Walk the Talk (Final in Flat Wesley Series)

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and John 21:15-17

The verse you heard this morning from Deuteronomy is drawn from the Shema, a prayer still prayed daily in morning and evening by some Jewish folx. It is understood as a cornerstone in faith life and is perhaps the most essential prayer in all of Judaism.

 

Jesus, who was a Jew, would have had this on his tongue frequently.

 

Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 

 

The accompanying instructions follow:

Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

 

Because of the instruction to inscribe these words on doorposts and gates, Jewish homes often have a mezuzah on the doorway, a small decorated chamber that holds a tiny scroll with this prayer on it… And as you enter in and out, it is there to be touched, a reminded of the command to love God with heart, soul and might.

 

I love this part of the tradition. I love this tangible reminder of who God is and how we are called to LOVE God with all of ourselves. I appreciate it so much that I happen to have a mezuzah on the door that I enter and exit each day at my home. As a follower of Jesus, I believe that this teaching about remembering and loving God day in and out was central to who Jesus was and what he taught. It is at the foundation of his declaration that the greatest command is to love God, and like it to love neighbor.

 

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might.

 

All of you.

Each and every moment of each and every day.

 

And that teaching is at the heart of Jesus is instruction to Peter to act out his love for Jesus by feeding his sheep.

 

Steve Manskar, a pastor and scholar of John Wesley who has written MANY books and articles on how we practice discipleship, the work of following Jesus, writes this:

 

In the Baptismal Covenant you (as United Methodists) promise to “confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church ….” The congregation, in turn, promises to proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ; to surround you with a community of love and forgiveness, that you may grow in your trust of God, and be found faithful in your service to others; to pray for you, that you may be a true disciple who walks in the way that leads to life.[1] Living the Baptismal Covenant is how Christians obey Jesus’ “new commandment.”

 

There is SO MUCH hard work wrapped up in that covenant commitment that we make. It is nearly impossible to live into the fullness of that commitment 24/7 without some stumbling. And so thank goodness for that relentless grace that surrounds us each and every moment of each and every day. Remember that grace that we discussed 3 weeks ago?

 

John Wesley and his brother Charles, along with their friends that made up the ‘holy club’ at Oxford, recognized the risks of trying to navigate doing the right thing early on. And as we discussed just 2 weeks ago, they set up systems and programs of accountability for themselves and eventually for many lay people. For the earliest Methodists, small groups were the place to name what is hard, pray for one another, own up to short-comings and seek support for continuing to do the work of loving God and neighbor.

 

Today, I want to focus in on the 24/7 quality of faith that the Wesley brothers encouraged people toward.

 

In the preface to a 1739 publication entitled Hymns and Sacred Poems, John Wesley wrote:

Solitary religion is not to be found there. “Holy Solitaries” is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than Holy Adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness. Faith working by love, is the length and breadth and depth and height of Christian perfection.

 

Manskar writes:

Holiness is social because God is social. He created human beings in his image to be relational creatures. We become fully human when we share in the relationships God initiates with us through the people he places in our way.

 

Social holiness is the practice of obeying Jesus’ commandments to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, loving your neighbor as yourself, and loving one another one another (fellow members of your local congregation) as Christ loves.

 

When Wesley says that holiness is social he means that the depth of your love for God is revealed by the way you love whom God loves.

 

A core premise of Methodism as expressed and taught and practiced is a recognition that our faith and commitment is practiced, lived out, and expressed in community, meaning we don’t do it alone,

 

and it is practiced, lived out and expressed in all aspects of our life – our family life, our work life, our relationships with friends and colleagues, our neighborhoods, our political life, our physical and mental well-being.

 

You can’t be a Christian alone.

And you can’t limit the moments in a week when you are a Christian. 

 

In a world that feels really difficult sometimes, I wonder what it means to really embrace this idea of social holiness that Wesley intended for the movement.

 

What might happen when we work together consistently and we act together as people who love God and follow Jesus and listen for the Holy Spirit? What happens when we make all other titles and identities secondary to that of Christian? When we are figuratively neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free…but instead one body? One body called to LOVE.

 

To love God is to love God’s creation, which happens to be everyone and the earth and all of her resources. To be alive and to profess faith is to be a citizen of the Kin-dom of God first and foremost – ahead of all other allegiances. 

 

When the resurrected Christ appeared to Peter, who would be the rock on which the future Christian community was built, Jesus challenged – Peter, do you love me? If you do…feed my sheep.

 

This is the question and challenge before us each day. The Wesley’s sought to reclaim the centrality of that question and command and to live it in such a way that justice showed up in community – housing, healthcare, education, faith, hope and love.  

 

And so, will we each choose to walk the talk? To love God actively, not just with our worship but with our work for justice and mercy?

 

Will we walk the talk collectively as a community? Will we lay down labels like “red” and “blue” in order to see the hungry fed, the homeless housed, the oppressed set free? Will the scales fall from our eyes so that we can see how we have been part of systems of oppression, and will we turn our feet away from those choices, those behaviors (which is repentance) so that we are living as walking expressions of God’s love for God’s people and God’s creation?

 

Already, I see us reaching for and doing `this work. I know we have already discovered at times it is not easy. But it’s happening! And I see it in the way your hearts are being transformed.

Take heart. This is not easy but it is how we are called. It is the road we are making…together.

 

Thanks be to God.

And may it be so.

Amen.

 

 

 

Flat Wesley challenge – where is your Christian identity being called to present front and center? OR…where is one place you want to be more conscious of living into your identity?