Wesley Bros.

Submitting to be more vile. Tumblr for www.wesleybros.com.

[wesleybros]

The way forward is not indifference. But what will it be? #UMCGC John Wesley called for a “catholic spirit,” where Christians with strongly different viewpoints would respect one another’s heart to give their best to God, even if they didn’t agree on what that looked like in the details. But he also clearly defined that this catholic spirit is NOT a glossing over our differences as if they don’t matter. A latitudinarian is a person who seeks unity by indifference. This is not Wesley’s catholic spirit. The latitudinarian is “of a muddy understanding…your mind is all in a mist; because you have no settled, consistent principles, but are for jumbling all opinions together” (Catholic Spirit, III.1). With regard to beliefs about God, beliefs about the practice of worship, beliefs about church governance, and beliefs about how we are to treat others, Wesley argues that we should have firm conviction that we are completely following God’s way. Indifference in these matters becomes the real enemy of the Church because (as I think we have clearly seen) over time, lack of passion does nothing but convince the world that Christ doesn’t matter. I have not planned how I will end this little series on the catholic spirit…I’m waiting to see how our General Conference will play out and how catholic our spirit will be… United Methodism tends to be Centrist, seeking a balance between the Left and Right, all within one denomination. While many of us who are Centrist have a strong conviction that this is the sort of church God has called us to be, there are others who believe it is a great liability. There is an argument within Methodism that our Centrism has made us all latitudinarian, unable to agree on any way forward together, becoming indifferent to any true conviction in order try and keep the Left and the Right in the same denomination, worshipping together in the same pews. Next week we will explore the “essentials” that Wesley believes we must hold fast to, and the “opinions” that often divide the church. In the meantime, search your own heart…if the pursuit of God is our highest aim, are you pursuing God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength? Are you convinced that your worship, your principles, your church are the truest forms for you to pursue God? Yes, sure there’s loads of other options out there…and a truly catholic spirit appreciates that those options are helping others pursue God to their fullest. Has your faith in God caused you out of indifference and into something that really matters? If not, maybe it’s time to check your rudder.

[wesleybros]

Forgive the low-ball comedy in this one.  Recently, a pastor was holding a baptismal remembrance ceremony.  As the entire church came one by one before him, he would mark their forehead, saying, “Remember your baptism, and be thankful.”  One woman came to him in the line and refused him, saying, “No way, pastor…I heard there is a transgender person in my son’s confirmation class.  We are a bible-believing church.  You can’t let that kid be confirmed!”  With great grace, the pastor asked this mom to come back and talk to him about it another time…he continued to help everyone else remember their baptism.

Later, one-on-one, the pastor informed this parent that transgender people have the highest suicide and self-harm rates of anyone.  He informed this mom that this kid had already been chased out of another church because of the self-righteous hard hearts, and that this would not happen in our church. When our state of NC had just passed a bill that allows Christian business owners to discriminate against gays and transgender people, we would show this child that this is not us. In our church, we would amaze this kid with the love of God, and the love of this community.  Believe it or not, that mom’s heart was changed.  She began to see this transgender kid as something more…a child of God.  She ended up praying for the child and his family.

And where did these Christians get the idea that they were sharing God’s love by discrimination disguised as protecting themselves?  In Acts 8, we get the amazing story of Philip sharing the gospel with a sexual minority.  The Ethiopian eunuch would have been castrated as a boy against his will, making him both a victim of abuse and forever incapable of entering the Jerusalem temple to worship God (Deuteronomy 23:1).  After leaving Jerusalem where he had come to worship, only to be reminded that his trans-gender nature barred him from the walls of God’s house, the eunuch was drawn by the Isaiah passage that reminded him of himself:

“As a sheep led to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he didn’t open his mouth.  In his humiliation justice was taken away from him.  Who can tell the story of his descendants because his life was taken from the earth?”

The Holy Spirit drops Philip by the eunuch’s side, just in time to overhear him reading this text.  Philip shares the gospel with him, and it turns out that Jesus actually died for transgender people because Jesus believed they are worth it.  The eunuch was so elated he asked to be baptized.  Philip, who had grown up with the temple holiness codes, didn’t think twice about whether or not this sexual minority belonged to the church.  He baptized him at once.

I listened to Against Me! while working on this one this week.  They’re not for everyone in my normal audience, but their latest album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, has really opened my eyes to the internal struggle that seems to be common for people experiencing transgender dysphoria.  In one song where the band judges idiot Americans, the singer hauntingly says, “While I hope I’m not like them, I’m not so sure.”  It’s just as easy for people who are are more open to transgendered people to become judgmental of those who aren’t.  The point isn’t to look at other people like they’re idiots for not believing the way you do.

