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“Methodical Methods” Matthew 20:1-14; Ephesians 2:4-10 November 16, 2014 Rev

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“Methodical Methods” Matthew 20:1-14; Ephesians 2:4-10 November 16, 2014 Rev “Methodical Methods” Matthew 20:1-14; Ephesians 2:4-10 November 16, 2014 Rev. Kelly Love Davis United Methodist Church In some sermons this fall I have focused on the spiritual and theological diversity of this congregation. Part of my hope was to make some space for our diverse understandings of God, for the diverse views that exist in this congregation related to Christian theology. But in offering up the hope that there is room here for different ways of looking at things, I also hold the hope that we find a significant degree of unity. In one of my fall sermons I suggested that two things we have in common, two centrally important things that unite us here at the Davis United Methodist Church, are that we are Christian, and, that we are United Methodist. To be Christian means that Jesus Christ is central to how we understand ourselves as a particular faith community, and that is what I talked about last week. So today, let’s take a look at what it means to us to be United Methodist – at how our inheritance as United Methodists shapes the Davis United Methodist Church in the 21st century. There was a movement in the Church of England in the 18th century seeking renewal and revitalization in the church. The founder of that 18th century renewal movement was named John Wesley, and he was a very methodical guy. He introduced a lot of methodical practices and approaches to the folks who were drawn to his movement. And people outside the movement looked at these very religious people and mocked them by calling them Methodists. The name stuck. We in the Davis United Methodist Church in the 21st century have our methodical moments, and we have our not so methodical moments. But there are other hallmarks of Methodism that are very apparent in this church today. I’ve already talked about one of those hallmarks at length, which is our openness to differences of opinion. I offered one sermon in September on that topic. As John Wesley wrote in one of his sermons: “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.” 1 We can love alike, even without being all of one opinion. But there are still more characteristics of Methodism that we reflect here in Davis in this time. Contemporary Methodists find in John Wesley’s writings an acknowledgement of four sources for understanding of God. We have come to call this Wesley’s “quadrilateral,” though that was never a word he used. The four sources Wesley consistently and repeatedly drew upon in shaping his own theology, and the four sources he urged his followers to draw upon, are scripture, 1 “Catholic Spirit” 1749 2 tradition, reason, and experience. The idea of using scripture, and the ideas passed down through the Christian tradition, to shape our faith today was not new to Wesley, of course. That idea would have been assumed by practically every Christian for many centuries. And we today turn to scripture regularly as a resource to nourish our faith, teach us wisdom, and engage us in the wrestling that is sometimes a part of the life of faith. We also engage with other voices from the Christian tradition, as we examine the influences of prominent Christian ideas that have been handed down over the centuries. But I suspect that perhaps the most appealing resource in Wesley’s quadrilateral for Methodists in Davis in the 21st century is the honoring of reason. The idea that reason was a legitimate resource for Christians to draw upon in shaping their faith was not unique to John Wesley. In fact, it really isn’t until fairly recently, in the later 19th century when historically we start to see certain stripes of Christianity deliberately reject cognitive reason, as if reason is somehow in conflict with faith – but that’s a whole ‘nother sermon. But the idea that reason, our thinking, informs our faith was assumed by most Christians of Wesley’s day. In particular reason was a part of the understanding of the Church of England, which Wesley belonged to. So the use of our own reason as a source for developing faith was not new to Wesley. But it was and is an integral part of a Methodist understanding of how a person develops his or her faith, his or her understanding of God. When we come to the fourth source in Wesley’s quadrilateral, we find something that is a bit different. The role of experience was and is more explicitly acknowledged by Wesley and the Methodists than by some other branches of Christianity. In part, Wesley’s acknowledgement of the role of experience in shaping our beliefs or theology is just that: an acknowledgement of what is clearly true. A person’s life experience has a huge impact on what they come to believe or not believe. But more than that, Wesley’s life and writings show that he understood experience as the thing that enlivens a person’s faith. Experience is what provides the “wow” of having God expand our horizons beyond what we could see on our own. Experience is the feeling of our skin prickling when we are moved by someone’s story of finding hope when they were living in despair – and the affirmation that God is the source of hope. Yes, experience shapes our thinking about faith. We aren’t likely to think or believe something that is in conflict with our actual lived experience. But more than that, experience enlivens our faith. And this is an aspect of a Methodist perspective. In the language of his day, Wesley said that “all religion is social.” To offer a more direct quote, John Wesley said “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” This Wesleyan emphasis or Methodist emphasis is very much a part of today’s United Methodist Church in Davis. It’s not a kind of wording that people tend to use today, but it means two things, to say that religion is “social.” First, it means that our faith is meant to be practiced in community. And the depth to which we in this church value community, as part of the role the church fills in our lives, reinforces the sense that the Christian faith is meant to be practiced in community. The second meaning of religion being social, as Wesley called it, is that religion is meant to be connected to what is going on in society – connected to the world around us. This was a significant characteristic of the renewal movement of the original Methodists in the 18th century. Methodists were known for taking their faith out of the church buildings and into the world 3 around them. They were known for their service in feeding the hungry, developing educational programs for children, and speaking out on social issues such as slavery and child labor. They reached out to the poor and to industrial workers in ways that the traditional Church of England at the time was not doing. There are countless records of John Wesley preaching outdoors, in open fields or town squares or wherever he found space, sometimes to crowds of hundreds of people. The social religion of the Methodists stays connected to the needs and events of society. If you wanted to delve into some more academic study of Wesleyan or Methodist theology and practice, here are a couple of book titles you would find – titles of books that are very prominent in the field: “Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today” is one. Another is “Practical Divinity: Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition.” Still another is “Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s practical theology.” These titles reveal a lot about Methodism. Methodists are largely practical in our approach to faith. A faith that does not have direct application to real life, to daily life, is not of much use to the people called Methodists. Calling religion “social religion” as Wesley did is one aspect of this. But even beyond that, Methodists in the 18th century and Methodists in Davis in the 21st century want a faith that makes a difference in real life. Yes, spirituality is a part of our faith or a part of our religion. But this spirituality is not some pie in the sky, feel-good emotional experience. That’s why scholars writing about Methodist theology almost inevitably pair grace with responsibility. A Methodist spirituality informs how we put our faith into practice – it is practical. It informs how we live in the world, our values, what we do with our time and money, our hope for making a difference in the world, as well as the personal spiritual practices we follow in order to nourish our spirits and sustain and deepen our faith. All of these things I’ve just listed are part of what Wesley called “Means of Grace.” God’s grace is always a gift from God that is freely given. We cannot do anything to earn God’s grace, and cannot do anything that would ever make us unworthy of God’s grace. But Wesley taught that we can live and act in ways that make us more receptive to God’s grace, and more likely to recognize God’s grace at work in our lives. These ways of living and acting are the means of grace, and Wesley divided them into two categories: Acts of Piety, and Acts of Mercy.
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