John Meunier

Here is what John Wesley preached about stewardship:

And, first, we are to inquire, in what respects we are now God’s stewards. We are now indebted to Him for all we have; but although a debtor is obliged to return what he has received, yet until the time of payment comes, he is at liberty to use it as he pleases. It is not so with a steward; he is not at liberty to use what is lodged in his hands as he pleases, but as his master pleases. He has no right to dispose of anything which is in his hands, but according to the will of his lord. For he is not the proprietor of any of these things, but barely entrusted with them by another; and entrusted on this express condition, — that he shall dispose of all as his master orders. Now, this is exactly the case of every man, with relation to God.

Interestingly, he notes that “steward” is the best of all descriptions of the relationship between humans and their God. It is not sinner or servant – although they do describe humanity well – but as stewards that we are best understood. Given Wesley’s emphasis on evangelical repentance, justification, and new birth, I found this assertion by Wesley catching me off guard.

His forthrightness is not surprising. Wesley’s “stewardship” sermon is not a mild appeal to us that our life will be better adjusted or more in tune with God’s purposes if we just increase our giving by 1 percent this year.

None of that for John Wesley. Your soul, your body, your money, your talents, your health, your very thoughts are on loan from God. You do not own any of them. You have no freedom to use them as you like. You may only use them as God has given you leave to use them.

Wow. And just in case you thought Wesley – ha, ha – was laid back about that implications of being a steward, think again.

[T]here is no employment of our time, no action or conversation, that is purely indifferent. All is good or bad, because all our time, as everything we have, is not our own. All these are, as our Lord speaks, ta allotria – the property of another;of God our Creator. Now, these either are or are not employed according to his will. If they are so employed, all is good; if they are not, all is evil. Again: it is His will, that we should continually grow in grace, and in the living knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently, every thought, word, and work, whereby this knowledge is increased, whereby we grow in grace, is good; and every one whereby this knowledge is not increased, is truly and properly evil.

If we agree with Wesley that all we have is a gift from God, do we walk with him to the end of this line of thinking? Is everything we do at every moment either in keeping with God’s will or rejecting it? Are there indifferent actions? If so, what is the Scriptural guidance for telling the line between the good and the evil?

The UMC.org site updates us on ongoing committee work to suggest new ways to shape the global United Methodist connection. It looks like people are engaged in careful, prayerful, and pragmatic effort to address the nature of the denomination.

Some of the directions and decisions that the committee has made include:

* Leaving the question of ordination of non-celibate homosexuals to the General Conference (headline issue for many)

* Granting more autonomy to regional bodies

* Shortening and simplifying the Book of Discipline (Yeah!)

* Preserving the Council of Bishops (I did not know that was in question)

* Retain the Social Principles in the Book of Discipline (Could we clarify whether these are law or guidance?)

And the last one surprised me: “Retain doctrinal standards such as the Articles of Religion, Confession of Faith and General Rules as binding for the worldwide church.”

Two points of interest to me here. First, that phrase “such as” usually means including the items mentioned, but it could mean in this case – other stuff that is like these items. This confuses me because I thought the Restrictive Rules meant those things could not be moved or done away with, which makes me wonder why the committee had to discuss it all.

I may be missing something.

Second, are the standard sermons left out intentionally?

Do you think Christians should change the world? James Davison Hunter’s book To Change the World – with all due respect to the Rev. Slaughter – is a book you should read. At the very least, even if you reject Hunter’s argument, you will find yourself sharpened by the iron of the disagreement.

Hunter’s basic thesis is that the popular notion of what cultures are and how they change is wrong. The popular notion centers on individuals and the aggregation of individual “values” as the forces that produce and shape culture. Hunter – a Christian sociologist – argues that culture is produced by institutions and networks – not individuals – and changes when elites and the institutions they lead overlap and orient themselves toward common ends.

The argument is much too sophisticated for my brief summary. You can find a 11-page talk he gave in 2002 that includes some of the arguments from the book here (.pdf).

I’ve only skimmed through the book once, but intend to turn to a more careful reading in the next month. One place I found his book helpful is in articulating some of the discomfort I have – despite my admiration for – the neo-Anabaptism of what I call the Duke school in United Methodism – Bishop Willimon, Stanley Hauerwas, and their fellow Yoderites.

(Note: Hunter has ample critiques of the traditional Christian Right and Left as well. This book is not an attack on neo-Anabaptism in particular. I just found the following passages putting in words problems I’ve had with the ideas expressed by the movement.)

In some respects, ne0-Anabaptists politicize their engagement with the world even more than the Right and the Left because they cast their oppositions to the State, global capitalism and other powers in eschatological terms. To literally demonize such powers as the State and the market as they do means that they draw much of their identity and purpose in the here and now through a cosmic struggle with them. … Their identity depends on the State and other powers being corrupt and the more unambiguously corrupt they are, the clearer the identity and mission of the church. It is, as my colleague Charles Mathewes has put it, a passive-aggressive ecclesiology. The church depends on its status as a minority community in opposition to a dominant structure in order to be effective in its criticism of the injustices of democratic capitalism.

