John Meunier

Luke 3: 1-6

Last Advent, my first preaching, I got tripped up by back-to-back John the Baptist texts. I found myself struggling to have two different messages because I did not think ahead to week 3 while working on week 2. So, my first piece of advice is to think about the way you will preach next week’s text as you consider this week.

The Old Testament lectionary texts help in this task. Malachi this week zeroes in on the sending of the messenger. Zephaniah next week suggests the center-of-gravity to be the actual good news he carries. So, as I prepare to preach, my focus is on God’s sending and calling of John with only some indication of the message.

Luke’s attention to the concrete and historical facts reminds us that this is not meant to be read as a fairy tale. This is not “once upon a time,” but a very specific time. Readers are meant to understand that this story is grounded in the hard reality of the world as they know it. The word of the Lord comes to John even in the midst of politics and power that we know so well.

Making paths straight is a key command here. I’m not sure – at this point – what that means. Does it mean that every nook and cranny shall be made aware? Does it mean the good news will penetrate into every low place and high place? It will be carried to the rural backwaters and the heart of the cities. It will find every place where a ear might be able to listen.

But John is only making the way ready for the actual good news. He is preparing the stage for Jesus. He is drawing attention and gathering people together so they will be ready to hear and see what Jesus does. He is the warm up act. He is the advance team. He is the paratrooper battalion dropped behind enemy lines to hold the key bridge until the main army arrives. (I need to broaden my set of metaphors.)

I’m not sure yet how to tie these various bits together. I’m not sure if they all should be tied together. Often picking one thread is a better way to go.

There is danger, and there is threat: there is an enemy. Pastoral work takes place in an environment of hostility. There are times in history when it is overt; other times when it is covert; always it is intense. The pastor who does not know that is unfit to be a guide in the life of the Spirit.
- Eugene Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work

Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I watched a disturbing show on MSNBC this evening about sex slavery in the United States. The stories were demonic. Women were lured or hijacked into sex work. They were threatened and beaten and raped. They were terrified. And all the while scores of men lined up to pay to have sex with them.

This is not the charming prostitution of Hollywood movies. It is evil.

I went shopping today for milk and a few essentials. Spread throughout the store in aisle after aisle and display after display, there were alcoholic beverages. Where once the beer and wine – no hard liquor at all – were kept in one aisle that was roped off on Sundays, now, when I walk in the doors, I am greeted by large displays of hard liquor.

And on my way out are multiple opportunities to play the lottery. Meanwhile, the casinos in my state are rattling the doors of the legislature asking for tax breaks and new rules so they can better compete with other states. The governor says he wants to hold the line at 13 casinos in the state, but there are money and power and jobs at stake.

Drugs are rampant. Child abuse. Domestic abuse.

The enemy is doing quite well. Is he troubled at all by another sermon series about finding purpose in our lives?

Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, loking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.
- 1 Peter 5:8-9

Somehow it feels that in many quarters, the church has bought into the idea that what we are doing is not really a matter of vital importance. In the end, it does not matter, too many of us seem to believe. Oh, it matters to the extent that people’s lives will be fuller or better or even more prosperous if they live as disciples, but we do not often act or speak as if there was anything more at stake than a well-adjusted life and the freedom from old wounds.

Is that the strategy of the enemy at work? Is the first step toward uprooting the gospel convincing the people that there is no darkness in need of light?

Matt Judkins has placed an open call for “God-called” preachers.

We have young women and men in our conference who have a deep-seated Spirit-filled longing to lead congregations like this to revitalized ministry for Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God the Father.  We have young men and women who are tired of campaigns, sick of non-descript goals and efforts, and dying to be used by God to share the Gospel.   My 95 year old Grannie once called these “God-called preachers,” and I’m praying their tribe will increase and be invited to lead.  Let’s stop wasting time adding pages to the Book of Resolutions that no one will ever read, and begin to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Who knows what ten years of that might accomplish?

Bishop Schnase says we pastors should study haiku.

