who is not in harmony with the undiluted purity and goodness of the creating, redeeming God.

Can you find happiness/holiness on your own? NO. Can you make yourself be happy/holy? NO. Can you forge for yourself a sense of assurance that it is well with your soul, and a sense of serenity and inner peace even when cataclysm or death loom? NO.

But God can give it, and wants to....no matter what has been your past record of checkered achievement, and no matter how far away you are now from where you know you ought to be. God can take all those fragments and put them together into a new and beautiful and growing pattern. AND THAT’S THE GOOD NEWS FOR TODAY AND EVERY DAY.

Where are you along the path in your own spiritual pilgrimage? Only you can answer it, of course and only you have to answer it.

But you do have to answer it, or will, sometime, somewhere. Maybe a good way to pose it would be simply to let Mr. Wesley ask you as he asked his ordinands for ministry: Have you faith in Christ? That first, after admission, confession, repentance of sin, and accepting God’s gracious gift of pardon.

Have you faith in Christ? Are you going on to perfection? Are you earnestly striving after it?

The expected answer to all 3 is YES...and if those are your answers, may what is pronounced on earth be ratified in heaven, to the honor and glory of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.