Charles Wesley Diary Decoded

Fascinating....

LONDON -- A secret, coded diary kept by one of Methodism's founding fathers for 20 years has been deciphered by an Anglican priest in Britain, illuminating historical efforts to keep Methodists in the Church of England.

The task of decoding Charles Wesley's handwritten 1,000-page journal took the Rev. Kenneth Newport of Liverpool Hope University nine years, he told journalists.

Wesley's brother, John, founded Methodism. Charles was a prolific hymn writer whose works include "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

Newport said that Wesley's complicated writing omitted vowels and abbreviated consonants in a style ascribed typical of a gentleman and preacher of the 1700s.

Wesley's journal begins with his trip to America in 1736. It offers an insight into Wesley's determination to prevent the Methodist Societies from breaking away from the Church of England, according to the Times of London.

It also detailed "disagreements with his more influential brother" John over whether the movement should break with the Church of England.

The two volumes that Newport has translated make up what has been described as the first complete transcription of the text.

Why Believe in God?

Looking at my bookshelf I see no less than eight books with titles such as The God Delusion, God and Religion, The Atheists Bible, God is not Great, The Varities of Religious Experience, and the Portable Atheist. With the exception of a couple, most of these titles were published in the past few years. Back in in Georgia, I would visit Borders books every week. In the beginning I noticed that a few books on antheism would be placed in the religion section, but not many. But it wasn't long before Atheism had its very own section.
I'm not sure the official structures of the church have done a great job explaining at the most basic level - why should a person believe in God? Because we in the church have not done a great job, others are asking that question on behalf of the church and their conclusions are not the same. This topic interests me on many levels, but perhaps the most important one is that this topic is a hot one.

Why should we believe in (a) God?

The first night of our Rekindle the Gift Wednesday's will focus on that very question. We'll look at the common (and increasingly popular) reasons given for NOT believing in God. We'll look at classical philosphoical proofs of God's existence, and of course, we'll share our own thoughts and experiences.

Wednesday, September 3 - 8:15am or 6:30pm - Rekindle the Gift - Why Believe in God?

Angel Sightings?

Take a look for yourself at this page on beliefnet.com. Celestial or not - they're neat.

Have you ever seen something...angelic?

Prayers for School

On behalf of everyone at St Timothy's Episcopal Church, our prayers are with and for the family of Matt Gfeller, the young Reynolds High School student who lost his life this weekend.

Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord; and let light perpetual shine upon them.

_____________________

Yesterday's Sermon:

I’m glad I don’t have to go to school tomorrow, aren’t you? Oh, I’m sorry, there’s a significant portion of folks here who DO have to go to school tomorrow. I know because I can see it in your faces! All the stress and anxiety and angst. And I can see it in your parents’ faces too! All the joy and freedom and happiness. But even though I wish you well tomorrow and later we’ll ask for God’s blessing on your new school year, I’m glad I’m not going tomorrow.

I’ve already spent 20 years of my life in school. That’s 20 years of homework, tests, and trying to impress the brunette sitting beside me. I plan to go back to school some more and have more homework and more tests and Cherilyn has said I can’t flirt with any brunettes, but for right now, I’m glad I done.

No more pop quizzes, projects, homework, extra-credit, or being sent to detention. No more two-a-day football practices or late-night cram sessions for a test I waited to the last minute to study for.

But that’s not really telling the truth. Because everyone here who has already finished school will agree that there are always pop quizzes, projects, homework, extra-credit and the threat of going to detention. There will always be long practices and late-night cram sessions for tests we waited to the last minute to study for. At least in high school you have a mascot.

I say all of this because today Jesus gives his disciples perhaps the first pop quiz in all of the bible. As they were walking into the cosmopolitan seacoast town of Caesarea Philippi, Jesus stops class and tells his disciples to pull out their pencils.

This is a two question test, Jesus basically says.

Question number one: Who do people say the Son of Man is?
Now first of all, I think that is a trick question. That would make me chew on my eraser for a minute because Jesus used that enigmatic phrase ‘Son of Man.’ And I don’t like trick questions. But his disciples respond quickly to that one.

John the Baptist, one disciple said. Elijah, another answered. And the others said Jeremiah or one of the prophets. I guess that wasn’t too hard of a question. All Jesus did was ask his disciples what other people thought.

