Sermon, "The Holy Club: A Matter of Trust," Proverbs 3:1-8, Luke 16:10-12

Sermon 6/16/19

Luke 16:10-12, Proverbs 3:1-8

The Holy Club: A Matter of Trust

When John Wesley and his younger brother Charles were students in college, they struggled with how to keep growing in faith, despite the rigors of higher education. John was hoping that having his brother near him at school meant that he would have a partner to keep him on track, to keep him accountable with his discipleship, but when Charles first went to Oxford, he sort of “put his faith on hold” like many other students. By then John had become a fellow, a teacher of other students at Oxford, and then went to serve as pastor of a church. But eventually, he received a letter from Charles. Charles wrote, “I … awoke out of my lethargy.” Charles “wrote of his renewed desire to focus on his spiritual growth. He also asked for tips on keeping a spiritual journal, a practice John found helpful.” (1)

John took the opportunity when offered to go back to his teaching post as a fellow at Oxford, and he and Charles and a couple of other friends started meeting together regularly. In fact, they gathered together for 3-4 evenings each week. They would review and discuss classic books together along with the Greek New Testament. Group members tried to serve God every hour of the day. They set aside time for praying, examining their spiritual lives very carefully, and meeting together, and they also engaged in service to others, bringing food to the poor, visiting people in prison, and teaching orphans to read. They also fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays until 3pm as a spiritual practice, and shared in Holy Communion together weekly, a then uncommon practice in the Church of England of which they were part. (2) Others started calling the group “The Holy Club.” Like the name “Methodist,” “The Holy Club” was not a name Wesley and his friends gave themselves. Instead, it was meant to be an insult from others who mocked their intense practices. They were labeled “enthusiasts,” people with “excessive religious behavior,” and even teased with a little rhyme:

By rule they eat, by rule they drink,

By rule do all things but think.

Accuse the priests of loose behavior.

To get more in the laymen's favor.

Method alone must guide 'em all

When themselves "Methodists" they call. (3)

Despite the critiques, though, the small group persisted, with many of its members making significant contributions to their faith over the following years. The “Holy Club” model also served as a guide for the model of Methodist societies, small groups of disciples encouraging each other in faithfulness, that formed the backbone of the Methodist church to come.

For the next three weeks, we’ll be looking at a set of 21 questions that members of the Holy Club used. They’d reflect on these questions in their private devotional time, and then meet with each other to share about their discipleship together. (4) And as we think about our Methodist heritage and the example John and Charles Wesley set, we’ll see if their Holy Club questions can help us deepen our discipleship - or if we’re prone to make up new rhymes about methodical Methodists!

The Wesleys and the Holy Club, and eventually the Methodist movement that grew from it all emphasized practices of accountability for a growing discipleship. Practicing accountability in our discipleship means letting others in on our faith journey, and that’s something that can be very difficult for us in our culture. We prize individualism and privacy, and lots of spheres in our world emphasize that your religious views are your own - not open to the scrutiny or questioning of others. And so we sometimes let our discipleship turn very inward. We want our faith journey to be just between us and God. But God is always sticking our neighbor smack in between. How do we demonstrate our love of God? Through the way we love one another. How can we draw close to God? In part, by drawing close to each other.

Next Sunday and the week after, we’ll celebrate baptisms during worship. From time to time, I get shy folks ask me if they can have a baptism outside of worship, because they’re so uncomfortable being up front. But I’ll work hard to find ways to make them more relaxed within the worship service - because our acts of faith are never between just us and God. The community always gets invited into our covenant. We all make promises to each other: God, us, and the whole congregation. Listen to these words from our baptismal covenant:

I ask the whole congregation: “Will you nurture one another in the Christian faith and life and include these persons now before you in your care?”

The people respond: “With God’s help we will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. we will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their trust of God, and be found faithful in their service to others. We will pray for them, that they may be true disciples who walk in the way that leads to life.”

I give the charge: “Members of the household of God, I commend these persons to your love and care. Do all in your power to increase their faith, confirm their hope, and perfect them in love.”

The people respond: “As members together with you in the body of Christ, we renew our covenant faithfully to participate in the ministries of the church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness.” (The United Methodist Hymnal, 37-38)

We’re accountable to each other, even if we’re much less intense about it than the Wesleys and The Holy Club were. Being together is an integral, irreplaceable part of our faith journey. Supporting each other in discipleship is something for which there is no substitute. We need each other to be the body of Christ. So, who are the people in your life helping you grow in discipleship? How can you entrust more of your spiritual journey to them, sharing heart and soul with them?

This week, we’re looking at some of the 21 questions Wesley and his friends asked themselves and each other each week, questions that broadly look to questions of trust and discipleship. Is God trustworthy? Are we trustworthy? How do we grow in our trustworthiness in our relationships with God and one another? Wesley and his friends asked each other:

Am I consciously or unconsciously creating the impression that I am better than I really am? In other words, am I a hypocrite?

Am I honest in all my acts and words, or do I exaggerate?

Do I confidentially pass on to another what was told to me in confidence?

Can I be trusted?

