This morning, I was extremely blessed to be a part of a conference call, put together by Dr. Douglas Strong, professor of history at Wesley Theological Seminary, and Paul Ervin, the executive officer (I think) of the Foundation for Evangleism, alonjgwith six or eight others, to begin planning an event for United Methodists to gather around issues pertaining to the emergent conversation. Hal Knight was another person on the call, and he phoned me just after the conference call was over. The first words out of my mouth were, "Jesus must be coming soon." This is what I have yearned for, prayed for, and have had such energy around for the last two years.
The test of any venture, said a wise man once, is if we would sacrifice what we are, for what we could become. John Wesley knew this truth. I imagine him out there in that church cemetery, surrounded by persons thirsting for the good news, people who wanted to hear him, to see him, and most importantly, to experience the Holy Spirit through him. And standing there, surrounded by the vestiges of death in that church yard cemetery, in fact, standing perhaps at first next to his father's grave, John Wesley knew that at this moment, he was must make that decision of how best to honor his father's life---to stand aside and with respectful distance, gaze on that tomb with memories wistfully coming to mind---or was he to remember how his father had, in his own rather odd way at time, took action to live out his faith, in ways that sometimes led to his being misunderstood and shunned. Wesley took the latter choice, and by standing on his father's grave to preach that day, set us an example of how we, his successors, must face our future today. We honor Welsey, we honor those who established the churches where we now worship, we honor those in our own lives who have been the fathers and mothers of our faith, by remembering respectively of course. But our church, the UMC church, now must decide whether respect and love for our ancestors might be better lived out by doing as Wesley did---to take the mission of the gospel to the culture, to the world, to know that to choose the better part of honoring those who went before us, and all that has been in our church. Maybe the best way to live that out is by finding ways to translate what those buildings and past beliefs were all about--the new and abundant life that can be found in Christ. The needs of the people are what led Wesley to do things that as a younger man, he would never have done--preaching in the field, preaching on his father's grave, sending bishops he had selected to the New World. We also live on the verge between moderniy and postmodernity, the Old World and the New, and the need of this generation to know and to hear and to find that abundant life has to compel us forward, too.
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