Monthly Archives: January 2025

What Will You Do?

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This will appear in the upcoming issue of the Fishkill UMC newsletter.

In one of my first messages as a lay speaker, I stated that I saw Jesus as a revolutionary and a radical.  Paul Schuessler, my cousin and patriarch of the Schuessler family (my grandmother’s family) was visiting my church that Sunday.  Paul was also one of the many Lutheran ministers in the lineage of the Schuessler family.  Afterwards, Paul chided me for being so bold in my pronouncements about our Savior.  Yet, a year later, he would state that Jesus was a revolutionary and a radical.  When I asked him about this change, he just commented that such a change is possible with Christ.

As I have written before, I grew up in the South during the 50’s and 60’s so the schools that I went to were segregated.  Even in high school in Memphis, TN, from 1966 – 1968, I, along with my classmates, experienced the effects of segregation.  I doubt that my classmates truly understood that because it was the system they grew up in.  However, because of the moves my family had made, it was a bit easier for me to see and feel those effects.

And those effects, while not as obvious, were still present when I went to college.  In 1969, the Black Students Association of NE Missouri State College (now Truman State University) organized a sit-in of the administration building in protest to the lack of off-campus housing for black students.  Because I knew those who were involved in the protest, I was inside the administration building in support of their efforts.  It should be noted that I was the only white student inside the building.  The campus ministers, including the Wesley Foundation minister, were busy helping negotiate a safe conclusion to the standoff between the students inside the administration and the administration officials and police outside.  Most white students were on the outside but not in support of their fellow students. (note 1). 

I went into the administration building that evening because the people inside were my friends, and one needs to stand by their friends at times of need. 

Later that same spring, I would come to understand that my acceptance of Christ as my Savior allowed me to receive God’s grace. And this meant that my life could never be the same again. As Methodists, we understand that our lives can never quite reach the level of perfection of Christ; but that doesn’t mean that we stop trying.

I work for justice, freedom, and good not because it will get me into heaven but because it is what is expected of me because I am a citizen of the New Kingdom (Note 2).

What did you do when you sat in the synagogue and heard Jesus tell the people of Nazareth that he come to preach the Good News to the poor, to pardon the prisoners, give sight to the blind and set the burdened and battered free?

What did you do when Jesus fed the multitudes, not once but twice?

What did you do when the people sought out Jesus to heal them, their family, and their friends?  Did you help the four friends who found a way to lower their friend through the roof so that Jesus could help their friend walk again?

What did you do when the people gathered outside Jerusalem and pooled their resources so that all could share?

What did you do when Jesus turned no one away?  What did you do when Paul suggested that the message Christ gave was for all and not just a few?

What did you do when the early Methodists created the first credit union so that people could pay their bills instead of being thrown into debtors’ prison?

What did you do when the early Methodists created the first health care clinics to provide health care to the many people who did not have access to health care?

What did you do when the early Methodists created the first schools so that children could learn to read and write?

What did you do when the early Methodists opposed the sale and trafficking of human beings?

Because the early Methodists sought to change society and help those that society considered unworthy, they were considered threats to the organized/established church.  Our spiritual ancestors were considered outsiders and troublemakers because they sought to bring the message of the Gospel to the people!

Why was there no bloody revolution in England when there was one in France at the same time?  Some historians believe that because of the efforts of the Wesleyan Revival, England did not experience a bloody revolution like the French revolution of the same period (note 3).

Some years ago, I used the phrase “vision with action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world” in a message.  (from “What’s The Next Step?”)

Now, as it happened, eight months later I was at that same church and I used a phrase that Willie Nelson said, “one person cannot change the world but one person with a message could.” As I recall, he pointed out that Jesus and the message he carried on the back roads of the Galilee was one prime example. (from “What Does Your Church Look Like?”)

Two thousand years ago, we were given a vision for the future.  Some two hundred and fifty years, a mission was begun to make that vision possible.

John Wesley first expressed the vision of the church and its need to minister to the community in this interchange with Joseph Butler, Bishop of Bristol:

Butler – “You have no business here. You are not commissioned to preach in this diocese. Therefore, I advise you to go hence.”

Wesley – “My lord, my business on earth is do what good I can. Wherever therefore I think I can do the most good, there must I stay so long as I think so. At present I think I can do the most good here. Therefore, here I stay.” (Frank Baker, “John Wesley and Bishop Butler: A Fragment of John Wesley’s Manuscript Journal)

And when the church becomes a part of the community, its impact is wide. Bishop Earl Hunt, who served as President of the United Methodist Council of Bishops spoke of the impact of the church in a community.

“. . . whenever the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is turned loose in a community to help human beings and meet their needs and lift up the name of Jesus Christ, that church becomes indispensable in the community.”  (Pages 173 – 174, New Life For Dying Churches! Rose Sims) (note 4)

We, the people of the United Methodist Church in the 21st century, see a world that is not unlike the world of Israel two thousand years ago or England some two hundred and fifty years ago. 

We see poverty and the widening gap between the classes; we are beginning to see health care denied because people cannot afford it; we are seeing the oppression of many simply because they seek freedom, or they are somehow different.

What will you do?  Will you stand aside?