Do I insist upon doing something about which my conscience is uneasy?

Am I jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touchy, or distrustful?

Do I disobey God in anything?

At our Wednesday night Bible study this past week we asked these questions as a group, and found them challenging. If we have to answer these as the simple yes/no questions they’re presented as, our answers are pretty stark. Yes, sometimes I’m a hypocrite. Yes, sometimes I exaggerate. I am not always 100% honest in every situation. I have not kept every confidence shared with me. I have not always been worthy of trust. Sometimes I’ve done things despite knowing better. I’ve been jealous, impure, critical, irritable, touch, and distrustful. I’ve disobeyed God. Admitting that to God, myself, and out loud is hard, even though I suspect I’m in pretty good company with my answers. But I also think these questions push us farther. We talked about that at Bible Study too - when do I find myself disobeying God and why and how can I do things differently next time? In what situations do I find myself trying to make myself seem better than I am, exaggerating? We talked about, for example, the enormous pressure we face in world of social media to make ourselves look great online. We tend not to post pictures of our dirty dishes, but instead only our well-arranged rooms. We tend not to post times we’ve been bad parents or bad friends, and instead share our successes or the triumphs of our children (or niece and nephew!) Of course we do this. What’s the cost to our spiritual life when we can’t be honest about the real, messy, sinful people we are, and instead have to pretend to have it together all the time? When we’re pretending with everybody else, how easy is it to start pretending with God too? If we pretend with God, how can we grow? How can we experience forgiveness and reconciliation if we can never admit we’re in need of them? As I let these Holy Club questions into my heart, I find them pretty challenging indeed.

Today we heard a passage from Proverbs. I have to admit, it isn’t my go-to book of the Bible, and I’m not sure I’ve ever preached on it before! But as I was thinking about these questions of discipleship and trust, it tugged at me. In our text, God is telling us not to forget God’s commandments, but instead to remember that following God’s commandments brings us abundant well-being. Instead, we should keep God’s word close at hand, around our neck, written on our hearts. And when we do that, the writer says, now shifting points of view, we’ll find favor with both God and neighbor. The best way for us to be trustworthy is by trusting entirely in God. If we trust God, we don’t have to rely on our own faulty wisdom. God will guide us. God will be our wisdom. God will help us turn from evil. The writer concludes, “It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body.” I love that image. It fills me with peace. When we put our trust in God, and let God be our guide, we experience healing and refreshment. Don’t we want that?

Of course, we can trust God, always. But here’s something surprising for us to think about: God trusts us too! Again and again, God trusts us. God starts out trusting us with responsibility for the rest of creation right in the beginning of Genesis, and God trusts us with carrying out the work of Jesus for the rest of our days. And all in between that, God entrusts us with caring for people and places and messages and situations. Again and again, God shows a great willingness to trust us. Despite how often we mess up what God puts into our hands, God trusts us. Is God foolish to trust us when we so often fail? I don’t think so. Instead, I think our God of all hopefulness, the one who created us, knows just how much potential we have. God knows all we are capable of doing and being. And God knows that when we commit to growing as disciples, we grow more and more ready to handle what God entrusts to us.

Can we be trusted? With God’s help, and with the help of our friends on this journey, to whom we open our hearts and souls, we can. Thanks be to God. Amen.

(1) Iovino, Joe, “The Method of Early Methodism: The Oxford Holy Club,” UMC.org, http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/the-method-of-early-methodism-the-oxford-holy-club.

(2)   Keysor, Charles W. (1996). Our Methodist Heritage. Good News, 12. 

(3) Ibid. 

(4) “John Wesley and The Holy Club’s 22 Questions,” Hope, Faith, Prayer. https://www.hopefaithprayer.com/john-wesley-holy-club-questions/

Sermon for All Saints Sunday, "Enough: Wisdom and Finance," Luke 15:11-24

Sermon 11/4/12

Luke 15:11-24, Proverbs 21:5 & 20

(Much of the structure for this sermon is suggested in Adam Hamilton's Enough Stewardship Guide, and adapted for use at Liverpool First UMC.) 

Enough: Wisdom and Finance

            The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most-loved of the parables of Jesus. I’m not sure exactly why that is, except that maybe we all pictures ourselves to be a bit like the prodigal, wandering away from God, making foolish choices, and hoping, and finding that God welcomes us back with joy no matter how foolish we’ve been. Personally, I would admit I am much more like the older brother in the parable than the younger son, and I suspect that is true for a good many of us, especially in the life of the church, but I’ll save all that for another sermon! Today, we’re really only focusing on the first part of the parable, and this younger, prodigal son. Prodigal is one of those words that we use incorrectly so often that most people are starting to understand a different meaning for it than originally intended. We often hear or use prodigal to mean wandering, or lost. A prodigal is one who has wandered away, gone off life’s intended course. But actually, the word prodigal means extravagant and wasteful, one who spends recklessly and without control. The parable’s title refers not to the son leaving home, but to the son squandering his inheritance. With the correct understanding of this key word, our focus on the parable might change. It isn’t primarily, perhaps, a parable about wandering away from God, but a parable about being wasteful with the gifts God gives us. With this reading in mind, perhaps we are all more like the prodigal son after all. What are you doing with the good things that God has put into your hands to have care over, to be stewards of?

