Last Sunday's Thought: singing and giving thanks to God at all times

The writer of the preface to Methodist hymn book of 1933 wrote these words. ‘Methodism was born in song. Charles Wesley wrote the first hymns of the Evangelical Revival during the great Whitsuntide of 1738 when his brother and he were “filled with the Spirit”, and from that time on Methodists have never ceased to sing. Their characteristic poet is still Charles Wesley. While for half a century hymns poured continually from his pen on almost every subject within the compass of Christianity, and while no part of the New Testament escaped him, most of all he sang the “gospel according to St Paul”. He is the poet of the Evangelical faith. In consequence Methodism has always been able to sing its creed.’

         John Wesley produced a hymn book for the ‘use of people called Methodists’ in October 1779. In these hymns, he said, ‘there is no doggerel; no botches; nothing put in to patch up the rhyme; no feeble expletives. 2. Here there is nothing turgid or bombast, on the one hand, or low and creeping on the other. 3. Here are no cant expressions, now words without meaning… We talk common sense, both in prose and verse, and use no word but in a fixed and determinate sense. 4. Here are, allow me to say, both the purity, the strength and the elegance of the English language; and at the same time, the utmost simplicity and plainness, suited to every capacity. Lastly I desire men of taste to judge… Where there not be in some of the following hymns the true Spirit of Poetry… That which is of infinitely more moment than the Spirit of Poetry, is the spirit of piety… It is in this view chiefly that I would recommend it to every truly pious Reader, as a means of raising or quickening the spirit of devotion, of confirming his faith; of enlivening his hope; and of kindling and increasing his love of God and man.’

         What makes the Wesleys’ hymns so compelling is their knowledge of the Biblical text and their ability to place it into poetry. In Ephesians 3:18 Paul prays that we may have the power to comprehend ‘what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge’ so that we may be filled with the fullness of God. Here is how Charles Wesley translates this into poetry for song, with allusion to the refiner’s fire (Isaiah 48:10):

         O that in me the sacred fire / might now begin to glow, / Burn up the dross of base desire / And make the mountains flow!

         O that it now from heaven might fall / And all my sins consume! / Come, Holy Ghost, for thee I call, / Spirit of burning come.

         Refining fire, go through my heart, / Illuminate my soul, / Scatter thy life through every part, / and sanctify the whole.

         No longer then my heart shall mourn, / While purified by grace, / I only for his glory burn, / And always see his face. (Paul Wesley Chilcote, The Song Forever New. Lent and Easter Meditations on Charles Westley’s Hymns (2009), pp. 97-8.)

         And we have also encountered Paul stating in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!’

         Charles Wesley translates this sentiment into poetry thus:

         The gift unspeakable impart, / Command the light of faith to shine, / To shine in my dark drooping heart, / And fill me with the life divine’ / Now bid the new creation be, / O God, let there be faith in me!

         Thee without faith I cannot please: / Faith without thee I cannot have: / But thou has sent the Prince of Peace / to seek my wandering soul, and save: / O Father! Glorify thy Son, / And save me for his sake alone! (Chilcote, p. 72).

In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God while in prison when there was an earthquake so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken and everyone’s chains fell off. The jailer was about to kill himself, but Paul shouted out that he should not harm himself because no one had escaped. Then the jailer brought them outside and asked what he had to do to be saved: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’, Paul declared (Acts 16:31).

In Charles Wesley’s great hymn, ‘And can it be’, the incident is taken as the paradigm of Christian conversion and was written immediately following his own conversion on 21 May 1738:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay, / Fast bound in sin and nature’s night: / Thine eye diffused a quickening ray; / I woke; the dungeon flamed with light; / My chains fell off, my heart was free, / I rose, went forth, and followed thee (Chilcote, p. 89). 

It is God who sends ‘the Prince of Peace to seek our wandering souls and save’ (Chilcote, p. 73). That is why we always and everywhere should be ‘…filled with the Spirit, as [we] sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among [ourselves], singing and making melody to the Lord in [our] hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Ephesians 5:18-20). Amen.

Note: your blogger will be on leave for a couple of weeks but will return with renewed zeal on 9 September at the latest, depending on internet connections.

Last Sunday's Thought: on not letting the sun go down on our anger

            ‘Be angry but do not sin; let not the sun go down on your anger’ (Ephesians 4:26). The two halves of St Paul’s adage seem to be in contradiction with one another. As long as we do not sin, we are entitled to be angry; but on the other hand, forgiveness must be shown before sundown. Now the second maxim, let not the sun go down on your anger, is one of the adages that those involved in marriage preparation advocate, and those who live in a happy marriage try to practise. It’s very easy to get angry with each other; the longer the anger continues without reconciliation the more difficult it becomes to reconcile; conversely, while it requires both parties to step back a little from their extreme position, a prompt reconciliation or at least recognition that that the difference should be settled by an agreement, the easier that process of reconciliation becomes.

         All contentions, whether between private persons, families, churches, or nations, are begun and carried forward by pride. Disputes would be easily prevented or ended, if it were not for pride. On this, however we translate its precise wording (e.g. ‘by pride comes only quarrels’), the text of Proverbs 13:10 is decisive. As one commentator expresses it, ‘pride is not only thinking we are better than others; pride can be thinking we are worse than others or just being self-conscious. It doesn’t matter if self is always exalting itself or if it’s debasing itself. It’s all self-centeredness, which is pride. Like it or not, understand it or not, pride is the source of all of our anger. As we deal with our own self-love, anger toward others will be defused. The only reason we are so easily offended is because we love ourselves so much.’