I actually like those kinds of questions. It’s not that hard to explain both sides of an argument. It’s purely academic – which makes sense seeing as this was an academic exercise. If we had a pop quiz right now and asked the same question and you pulled those little pencils out of the pews we could all answer.

Who do people say Jesus is?
Well some say he is a great teacher, a prophet even. Most everyone believes that the person Jesus lived in the first century and he started a movement. Most everyone believes that he died from the Roman form of crucifixion.
And there are others who say that he was the Son of God, in fact he WAS God. Some say that he rose from the dead destroying death and sin, and ascended into heaven and all of this – his life, death, resurrection, and ascension – saves us from the power of sin and death, too.
But like all tests, like all pop quizzes, the second question is harder:
Now that you’ve told me what everyone else thinks, now that you have given me an academic explanation as to the diversity of opinion – tell me what you think. Who do YOU say that I am?

When Jesus asked the first question, many, maybe all of the disciples answered. John the Baptist! Elijah! Jeremiah! One of the prophets! But with the second question, we don’t hear a chorus – we only hear a solo.

Simon Peter raises his hand and says “You are the Messiah, or the Christ, the Son of the living God!”

And the teacher smiled.

But do you realize what that meant for Peter to say that? If Jesus was like John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or any of the other prophets, he would have been a great teacher, his words would have been full of wisdom and the disciples would have been wise to listen to him and learn from him.

But to say that Jesus was the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God, was to say something completely different.

Peter was saying that Jesus was the Revelation of God, he was the image of God. And if Jesus is the image, the revelation of God, then Peter’s life should be completely and totally oriented by the life and message of Jesus.

How should Peter live? By following the pattern of Jesus. How should Peter deal with other people? The same way that Jesus dealt with people. How should Peter handle hardship, suffering, horrible news? In the same way that Jesus handled it.

When Peter said Jesus is the Christ – he confessed that Jesus is his Lord.

But do you know what happened immediately after Jesus praised Peter? Do you know what happened immediately after Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter and called him the Rock (Peter means Rock) and declared that the church will be built on him and that he will have the keys to the kingdom of heaven?

Four verses later, Jesus basically calls Peter the devil. Four verses after Peter aced the pop quiz and correctly identified Jesus as the Son of God, he pulls Jesus aside and starts telling him what to say and how to act.

It’s easier to answer correctly than to live correctly, isn’t it?

That’s the thing about Peter. Look at his life. He takes a leap of faith to walk out to Jesus on the water and falls. He confesses that Jesus is the Christ and then he acts like the devil. He fights to defend Jesus and even cuts off someone’s ear in the process, but when the question came if Peter knew Jesus, he denied him three times.

But of all the disciples, I’m glad Jesus looked at Peter and called him the rock. Because of all the disciples Peter is the one that I can relate to the best. There are times when I feel as if I’m so close to God it’s hard to explain, and then there are times when I do things, when I say things, when I think things…that are hard to explain.

I think that’s why Jesus called Peter the rock – because we all can see ourselves in him. We can see the process of faith – high one minute and rock, there’s that word again, rock bottom the next. Jesus called Peter the son of Jonah – do you remember Jonah from the Old Testament? He was the one that ran from God and spent three days in the belly of a fish and was spit out before he did what God called him to do.

But even on a rock as shaky as Peter, even on rocks as shaky as the flawed souls in this room, the Church stands strong. And if that’s not evidence of God’s grace, I don’t know what is.

Even though most of us aren’t going to school tomorrow, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t daily faced with homework, projects and pop quizzes. That doesn’t mean we don’t need our backpacks blessed!

Who does the world say Jesus is? That one is easy.
But who do we say Jesus is?
If he’s just a prophet or good teacher, then his words are valuable and we should listen.

But if he is the Son of the Living God, he is the Revelation and Image of God. If Jesus is the Christ, and that is our confession, then like Peter our lives should be completely and totally oriented around him.

How do we live? We pattern our lives after Jesus. How do we deal with people day in and day out? We remember how Jesus dealt with people? How do we deal with hardship, pain, suffering, and terrible news? We carry our cross with Jesus.