            Last week we talked about Affluenza and Credit-itis – which I think we can sum up into wanting more, and wanting it now. And somehow, even we attain close to the degree of financial security we’re looking for, we are still not careful with our money, and actually waste it here and there and everywhere until we’ve lost the bit of security we thought we had. I don’t know about you, but I find that paying with debit cards instead of with cash sometimes makes me shockingly mindless of what I’m spending. Just a quick, easy swipe of the card. I know, I know, you’re supposed to be careful, save all your receipts, budget, balance, and so on. But, frankly, well, let’s just say those kind of details are not my strong suit. Not too long ago, though, my bank unrolled a feature online where I can look at a lovely pie chart that shows me what categories I’m spending my money in. It includes categories like utilities, gasoline, groceries, a new rather large category for me: mortgage payments, and then categories like restaurants, general merchandise, entertainment, and “other.” This month we’re working through Adam Hamilton’s book called Enough, and he suggests that the two primary ways we waste money are on impulse buying and eating out. He’s got me pegged, certainly. If I added up all the money I spent on eating out in a year, well, I shudder to think of the total. Do you find yourself wondering what happened to the money you had? Are you making wise decisions with what you’ve got? What would your pie chart look like? How much are you wasting of what you’ve been given? How much of a prodigal are you?

            Creating new patterns for ourselves when it comes to our money and resources starts with clarifying our purpose, our priorities, and our relationships. Why do we exist? What are we here for? Despite all the messages society shouts at us, we are more than consumers! Our purpose is not to consume and accumulate and spend. We were created by God, who loves us, to care for God’s creation, to love God, and to love one another, to care for those in need, to glorify God, to seek justice, and do mercy. That’s our purpose. And that means that everything that we do, everything that we have, is meant to help us fulfill our purpose. Our money, our gifts, our possessions – all this is meant to be used to help us fulfill our calling – “to serve Christ and the world through the church, missions, and everyday opportunities.” (1)

            What are your goals? Hamilton suggests that if we have a sense of what God is calling us to do, then we need to start planning to respond to that call. What is your purpose? What do you want to do for God? And how are you going to start doing it? If you are really compelled by these questions, Hamilton has some resources for seriously asking and answering these questions for ourselves, and I would love to see where God is leading us. I think we also need to ask these questions to ourselves as a congregation. What is our purpose? What is God calling us to do? And then what’s our plan? Are we using our resources in the best ways we can to serve God’s purpose for us?

            “Barbara Glanz is a motivational speaker who conducts workshops for large companies. One day she was speaking at an event for the employees of a grocery store chain. She talked to them about how they saw their life purpose, suggesting that their work was more than stocking shelves or ringing up customers' food purchases or delivering supplies. She told them that every person they met was an opportunity to bless someone, to live out a higher calling or mission.

The employees were inspired by her words, including one nineteen-year-old grocery bagger named Johnny. Johnny, who has Down syndrome, took her words to heart. He went home and tried to think of ways he could be a blessing to others. Finally, he came up with a plan. Each night he would search the Internet for a positive saying that would encourage people. Then he would print out 300 copies and carefully cut the sayings into individual strips. The next day, he would put one of the sayings in the grocery bag of each of his customers while saying, "I put a saying in your bag. I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here."

A month later, the manager noticed that Johnny's line was much longer than the others. Even when he announced that there was no waiting in lines 2 and 3, no one budged. People wanted Johnny to be their bag boy. He touched them and filled them with hope. Johnny got it. He was pursuing a mission that was bigger than his personal satisfaction.” (2)

Can we say the same for ourselves? Are we pursuing a mission that is bigger than our personal satisfaction? Can we articulate our mission? Do we use all that we have been given to support what we’ve said we’d set out do? 

            Today, we are celebrating All Saints Sunday, a day when we remember members of our congregation, as well as the loved ones we carry in our hearts, who have died during the last year. It may seem like a strange combination – All Saints, with a conversation about how we use our resources. But maybe it’s not such a stretch at all. When I think of the saints in my life, I think of people who were remarkably content, regardless of how much they had stored up for themselves. I think of people whose lives were marked by giving of themselves freely for the sake of others. I think of people who were pursuing a mission in life that went beyond their own satisfaction.

            Today, our Chancel Choir sang an anthem, which is also a favorite hymn of mine in our hymnals, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” Listen again to the last verse: “They lived not only in ages past; there are hundreds of thousands still. The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus' will. You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store, in church, by the sea, in the house next door; they are saints of God, whether rich or poor, and I mean to be one too.” Saints of God, loving to do Jesus’ will. God helping, let us mean to be Saints too, sure of our purpose, and striving, every day, to live in ways which let us carry out our mission of service in God’s kingdom.

Amen.

(1)   Hamilton, Enough Stewardship Guide, 73.

(2)   Hamilton, Enough, 48-49.