Rev. Brent L. White

Methodism: Insert your own punchline about being watered-down here.

I just finished reading Christian ethicist (and fellow United Methodist) Stanley Hauerwas’s essay entitled, “The Radical Hope,” about a Christian understanding of family (versus popular pseudo-Christian or sub-Christian alternatives).¹ He argues that there is a sense in which Christianity challenges the human family. He doesn’t quote next week’s “Relatively Speaking” text, Mark 3:31-35 (“Who are my mother and my brothers?”) but he may as well.

In a section of his essay, he seeks to illustrate ways in which our Christian faith challenges traditional family allegiances. Allow me to share this heartbreaking passage. Emphasis is mine.

For example, my friend Will Willimon notes that during the time he has been Dean of the Chapel at Duke [ed. note: Willimon is now a United Methodist bishop in Alabama], he has received four angry phone calls from parents. All the calls have taken the same form. The parent says, “We sent Suzy to law school. But she has become so involved in the Wesley Fellowship that she has now decided she is going to become a missionary to Honduras. How could you let this happen? You have ruined her life.” That as pale a form of Christianity as Methodism can still produce this kind of result indicates pretty definitively that the Gospel is not altogether friendly to the family.²

Ouch! Is it really so bad, Stanley? Well, maybe so… But as much as I love Hauerwas—and few thinkers challenge me more to consider how demanding it is to follow Jesus in this world—I often think the only way to be the Church from his point of view is to become separatists, like Anabaptists (e.g., Amish or Mennonite). Still inasmuch as we Methodists are watered-down, I happen to know there are a lot of us Methodists who are not happy to leave it that way!

1. Stanley Hauerwas, “The Radical Hope,” in The Hauerwas Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 505-518.

2. Ibid., 511.

This is a collect for grace from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer:

O Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that we, being ordered by thy governance, may do always what is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our sermon series on family relationships in the Bible continues with “Relatively Speaking, Part 4: Husbands and Wives.” We’ll look at Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:18-25. The service will feature special music and a video of church members talking about their spouses.

To get us in the mood, here’s a love song by Van Morrison, which Rod Stewart turned into a monster smash hit in the early ’90s. Enjoy!

There’s a love that’s divine

And it’s yours and mine like the sun

And at the end of the day

We should give thanks and pray to the one, to the one

Sermon Text: Luke 10:38-42

[To listen to the sermon online, click the play button below or click here to download an mp3 podcast.]

The following is my original manuscript.

This happens every time my kids are made to clean their rooms… An argument inevitably breaks out between at least my two boys, who share a room, over the question of who is actually cleaning. Townshend will say, “Ian, cle-e-e-e-e-e-e-a-n!” And Ian will say, “I am cleaning,” and much crying and yelling ensues. They will cycle through this argument about five or six times before the room is actually clean. What’s at stake here is the question of fairness: no one in my family wants to have to do more cleaning than anyone else. As Lisa would gladly tell you, there’s really no danger of that with me! But for my kids, yeah…

Fairness. One of you told me that the first complete sentence your child learned to say was, “That’s not fair!” And they say it with such great authority. “That’s not fair”—as if they’ve found the hidden trump card that wins every argument, that settles every dispute. “It’s not fair that I can’t have ice cream for breakfast!” a four-year-old says. And the parent responds, “Oh, well… in that case, strawberry or rocky road?” What our kids don’t understand is that we parents don’t really care about fairness—I mean, not really. What we really care about more than anything else is peace and quiet! Right? I am not nearly as interested in the question of fairness as my children want me to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, 24 May 2010, is Aldersgate Day. Wesleyan scholars debate the meaning of Aldersgate. Was it a full conversion to faith or a formative spiritual experience? (I believe the latter.) Wesley himself rarely referred to it after about 1740. One thing is certain: Wesley, who had previously struggled to believe that he was truly a Christian, found in Aldersgate a sense of assurance that he was forgiven, loved, and accepted by God in Christ—a conviction from which he never wavered. Assurance continues to be an important emphasis in Methodism. In general, we Christians ought to be assured by the Holy Spirit that we will be saved. It shouldn’t be something we worry about.

On this day 272 years ago, John Wesley wrote the following in his journal (dated May 24, 1738):

…In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate-Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. 15. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there, what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, “This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?” Then was I taught, that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation: But that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes with holdeth them, according to the counsels of his own will. 16. After my return home, I was much buffeted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away. They returned again and again. I as often lifted up my eyes, and He “sent me help from his holy place.” And herein I found the difference between this and my former state chiefly consisted.

Here’s the 250th Aldersgate anniversary address from 1988, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, by Dr. Donald English, a British Methodist scholar. Queen Elizabeth II was in attendance.