Sermon for the 24th of August - Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Lectionary Readings for the Tenth Sunday of Trinity

Jeremiah 1: 4-10 
Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,  ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,  and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’  Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ But the Lord said to me,  ‘Do not say, “I am only a boy”; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’  Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,  to pluck up and to pull down,  to destroy and to overthrow,  to build and to plant.’ 

Psalm 71: 1-6
In you, O Lord, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress, to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the unjust and cruel. For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from my birth; it was you who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.

Hebrews 12: 18–29
You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. (For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.’ This phrase ‘Yet once more’ indicates the removal of what is shaken— that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Luke 13: 10-17
Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday of Trinity

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe;

for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

From time to time there are movements within the established church that renew it from within, giving it renewed power: a rekindled spirit of faith, hope, and love.

One of the most remarkable of those who have given this new life to an old, old church---for us, the Church of England---is the person of John Wesley, and his accomplished poet and hymn-writer brother, Charles. John Wesley travelled approximately 250,000 miles on horseback throughout his ministry, a distance equivalent to circling the earth about ten times. He covered this immense distance to preach, often several times a day, spreading the message of the Methodist movement across the British Isles. Charles wrote over 6,500 hymns during his lifetime, from Hark, the Herald Angels Sing to others you have never heard of.

When we despair of the state of the church today, and wonder where all the people are who are not sitting beside us in these pews, it is heartening to remember the lives of these two remarkable and godly men, and also the person who shaped and formed them, their mother, Susannah.

Susannah was the youngest of twenty-five children. Her father, Samuel Annesley, was a Dissenter from the established church in England. Strong character that she possessed, at the age of twelve Susanna stopped attending her father's church and became a member of the Church of England. She married Samuel Wesley when she was 19, in 1688---the year of the Glorious Revolution; he was 26. They went on to have 19 children, nine of whom, however, died in infancy.

Her husband Samuel, who became parish priest of Epworth in Lincolnshire, aspired, also, to be a writer: he became known as a prolific, but not particularly accomplished, poet. In 1685 he published Maggots, or, Poems on Several Subjects, Never Before Handled by a Schollar. He also laboured for many years on A Dissertation on the Book of Job, a work in Latin.

His work is not remembered and had little impact on his family other than to cause them great financial hardship. In contrast, Susanna wrote much that would be fundamental to the education of their children. In addition to many letters, she wrote meditations and scriptural commentaries for her own use, as well as extended commentaries on The Apostles Creed, The Lord's Prayer, and The Ten Commandments.

As a minister, Samuel was not warmly received and his ministry was not appreciated. An autocrat, did not commend himself to the people of Epworth. His parishioners were strongly opposed to Royalists, Torys or academics: Samuel was all three. A complete mismatch for some of his illiterate parishioners, they actively tried to drive out the Wesleys from the parish.

Samuel left Susannah and the children for over a year at one point because of a minor dispute. In addition, their house burned down, twice.

Despite these many hardships, Susannah remained an unassailable source of serenity and security for her family. She assumed complete responsibility for her children's remarkable education. Susannah instituted a careful and considered series of lessons---Latin, Greek, classical studies were part of the curriculum for daughters and sons, alike. Her own deep spirituality informed all that she gave them.

During a time when her husband was in London, defending a friend against charges of heresy, he had appointed a locum to preach. The theme of the man’s sermons revolved exclusively around repaying debts. The appalling insufficiency of this content caused Susanna to assemble her children on Sunday afternoons for their own family services. They would sing a psalm, then Susanna would read a sermon from either her husband's or father's sermon file, then another psalm would conclude. The local people began to ask if they could attend. At one point there were over two hundred people attending Susanna’s Sunday afternoon service, the Sunday morning service dwindling to nearly nothing.

It was her deep spirituality and rigorous discipline in daily prayer and worship that so shaped her sons.

The Church of England had sunk to a very low place in the 18th century.

Training for the priesthood consisted of a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, with sometimes a verbal examination of Latin, Scripture, and church doctrine by a bishop. As you can imagine, this resulted in many priests of questionable merit. The system of preferment meant that wealthy families could appoint as a parish priest anyone they liked, but who might have no qualifications whatsoever for the post. Some clergy appointed to a parish did not live anywhere near it, and so delegated their pastoral duties to a curate, paid a pittance, often barely enough to survive. The perception that clergy were more interested in hunting, gambling, or associating with the local aristocracy did not help things. Above all, the massive dislocation of workers from the stability of a rural parish to the slums of newly industrialised cities caused great misery. The Church largely failed to keep up with this national migration from country to city, to the appalling living conditions found among the urban poor.

It was over against this background that Susannah brought up her children.

At Oxford, beginning in 1729, John and Charles created a system of rigorous self-examination and daily prayer (out of which came the name Methodist, from the method they lived by). A few fellow students came to share this system with them: they were called derisively by other students, The Holy Club. But John and Charles took this as validation of their sincerity. They prayed with prisoners about to die and visited poor families in the town.

But it was an experience of conversion, of being touched by the hand of God in an intense and personal way, that awaited them. Having been so deeply conscious of their personal failings, the brothers had needed something else to set them on their course. In May of 1738 Charles, first, experienced a change of heart, a passing from fear and doubt to a new confidence and joy. John, three days later, experienced a similar conversion. He who had striven so long for a state of inward holiness by such exacting means at last felt that God had transformed his heart by the gift of a faith that freed him. That faith in Christ was sufficient, and that it liberated him from any measuring of personal perfection.

After this, both brothers were set free to change the state of the church in that century. With hearts aflame, they tirelessly proclaimed this same message, that Christians could achieve a state where the love of God reigned supreme in their hearts, giving them not only outward but inward holiness.

John Wesley travelled widely and preached to gatherings of thousands out of doors. Across Great Britain and Ireland, he organised small groups that developed intensive and personal accountability, partook of religious instruction, and practiced discipleship. He appointed itinerant, unordained evangelists—both women and men—to care for these groups. Under his direction, Methodists became leaders in many social issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery and support for women preachers.Though persecuted and attacked in print, at times attacked physically by mobs, Wesley and his followers continued to preach and work among the neglected and the needy.

Throughout, he never sought to break off from the Church of England.

John and Charles persevered, holding fast to what they believed: that loving God was was the only essential element in the life of faith---a gift of grace.

Both Wesleys later became widely respected; by the end of John's life, he was described as the best-loved man in England.

If our God indeed is, as the author of Hebrews states, a consuming fire, then reverence and awe would seem to be the only possible response; but the great reformers of the church in all times have known that reverence and awe have to be offered within the greater offering of love.

leave you with a quotation from each brother:

To paraphrase roughly John's widely-quoted saying:

Do all the good that you can, in all the ways that you can, for as many as you can, for as long as you can.

And to remind us of the well-known lines of Charles's hymn, And Can It Be:

the refrain:

Amazing love! how can it be

That Thou, my God, should die for me?

And the fourth verse:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;

Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray,

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

My chains fell off, my heart was free;

I rose, went forth and followed Thee.

In a time when our world seems to be splintering apart from the human passions of greed and lust for power, when wrong-doing and violence mar so many lives, let us take heart from the the mother and sons who strove to love God with all their heart, whose passionate embrace of a loving faith led them to free so many others from the bonds of fear. Who did good in the name of the Christ who loved all.