Encountering God
Revival - Part 4
Sunday, May 2, 2021
Ephesians 2:1-10, 2 Corinthians 5:13-21
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Ephesians 2:8-10
When John Wesley observed George Whitfield preaching the gospel to 30,000 miners on a hillside, he wrote in his journal,
I could scarce reconcile myself to this strange way of preaching in the fields... having been all my life so tenacious of every point to decency and order that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church... At four in the afternoon I submitted to "be more vile", and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people.
If there was ever a word for a post-pandemic church, this is it. Before COVID-19 forced churches to close their doors, many felt like Wesley in thinking that “the saving of souls was almost a sin if it had not been done in church.” Maybe not a sin, but there was and often still is a prevailing mindset that expects people to come into the church to hear the message of God’s grace and salvation.
But Wesley’s understanding of grace extended far beyond the walls of the church. Through prevenient grace, Wesley believed that God’s grace was at work in a person’s life long before they were even aware of it. If God is present with a person before that person is present to God, it must imply that God’s grace is it work in homes and workplaces and markets and taverns and even in the fields as it is in the church. If this is true, the question is how we might help those outside the church become more aware of this grace at work in their midst.
It is ironic, perhaps, that Wesley commits to “becoming more vile” by preaching to the common workers in the fields. Some have responded in similar ways to extending the church’s ministry through online platforms. “That’s not church,” some will say. I even had one person tell me that we should shut down our live-stream worship because it made people too lazy and they needed to get back to worship in the building. Yet if it is true that God’s grace extends to everyone where they are at, why would we assume that God’s grace cannot be present in the digital world. There are certainly benefits to in person connection, and face to face, embodied relationship with others is crucial to our Christian faith, but does that require someone to be singing in a crowded sanctuary hoping not to be infected by an invisible disease? Or might it be that the face to face happens on the front porch with a few neighbors or with a few friends over lunch or coffee talking together about the scriptures from the sermon they just watched online from last Sunday?
Church happens wherever God is present with God’s people and God’s people are present with God. Let us then become more present to the God who is present with us in every ordinary moment of our lives, and let us point others to a deeper awareness of God’s presence in the ordinary moments of their lives. God doesn’t wait for people to come to church to meet him. Why should we?
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
For more on the Wesleyan Revival, check out Adam Hamilton’s book, “Revival: Faith as Wesley Lived It”