A sermon on John and Charles Wesley, delivered in Christ Chapel on March 2, 2004, by the Reverend Dr. William Seth Adams, Professor of Liturgics and Anglican Studies

Mark 10.35-45

Blessed be the Name of God

There was murmuring around the table, among the ten. “Those two, always sucking up to him!” That was doubtless their first reaction. And because the sons of Thunder were perpetually doing what the ten accused them of in this instance, this reaction, this murmuring, was very common among them. “They’re always sucking up to him.” And if the brothers themselves weren’t bad enough, sometimes their mother, whose name I take to be Thunder, made the same move. “Put them at the head table, won’t you, please!?” It’s no wonder that the rest of the inner circle of Jesus’ followers were “angry with James and John.” Clearly, they had every right.

Biblical brothers are forever acting badly. In fact, it seems that the reason Biblical brothers get remembered at all, or at least in the first place, is that they don’t comport themselves as well as they might. It makes you wonder why “brotherly love” gets such a good reputation. Surely the Bible’s no help.

Cain and Abel, for example, set a rather ugly pattern early on. And what about Jacob and Esau, the pair whose story we heard read in this very room not so long ago. Or Joseph and his herd of brothers—what a nice bunch of guys they were. And we can even add Jesus into the mix. He seems to have disavowed is own blood kin in favor of brothers [and sisters and parents for that matter] who chose relationship with him. Blood lines didn’t count. Not a very wholesome example of “family values,” I’d suggest.

Having said all this, it’s ironic that the lectionary wizards put this gospel reading on the list for today’s remembrance of the brothers Wesley. Are we to deduce something about their relationship from the self aggrandizement exhibited by the siblings in the narrative or from the larger biblical pattern? Are the Wesleys like these other brotherly “heroes” in the story we tell about our life with God? Or is there something else afoot in this reading that needs our attention?

Perhaps this reading got put on the list for today because of the other part of the reading, the part about the Gentiles. First the brothers take a beating and then the Gentiles. We are Gentiles. In the narrative, we are the ones over whom our rulers “lord it.” Now surely the Wesleys were Gentiles so maybe this is the connection. Maybe they got on well enough but were offensively Gentile. It’s awfully hard to know.

Well, rather than immerse ourselves further into the gospel reading in this fashion, let me move with it in another direction. The Wesley brothers accomplished remarkable things, setting standards of commitment and faithfulness that changed the practice of the faith in their own time and into ours. Perhaps it’s their commitment to the one who speaks in the narrative we have read, perhaps it’s their proclamation of this Jesus in hymn text and preaching that’s what we are supposed to fix upon—not so much the badly comported brothers or the failings of the Gentiles but rather grace of the speaker. Perhaps it’s their love of the one who tells the stories that we are to raise up. This seems a very hopeful gambit.

The eighteenth century church into which the Wesleys were born was a moribund and complacent institution, an institution settled into a world whose energies moved almost inexorably toward urbanization and the creation of great and crushing industry. These energies brought with them a kind of virtually inevitable but surely not necessary dehumanization. The concern and compassion that the Wesleys brought to this world is a continuous trait of the Methodism that arose from their ministrations. In John Wesley’s preaching and his devotion to discipline and in Charles Wesley’s remarkable hymns, salve was provided for countless wounds and many were awakened to the marvels of life in faith with Jesus. The evangelical awakening that was their companion and their legacy helped to bring increasing vitality to the lives, dreary and otherwise, of countless industrial poor. And the westward spread of Methodism in North American is its own remarkable story.

But the history lessons about the Wesleys and the influence exerted on them by Thomas a Kempis and William Law are appropriately Professor Gregory’s to report and the virtues and beauty of Methodism as a faithful expression of the mind of Christ are Professor Barton’s to expound. For my part, I want the hymns.

Now it’s important to remember that Charles Wesley’s hymns are the poetic texts to which later writers provided music. When I think of hymns, I always think of something I can sing or hum or whistle. But what Charles Wesley wrote were the words, not the music. And we are told that by the time he died at age 81, Charles had produced something in the neighborhood of 5,500 hymn texts—the first published in 1739 when he was 32. I simple cannot conceive of such a feat. It’s simply miraculous! It’s as if he fashioned one hymn text every day for 15 years! How on earth did he have time to do mow the grass or do the laundry?

Already today, we have sung a Wesley hymn and as the liturgy continues, we will sing more. Our last hymn will be perhaps my favorite Wesley hymn of all, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my dear Redeemer’s praise,” surely one of the finest songs of praise ever conceived. Through the liturgy we will do our singing and I must be content with that.

Instead, I want to read you some texts and I want you to listen as if these texts offered you something of value, something of wonder and beauty, something to feed you, to inspire you, to settle your heart. I have read poetry to many of you before—and I likely will again—but none finer than these. Much as I wish that all of what I will read you was written in the plural—as it might be for liturgical use—the first one reads as if a single speaker speaks. I usually nettle at the individual references of many hymn texts but I take Charles Wesley’s like I take the psalmist’s phrases—as universal enough to be understood as corporate and communal.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church often invites his hearers to listen with an “undefended heart.” And so I do as well. Listen with an undefended heart, to these wonderful and abiding poems.

Begin the day with this:

Christ whose glory fills the skies,

Christ the true, the only Light,

Sun of Righteousness, arise!

Triumph o’er the shades of night:

Dayspring from on high, be near;

Daystar, in my heart appear.

Dark and cheerless is the morn

Unaccompanied by thee;

Joyless is the day’s return,

Till thy mercy’s beams I see,

Till they inward light impart,

Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.

Visit then this soul of mine!

Pierce the gloom of sin and grief!

Fill me, radiancy divine;

Scatter all my unbelief;

More and more thyself display,

Shining to the perfect day. [6, 7]

For the church within the communion of saints, the living and the dead:

Let saints on earth in concert sing

With those whose work is done;

For all the servants of the King

In heaven and earth are one.

One family we dwell in him,

One Church, above, beneath,

Though now divided by the stream,

The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God,

To his command we bow;

Part of the host have crossed the flood,

And part are crossing now.

E’en now by faith we join our hands

With those that went before,

And greet the everliving bands

On the eternal shore.

Jesus, be thou our constant Guide;

Then, when the word is given,

Bid Jordan’s narrow stream divide,

And bring us safe to heaven. [526]

Yearning for the completion of what has begun, exhausting ourselves in praise:

Love divine, all loves excelling,

Joy of heaven, to earth come down,

Fix in us they humble dwelling,

All thy faithful mercies crown.

Jesus, thou art all compassion,

Pure, unbounded love thou art;

Visit us with thy salvation,

Enter every trembling heart.

Come almighty to deliver,

Let us all thy life receive;

Suddenly return, and never,

Never more thy temples leave.

Thee we would be always blessing,

Serve thee as thy hosts above,

Pray, and praise thee without ceasing,

Glory in thy perfect love.

Finish then thy new creation;

Pure and spotless let us be;

Let us see thy great salvation

Perfectly restored in thee:

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. [657]

Blessed be the memory of John and Charles Wesley. Blessed may you be.

Blessed be the Name of God