Or will you remember what those who came before you did, and do the same?

Notes

Note 1        see Side By Side | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/side-by-side-2/) for information about this protest

Note 2       from “The Changing of Seasons” | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/the-changing-of-seasons/)

Note 3       Notes on the Methodist Revival and the non-English Revoltuion are in Generations | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/generations/)

Note 4       from The Family Business | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left (https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/the-family-business/)

What Will Be Our Faith Legacy?

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I am a little bit behind in my writing. This was my contribution to the Fishkill UMC December newsletter. Some of this appeared in earlier posts.

Back in 2024, I wrote about the legacy of the wise men and how science and faith were linked in our lives today by the journey of wisemen to Bethlehem two thousand years ago (1).

Our faith journey comes from many different sources.  Some found their faith in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, others found their faith in the non-Abrahamic faiths of the East; other found their faith in non-traditional forms.

Others may have never accepted a path of faith, choosing to seek their own path.  And others may have rejected the faith of their past or are still seeking to find their faith (2).

I choose to walk with Jesus Christ as my personal savior.  As I have written before, my mother laid the foundation for my journey with Christ by insisting that my siblings and I be in church every Sunday, no matter where we were.  And one Sunday in 1962, I began to think about walking with Christ.  It was this contemplation that led to my earning the God and Country award in 1965.

The legacy of my faith is through the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB)and its predecessors and the efforts of Jacob Albright, Martin Boehm, and Phillip Otterbein.  I am a member of the United Methodist Church (UMC) because of the merger of the Methodist Church and the EUB church in 1968. These denominations merged because each shared the beliefs of John Wesley.

The Wesleyan approach was open, inclusive, and a practical theological vision of the Christian life as opposed to the restrictive, exclusive, dogmatic approach to matters of faith and practice seen in traditional churches.

Our legacy was and still is to preach outside the normal boundaries of a church. Methodism began as a spiritual movement to renew a decaying institutional church and serve the outcast, the marginalized, and the poor, those that traditional Christians called the “unwashed rabble”.

The early Methodist movement was everything the traditional church wasn’t.  It was often messy or unregulated.  It was based on small groups, it empowered women, gave enslaved persons a sense of freedom, and created a vision of justice and liberation.

In 18th century America, Methodism was a “volatile, alienated, defiant, and charismatic” movement that empowered “those who were demeaned and degraded” with a revolutionary sense of God’s liberating loved (“Religion in the Old South”, Don Matthews, University of Chicago Press, 1977).  Methodism was seen as a threat to the establishment of the time because it was revolutionary, inclusive, heart-centered, and Jesus-fired (3).

Early Methodists found ways to feed the hungry and established free health care clinics to provide medical care.  Because people were denied basic financial services and put into jail because they could not pay their bills, the early Methodists created the first credit unions.  Because children worked in the mines and factories six days a week, the early Methodists created Sunday schools to educate them and their parents.  Because of the efforts of the Wesleyan Revival, some historians think this is the reason England did not experience a bloody revolution like the French revolution of the same period (4).

But where are those efforts today?  How do we respond to the questions Dr. Tony Campolo asked?

What do we do about the poor?

  • What do we do about education or the environment?
  • What do we do when the system that is in place ignores the little children of this country in favor of big business and greedy corporate interests?
  • What do we do when other Christians tell the parents of gays and lesbians that their children’s sexuality is their fault, that they somehow have lived a sinful and wrongful life?
  • How is it that we have allowed Christianity to become so judgmental when our own Savior never judged anyone? (5)

We have seen Christianity coopted by the secular realm.  People who claim to be Christians act as if they were the religious and political authorities who opposed Jesus two thousand years ago.

Evangelical pastor Russell Moore told NPR in an interview that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”

“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,’” Moore said. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.” (6)

What will those who proclaim the legacy of Christ but see his teachings as subversive say when they read in the Book of Acts where those who came before us pooled their resources so that all would have enough?

As we enter the season of Advent and begin preparing for the coming of Christ, I ask you consider your legacy.  Why did you begin your journey with Christ?  What will be the legacy you leave for those who follow you?

Will our legacy be one of hatred and ignorance?  Will it be one of exclusion?  Will we forget that we were once immigrants, strangers in a strange land?

Or will it be one of hope and promise, of redemption and acceptance, of liberation and freedom for all, no matter what path they walk?

Notes

  1. The Legacy of the Wise Men | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2020/01/01/the-legacy-of-the-wise-men/
  2. Seeing the future | Thoughts from The Heart On The Left -https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2023/12/02/seeing-the-future-3/
  3. Generations | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/generations/
  4. Evangelism and the United Methodist Church | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2024/06/07/evangelism-and-the-united-methodist-church/
  5. Generations | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/generations/ and references within.
  6. From an interview with Tony Campolo posted on Beliefnet.com on 12 November 2004) – Evangelism and the United Methodist Church | Thoughts From The Heart On The Left – https://heartontheleft.wordpress.com/2024/06/07/evangelism-and-the-united-methodist-church/
  7. Christianity Today Editor: Evangelicals Call Jesus “Liberal” and “Weak” | The New Republic – https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak