FINDING CHRIST’S WAY AS UNITED METHODISTS

John 14:1-14

With the exception of the 23rd Psalm, it would be my guess that today’s gospel from John is the most popular biblical text for usage in funerals to bring consolation and hope to people experiencing sorrow. Jesus’ words to his disciples provide wonderful encouragement as he speaks of his Father’s house. He says, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

These words are spoken in the context of Jesus’ prediction of his betrayal and death. Peter had just declared his willingness to lay down his life for him, with Jesus responding that Peter would deny him three times before the cock’s crow. Yet in spite of these dire predictions, Jesus offers words of hope. It would seem that death already was inevitable in Jesus’ mind, and as grievous a thought as that was, he is looking beyond death toward God’s eternal plans. He spoke to them of a realm beyond imagination where everyone would be provided for, never again to be separated from his love. Let me reiterate his words: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Jesus’ next statement, however, brings a challenge. He tells them, “And you know the way to the place where I am going.” His challenger is that questioning, sometimes doubting, Thomas, who lays it out for all of them in terms of what they were probably thinking: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And of course most of us surely remember Jesus’ immortal reply: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is the way. Whenever Christians speak of THE WAY they are speaking of following in the footsteps of Jesus. Clearly, there are many paths to the Father where Christ can be found. He is not confined to one way as opposed to another. There are many churches and Christian sects who differ from one another in doctrine and theology, rituals of liturgy and sacrament, and in polity and every day practice in the field. Questions of who is right and who is wrong, who maintains orthodoxy and who pushes the window toward heresy, have occupied the church’s thinking always. Reformation is an ongoing necessity to keep the church true to its founder and relevant to the age in which it exists.

As we have watched the death and burial of Pope John Paul II and the election through the mysterious inner workings of the Papal Conclave of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the new pope, taking the name Benedict XVI, we have heard much discussion over the direction the church will move in coming days. Former Cardinal Ratzinger in a sermon just prior to the Conclave spoke strongly for the church to maintain its teachings and traditions, and not be influenced by “every wind of change.” Others, particularly Roman Catholics in the United States, call for a church more in tune with the needs of the day, including consideration of admitting women to the priesthood and allowing priests to marry. A struggle is going on within the Roman Catholic Church for leadership and direction. It was encouraging to hear on the radio this morning that in his sermon today he said he would be listening carefully to the church throughout the world and would seek to remain true to the precepts of Vatican II. His words probably have brought encouragement to many, but there is still a struggle to be waged as the church moves forward. This is nothing new in Christianity, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. Reformation and renewal are always taking place.

In our own United Methodist Church we have seen these trends from the beginning. We had our start in John and Charles Wesley’s efforts to renew the Anglican Church in England. The priesthood had grown terribly lax and was seemingly unconcerned about the huge social turmoil occurring in England. Some historians say that the spiritual resurgence that came about through the movement, often referred to as “the people called Methodists,” may well have headed off a revolution in England comparable to the French Revolution. The Methodists faced the troubles of the day head on and engaged social problems in the might of the gospel.

John Wesley carried his message of the warm heart – the heart that has been transformed by the loving grace of Christ - not only to the coalfields and farms of rural England; he took to the city streets, to the jails and poverty-ridden neighborhoods of London. He addressed the problems being brought on by rum, gambling, slavery, poverty, oppression of various kinds, and gave God’s answer to these problems. He gave hope to common people and helped them find their voice for the good. At a time when he was being shut out of Anglican churches, he declared that the world was his parish and did all he could to send faithful witnesses, lay preachers and class leaders to preach the gospel and to organize spiritual communities into societies, classes, and bands, so they might grow in faith as they learned of God’s love through Jesus Christ. It was a grassroots effort for years and years, and only with the American Revolution did Methodism finally become a church apart from the Anglican Church. It became a denomination. And what a denomination it became, especially in the American colonies.

With the leadership of such persons as Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke, Robert Strawbridge, Jacob Albright, and William Otterbein, Methodism spread across this great land with Methodist circuit riders braving every element to follow the wagon trains west, walking with the Cherokee Indians on the trail of tears, setting up churches, organizing schools, starting universities and hospitals, taking up the cause of the poor and challenging every form of oppression, chief among them being slavery, an issue that divided the church at one time but which eventually found resolution and subsequent reunification. It would be tempting to spend this entire sermon talking about this amazing history, but suffice it to say God has been active in the Methodist movement from the beginning as faithful men and women have sought Christ’s Way within the parameters set down by the Wesleys, who themselves were indebted primarily to the teachings of the Church of England. To this day our doctrinal standards are found in The Articles of Religion that came down from the Anglicans and the Confession of Faith that came through the German speaking branches of our church. In more recent years the General Conference has added other defining documents to our teaching, including our Social Creed and a treatise entitled Our Theological Task.

As we continue to engage the present age and move into the future, seeking to mobilize a new generation, it is important that we understand the principles that our church has tried to live by as it has met each new challenge. While there are a number of such principles within our historic faith, I want to zero in on something that has come to be known as the Wesley Quadrilateral. John Wesley never it called that, but later historians have coined the term to refer to basic teachings that Wesley regularly set forth. Simply put, it is a four-way test of how Methodists engage in decision-making. Essentially, Wesley taught that there are four factors that ought to enter into Christian decisions that are as follows: Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason. Wesley believed that important decisions made in the name of Christ should be able to stand up under these tests.

He maintained that Scripture is the most important test. Though Wesley was regarded the best read man in England by one so great as Samuel Johnson, the creator of the first comprehensive English dictionary, Wesley always said, “I am a man of one book.” He was talking about the Bible. He began every day well before dawn in his little prayer closet off his bedroom in London reading the scripture, praying, and meditating. Hours were spent every day doing this before he took on the Herculean tasks of resourcing a rapidly growing spiritual revival. His love of this one book got me thinking about the Bibles we have in our homes. Do they just catch dust or are they part of our daily bread?

[The Bible sometimes seems such a vast book. Maybe the size alone deters some from picking it up, but consider this: It is said that if you read the Bible at standard pulpit speed, slow enough to be heard and understood, that it would take seventy-one hours to read from Genesis through Revelation. If this were translated into minutes per day for 365 days, it would mean that the Bible could be read cover to cover in just twelve minutes a day! Imagine. Perhaps some will want to starting giving that twelve minutes a day to yourself this very day as a gift of love from God.]

According to the late Albert Outler, a great American historian of Methodism, Scripture outweighed all the other factors in Wesley’s teaching. But right behind it came Tradition. I have already alluded to the fact that Wesley was not a systematic theologian, writing the comprehensive theology for the church. Rather, he drew upon great writers like William Law and his book, A Serious Call to a Holy and Devout Life, and the great collected wisdom of the church found in The Articles of Religion, paragraphs which say clearly what Christians believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and so forth. He held on to 23 of these Articles as essential to the church’s teaching. Certain practices were also kept, including infant baptism. While there is not a specific biblical warrant for infant baptism, Wesley believed it is implied in Scripture, particularly in Jesus’ invitation for the children to come to him without interference and the baptizing of the jailor, along with his entire family. Furthermore, it is a practice that has always been kept in the church over the centuries.

Let me mention one important exception to my statement about the Wesleys not being systematic theologians. While they did not put their theological understandings down in book form, there is no greater body of understanding on the wondrous gift of God’s grace in Jesus Christ than is found in the Wesley hymns. Charles was the greatest hymnist of his time and wrote thousands of hymns, many of which are retained in our Book of Hymns, including “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”, “Jesus, Lover of my Soul”, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, and two hymns we are singing today. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the Wesleyan hymns of the Eucharist. There are none greater. John Wesley also captured much of his thought in his collection of 39 Sermons and his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament, which were a guide to preaching and biblical interpretation for all his lay pastors.

The third leg of the Wesley Quadrilateral is Experience. It was John Wesley’s heart-warming experience at a Christian society meeting on Aldersgate Street in London that was the breakthrough in his spiritual development, as he came to realize that Christ could be known in a personal way through one’s own experience. He realized that we didn’t have to approach God in the abstract, but could know God through one’s own experience. One of the greatest ways that people are coming to Christ today is in small groups where people like you and me simply share our experience of God’s work in our lives, the life-changing manner in which God touches us through the Holy Spirit to make sense of life and to give meaning and purpose. In a nutshell, the Experience factor refers to proving God in the context of our daily living. On the anvil of life’s experience we find God’s promises to be true. We find that faith anchored in prayer keeps its promises.

The final factor in the so-called Wesley Quadrilateral is Reason. While Methodism is often referred to as the religion of the warm heart, it is also known for its appeal to reason. If you were to visit Wesley Theological Seminary today and were to stand in the quadrangle, you would see a plaque on the library wall that says, “Unite these two so long disjoined; knowledge and vital piety.” The architect in designing the buildings on Wesley’s campus did a terrific job showing how piety and reason work together. The windows of the library look out on the chapel and the chapel windows look toward the library.

Wesley believed that every believer had to work out his or her own salvation with fear and trembling. United Methodist does not seek to indoctrinate, but rather to educate with the full arsenal of resources available to help people grow in grace, knowledge, and a vital experience with God through Jesus Christ. United Methodists are encouraged to think, to ask questions, to dialogue with other believers, to grapple with the difficult issues of the day. Every four years our General Conference, made up of equal numbers of laity and clergy, meets to wrestle through the legislative challenges of our time and to try to provide position statements that will help other believers come to their own decisions on important matters. We respect the diversity within our church, the pluralism, and see it as a means to keep the reformation going as we seek to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit for our time.

So there you have it, the criteria by which United Methodists can make important decisions: Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason. But let me go back to the centrality of Scripture. I recently read the words of John R.W. Stott, an Evangelical Christian, who makes an important point for all Christians, while defending his own position: “We have an almost superstitious attitude to Bible reading as if it had some magical efficacy. But there is no magic in the Bible or in the mechanical reading of the Bible. No, the written Word points to the Living Word and says to us, ‘Go to Jesus.’ If we do not go to the Jesus to whom it points, we miss the whole purpose of Bible reading.

Evangelical Christians are not, or ought not to be, what we are sometimes accused of being, namely, ‘bibliolaters,’ worshipers of the Bible. We do not worship the Bible; we worship the Christ of the Bible. Here is a young man who is in love. He has a girlfriend who has captured his heart. As a result he carries a photograph of his beloved in his wallet because it reminds him of her when she is far away. Sometimes, when nobody is looking, he might even take the photograph out and give it a surreptitious kiss. But kissing the photograph is a poor substitute for the real thing. And so it is with the Bible. We love it only because we love him of whom it speaks.”

And with the help of our traditions, our experiences of his presence, and the way we reason about the way his love is working in the world, we come to know him even better and will be better equipped to be faithful disciples, walking in Christ’s Way, his Truth, and living his Life, the life of love and compassion he so perfectly exemplified.