And as Hunter points out, the neo-Anabaptist critique of both the church and the world is overwhelmingly negative and leave little resource for those Christians who do not work in the church or the sacred confines of the theological academy.

The idea that the tasks one has in life – but especially one’s job – can be construed as a “vocation” or “calling” is not only rejected by the neo-Anabaptists, but treated at times with remarkable contempt; their hostility to other believers with different views, unrestrained. …

The neo-Anabaptist view of work and Christian presence in the world has important and, perhaps, unintended consequences. As a matter of theological conviction, the neo-Anabaptists cannot offer a constructive theology of work or art or commerce. Fair enough. But they also fail to offer any wisdom or encouragement or grace to believers who have to work (let alone want to work!) outside the church for a living. Their silence on the matter declares that the daily labor (and thus much of the lives) of most believers has little or no spiritual meaning outside of their activity in the church; in effect, that God does not care what they do as long as it is not immoral; that the day-to-day concerns of most believers do not merit the attention of the church’s leaders.

My quotes are already too long, so I will stop there.

The critique Hunter raises about the nature of the theological project of the Duke school resonates strongly with my own reactions while reading the books and listening to the sermons of the major figures who have such an influential presence in the intellectual life of United Methodism today. I’ve not read Hunter carefully enough to offer a good summary of his alternative to the dominant contemporary modes by which the church tries to change the world, but I urge anyone interested in such questions to pick up Hunter’s book.

The conversation he wants to provoke would be good for us.

Out of Ur has a summary of comments made by Tim Keller at a God gathering. Is it just me, of does the good Presbyterian Keller sound a lot like a “both/and” United Methodist?

Keller believes this rift between justification and justice is completely unbiblical. “Justice and justification,” he said, “are joined at the hip. They are a seamless cloth.” He spent much of his time arguing from scripture that the doctrine of “justification by faith leads inevitably to justice.” Citing passages like Isaiah 58, Mark 12:38-40, Matthew 25, and others, Keller said that if we truly believe that we are saved by grace alone we will care about the poor.

The doctrine of justification by faith emphasizes that “God’s justice matters,” he said. We are perpetrators of wrong. We are sinners. We are poor in spirit. But God has had mercy on us. If we understand our spiritual poverty than we cannot ignore the material poor who are presented to us. If our belief in justification does not manifest itself in care for the poor, then our faith is dead as the Epistle of James says.

This is what Keller calls the “both/and” gospel…it’s about justification andjustice, not justification or justice. And when we get this right, not only do we see justification lead to more justice, but doing more justice leads more of the lost toward Christ and justification through faith.

I had missed the controversy caused by John Piper inviting Rick Warren to a God conference. Apparently for some, John Piper – who told his daughter that God killed people in the Minnesota bridge collapse to put fear in the hearts of the rest of us – lost his Calvinist cred by inviting Warren to speak.

Trevin Wax has a great post about the whole affair and some wise counsel to everyone who wants to lob fireballs at other Christians.

The Supreme Court ruled today in a way that some Christians will probably cheer. I am not one of them.

The court held that a cross serving as a war memorial in an isolated part of the Mojave Desert does not have to be taken down just because it is on federal lands. The Los Angeles Times story said that in explaining the ruling, the court’s opinion argued:

The cross “evokes far more than religion,” [Justice Anthony] Kennedy said.

He faulted the judges in California for having “concentrated solely on the religious aspects of the cross, divorced from its background and context. A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs. It is a symbol often used to honor and respect those whose heroic acts, notable contributions and patient striving help secure an honored place in history for this nation and its people,” he wrote.

(Full ruling in .pdf file here.)

The quotes above are not the only – or perhaps even the primary – basis of the court’s decision. My beef is not with the ruling per se. I’m no lawyer or Constitutional scholar. My concern is with the specific language used by Justice Kennedy.

I am not encouraged by a ruling that declares the cross a generic and inoffensive symbol of honor and respect for those who have died heroically. The cross on a grave is a sign that a Christian lies in the ground. A cross anywhere else is a witness to gospel. Even in the name of keeping a cross standing, we should not allow the meaning of the cross to be watered down.

I can almost hear the anti-Constantinians saying, “I told you so,” in my ears.

In the midst of his sermons on The Sermon on the Mount, John Wesley offers this insight on prayer and desire.

[O]ur prayers are the proper test of our desires; nothing being fit to have a place in our desires which is not fit to have a place in our prayers: What we may not pray for, neither should we desire.

What a practical test of our desires. If we find ourselves asking whether it is fitting that we desire this or that thing, if we wonder if the wish we harbor toward someone else is proper or not, or if we question if our desires for ourselves are holy, Wesley offers us this test. Would it be proper to pray for that thing?