Sometimes our message as preachers, teachers, and leaders would be twice as powerful if it were half as long. More words do not indicate more meaning or greater effectiveness.

Being weak in Japanese poetry, my mind went to the limerick, which the good bishop may not endorse quite so heartily.

At the Christmas Conference of 1784 that established the Methodist Episcopal Church in the newly independent American states, Thomas Coke delivered a sermon at the ordination of Francis Asbury that appeared to be aimed in part at setting out a clear break with the Anglican foundations of the Methodist movement.

According to John Wigger’s biography of Asbury, Coke was pretty direct in pointing out the flaws in the colonial Anglican church. He said it had been “filled with the parasites and bottle companions of the rich and the great. … the drunkard, the fornicator, and the extortioner, triumphed over bleeding Zion, because they were faithful abettors of the ruling powers.”

Coke decried the Anglican clergy’s teaching that sinners could not know for certain that their sins were forgiven by the witness of the Spirit. And he saw in that the source of moral failures. “We cannot be ignorant that they justify as innocent many of the criminal pleasures of the world – card playing, dancing, theatrical amusements, &c. – pleasures utterly inconsistent with union and communion with God.” (Quotations are taken from Wigger’s book, p. 144.)

Here again I come across the division in the colonial and post-colonial Methodist movement over the effort to distinguish from the Anglican and elite church by appeal to moral discipline and experiential religion. The same tensions were evident in the clash between Pilmore and Asbury I commented upon in a previous post.

What I notice is that in practice – if not in rhetoric – the United Methodist Chuch seems to reflect the colonial Anglicans a great deal more than the Methodists. We have lost any inclination for holiness if it entails abstaining from what are generally considered innocent pursuits. We have a bias in favor of educated clergy over passionate lay preachers. We nearly chase after the wealthy, respectable, and influential segments of the population. We mix comfortably with governors and bankers.

Have we become the very thing Wesley and Asbury and all those early Methodists set out to renew?

Taylor Walters Denyer is appointed to Friendly Planet Missiology from out of the Indiana Conference.

She is too busy doing the work of Christ in Africa to update a blog on a regular basis, but this post from earlier in the month about her work with the Methodist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, has me thanking God for his work and challenges me to consider how much of what I worry about is a trap and a snare.

John Wesley in his journal discusses how he goes about reviewing the Methodist classes to cull out those who do not follow the the rule of the society.

I examined the classes. I had been often told, it was impossible for me to distinguish the precious from the vile, without the miraculous discernment of spirits. But I now saw, more clearly than ever, that this might be done without much difficulty, supposing only two things: First, Courage and steadiness in the examiner. Secondly, Common sense and common honesty in the Leader of each class. I visit, for instance, the class in the Close, of which Robert Peacock is Leader. I ask, “Does this and this person in your class live in drunkenness or any outward sin? Does he go to church, and use the other means of grace? Does he meet you as often as he has opportunity?” Now, if Robert Peacock has common sense, he can answer these questions truly; and if he has common honesty, he will. And if not, some other in the class has both, and can and will answer for him. Where is the difficulty then of finding out if there be any disorderly walker in this class, and consequently, in any other? The question is not concerning the heart, but the life. And the general tenor of this, I do not say cannot be known, but cannot be hid without a miracle.

I added the emphasis because that sentence struck me as important. We sometimes get tangled up over what we can and cannot know about the heart of others. Wesley was well aware of the problem but not troubled by it. It is by the life of the person that he judged and on the basis on things that could be easily seen by any that took care to look.

A person could say that such a system leaves a lot of room for false fronts. A man might attend church without a heart for it. A woman might be scrupulous in hiding her sins from the eyes of others.

This is all true, but it did not seem to greatly bother Wesley that some might evade detection so long as the classes had clear expectations and clear means of acting upon them. He was happy to cull the membership of his societies. A small but disciplined society was vastly preferred to a large but loose one.

Steve Manskar has pointed out to me more than once that we need to be careful about confounding our churches with Wesley’s societies, but I do wonder if the basic impulse he operated under would be a good one for us. Christians are under vows to God and our fellow Christians:

• Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
• Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
• Do you confess Jesus Christ as you Savior, put you whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the chruch which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations and races?

