A taillight or a headlight?

I have been pondering this week about what would've happened if John Wesley and Martin Luther King, Jr. had met.

Granted, they lived in different centuries and different countries. But as I have been reading Rev. Dr. King this week after reading so much Wesley last week, I wonder if anyone has ever looked closely at their writings and work together. (If you are reading this and know of anything related, please let me know!)

Rev. Dr. King gives me that same feeling of heartburn that I blogged about last Friday. His words make me shake my head and respond out loud. I've had a tough time trying to pick small tidbits to share daily with my bible study group, because I feel like entire paragraphs and pages are necessary and soul shaking. And I've written about three blog drafts in the last week that I have then saved instead of posting, because I can't seem to express this feeling I have when I read Rev. Dr. King's work.

I think that my favorite document by Rev. Dr. King is the Letter from Birmingham City Jail. One reason I love it is because he speaks so explicitly to the church, to people who claim to follow Jesus Christ. It seems that the life of discipleship is the heart of much of King's work, but this letter writes it plainly, sharp and simple as an arrow.

This is the passage I highlighted today for my bible study group, and it is such a great text to have soaking in our heads on Sunday:

"In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice."

-Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Have we learned anything since Rev. Dr. King wrote these painfully true words? Are we spouting the same old "pious irrelevancies" while people are struggling and dying in front of our eyes? Is the church today a taillight or a headlight?

Triflers and the trivial

"Do nothing on which you cannot pray for a blessing. Every action of a Christian that is good is sanctified by the Word and prayer. It becomes not a Christian to do anything so trivial that he cannot pray over it."

-Random John Wesley quote (meaning, I don't know where it's from)

“May it not be one of the consequences of this, that so many of you are a generation of triflers; triflers with God, with one another, and with your own souls?”

-Sermon 4 “Scriptural Christianity” (1744)

A generation of triflers; ouch.

I read this last week while I was preparing to preach and while I didn't bring in up from the pulpit, it has been stuck in my head ever since. John Wesley was definitely not a man who wasted time on anything that he considered trivial. He was a man driven by urgency, the urgency of the gospel.

We talked about this last week as we discussed the Gospel of Mark as a whole. The word "immediately" is characteristic in Mark, occurring over and over again, and this makes the gospel feel urgent, pressing.

I wonder if we truly grasp the urgency of the gospel, the drive that God has to make all things new, the overwhelming passion of God to complete the work that God has begun in us and in the world that God has created.

There are many days that I look back and think, where did the day go? How is it 5:00 already? or 11:00 already? What have I been doing? And I wonder if I am really using the time that God has blessed me with to the greatest extent that it can be used.

I know this: I do not want to be a part of a generation of triflers. I don't want to waste my time on the unimportant, the petty arguments, the pointless discussions. I don't want to waste my time surfing the web or channel surfing. There is no time to waste! If I can't pray for God's blessing in it, maybe I shouldn't do it, no matter how small it is.

What would it be to live like this?

Heartburn: A Side Effect of Methodism

No, I'm not just referring to the abundance of food in a Methodist gathering and the sluggish way you might feel when you waddle home afterwards.

I'm talking about the burning deep down in my heart that I get when I read, well, just about anything of John Wesley's.

I have been reading a good deal of John Wesley here recently, catching up on a some books that I have owned for a few years but haven't read. This inspired me to term our Wednesday worship services in the month of August "Wesley Wednesdays" because the burn that I felt as I read some of Wesley's work could not help but get expressed in the sermons that I preached. A combination of John Wesley's sermons and the book of James...that's enough to light you on fire!

I have also recently been working on the Bible study that I am designing for my ordination application. I have chosen, between the options of Mark and Job, to teach from Mark and to focus on the Way of Discipleship. As I have been working on this, praying about it and immersing myself in preparation, I had a thought that felt particularly inspired. Since we are talking about discipleship, what if we also heard from folks who lived their discipleship in powerful ways over the years, not just disciples from the biblical witness but those who have lived the faith since then?

I looked at my outline, nine weeks worth of Markan texts teaching about and calling forth discipleship, and started brainstorming about nine disciples whose life embodied or embodies this radical kingdom lifestyle. I will say, shaking my head, that I never cease to be amazed at the way that God works, and how beautifully everything comes together for God's glory!

So everyday, I am emailing the Bible study group with quotes from the weekly disciple. The week's quotes are particularly focused on the texts that we will discuss at the end of the week and they all express discipleship in the person's context.

Week one, of course (you all knew this was coming!) is John Wesley.

And we are back where we are started: heartburn. This week I have been combing through his sermons, journal entries, and notes about him to pull out tidbits and quotes for my class, none of whom have studied or read much of Wesley's works.

I get drawn in to this work and find it hard to stop. I read his sermons and shake my head, reading parts out loud and saying things like, "preach!" or "well." I just can't help myself. The Spirit of God continues to move in his words even today, over 300 years later. My heart burns within me as I read the challenging words that he spoke to people in his sermons and then instructed his lay preachers to preach as they rode their circuits.

It wasn't an easy word then, and it isn't an easy word now. I was reminded today as I read through his journal entries in May 1738 how often he was asked never to come back after he preached in a church, especially in well established, significant churches. Over and over again he writes about how he preached in such and such church and then was asked never to return. So the next day, he did the same thing. And then the next day. And then the next. The establishment wasn't too crazy about him. And this is particularly interesting because for his whole life and ministry he worked against the notion of starting a new church. He had no desire to split from the Church of England, but rather, he called people to faithful discipleship within the church, even while he was eventually willing to preach in fields and marketplaces to people who the established church did not reach.

I could go on and on, but perhaps I will save the rest of my heartburn for another blog.

And stay tuned for nine weeks worth of interacting with a few of the men and women who have inspired me and many others over the centuries in the way of discipleship.