This question will knock down a great deal that we desire – even a great deal that appears innocent or harmless. But Wesley’s general rules said we should engage in no activity that does not tend toward the glory of God. This is just an extension of that rule.

If we cannot keep it perfectly, it is at least a good reminder. If it would cause us embarrassment to pray for what we desire, then we should at least question that desire.

Donald Haynes reminds me of the guy who stands in the door of the airplane in World War II paratrooper movies – a sci-fi version is in the delightfully horrible Starship Troopers. He stands at the door shouting encouragement and reminders at the troops before pushing them out the door.

Haynes is the jump master for Arminian Christianity.

In his latest post, he issues another call for a resurgent Arminianism to stand up to a rising tide of Calvinism and the growing dominance of theologies that displace Methodist evangelical faith.

Our theology must help us recover the enthusiasm and passion of Methodism when we were a reform movement. We must recover the Arminian theology that insisted Jesus died for all, without regard for ethnicity, lifestyle or socio-economic status. That era also insisted that experiential grace can empower total life changes in morality and ethics.

We must become less static and more dynamic, less institutional in modus operandi and more like a movement that can be regionalized. With Paul we must adapt to the new cultural ethos while insisting on the core of the gospel. We have been too rigid in method and too wimpish in message; now we must become bold in our Wesleyan message and more flexible in method.

Haynes comes back to this call often. It is good to have a voice crying out in the wilderness like this on a regular basis.

How do we talk about sin? How do we understand what it is?

Some do not speak of it at all. If sin is a part of their theology at all, it is a vague thing that can probably be rooted out by good thoughts and education.

Others take sin quite seriously. They understand fallen humanity to be the basic condition of our lives. But they speak of this falleness – this sinfulness – in different ways. There are many metaphors for sin.

The classic Reformation view – which John Wesley clearly shared – starts with a righteous God and an unworthy humanity. It seeks to convict us and cut us to the heart. We deserve nothing at God’s hand. If God were to drop us into the pit this very moment that would not only be within God’s power, but it would be justified. We have so tarnished and damaged the wonderful gifts God has given us, that we deserve – indeed justice demands – we be punished.

More widespread in the mainline Protestant church is a view – if not derived from then at least shared by Eastern Christianity – that sees sin more as a disease of the soul in need of healing than a willful corruption and rebellion against God. Randy Maddox has argued that John Wesley was also influenced by this view. In it, the response to sin is much more therapeutic than judicial. God is the healer rather than the judge. And while we may be condemned if we refuse the healing, it is a tragedy rather than justice when that happens.

Just yesterday, I was reading Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and he offered two metaphors in two paragraphs.

Sin is slavery and sin is a soul like a tossing sea. I particularly liked his metaphor of the tossing sea taken from Isaiah 57:20, “The wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.”

Foster elaborates:

The sea does not need to do anything special to produce mire and dirt; that is the result of its natural motions. This is also true of us when we are under the condition of sin. The natural motions of our lives produce mire and dirt. Sin is part of the internal structure of our lives. No special effort is needed to produce it. No wonder we feel trapped.

These four metaphors – crime, disease, slavery, sea – are just the beginning. Scripture gives us many more. Literary imagination and our own experience suggest a wide range of ways to describe sin.

I’m fascinated by how many ways we try to understand the nature and meaning of sin and how the image or metaphor we use changes not just our sense of sin, but even our understanding of salvation and the gracious work of God.

The poet in me wants to preserve as many of these different understandings and images as we can. I see such a loss when we collapse it down to one in the name of clarity. But that goes for all these views. We all have understandings we want to throw out, but doing so impoverishes our faith and pushes us one step closer to iron and lifeless legalism.

When it comes to sin – just as with God – we need a full garden of metaphors to help us see what the world and its ruler would blind us to.

A retired pastor told me this story not too long ago.

He said it used to be that when a Methodist pastor died, every clergy member in the district or even conference who could get to the funeral would attend. It would be customary for the gathered clergy to join together in singing a hymn as part of the service. They would do this even if they did not know the dead pastor very well.

They did this because the clergy understood that in a connectional church, the passing of one clergy member was something of importance to them all. They all had a sense of shared mission and shared work.

I’m sure this is a rose-colored memory, but the spirit of it sounds in keeping with our Methodist roots. The pastoral leadership had an identity that was not tied to the churches they served so much as it was to the people with whom they served. The annual conference was the expression of this identity.

I was going to write about my thoughts about the state of clergy now, but I’m poorly positioned to do that. I’m a bi-vocational part-time local pastor of limited experience.

So, I’m curious; how does it look to you?

Do United Methodist pastors have a shared sense of mission and identity today?

Does the annual conference retain any of its historic meaning as a place where clergy gather, worship, and conference about what to teach and how to lead the church?

Is it possible or desirable to recapture any of that?