The point is to get out there and love people you don’t understand.  And shut up about your religious accommodations.

[wesleybros]

A lot of what separates us on this earth is the fear of the other…the fear of the unknown…the fear of what we don’t understand. Humanists would tell you to look for the common humanity in the other. Walk a mile in the other person’s shoes and then you won’t be so fearful. That’s actually really good and true. I love this song by Kings of Leon where the chorus is simply, “I walk a mile in your shoes, and now I’m a mile away…and I’ve got your shoes.” As Christians, it is so important to see the common humanity in the other. We are all made good in the image of God. We are all sinners and have fallen woefully short. There is good and there is bad in us all. But we must go even deeper than this in approaching the other. We must see every other person as someone for whom Christ died…someone that God saw worthy of the ultimate sacrifice to forgive. This goes deeper than walking a mile in someone’s shoes, because you may have made different choices, better choices if you were in their shoes. Some people are just too difficult to love, too difficult to accept as they are, too broken or dangerous to get close too. But they are no less loved by God. Some Christian traditions teach that Christ’s death has unleashed a spark of the Holy Spirit of God into the heart of every soul. This is called prevenient grace, a tiny hint of the presence of Christ in everyone. John Wesley taught that because we can meet the presence of Christ in everyone, we ought to make all the more effort to engage them, to go deeper with those we might otherwise fear. We might be surprised by the spark of Christ in us meeting the spark of Christ in them. St. Patrick is said to have spent his life converting the very dangerous pagans of Ireland, his own slaveowners from his youth. As he went about with the Gospel in hostile territory, this prayer is attributed to him: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ in the fort, Christ in the chariot seat, Christ in the poop [deck], Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. As you go about your week, I hope you will see Christ revealed in the kindness of a stranger. I hope that you will take opportunities to share the Christ in you with the Christ in others. Move past your fears, move past your prejudices, and see the other as someone Christ believed was worth dying for. You may be surprised by a holy encounter. Or they could steal your jewelry. People are jerks. You just have to ask yourself if the reign of God is worth the risk.

[wesleybros]

I’m in this weird position as a pastor, where I know loads of people who absolutely LOVE Christian movies.  They are wonderful people I love so much.  They want me to take my youth group to see these movies.  And they seem to have really moving experiences watching these movies.  In fact, I was likely the teenager who would have really loved these movies (I did after all, get rid of all my secular CD’s and dive wholesale into the Christian music market).  And then there’s me today, who doesn’t just hate these movies, I’m usually blatantly offended by them…maybe not all Christian movies ever, but ESPECIALLY the God’s Not Dead franchise.

Here’s why.  They are not in any way actually evangelistic, in no way designed to convert a person into a believer, but instead, to affirm this Christian sub-culture, to pat Christians on the back and make us feel good about ourselves.  The Christians are flat, perfect characters, persecuted for their beliefs, while the non-Christian characters are flat, antagonizing jerks.  These movies tend to become propaganda for a very particular version of conservative American Christianity, inflating this bizarre victimization of “We’re just not allowed to say the name ‘Jesus’ anymore,” and confusing that with actual persecution.

This puts me in a weird position as a very different kind of Christian with many non-Christian friends and acquaintances.  Most of these people are ex-Christians because they have come to believe that the Religious Right, and this Christian sub-culture that’s been formed more by Capitalism than by Christ, is all that the Church is.  And who can blame them for rejecting that?  But then they’re just confused about why I would want to be even remotely associated with that scene.  They’re so turned off by this brand of Christianity that it requires the rest of us to really up our ante with our witness.

You see, I’m still evangelical.  I want my non-Christian friends to know Christ.  I want them to know the joy and beauty that I have found in Jesus.  And so I am inspired by the story of St. Francis travelling to Egypt during the Crusades to try to convert Islamic Sultan Malik Al-Kamil.  St. Bonaventure (a biographer of Francis) described the encounter this way:

The sultan asked them by whom and why and in what capacity they had been sent, and how they got there; but Francis replied that they had been sent by God, not by men, to show him and his subjects the way of salvation and proclaim the truth of the Gospel message.  when the sultan saw his enthusiasm and courage, he listened to him willingly and pressed him to stay with him.”

Malik never converted to Christianity, and when he shared about Allah, St. Francis never converted to Islam.  But the two men demonstrated respect for each other’s religion, respect that didn’t deny the truth they believed about their own.  Francis was impressed by the Muslim practice of praying 5 times daily, and the sultan encouraged him to practice it.  And the sultan experienced a profound truth that not all Christians believed he was worthless if he didn’t convert.  You see, I can believe that Jesus is the only way to the Father, and still respect another person’s devotion to their different faith.  I try to make my witness to non-Christians one that begins with respect for their beliefs, even when I disagree.  If Jesus says, “This is how the world will know you are my disciples, if you love one another,” then I want to shape relationships that show real love, real respect, and genuine friendship even if a person never ends up following Christ the way I think they should.