By saying Jesus is the Christ, we are saying that he is the stick by which all things are measured, he is the plumb line – he is the standard.

Who is Jesus of Nazareth to us?
That is the most important question we will ever have to answer in our lives.
And this one is not just academic.

Amen.

The Book of Needs

Saturday I visited Archangel Michael Books, an Orthodox bookstore. I have long appreciated the liturgy, theology, and pastoral aura of Orthodox Christianity. While perusing for nothing at the store I came across a four volume set of The Book of Needs (I bought two volumes). The title alone was enough for me to pick it up and look inside. The contents of the four volumes (over 2,000 pages) contained liturgy after liturgy for just about every service you can think of. Blessing of the vineyard? Got it. Exorcism? It's there. Prayers for when impure thoughts come during sleep. Six pages. Even the blessing of a car - great for 16 year olds.

I love the title, The Book of Needs. Every single day we seek to meet our needs. And every single day the Church is present to help us. The Episcopal Church, while not have a four volume set does have equally wonderful resources in helping us meet our daily needs. The Book of Occasional Services has liturgies ranging from the Blessing of Homes to the Blessing of a Pregnant Woman to the anniversary of marriage. We also use other books from Church tradition (including the Book of Needs!).

The Church is not just for Sundays and for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. The Church is for every day and for all people. Christ has redeemed us and he has redeemed all of us. The Church, through centuries of pastoral practice, has found ways to meet us at every turn, and at every need.

Sunday's Sermon

There are so many things to love about the Episcopal Church. And as someone who was born a Cradle Episcopalian but held hostage by Methodist parents, I find myself loving the things that make us who we are more and more.

I love the fact that when I say, “The Lord be with you,” you will say “and also with you!” Do you realize that we are praying for each other and we are blessing each other when we do that? May God be with you now and always. And may God be with you now and always.

I love it!

And I love the fact that we read the Bible in church. We read a lot of the Bible. If you come to church every Sunday for three years, you will have heard the majority of the Bible read. Every Sunday we hear from the Hebrew Scriptures (or the Old Testament). We sing a portion of the psalms. We hear from one of the Epistles in the New Testament, and with great ceremony and reverence, we hear from one of the Gospels.

Not only do we get to hear from all parts of the Bible – but it keeps the preacher honest. I guess technically I could preach on any text from the Bible, but it would only make sense if I preached from one of the readings that we read in church.

And that’s not always easy. You see, if it were up to me, I would probably only preach from two or three different readings each week. I might throw a few more in there, but it wouldn’t be long before you noticed a theme. If it were up to me, I’d pitch a tent in the letters of John and stay a while.

Especially in John’s 1st letter where he says that we should love one another, because love comes from God – in fact, God is love. I love that passage. And because I love it, I think I would favor it. I would bring it back each week.

Or I would stay around in the 18th chapter of Matthew where Jesus tells his disciples that if you disagree with someone, don’t gossip or engage in passive-aggressive behavior. If you have disagreement, if you are at odds with someone, go to them. Talk to them face to face. Be an adult. Deal with it. If that doesn’t work, then take someone with you so they can be a witness. If that doesn’t work, then bring it before the church. Let’s work it out!

There is so much conflict in our lives, at home, at school, at work, and in the church – that I think I would favor that passage.

Which means I would never go to the 15 chapter in Matthew. Or in the 7th chapter of Mark – they both tell the same story. But in the Episcopal Church, we have the lectionary – the assigned readings for today. And as much as I do not like it – I have to turn to the 15th chapter in Matthew.

The problem with the 15th chapter of Matthew is that it puts me in a position that I am not comfortable being in. You see, in this chapter, Jesus does something that is, how do I say it, very un-Christ-like. Jesus says something that frankly, doesn’t sound like Jesus.

After Jesus finished talking with the scribes and Pharisees, he went with his disciples to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Basically he went to modern day Lebanon. A Canaanite woman from that region came out to Jesus and was screaming and shouting, “Have mercy on me – my daughter is tormented by a demon!”

And Jesus ignores her. That’s the first thing that Jesus does that is hard to explain. In the chapters before Jesus heals people, he has compassion on them, he even goes out of this way to visit them in their homes, but when this woman, comes out and pleads with him – he just keeps on walking.

