The Evangelical Wesley : The Gospel of God

The first challenge of the Wesleys has to be with the Gospel. The good news of God's saving love in Jesus Christ. The starting point for the Christian and the Church is God, not man. It is what God has done, not what man does. It is not human activity but God's saving word and deed in Jesus Christ.

That is why it is right to begin with Pentecost 1738, for that was the turning point for John Wesley on 24 May and for Charles Wesley three days earlier on 21 May. As he wrote in his journal, "I felt I did trust in Christ, in Christ alone for salvation … and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine"

Then we find the words sin and salvation. Sin concerns what we have done against God; Salvation is what God has done, is doing and will do for us.

Let me contrast that with another view of the Gospel.. eg. Hymnbook. I am told that there was an American hymn book, where in the index, under the phrase Kingdom of God, it said : For Kingdom of God, see democracy. In other words, the Kingdom was interpreted essentially social and political.

Eg. Russia. There was something similar in Russia in 1917 after the Revolution when the Living Church Movement pledged itself to work with the Community Party "for the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth"

When the Gospel is politicised, in this way, sin and salvation are essentially about man rather than about God, and the Church becomes the spiritual arm of a political party. For Wesley sin was not essentially social and salvation was not essentially social. Sin was not essentially an offence against man, such as racism, evil as that is. Sin was essentially an offence against God. Salvation was not essentially a non-profit social order.

Evangelistic Wesley - The Proclamation of the Gospel

The second challenge is evangelism. The evangelical Wesley was also the evangelistic Wesley. On the evening of 24 May 1738 after his heart had been strangely warmed, he went to his brother Charles' lodgings. Three days before, on 21 May, Charles had come to saving faith and had written a hymn. They both sang it. We know it as their conversion hymn. It began with a sense of the wonder of God's grace "Where shall my wondering soul begin". But verse 2 moves from wonder to mission. "O how shall I the goodness tell, Father, which Thou to me didst show" and verse 4 "Outcasts of men, to you I call - He spreads His arms to embrace you all."

What happened that night happened more dramatically in Bristol on 2 April the following year, when he began to preach in the open air. Methodism was mission and mission was primarily evangelism.

In recent years we have talked of mission, but too often mission has meant service, social care, political engagement - anything except evangelism.

The Holy Wesley : A life of Holiness - personal and social

For Wesley, faith has always to be active in love. Wesley stressed what God has done for us in Christ - but also what He will do in us and through us by the Holy Spirit. He believed in and preached the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

In his account of 24 May 1738, we sometimes stop too early and do not reach the point when he speaks of praying for those who had persecuted him. The Grace of God does not vividly deal with our past, it transforms the present.

Wesley was quite specific. It meant doing no harm (hence abstaining from activities as diverse as luxury, drinking spirits,) doing good (giving food and clothes, visiting the sick and imprisoned). However, underlying all this is the emphasis on perfect love. We have largely abandoned this emphasis on perfect love - for we have become more aware of human faults at the danger of legalism.

But alongside personal holiness there is also social holiness. Wesley was concerned with the poor, the sick, the unemployed, the slave trade. He founded schools, set up dispensaries, opened co-operatives for the unemployed, attacked the slave trade.

He attacked the social and economic conditions that led to unemployment and challenged the idea that the poor are poor simply because they are idle. He attacked the social evils as he perceived them including the slave trade. The last letter that he wrote, in the last week of his life, in his eighty eighth year, was to Wilberforce, encouraging him in the abolition of the slave trade - He wrote 'Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it'. But hear as well the next paragraph in the letter which shows an almost contemporary concern for racial equality and justice. 'Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance, that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a law in all our Colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villany is this!'

The Biblical Wesley : The Bible

Wesley said that he was a man of one book -that one book was the Bible. Of course he read hundreds of books and encouraged others to read them. However, the Bible was essential for Wesley, as in his words it "shows us the way to heaven". Wesley was in the tradition of the reformers that scripture is authoritative for our knowledge of God and man.

In modern reports sometimes this emphasis of Wesley has been confused by Wesley's reference also to tradition, reason and experience as each of these were equal to scripture. Indeed we have had reports to the Conference which place the insight of social and biological realness alongside scripture as if they were equal to scripture.

For Wesley they were subordinate - our experience could confirm scripture, it could not contradict it. Traditions are not there to overthrow scripture but to witness to it.

Something similar happened 3 years ago in a report on language about God. It begins with our experience (whether of women feeling oppressed or children with bad fathers) and then retains from scripture what fits in with that.

 Thus the fact that Jesus prayed to God as Father, the fact that commended us to address God as Father, the fact that this made such an impact on Paul that he preserved the very word for Father (Abba) - all that is nothing compared with the view that some have difficulty with the word Father - as if that was not true in the first century just as much as in the 20th.
 

The Ecumenical Wesley : Union

I think some of you may find the next challenge the hardest thing I have to say - Wesley was ecumenical. He was ecumenical in the sense that he could see what as good and helpful in Dissenters as well as Anglicans in Roman Catholics as well as Protestants.

He was also ecumenical in the sense that he was concerned with unity not to say union. It was important to him, but it must be said not all important.

Proclamation of the gospel was of the greatest importance to him, and nothing should stand in its way. He was willing to risk separation from the Church of England for the sake of proclaiming the gospel - but that is not the story. He sought throughout his life to hold the Methodist people with the Church of England. He himself lived and died a minister of the Church of England. His brother Charles was, of course, even more passionately committed to unity with the Church of England. Charles could even say - "all the difference between my brother and me was that my brother's first object was the Methodists and then the Church, mine was first the Church and then the Methodists".

We do not know exactly what Wesley would say about the current talks with the Church of England let alone with Anglicans in Scotland and Wales. But we do know that he was both an Anglican and a Methodist, and that he desired to remain both. Of course he did not want uniformity, but he did want to hold the Church of England and the Methodist people together.

The Heavenly Wesley : Heaven or the life of the world to come

Our society is increasingly absorbed by this world. With this worldly possessions and this worldly pleasures. Its high point would be Saturday night with a lottery win, rather than Sunday morning. If people heard Wesley preach on the use of money with its 3 points (gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can) they would stop at gaining all they can.

The Church has rightly challenged the view that the possessions and pleasures of this world are everything. But our preaching and teaching are for all that too dominated by this world and the way we can serve God in this life. Now let nothing I say diminish the importance of this. We have however largely lost the vision of the Wesleys that this life is not the end but the beginning - and that heaven is our home. Our life here, even if it lasts a hundred years or a thousand, is but a foretaste of the heavenly banquet which God has prepared for His people.

How many of the hymns of Charles Wesley finish in the last verse in heaven, setting this life in the context of heaven. Think of perhaps his most sung hymn 'Love Divine'. How does it end "Changed from glory into glory, Till in heaven we take our place, Till we cast our crowns before Thee, Lost in wonder, love and praise'