After all, that’s the way Christ loved us.  Not complaining how hard we have it as Christians in America.

[wesleybros]

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  The earth shook, and the rocks were split.  The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.  After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.  Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Matthew 27:52-54

Many church fathers wrote about this tiny little incident, only mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, wherein the zombie apocalypse commenced.  These church fathers help us theologically interpret Matthew’s narrative.  For instance, Gregory of Nazianzus (330-389 AD) says, “He lays down his life, but He has the power to take it again; and the veil rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened, the rocks are cleft, the dead arise.  He dies but he gives life, and by his death destroys death.  He is buried, but He rises again.  He goes down to Hell, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead…”  What’s theologically significant in Matthew is that Jesus’ DEATH conquers death…not just his resurrection.  Jesus’ death destroys the holy border that kept Israel from God’s presence.  Jesus’ death sets the captives free from Hell.  This text is connected to the idea that Jesus broke into Hell and set loose all the saints who had died before he came to earth.

Protestant Reformer John Calvin notes some of the logical questions raised by Matthew’s wording and timeline, writing,

“This was a particular portent in which God testified that His Son had entered death’s prison, not to stay there shut up, but to lead all free who were held captive… That is the reason why He, who was soon to be shut in a tomb opened the tombs elsewhere.  Yet we may doubt whether this opening of the tombs happened before the resurrection, for the resurrection of the saints…followed, in my opinion, the resurrection of Christ.  It is absurd for some interpreters to image that they spent three days alive and breathing, hidden in tombs.  It seems likely to me that at Christ’s death the tombs at once opened; at His resurrection some of the godly men received breath and came out and were seen in the city.  Christ is called the Firstborn from the dead… This reasoning agrees very well, seeing that the breaking of the tombs was the presage of new life, and the fruit itself, the effect, appears three days later, as Christ rising again led other companions from the graves with Himself.  And in this sign it was shown that neither His dying nor His resurrection were private to himself, but breathe the odor of life into all the faithful.”

That’s beautiful, Calvin…and probably my favorite explanation of all the one’s I’ve read.  But I want to know the rest of the story!!!  Matthew DOES say that the bodies were raised the moment Christ died, but they didn’t appear to anyone until after the resurrection.  Matthew leaves us guessing about what happened to all these undead.  Did they move in with their ancestors?  Did they crumble back into dust, and if so, what was the point?  Did they take off into the sky with Jesus when he ascended, which would have been mentioned, I think?  Do they continue to roam the earth, lurking in your church shadows late at night, long past the point of remembering what it means to love others the way Christ loves them, mumbling, “Weeeeev nevvvrrrrr donnnn ittttt thaattttt wayyyy beforrrrrrr……”

Lest anyone fear this is a comic judging old people, it’s actually a comic judging ANYONE who’s religion is more focused on external appearances and self-importance.  You may not be devouring actual brains, but your zombie ways are feeding off the heart and soul of Christ’s movement.  And by you, I sometimes mean me, because it’s surprisingly easy for all of us to fall into these patterns of self-serving religion…

[wesleybros]

It’s a funny thing, coming to take the bread and the wine.  We all bring different levels of understanding, or of not understanding.  We all come with different strengths of faith or lack of faith.  Different Christian traditions have different limits on who can receive Holy Communion, The Lord’s Supper, The Eucharist.  That’s because they each have different understandings of what it means.  My favorite summary teaching on the Eucharist comes from St. Augustine of Hippo, who taught catechumens on the meaning of communion by saying, “Be what you see, receive what you are.”  What happens in the Eucharist always requires some sort of translation, some kind of imperfect metaphor to help a person begin to grasp this incredible mystery.

This comic is not meant to cover all the breadth of theology surrounding the Eucharist, nor is the punchline some culmination or summary of Eucharistic theology.  Rather, I wanted to convey the beauty of the communion of saints who gathers at the table, the variety of theology that enriches our understanding.  Perhaps in one of these saints you hear echoes of how you tend to understand this Holy Mystery.  As I youth minister, it’s always a joy to help a person find Christ in translation.

Come, sinners, to the gospel feast; let every soul be Jesus’ guest. Ye need not one be left behind, for God hath bid all humankind.

