“Who do you say that I am?”
Grŵp Cadfan reflection on Methodism, as part of the series “9 reformations”
Llandudno, 28 February 2018
Order of service here on pp. 26–31
Who do you say that I am?
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
I suppose that nobody means to start a movement, to start a reformation. Nobody tries to be a schismatic. It takes a while to come to terms with being a Messiah.
It’s a process. You take the next step that seems right for you. Events happen. The tide of history sweeps you along. You become comfortable in this new skin, doing something different, distinctive. And soon enough, eventually, before you know it, there’s no way back; you have a new charge to keep, a new calling to fulfil, a present age to serve, as only you can.
But that all takes time. And during that time, a time of redefinition, a time of seeking clarity of purpose, you’ll ask questions, insecure about who you really are. And other people, having a sense that something new is happening in their midst, will ask questions of you, and try to define you, and give this new thing a name.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Some say John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah.”
“But who do you say that I am?”
Nobody means to start a movement, to start a reformation. Nobody tries to be a schismatic. It takes a while to come to terms with being a Messiah.
John Wesley didn’t intend to start a separate church. (It’s tempting to see his life as a story of revolutionary new starts — of personal church conversion and then Church reform. One of the few things most people know about him is that he had a conversion experience as a young man — he went to a Moravian service in the City of London, and recorded in his journal, in that curious phrase, that he had felt his heart “strangely warmed” — hence the joke that in any Methodist bathroom washbasin, you’ll find three taps, one hot, one cold, and one strangely warm. But actually it wasn’t an overwhelming conversion experience, but a step on a journey of exploring new aspects of faith and doubt that lasted a lifetime.) His whole life was a time of redefinition, a time of seeking clarity of purpose, of asking questions, insecure about who he and (eventually) his people really were. He tried on different labels, and people put different labels on him, in an attempt to make sense of this new thing happening in their midst.
Let’s look quickly at five of those labels: Anglican, Bible moth, Arminian, Holy Club member, Methodist.
“Who do you say that I am?” An Anglican.
John Wesley was born in an Anglican parsonage; he and his brother Charles were ordained by Anglican Bishops; they lived and died understanding themselves to be faithful communicants of the Church of England. Wesley established a society, not a church. He meant, originally, for members of his society to meet on weekday evenings or, if needs be, on Sunday afternoons. It was a top-up to what the Anglican parish church offered; and he remained annoyed, to the end of his life, by Methodist preachers who organised society meetings on Sunday mornings, clashing with Mattins or the Holy Communion at the local parish church. Some of the other reforming movements we’ll consider this year managed to be welcomed and incorporated within their home churches — one thinks of Innocent III and the Franciscans, or of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England. It’s a crying shame that Methodism and Anglicanism became different things.
“Who do you say that I am?” A Bible moth.
At Oxford, John and Charles and their friends were known as the Bible moths. They’d gather in Wesley’s rooms at Lincoln College to read the Bible and talk theology long into the night, gathered like moths around the candle light. Even then, they took their faith, the need for a deepening relationship with God, seriously.
The only criterion for membership of the early Methodist societies was “fear of the wrath to come.” The very set up — that top up of what you’d get in church — spoke of people who wanted, needed to go deeper. Bible moths, gathered around, drawn to, the light of faith.
“Who do you say that I am?” An Arminian.
Wesley and his movement believed in the “four alls”: All need to be saved. All may be saved. All may know themselves to be saved. All may be saved to the uttermost. Free, universal, sure, full salvation. In more theological detail:
All people are free to accept or reject salvation by an act of human will — free salvation
All who are obedient to the Gospel according to the measure of knowledge given them will be saved — universal salvation
The Holy Spirit assures all of their salvation directly, through an inner experience and assurance — sure salvation
And, all in this life are capable of Christian perfection and are commanded by God to pursue it — full salvation
Wesley drew his teaching from the work of the Dutch theologian, Jacobus Arminius, and it set him almost diametrically opposed to the theological consensus of his day.
I guess that few of us nowadays are full subscribers to the 17th of the 39 Articles of Religion, “Of Predestination and Election”. You have to nod to it in your Declarations, but not much more than that. It says:
Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour.
Wesley, let’s be blunt about it, stood against that. All (he said, not some) need to be saved. All (not some) may be saved. All (genuinely, and not some) may know themselves to be saved. All (not some) may be saved to the uttermost.
One of the big theological changes of the last two hundred years is that, eschatologically, we’re almost all practicing Arminians now. But in an age of Calvinistic domination — formally in the Church of England, and among other dissenters, especially in Wales (where Calvinistic Methodism would prevail) — Methodist Arminianism was a rare and precious assertion of theological civility.
