Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Romans 5:1-11
June 15, 2003
This sermon was preached in response to the 300th anniversary of John Wesley’s birth on June 28, 1703. Its only connection with Father’s Day was the observation that John Wesley represents our denominational father in the faith. Birthday celebrations were somewhat big in the Detroit area in mid-June, given the four-day bash in honor of the Ford Motor Company’s 100th birthday. All things considered, the timing seemed appropriate.
One look at the church calendar will tell you that we are well into wedding season. But before people can mate, they first have to meet. Which is why, early in the wedding planning process, I find myself asking how their paths (if not their stars) first crossed. A colleague of mine was fond of telling people he met his wife in the Tunnel of Love….pausing, ever so slightly, before adding: “She was digging it.” She must have found it less and less funny each time she heard it, given that she went from digging him to divorcing him. But there could have been other reasons.
My brides and grooms meet in any number of places. Often at work. Sometimes at church. Occasionally in bars. More than a few started out as friends first, watering down the “love at first sight” theory. And blind dates surface in a surprising number of conversations, leading me to believe that while everybody claims to hate them, many have made good use of them.
I’ve also married people who met through those ads you see in the paper. Although I have yet to perform a ceremony for any couple who made their “love connection” on television. I keep waiting for a phone call from Trista or Ryan, asking me which Saturdays I have free. But it is yet to come. Though I’ll never forget the couple who met on I-94 while driving to Chicago one New Year’s Eve morning. He was in a car full of guys. She, in a car full of girls. The drivers alternately speeded up and passed one another, even as they wrote introductory messages with a Magic Marker on a yellow legal pad, posting them in the passenger windows. By Kalamazoo, they had a date. The following June, a wedding.
But among the more interesting stories are the “connections” that almost didn’t happen. Two people met at a dance, but one of them almost didn’t go. Or both of them almost didn’t go. They didn’t plan to go….didn’t expect to go….didn’t want to go….had to be talked, tricked, bribed or kidnapped into going….and upon arriving, planned to put in a token appearance and leave as early as possible. Until, that is, Walter Wonderful showed up. Or was it Wanda Wonderful? And that was where it all began.
When people tell me stories like that, I do not assume they are making theological commentary about divine directives that brought them together. They are simply marveling at the fact that things turned out as they did, given such an unlikely beginning. In effect, they are saying: “Look how close we came to missing each other.”
Don’t lose that thought. Put it on a shelf for a few minutes while I shift gears. As I mentioned in Steeple Notes, this month marks the 300th anniversary of John Wesley’s birth (June 28, 1703), making John 200 years older than the Ford Motor Company. But the point I want to reach in this sermon occurred, not in June of 1703, but in May of 1738, the night John Wesley turned up at a Moravian prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street in London. Which turned out to be the most momentous meeting of his illustrious life. But to understand why, you need a bit of background.
Many of you know that John Wesley’s father was a priest in the Church of England. And many of you also know that his mother was either a devout and devoted Christian woman who wanted nothing but the best for her children, or a maternally-smothering religious fanatic. Maybe both. History records both points of view.
At any rate, John Wesley committed himself, early on, to a life of Christian service and study, largely at the behest of his mother. In 1725 he was made a Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford. While at Oxford he was joined by his brother, Charles, and a few other serious Christian students in forming “The Holy Club,” organized for the purpose of serious Bible study and daily devotions. This group of friends could be found rousting themselves out of bed for prayer at the same hour of the morning that other Oxford classmates would be falling into bed from drink. Which led to much ridicule being heaped upon Wesley and his friends, and which further convinced these young men that they were on the right track (spiritually speaking), else why would they be so ridiculed and persecuted for their efforts?