-Charles Wesley

[wesleybros]

Palm Sunday was much more political than most Christians would like.  Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt, a symbolic messianic gesture (see Zechariah 9:9), in a processional that could easily be construed as mocking the triumphal entries of Pontius Pilate or other Roman leaders into town. The palm branches are also the symbol of a victorious ruler, and of the coming Messiah (1 Macc 13, Naphtali 5).  When the Pharisees chastise Jesus to silence the crowd, he responds with a quip from Habbakuk 2:9-11…

“Woe to him who builds his house by unjust gain,    setting his nest on high    to escape the clutches of ruin! You have plotted the ruin of many peoples,    shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out,    and the beams of the woodwork will echo it.”

As I go to vote in the North Carolina primaries, it haunts me to know that Christians are being associated with rhetoric that is so opposed to the way of Christ.  I in no way wish to endorse one political candidate as more Christ-like than another… I’ve never been too impressed with candidates who use Christianity as a way to draw votes for themselves, and I’m especially turned off by anyone who calls themselves a leader by capitalizing on the fears and hysteria of the masses.

Just as on the first Palm Sunday, Christ is entering the back door, maybe on a moped this time, countering this culture of hatred we have built…  While we raise our glasses to those who would protect us from the people we have pushed aside, the very stones and woodwork of our security cry out against us, proclaiming, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  The call of Christ, especially on this Palm Sunday, is one that challenges every wall we build to protect ourselves at the expense of others.

The peace that Jesus brings is a peace with justice, a peace that could never be fully realized by a government or worldly kingdom.  May we be peacemakers as we enter this Holy Week.  May we listen to people who support different political candidates than us.  May we work alongside the poorest, surround ourselves with people who are different from us, and look deep into their eyes for the spark of the Holy Spirit…that prevenient grace alive in all people.

[wesleybros]

Claim me for Thy service, claim All I have and all I am.

Take my soul and body’s powers, Take my memory, mind, and will, / All my goods, and all my hours, All I know, and all I feel, / All I think, and speak, and do; / Take my heart–but make it new.

—Charles Wesley, Hymns on the Lord’s Supper.

Theosis is an Eastern Orthodox understanding of salvation that is incredibly influential on John & Charles Wesley’s theology.  It’s best articulated by an early Church Father, St. Athanasius, who wrote, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”  It might sound a little weird at first, but think about it…the entirely holy, eternal God entered our finite and sinful existence so that we sinful and finite people could become holy and live eternally with God.  For Wesleyans, this is a lifelong process of sanctification, or being made more and more like Christ as we live lives that reflect the mind and attitude of Christ.

Kenosis is the Greek word for “emptied,” found in Philippians 2:5-11.  For our lives to reflect the mind and attitude of Christ, we must imitate the one who crafted the universe  and left behind his reign in Heaven to enter into our sinful existence and love the least of these.  We must never see ourselves as above others, but humble ourselves to serve the very people whom Christ died to save.  There’s a lot of theological debate about what “kenosis” really implies about the nature of the God-Man (that’s Jesus), but for the Wesley’s all that matters is the practicality of it all.  Jesus emptied himself and chose the life of a human who would die on a cross…and that means that to become like God is to empty ourselves and serve, no matter how smelly, no matter how ungrateful the recipients are, even if your actions never lead to their redemption or happy ending.

Bromhidrosis is the closest I could come to ‘stinky feet,’ but it really just means smelly sweat, which is the cause of stinky feet.  For the Gospel writer, John, when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he showed the real depths of his love and self-emptying.  The very God who created the atoms and souls that would become each of us, this very God chose to display his love and power by taking on a servant’s role, moving past the point of privilege and authority and into the realm of intimacy and lowliness for the sake of the other.

The poem in the central panel is part paraphrase, part original text from a Charles Wesley Hymn found in the 1739 Collection, in the section titled, “For Believers Working.”  Here’s the text:

Arise, my soul, arise, / Thy Saviour’s sacrifice! / All the names that love could find, / All the forms that love could take, / Jesus in himself has joined, / Thee, my soul, his own to make.

Equal with God most high, / He laid his glory by: He th’eternal God was born, / Man with men he deigned t’appear, / Object of his creature’s scorn, / Pleased a servant’s form to wear.

High above every name, / Jesus, the great I AM! / Bows to Jesus every knee, / Things in heaven, and earth, and hell; / Saints adore him, demons flee, / Fiends, and men, and angels feel.

He left his throne above, / Emptied himself of all but love: / Whom the heavens cannot contain, / God vouchsafed a worm to appear, / Lord of glory, Son of Man, / Poor, and vile, and abject here.

[wesleybros]

Make us worthy, Lord, to serve those people throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day, their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give them peace and Joy. Amen.

