This is the first blog post on my own site “Grace in the Fractures”, this title expresses my conviction that God’s grace often encounters us in the complex fractured realities of our personal and communal lives. Early Methodism arose in the complex fractures of Eighteenth-century British society. Contemporary Methodism is fractured in various ways. My own denomination, the United Methodist Church is deeply fractured as a consequence of struggles and debates over the inclusion of LGBTQ people within the church. My recent book “Bid our Jarring Conflicts Cease”: A Wesleyan Theology and Praxis of Church Unity develops a theological basis for striving for the unity of the church in the midst of the fractures. Over the next weeks and months, I will be writing blogs reflecting on aspects of the book in a more popular format with a particular view to its implications for the debates within the UMC.
So what’s the point of Methodism? John Wesley proposed that God had raised up Methodism to promote “scriptural holiness”. In our contemporary world “holiness” appears to be rather obscure if not irrelevant – particularly when it is seen to imply otherworldly legalism. When Wesley described what he meant by holiness he summed often it up by love – love for God in response to God’s love for us. Love for God, in turn, gives rise to love for our fellow human beings. In the contemporary context love is a devalued and often vague concept. From a theological perspective, love is most profoundly expressed on the cross. Here God expresses love for humanity by becoming human and taking upon Godself the pain and suffering that we inflict on God and our fellows as a consequence through our sinful self-centeredness. In Jesus God absorbs the consequences of our sin refusing to act in judgment upon humanity. As the human one Jesus acts in self-sacrificial obedience to God his Father for the benefit of humanity. So holiness as love has the form of the cross. It is the self-denying, self-sufficing loyalty to God and commitment to the well-being of humanity. Wesley explored this in various ways which we can summarize as follows.
Love for God is to center one’s life on God, giving God ultimate loyalty and living one’s life to God’s glory this is not a matter of obligation but of deep love for and delight in God. It in embodied in a life of prayer and thanksgiving, participation in communal worship, obedience to God’s commandments, trust in God’s care in all circumstances and the rejection of all competing loyalties.
Love for one’s fellow human beings is the commitment to the concrete and holistic well-being of all human beings.
- It is not mere outward actions it involves attitudes and motivations.
- It extends to all human beings: Friends, strangers, enemies, the moral, the immoral and even those one considers to be the enemies of God.
- Entails a deep compassion for and solidarity with those who are suffering.
- It pervades and directs all dimensions of a person’s life.
- It takes on a particular character in relationships between fellow Christians entailing reciprocity and mutual delight
For Wesley, the gospel is the announcement that God is at work amongst humanity to forgive and transform people who respond to God’s grace in obedient faith. The Methodist movement was called to be the embodiment and channel of the love of God – that is of God’s love for humanity; of human beings love for God, and thus of our participation in God’s love for humanity by our love for our fellow humans. That is the point of Methodism. As Wesley wrote in his poem “Primitive Christianity”
Ye different sects, who all declare
‘Lo! Here is Christ!’ or ‘Christ is there!’
Your stronger proofs divinely give,
And show me where the Christians live.
Your claim, alas! Ye cannot prove;
Ye want the genuine mark of love:
Thou only, Lord, thine own canst show,
For sure thou hast a church below
The challenge before is what does it mean to embody the love of God in relation to the continuing debate over the inclusion of LGBTQ people. This raises significant issues about our understanding of how we embody love toward LGBTQ people. But also as to what it means to embody God’s love in a community which includes people with contradictory views and practices in relation to LGBTQ inclusion.
Dr. David N. Field, a United Methodist layman, describes himself as "a South African of mostly European ancestry living in Switzerland; a migrant and a descendant of migrants; a Methodist theologian married to the pastor of a Reformed Church." He serves as Academic Coordinator of the Methodist e-Academy, a training program for people preparing for the ordained ministry, and is a member of the Commission on A Way Forward. He blogs at Grace in the Fractures, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.