The woman apparently doesn’t stop when Jesus ignores her because the disciples now start urging Jesus to send her away. “She keeps screaming,” they say.

Then Jesus does the second thing that is hard to explain – he tells the disciples and maybe even the woman, that he was only sent for the lost sheep of Israel. In other words, he was sent to be with the Jews – and not the Gentiles, and certainly not the Canaanites. But that goes completely against some other things Jesus has said – not to mention the famous John 3:16 – that God so loved the world that he sent his only son and whoever – WHOEVER – believes in him will be saved.

Jesus keeps on walking.

Now the woman comes up and kneels before Jesus and says to him, “Lord, help me.”

And Jesus does it again: It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to dogs.” That’s exactly what he said. He compared the Canaanite woman to a dog.

Now the Jews did not like the Canaanites – they had a long history of not liking each other. Remember when God showed Moses the Promised Land way back in the Old Testament? Remember when Joshua led the Hebrews into the Promised Land? The Promised Land was not empty – it was not vacant waiting on the Hebrews to move in. The Canaanites were there. And not only were the Canaanites in the land that God had promised the Hebrews, but they were polytheistic and the rumor was they would even sacrifice their children to their gods.

So on one hand, it wasn’t uncommon for a Jew to call a Canaanite a dog – but Jesus? It’s hard for me to swallow Jesus using a racial slur. Especially when St Paul says that in Christ, in Jesus there is not male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. But that’s what he said.

And the woman is still there – still arguing – still pleading with Jesus – “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

And that did it. I bet he even smiled when he said “your faith is great – your daughter is healed.”

Doesn’t sound like Jesus, does it? A woman comes to Jesus – the Prince of Peace – and begs for him to heal her daughter. He ignores her, and then says that he is only here for certain people and when she keeps bugging him he calls her a dog, and after she finally persists – he grants her request.
Either we don’t know Jesus as well as we thought we did or we don’t know ourselves as well as Jesus knows us.

Thursday night I had a conversation with an old friend. The details of that conversation aren’t important except that they are identical to thousands of conversations we’ve all had at one time or another – either with other people or conversations we’ve had with ourselves.

Something has happened. Something has happened in our lives that didn’t see coming. That we can’t control – we can’t fix, and now we are left holding a new hand of cards that life has dealt us and we have no idea how to play it.

Maybe we prayed. But nothing happened. Maybe we even went to church once or talked to the priest, but the situation stayed the same. So after trying to reach out to God and give everything to God, nothing happens. God either doesn’t care, is angry, or doesn’t exist.

It’s as if we are pleading with God but he just walks on by. We plead some more and we feel as if God said he’s more interested in other people. We plead even more and God asks us who we think we are. Sometimes it may seem that way.

But the woman at Christ’s feet kept on. That is the gift of the Canaanite woman. That is her gift to us – for even though she was a woman, she was the mother of a possessed child, and she was from a group of people that had long been at odds with the Jews – she persisted. She knew the odds were stacked against her, she knew the hand that life had dealt her was not a winning hand – but she did not stop.

The gift of the Canaanite woman to us is that she was convinced there was hope in her desperate situation. She was convinced there was grace. She was convinced of the truth contained in my favorite passage in 1st John that God is love.

It’s not that God plays with us, or toys with us. God is not racist, sexist, or mean. Sometimes we need to ask to right questions. Sometimes we need to have the right perspective. And God in his great mercy and love will sometimes challenge us to look at the world and to look at our problems differently to look for hope and to look for grace and to look for love even when it may seem as if there is none.

Because God knows us. God knows us better than we know ourselves. And if God knows us better than we know ourselves – God knows what we need, what we are looking for, and what hurts.

And if God is love, then God will not ignore us or insult us. God will help us see the world and our role in this world from a greater, better perspective. God will show us the hope, grace, and love that is in every situation and every person.

And even though we don’t always have it – God will help us be patient. God will grant us the strength to persevere. God will smile and reward our faith.

If it feels as if God does not care or does not hear us – let us not give up. Don’t leave.
If it feels as if there is no hope, no grace, nor love in our lives or situations – let us keep looking. Don’t leave.

We have to be present. We have to be present with God. That is the gift of the Canaanite woman. Amen.

Rekindle the Gift