-Mother Theresa

It is a common reaction for Americans serving the poor to share about their experience with things like, “We are so blessed,” and of third world poverty, “Even though they have nothing, they seemed so happy.”  We develop a theology about God that lacks confluence, or the merging of those kinds of phrases with what they actually imply.  “We are so blessed,” often implies that those who have little are not blessed.  Closer inspection of the way we use these “blessings” of material wealth primarily for ourselves reveals a theology of hard work and luck (I earned this life for myself and I’m lucky it hasn’t been taken from me).  But Jesus never taught, “Blessed are the high-end grocery shoppers, for they shall never lack gourmet cuisine.”  Jesus taught, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

The reality of our world is that we are born into economic disparity, and the social structures in place create a tremendous up-hill battle for the poor.  Those with privilege who realize and care about this disparity often toss up our hands, overwhelmed by how impossible it seems to actually make a difference.  The problems are just too big, and we are too comfortable with our lifestyle to anything meaningful.

Basil the Great took seriously the command of Christ to “sell your possessions and give to those in need.”  He challenged our normal objections to these words, reminding us the logic of our wealth.  If you think everything you have you earned for yourself, you are an atheist, unwilling to recognize that every good and perfect gift comes from God.  If you recognize you have nothing that you have not received from God, you must give an account for why God gave you so much and others so little.  “Is God unjust, who divided to us the things of this life unequally?”  Basil uses confluence to merge the reality of economic disparity with belief in a just and loving God.  Life is the way it is because God intends for you with wealth to share with you who have none.  Basil taught that the wealthy claiming their wealth as their own is like someone calling fives on a seat at a theater…you are taking public property and saying it belongs to you, getting mad when someone else takes the seat.  In other words, everything you have beyond what you need for basic survival belongs to those who don’t have enough for their own basic survival.  Because it belongs to them, you are robbing from them by keeping it for yourself, you greedy cheater-pants.

In the Wesleyan tradition, we teach that we experience the grace of God as we practice works of mercy.  As we give generously to those in need, the lines get blurred between who is being served.  Giving away from your stores begins to set you free from the trap of your possessions.  Meeting the people who struggle to survive, learning to love them, transforms our hearts more and more to see Christ in everyone, enlarging our hearts for peace with justice on this earth.

P.S. For those of us who wish we could do something but are stymied by how big the problems seem, feminist activist Courtney Martin wrote a book called “Do It Anyway.” If you don’t have time to read the book, read the author’s summary of it at this link.

[wesleybros]

“O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.” Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem In his politically charged Sermon 130, National Sins and Miseries, John Wesley challenged the people of England to stop blaming their politicians (guilty as they may be) for the problems in society, and start to look inward. While we need politicians and leaders to take responsibility for the way their words and policies impact society, we the common citizens must search our own souls and say with David, “Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: But these sheep, what have they done?” (2 Sam 24:17). How have my actions and inactions cause the sufferings I presently experience? How have my actions and inactions cause the sufferings of others? Wesley challenged the political climate of his day (read, the American Revolution), because everyone was demanding their own personal freedoms and seeking to make themselves fat without taking responsibility for the way their gluttony and pride overlooked the actual needs of tens of thousands of homeless and starving in England. Instead of praising how small the world had become, and how expansive capitalism had become, Wesley mourned: “Luxury is constantly the parent of sloth. Every glutton will, in due time, be a drone. The more of meat and drink he devours, the less taste will he have for labour.” After doing a little research into the consumer market today, Wesley’s words don’t seem to have any less impact in our current climate. I recently heard a podcast where my generation was described as “loving the idea of service, but not that interested in actually serving.” I will spend extra money on something for myself and feel good about my contribution to the world because the company will give five cents to a hungry person. Why didn’t I just give all that money to the hungry person instead of give to myself first? When you reflect on your spending and serving practices, how much are you driven by your personal appetite, and how much are you driven by a true desire to serve others? Is your stomach controlling you? Is that real freedom? How have your actions and inactions caused the sufferings of others, directly or indirectly?

[wesleybros]

Zwingli Loves Sausage.

Lent is that weird season where Christians go on a diet.  Catholics and Orthodox give up meat (at least on Fridays), and High Church Protestants give up caffeine or booze or chocolate or social media.  One of my students this year gave up giving up stuff, meaning, he won’t be participating in the Lenten fast.  Historically, its 40-ish days of fasting a la Jesus in the wilderness, preparing the soul for Easter.  The truth is most Protestants don’t really get into fasting, in general, or for just 40 days.  I characterized this with the true story of Swiss Reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, who literally threw a sausage party the first Sunday of Lent in 1522 to protest Roman Catholic practices.  Take that, pope!