It is easy to see by our lives that many of us fail to observe these baptismal promises.

Would our churches be smaller but healthier if we found ways to help each other keep those vows in our minds all the time, support each other in observing them, and hold each other accountable to those vows?

How do we create a congregational culture that buys into doing this even if it means saying goodbye to some members from time to time?

Donald Haynes has some extended reflections on the future of guaranteed appointments for clergy.

Luke 21:25-36

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.

How interesting that we throw these things together - dissipation, drunkenness, and worries of this life. The NIV calls it “anxieties” of life, but the contrast still feels the same to me. Dissipation and drunkenness suggest something we do by choice or at least by weakness. The anxieties and worries of life we often view – or at least I do – as unavoidable. We cannot but face the worries of life. We are alive, after all. But the scripture says that if we are weighed down by those worries we are at risk of missing the movement of God’s kingdom among us.

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

When the kingdom breaks upon us, we will fear it. Jesus warns us that anywhere the kingdom breaks out, it is a scary. It is as if the sun goes dark and the seas boil over. We will be shaken. In the face of these fears, Jesus gives us a simple – if not an easy task – stand up. Raise your heads. Do not cower or shrink back. Stand up. Take your place.

What does that mean, I wonder? How does it look to stand up in response to the inbreaking of the kingdom of God?

From John Wesley’s “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion”:

We see (and who does not?) the numberless follies and miseries of our fellow creatures. We see, on every side, either men of no religion at all, or men of a lifeless, formal religion. We are grieved at the sight; and should greatly rejoice, if by any means we might convince some that there is a better religion to be attained — a religion worthy of God that gave it. And this we conceive to be not other than love; the love of God and of all mankind; the loving God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, as having first loved us, as the fountain of all the good we have received, and of all we ever hope to enjoy; and the loving every soul which God hath made, every man on earth, as our own soul.

This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness going hand in hand. There is humbleness of mind, gentlesness, long-suffering, the whole image of God; and at the same time a peace that passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.

This is the religion we long to see established in the world, a religion of love, and joy, and peace, having its seat in the inmost soul, but ever showing itself by its fruits, continually springing forth, not only in all innocence, (for love worketh no ill tho his neighbour,) but likewise in every kind of beneficence, spreading virtue and happiness all around it.

For some time I have been trying to discern what is the heart of a Methodist understanding of the Christian faith. It is urged upon us often that is consists in certain practices or certain doctrines. We are sometimes urged to forget any concern over such things and carry forward “Methodism” as nothing more than a name that binds us together.

But I am convinced that if there is any merit in being a Methodist and working to preserve the name of Methodist, it must derive from the certainty that in some way true Christianity can be found under that banner. If Methodism takes us away from Christianity’s true heart, then it should be opposed rather than propped up.

These three paragraphs from Wesley seem to me to be the ground on which all Methodism is erected.

It starts with observing the symptoms of the world and making a diagnosis. The miseries of people and the evils of the world are outward signs of people’s distance from God. Either they deny God altogether or they practice religion that is devoid of the power and passion of true experience and knowledge of God. Compared to this disease, we can describe with little challenge the healthy state – love of God and neighbor.

John Wesley practiced his spiritual physic to help bring the ill to health. The central conviction of his cure was that God - not the spiritual doctor nor the patient – is the only one with the power to heal. There are no gymnastics or work the patient can do. His only task is to open his mouth and swallow when the cure is offered up. Only when the power of the disease is broken, can a patient grow more healthy by living as a healthy person does.

And when a person is returned to health, of course, it is unthinkable that she would live as an ill person any longer. To fail to live as one restored to health is a sure sign that some form of illness still holds sway in the mind or body.

Through his years of experience, Wesley was convinced that his societies and systems were useful for helping the sick to see their own illness and giving them the encouragement to take the cure. We have come up with no better way than his. Indeed, we may have confused things that simulate the health for health itself.