My colleague and friend, Mark Trotter, calls Wesley a true obsessive-compulsive personality…. an observation that has some basis in fact. John Wesley was determined to make himself a Christian by a strict adherence-to and practice-of religious rules. That was his temperament. But it may also have been his neurosis. Who can say? What can be said is that he was raised to be an achiever from the time he was a toddler. He was not unlike today’s kids who are told, when they are very young, that they must study very hard in order to get the best grades, for the purpose of getting into the best schools, so that they can apply for the best jobs, that will enable them to live in the best neighborhoods, thereby allowing them to associate with the best people. And lest you think I’m knocking that, let me acknowledge that there is a certain blessing in being raised that way, because it means you will probably develop the work habits and self discipline that it takes to be successful in the world.
But that very message….which may be your blessing….may also turn out to be your curse. Because, if you take it too much to heart, you will probably never enjoy your success. The drive to succeed is a powerful force. It is like an engine you can’t shut off. You lie down to sleep and it keeps on running. You go on vacation and it keeps on running. You obtain your early goals, yet it keeps on running. Even when you rise to the top, you can’t turn the dumb thing off. It’s still running.
This is what happened to John Wesley. He was a driven man, compulsively so.
Tell me the rules (he said), I’ll follow them. Show me the work, I’ll do it. Point me to the first mile, I’ll go the second. Give me a book on achieving a right relationship with God, I’ll read it….outline it….preach it….develop a course syllabus from it….translate it into a foreign language….anything it takes. And if there is no such book in print, I’ll write it.
John Wesley was a tireless worker for the Lord. Ordained a priest in the Church of England, he signed on with the Foreign Missionary Society in 1735 to carry the Gospel from England to the new American colony in Georgia, planned and planted in Savannah. His specific commission was to be a chaplain for the Savannah-based colonists and a missionary to the Indians. He was a failure at both. Horrible at it and humbled by it, it was his first real experience as a pastor and his first real contact with the typical sinners who populate local churches. He was petty, priggish, self-righteous, censorious, obstinate and mean. And those were some of his better qualities. In his defense, Wesley couldn’t figure out why the church in Savannah didn’t look like the church in the textbook. Nor could he figure out why church people didn’t follow the rules.
But not only was he a failure at ministry, he was a failure at love. While in Georgia, he fell in love with a spirited young woman nearly 15 years his junior. But he wooed her weakly and lost her eventually, before turning on her spitefully (publicly denying her access to the Lord’s Supper) when she married another man.
Finally (and mercifully), John Wesley was fired from his commission to minister in Georgia. He was sent back to England. But arriving ahead of him was a note from General Oglethorpe in Savannah to the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Lands which read (in part): “Next time, send somebody more mature.”
To top it off, Wesley endured two weeks of a terrible Atlantic crossing, spending much of it leaning over the rail. But now he was back in London. The year was 1738. The month was May. And John Wesley was in deep spiritual torment. He had lost all belief in himself. And he was not all that certain about God. He doubted, given his recent shoddy performance as a pastor and as a human being, that God could believe in him.
So what do you do when, as the preacher, you are no longer certain of the One whom you preach? How long can you fake it….fudge it….finesse it….before the fraud becomes apparent? With that question gnawing at his soul, he went (late in the afternoon of May 24) to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The choir sang from the Psalms: “Out of the depths I have cried to thee.” John Wesley found the words personally descriptive of his pain, so much so that he included them in his journal entry for the day. Then he went to that little Moravian prayer meeting on Aldersgate Street. And upon hearing someone read Luther’s preface to the words of St. Paul (Romans, chapter 5) concerning the change that God can work in the heart of one who has faith in Christ, Wesley wrote (in summary):
I felt my heart strangely warmed.
I felt I did trust in Christ.
I felt that Christ trusted in me.
I felt that my sins were lifted from my life.
And looking at the clock, I discovered it was about a quarter ‘til nine (how interesting that even in his hour of spiritual ecstasy, John Wesley was so attentive to detail as to note what time it was).
If you have been hanging around Methodist churches for very long, that story is old hat by now. Some of you learned it with your mother’s milk. Others of you cut your denominational teeth on it. But as many times as you have heard that story, you probably missed the little detail in the first sentence of the third paragraph (from the journal entry written in Wesley’s own hand), to wit: “In the evening I went, most unwillingly….”