John Wesley didn’t actually keep Lent; he essentially did away with it in his Methodist Church calendar.  Wesley saw self-denial as crucial to true discipleship, but also recognized it to be one of the most misunderstood practices of the faith.  You had extremists to didn’t see the point of fasting, and therefore lived in the liberty and gluttony of enjoying everything to the utmost all the time.  You had other extremists who fasted so hard they took their self-deprecation as a point of pride.  Wesley proposed, and lived, a much more moderate and regular practice of fasting that is applicable for all people.  You should stop reading this and click here to read his sermon on Self Denial right now, because it’s better than anything I could say.

Wesley took Christ’s challenge seriously…to deny yourself and daily take up your cross.  For Wesley, self denial didn’t mean mistreatment of your body or super harsh and impossible self-masochism.  Self denial means second-hand shopping, it means living below your means so that you can give away the extra to those in need.  Self denial always carried with it the practical rule that you give yourself less so that you can give others more.  Eat less expensively and extravagantly.  Buy less for yourself so that you can budget more for those with nothing.  Wesley expected all of his ministers to completely abstain from food every Friday, and to dive deep into prayer on those days.  He taught that fasting and self-denial were the ways you feed your relationship with Christ, while feeding ever appetite you have only makes it more difficult to follow Christ.

A partial fast is restricting your diet, something you can do in an ongoing basis.  Wesley became a vegetarian for health reasons, though there are good ethical reasons for Christians today to choose to eat less meat (think about the incredible cost to produce meat from the farm to your table). A complete fast is abstaining from all food for a period of time, something that fewer people are able to do with regularity.  Granted, Wesley allowed himself to take tea and broth on complete fast days.  In any case, Wesley challenges us to take Christ at his word, and to move past a season of fasting to a lifestyle of self denial.  Let this Lent be your jump start into taking up your cross daily.  I have always found my love for God at its strongest when I have made fasting an ongoing and regular part of my faith walk.  There’s something about low blood-sugar and the dizziness that comes from missing a few meals in a row that reminds you of the human condition, that we are truly dependent on God for every good thing, that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed.

[wesleybros]

John Wesley was pretty notorious as an “editor.”  Whether he was republishing other people’s tracts as his own work (with a few revisions), or enhancing brother Charles’ lyrics, John had no qualms with taking material that he thought was good and rearranging it to make it better fit the overall thrust of the Methodist movement.  This was fairly common practice for his day, as there were no real copyright laws governing these shenanigans.  Some of Wesley’s editing cuts resulted in more popular versions of the original song.  A case in point is the hymn in the background of this comic, Praise to the Lord  From All Nations, by Isaac Watts.  Watts had made a few minor revisions of his own work, but Wesley went crazy with it, rearranging the lines of the verses, scrapping entire concepts within the song, and finally resulting in the weirdly named, Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne.  This actually became a much beloved hymn after Wesley’s revisions.  What I love about all this is that even though John allowed himself free reign to alter other’s lyrics, he was pretty opposed to anyone else revising the songs written by himself and his brother.  “I desire they would not attempt to mend them; for they really are not able…None of them is able to mend either the sense or the verse,” he said, because he and Charles wrote such perfect songs.

I share this snippet with you because Discipleship Ministries of The UMC just vetted the top 100 CCLI Songs.  This means a group of people looked at the most song contemporary praise songs and have chosen which ones are Green Lighted (okay for Methodists to sing as-is…most of these are just contemporary versions of existing hymns), and which ones are Yellow Lighted (proceed with caution). It’s a fascinating article (read it here), where they recognize that a majority of praise songs are coming out of “charismatic, Pentecostal, Calvinist, or neo-Calvinist” communities.  In a world where you don’t need a hymnal to have music in worship, where any worship leader can choose songs based on their radio popularity, or whatever she or he is most moved by, it can be useful to have the denomination regularly take a look at these songs and offer some theological insight.  Hopefully, theologically trained pastors and worship leaders are already doing this in their own congregations.

I want you to draw your own conclusions on the report from Discipleship Ministries, so I won’t say much more.  I think that the best worship leaders know the theology of their community, and are willing to change some of the lyrics to better fit their tradition.  We just did it in my congregation this week singing Faith of Our Fathers/Martyrs/Mothers.  If the masculine language of many praise songs drives your people nuts, it’s easy to change a word or two here or there…the problem is that the denomination is not allowed to print these alterations as a resource for you without the permission of the author, which the author probably won’t give.  And if a song is too focused on one aspect of God’s truth (like all those amazing Calvinist hymns by Stuart Townend), balance them out by singing another song in the same worship service that offers a different perspective on the work and person of God.