“Who do you say that I am?” A member of the Holy Club.
Others called them the Bible Moths. The young Wesleys and their keen friends called themselves the Holy Club. “Holy” because they tired to live holy lives. They understood life to be a quest for that last of the “four alls” — a quest for holiness, for Christian perfection — a quest to be holy to the uttermost. The whole understanding of the economy of salvation had, for them, a healthy two-stage drama. You had to know that you were justified (that’s why the strange warming of the heart mattered); but that was the beginning, and the life-long second step, that brought you closer to God, and necessarily so, was a quest for holiness through acts scriptural holiness, acts of social holiness, acts of mercy and act of grace. There is in Wesleyan Methodism a coherence beyond justification that is now taken for granted but, then was radical.
“Who do you say that I am?” Methodists.
Wesley was called, called himself, Methodist because of this methodical approach. His membership movement was supremely well ordered.
In part, that’s an expression of his personality, his control-freakery. Two extracts from his journal, late in his life, as he’s coping with a congregational meeting in one of his chapels that’s become a little too empowered, help to illustrate this (as background, we should note that it was considered normal and seemly and good for men and women to sit separately in Methodist chapels; but a vital thing that nobody saved their own pew, much less paid for it, as was normal in parish churches):
Friday, 21 December: :”The Committee proposed (1) that families of men and women should sit together in both chapels; (2) that every one who took a pew should have it as his own. Thus overthrowing, at one blow, the discipline which I have been establishing for fifty years!”
Monday, 24 December: “We had another meeting of the Committee, who, after calm and loving consultation, judged it best (1) that the men and women should sit separate still; and (2) that none should claim any pew as his own.”
That ordered-ness — that desire for methodism — was made plain in the connected structure of the Methodist movement. To be a member of a Methodist society was to sign up to be a member of a class meeting — a cell group, a home group. Class Leaders met together at a meeting chaired by a Local Preacher. The Local Preachers met together at a meeting chaired by the Circuit Superintendent Minister. And all the ministers met together at the annual Methodist Conference. At its best, this connexionalism offered tremendous support and thorough accountability for the Methodist people. In the words of Charles Wesley’s hymn, it gave flesh to the yearning:
Help us to help each other, Lord,
each other’s cross to bear.
Let each his friendly aid afford,
and feed his brother’s care.
It reminds me of the best we offer through Commissioned Pastoral Care Teams and home groups in this diocese — and honest, intentional, organised, loving care for one another.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Some say John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah.”
“But who do you say that I am?”
He’s seen as the grandfather of Methodism now — a denomination that, internationally, is bigger than the Anglican Communion — but when he died in 1791 at the grand old age of 87, it wasn’t really certain that Methodism would become a big thing. It took the nineteenth century to do that — and, specifically, the ability and willingness and readiness of the Methodist movement to do what the Church of England as unable and unwilling and not ready to do, namely to get its hands dirty and offer ministry to those new communities, those new villages and towns of working people, that the Industrial Revolution was giving birth to. That methodical structure helped it be successful there, as did its huge education programme — Methodist Sunday Schools taught arithmetic and literacy to generations of poor kids, as well as Bible stories, and parents responded with their faithfulness. But beyond that utilitarianism, Methodist also flourished in the nineteenth century because of language, words.
“Who do you say that I am?”
Methodism said to those people, “Let us tell you who God is,” and they told it in language, in words that were simple, and clear, and singable, and understood. Our offertory hymn later this morning is Charles Wesley’s eucharist hymn, “Author of life divine”:
Author of life divine,
who hast a table spread,
furnished with mystic wine
and everlasting bread,
preserve the life thy self hast giv’n,
and feed and train us up for heav’n.
Our needy souls sustain
with fresh supplies of love,
till all thy life we gain,
and all thy fullness prove,
and, strengthened by thy perfect grace,
behold without a veil thy face.
The clarity, simplicity, immediacy and power of the language is stunning. “And feed and train us up for heaven”. “Our needy souls sustain with fresh supplies of love”. “Who do you say that I am.” “Let us tell you who God is.”
If there’s a main lesson to be learnt from Methodism, (physician, heal thyself), it’s that importance of being less wordy, less middle class, less bourgeois; of talking of God simply and clearly; of offering an apologetic, an account of God that is compelling and credible for this present age.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Some say John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah.”
“But who do you say that I am?”
“Author of life divine, feed and train us up for heaven.” Amen.