What do those words mean? They mean he almost didn’t go. Wesley is saying: “Look how close I came to missing out on this.” Just as husbands and wives occasionally tell the story of how they got together and then include the words: “But we almost didn’t meet each other.” In much the same way, John Wesley is saying: “I almost didn’t meet the Lord.” Yet God met him. At the point where Wesley was “most unwilling,” God’s will was sufficient to carry the day.
Which sounds like “clergy talk.” Clergy talk that way all the time, especially when they are remembering how they got into the ministry. “I didn’t want to go,” they say. “I never planned to go,” they say. “I had a hundred reasons why the ministry wasn’t for me,” they say. “I had any number of ways of resisting God’s call,” they say. “But God prevailed anyway,” they say. I’ve heard variations on that story ever since I entered the ministry. It wasn’t my story. But it seemed to fit plenty of others. They came “most unwillingly.” But they came.
So what do you make of that? Did God force them? Probably not. Could they have held out longer? Probably so. God has too much respect for human freedom to force anybody to do anything. We are not robots, pre-programmed to do God’s will or go God’s way. Like the proverbial horse, we can be led to water. But God cannot make us drink.
I have never believed in predestination. Were such my philosophy, I would probably be preaching next door (at the Presbyterian church). But I am more than willing to grant that, where your life and mine are concerned, there is more than a little “steerage” going on….steerage which can be traced back to God. Which means that no place is completely God forsaken….that no encounter is entirely accidental…..and that every life experience is pregnant with the possibility….
That God may work there.
That fortunes may turn there.
That life may change there.
That paths may cross there.
Or that love may bloom there.
But it matters little that you believe that if you are not open to it.
I once knew a girl….well, not a girl, really, so much as a well-into-her-thirties woman….who lived with her mother. And it concerned her mother that, with each passing year, her daughter found less and less reason to go out and made more and more excuses to stay home. Which prompted a steady stream of maternal suggestions about places the daughter might go or things the daughter might do. And while neither acknowledged it, both mother and daughter knew that the real issue was “men.” “I have sworn off men,” the daughter said. “The good ones are gone, and those who are left want only one thing.” “But why don’t you go anyway?” her mother said. “You never know when you might meet someone nice.” Which, the daughter confided to me later, was exactly what she was afraid of. That she might meet someone nice. She was afraid of “nice.”
Just as John Wesley was afraid of “grace.” Having spent nearly 35 years of his life trying to earn God’s love, his mother’s love, the church’s love (reading Wesley’s biography, I think they were all bundled together), John Wesley was afraid to hear of a God whose love could not be earned, only received. But that was the God he met on Aldersgate Street, unwillingly though he came. The God he met on Aldersgate Street did not approach him with one more demand, one more requirement, one more rule, one more task to perform, or one more objective to achieve. Instead, God approached him with a promise that any prior failure had already been forgiven, and that all debts incurred along the way had already been paid. This being the God of Romans, chapter 5, who (Paul says) pours out his love for us. The proof of which is that Christ died for us….not while we were sewing still another merit badge onto our sash of Christian virtuosity….but while we were yet sinners.
And to think that Wesley almost missed him. Many do. Maurice Boyd tells the story of Dr. Campbell Morgan, a great British preacher, who went to visit a member of his church, only to learn that she was about to be evicted from her flat due to nonpayment of rent. That was on Saturday afternoon. So on Sunday morning, Dr. Morgan told several members of his congregation about this lady’s plight, suggesting that they come across with sufficient funds to pay her debt. First thing Monday morning, he went to the woman’s house with the money. He could scarcely wait to tell her the good news. Hammering on the front door, he received no answer. Hammering on the back door brought no response, either. What a disappointment.
Days later, he discovered the woman had been at home all the time. She had been afraid to answer the door. Hearing the pounding, she was certain it was the landlord coming for the rent. Never did she dream it would be her minister, bringing her money to pay the rent. She mistook a blessing for a burden. Which is how many treat the grace of God. My friends, don’t make the same mistake.