[wesleybros]

Days before his assassination, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. mourned, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, the same hour when many are standing to sing In Christ There Is No East And West.  Surveys today show that 87% of American congregations are homogeneous, with 67% of that number believing that their church is doing enough to be ethnically diverse (See the Lifeway study on Church Segregation)

I am super frustrated with the lack of real dialogue around the issues of interracial worship.  I work for a white church.  We have small pockets of non-white families that join and participate, a Burmese service that meets in our building but otherwise has no connection to us, and loads of ministries to ESL folk.  But any conversations around worship are really just focused on issues that concern white people.  Bring up trying to be more interracial in our approach to worship and it gets shut down, as if to say, “Look, we’re having a hard enough time convincing the (white) traditional worship crowd to accept that the (white)_contemporary service is real worship.”

I wrestled with addressing interracial worship in a comic because it is so complicated, and comics by nature oversimplify and make blanket statements to poke fun at nuanced issues.  But I couldn’t shake King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, where he said,

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust.

I do not think I have the answer to all of this.  But I have worshiped in intentionally interracial congregations, so I know it’s possible, and it’s beautiful.  I have worshiped in AME churches and sung in black gospel choirs, and I know that my worship experience is lessened by the absence of the black community in my weekly worship.  My parent’s predominantly white UM church has formed a sort of partnership with the black Baptist church a mile away, where members work together for social justice, and take turns worshiping once a month at each other’s church service.  The solution doesn’t have to look like just one thing.  My only prayer is that we would actually start praying together, playing together, and worshiping together, until one day our kids will wonder what took us so long to figure it out.

[wesleybros]

Calvinists are often quick to dismiss Arminians as “Pelagian” or “semi-Pelagian.”  Aside from the fact that they need to up their taunt-game, it is a categorically untrue accusation of actual Arminian theology.

Pelagius, the 5th century contemporary of Augustine, taught that we have the natural ability to follow Christ, that our nature is essentially good.  Augustine countered with an argument of original sin, that every inclination of the human heart was ultimately self-centered.  For Augustine, it is impossible for anyone to do anything that would incline their hearts to God, and only God’s grace could awaken a soul to transformation.  The church condemned Pelagius’ teachings as heresy, upholding Augustine’s doctrine of original sin as more true to scripture.  Today, a Pelagian is someone who straight up denies the need for God’s grace to do good – that essentially, everybody on their own has the capacity to save themselves by being good people.

The semi-Pelagians sought a middle way between Pelagius and Augustine by emphasizing humanity’s free will enabling us to do enough good to recognize the need for God, but that God’s grace takes us the rest of the way.

Today’s comics tell a story.  The first, visually based on M.C. Escher’s woodcut Mobius Strip II, shows a pretty common view of religion…I’m good enough, God helps those who help themselves.  Before their heart conversions, John and Charles Wesley did both tend to have this attitude.  Charles Wesley himself once wrote, “What! Are not my endeavors a sufficient ground of hope?  Would you rob me of my endeavors?  I have nothing else to trust to.”  You can make a Mobius by taking a strip of paper, giving it one half-twist and taping it into a loop.  It now has only one infinitely continuous side, so if an ant started crawling on it, the ant would return to the very same spot it started without ever crossing an edge.  When we trust only in our own efforts, we are infinitely climbing a ladder to nowhere.

Sometime after his heart’s conversion, Charles Wesley penned the hymn, I Want a Principle Within, characterizing the human’s inability to recognize our own sin.  You don’t have to live this life too long to notice that you, or at least everyone else, have hidden faults and failures that we may not even realize about ourselves.  The heart converted by Christ is one that is born in humility, one that recognizes even their best efforts do not undo their failures and faults.  John Wesley, as an Arminian Christian, taught that our free will is too self-centered to make that leap on our own, and so God has freely given grace to everyone, grace that enables us to be convicted of our sins and place our trust in God’s love.  The transformed heart then transforms the mind and attitude, and then the habits, to be formed more and more into the image of Christ.  As we exercise our faith through the works of mercy and the works of piety, we experience deeper and deeper levels of God’s grace.  As Arminian Christians, we believe God’s grace is first and last, and everything in between.

[wesleybros]

Covenant New Year.

I’m usually optimistic when it comes to the New Year.  I get pumped about going back to the gym, eating healthier, setting better boundaries for work and family.  But this year, I must admit that I wasn’t a fan of 2015, and the political front makes me want to just go ahead and fast forward past the debates of 2016.