         ‘Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about the [Christian] hope you have’, we read in 1 Peter 3:15. ‘Be ready to give the reason for it. But do it gently and with respect.’ In expressing confidence in our faith to others, in other words, we are told not to be angry but to be gentle and respectful; but equally to say nothing, to hold back, is a false pride that leads in effect to a renunciation of our faith. ‘Be ready to give the reason for it.’ Be prepared to speak up about our faith. And be prepared to be angered at the sort of things that Jesus would have been angered at: at injustice, at the inhumanity of man to man, at abuse of power when we encounter it. Be prepared to cross the road for one another, so that – as Henri Nouwen says – we may indeed become neighbours. If we subordinate self, or ‘die to ourselves’ to use the language of St Paul, we will be able to love others in something of the way that Jesus did. To show Godly anger is to be angry at sin while showing compassion to the sinner.

         In Henri Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey. Reflections for every day of the Christian Year, the entries for 8 August and 9 August, on being unconditional witnesses and being living signs of love, are particularly appropriate in this context. ‘Good news becomes bad news’, he teaches us, ‘when it is announced without peace and joy. Anyone who proclaims the forgiving and healing love of Jesus with a bitter heart is a false witness. Jesus is the saviour of the world. We are not. We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us. But this witness must come from a heart that is willing to give without getting anything in return.

         The more we trust in God’s unconditional love for us, the more able we will be to proclaim the love of Jesus without any inner or outer conditions.’

         ‘We, as followers of Jesus’, Henri Nouwen further comments, ‘are sent into this world to be visible signs of God’s unconditional love. Thus we are judged not first of all by what we say but by what we live. When people say of us: “see how they love one another”, they catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and are drawn to it as by a magnet.’

         ‘In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger and hatred’, he concludes, ‘we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.’ Thanks be to God.

Last Sunday's Thought: Baptism: the beginning of life in the Holy Spirit

The appointed readings for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity in the lectionary, which is used by most churches world-wide, happen to be particularly appropriate for a service of baptism. In the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that early Christianity was referred to as ‘the way’ (Acts 19:9, 23; 24:22). As Jesus makes clear in today’s gospel, the work of God is to believe in the person God has sent to the world: the Way, in other words, is the way of Jesus Christ. It is this way that Jesus points to in the gospel of John, when he says that he is ‘the bread of life’. Whoever comes to Jesus, he declares will never be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty. ‘Do not work for the food that perishes’, he warns us, ‘but for the food that endures for eternal life.’

         And it is the way of Jesus Christ to which St Paul points in his letter to the young church at Ephesus. He talks about the growth from infancy to mature faith in Jesus Christ. We need the various gifts that the Church has to equip us for our journey in Christ. These enable us to ‘grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ’. A simpler translation by Tom Wright of the last verse reads thus: ‘He [that is Jesus Christ] supplies the growth that the whole body needs, linked as it is and held together by every joint which supports it, with each member doing its own proper work. Then the body builds itself up in love.’

         The Christian journey, from infancy to mature faith, assisted by parents and godparents who must ‘speak the truth in love’, is thus a journey from an insecure faith – ‘thrown this way and that on a stormy sea, blown about by every gust of teaching, by human tricksters, by their cunning and deceitful scheming’ – to a mature faith in Christ Jesus, God’s son. ‘Then we shall reach the stature of the mature Man measured by the standards of the king’s fullness’, that is the fullness of Jesus.

         There is an important textual link between our Gospel reading and St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. At John 6:27, Jesus comments: ‘Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ This idea of God ‘setting his seal’ – akin to a human ruler affixing his seal with hot wax on a document – also appears twice in Ephesians. In the first chapter we read ‘In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise’, or ‘the spirit of promise, the holy one’ (Ephesians 1:13). And just before the end of chapter four, from which our reading this morning comes, we read ‘Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption’, or ‘the spirit who put God’s mark on you to identify you on the day of freedom’ (Ephesians 4:30).

         In almost legal language – and today it is lawyers who are virtually the only ones who still affix wax seals on documents – we thus see a connection between God, his son Jesus Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and ourselves as believers. Jesus is the ‘person whom God the father has stamped with his seal of approval’. Those who believe in Jesus’ gospel are stamped with his seal of approval by the Holy Spirit; and finally, ‘God has stamped his seal on us, by giving us the [Holy] Spirit in our hearts as a first payment and guarantee of what is to come’ (2 Corinthians 1:22).

The Holy Spirit comes into our lives through baptism (Paul tells us that ‘we were all baptized into one body, by one spirit’: 1 Corinthians 12:13). The seal of God is the Spirit who descends upon us as individuals at baptism and takes residence inside us and confirms us as God’s children. In a legal sense we are ‘adopted’ and ‘sealed’ for God; from a relationship point of view, we become members of God’s family. The gift of eternal life begins for the believer because of the arrival of the Holy Spirit at baptism and his continuing indwelling in us, ‘his spirit who lives within you’ as Paul tells us in chapter eight of Romans (Romans 8:11). The opportunities for a Christian life for the believer are boundless as a result of our baptism. ‘Don’t you see?’, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3, ‘You are God’s Temple! God’s spirit lives within you!’ (1 Corinthians 3:16). It is for that exalted purpose that we all should strive, and especially for this that parents and godparents should nurture this young child to be baptized in the faith. ‘All who are led by the spirit of God… are God’s children’ (Romans 8:14). Thanks be to God.