The early Methodists practiced getting together over New Year’s Eve for a Watch Night service.  It was a time to pray deeply together and to renew their baptismal covenant with this prayer that John Wesley created.  Often called the Wesley Covenant Prayer, this prayer is meant for Christians who want to go all in, who are willing to do great things for God just as much as they are willing to be “laid aside” for God, amounting to little in the eyes of the world.  As I enter the New Year, I do not place my hope in my own abilities, or in the world around me.  My hope is in the One who claims me, the Christ who died for even me, the God who works all things together for the good of them who love Him.  I hope to enter this year all in, diving headfirst into the expansive ocean of God’s love for me in Christ Jesus.

This week’s comic is inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s famous woodblock print, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1830-33).  It has long been a favorite of mine, and visually sums up for me the excitement, the danger, the call to submission we find in our baptism.

[wesleybros]

So, I’m a parent, right?  And I LOVE my 4 and 2 year old kids.  And then my little sweet girl gets presents for Christmas from her grandparents.  And she opens that one gift.  And it’s not a toy, it’s tights.  And she throws the tights at Martha, who gave her the tights.  “I don’t like clothes!” my daughter yells.  “I don’t want clothes!”  And I ran away and never came back.  Who is this little Christmas monster filled to the brim with original sin, that I love so much?

John and Charles Wesley were in the “fear the rod, and cry softly” camp of child-rearing, and I’m just not that guy.  I know it’s impossible to reason with a four year old.  I am working with her to understand the importance of gratitude and mindfulness, and oh yeah, that Christmas is not her birthday.  But the truth is, my mom had these same conversations with me, when I was crying because I got clothes instead of toys for Christmas…as a teenager…

One cool Christmas gift from John Wesley is the questions for the Methodist small groups (called “Bands”) which he drew up one Christmas.  These questions helped people to live a more disciplined life.  It’s super easy to get lost in the discipline, to tell yourself that what actually matters is how good you are, how you keep all the rules.  But the reality of the gospel is that we live in the discipline of holiness not to impress God or others, but out of a spirit of gratitude for what God has given us.  When you ask, “How is it with your soul?” it’s not to prove to someone that you’ve got what it takes to be on the God Squad.  It’s because you realize that you really don’t got what it takes, and that God loves you no matter what, and so you want to be challenged to love God more.  God’s gift for us at Christmas is pure love, for who we are, even when we throw the tights and scream in God’s face, “That’s not what I wanted from You!” Thanks for loving me in all my sin, both original and extra crispy.

[wesleybros]

Sometimes the Church is so intent on being the sole bearer of God’s truth, it can throw out the gospel when it is proclaimed back to us by a non-believer.  When John Wesley talked about prevenient grace, he said that there is no person alive who does not have the spark of God’s grace working within them.  Even if a person chooses to never accept God’s full love for them in Christ, that person will never spend a moment in this life completely abandoned from the love of God, for God will always go before them, leading them into God’s love.  This is the hope we have at Christmas time…that this grace which goes before us will truly break our chains, will truly create a brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity where wars cease, ideologies no longer supersede human rights, and community-building is never the result of tearing someone else down.

The first song to be broadcast over radio, O Holy Night, has been a crowd favorite for Celine Dion and Southpark lovers alike.  The song was originally a poem by French wine merchant, Placide Cappeau.  He thought it should be a song, and so he asked his friend, the Jewish composer Adolphe Charles Adams, to create an original tune.  It was first sung in a French congregation on Christmas Eve 1847.  The carol quickly became a French favorite, until the Catholic church discovered that Cappeau had left the faith for socialist philosophy, and Adams had never believed Jesus was the Christ.  The church forbid O Holy Night from being sung in its chapels. However, the people loved it so much they continued to sing it wherever they could.

Eventually, an America abolitionist, John Sullivan Dwight, heard the song and penned an English translation, making it a favorite hymn of the Union during the War of Northern Aggression (that’s what Southerner’s call the Civil War).  There is a legend (almost identical to a legend about Silent Night) in which the French army began singing the song from the trenches, leading to the Germans singing back a Christmas hymn by Martin Luther, leading to 24 hours of peace between the warring armies.  This is supposedly the reason the Church allowed the song to be sung again in its chapels.

In 1906, Reginald Fessenden made the first vocal radio broadcast, reading from the Gospel of Luke and performing O Holy Night on his violin, making it the first song sent by radio waves.

I can get discouraged by the constant barrage of hate coming through the mouths of Christian leaders and politicians who appeal to a large group of American Christians.  The true war on Christmas is any ideology proposed in the name of Christ which would have us fear our enemies and isolate ourselves from people of difference.  This week, go out there and serve alongside Jews and Muslims, make a difference in your community with the help of the poor and underprivileged.  Love others hand in hand with the impure and the faithless.  When the voice of the Church would stifle the gospel, it’s time for the everyday people to keep singing the right song until the Church becomes what it was meant to be…