Memorial/Ascension/Aldersgate/Heritage Sunday May 24, 2009 "Roots" Reverend Michael D. Powell John: 17:6-11

It’s important to know where we come from, because it says a lot about where we’re at right now, and where we’re going in the future. St. Francis was walking along the road one day, singing to himself. I imagine he was incarnating Colossians 3:12-17, which admonishes us to “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God.” Someone saw him and this is the exchange that followed:

“Francis, where are you coming from?”

“I’m coming from God,” he replied.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to God!”

“And why are you singing?”

“I’m singing so that I don’t lose my way,”

We all come from God, and unto God we shall return, like a stream flowing back to the ocean, like a ray of light, returning to the sun. Roots are important.

When I was a kid my family always spent Memorial Day visiting the cemeteries where our family members had been buried. I loved seeing all the flowers decorating the graves. I loved looking at the old gravestones.

Memorial Day in New Meadows, Idaho, were Anni and I had our first church and where Chalice was born, was a very big deal. It was a small town, with one little cemetery on the hill, and folks used to say that you weren’t really a local until you had people on the hill. As a pastor, I had quite a few of my people on the hill. I remember one year on Memorial Day it rained heavily all day and finally, about 3 or 4 in the afternoon it finally cleared and the sun came out. Anni and I jumped in the car with our flowers and dashed out to the cemetery and it was the most beautiful celebration of community you can imagine. Everyone in town had been waiting for the rain to stop, and there were hundreds of people with arms full and bucket loads of flowers walking around, laughing and talking, and quietly kneeling, decorating graves. The sun was shining brightly through the sparkling wet air and the colors of the flowers matched the colors of the rainbow in the sky above. On a day like that it’s easy to believe - we all come from God, and unto God we shall return. Roots are important.

A big part of who we are today has grown out of the roots of our ancestors. Today is not only Memorial Sunday. On the Christian calendar it’s also Ascension Sunday, when we celebrate that after his resurrection Christ ascended into heaven. Jesus was like a divine ray of light, a sacred emanation returning to the sun.

But this morning is also a uniquely Methodist holiday, called Aldersgate Sunday, and it has to do with the roots of our faith. The Methodist Church was founded by John Wesley, an Anglican Minister. Following a difficult and discouraging mission trip to America, he questioned his faith. It was a dark and a lonely time of self-doubt in his life. The year was 1738 when, at the age of 34, John Wesley attended an evening worship service in London. He was a broken man, looking for God, looking for a ray of light that would shine into the darkness of his soul. What happened that night moved him deeply. In his journal, Wesley records that he went to Aldersgate “very unwillingly,” and then describes his "Aldersgate experience." He was discouraged, broken, seemingly a failure in life, and yet at his darkest moment he describes this experience:

“About a quarter before nine, while the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” 

It changed his life forever. Each of us are here this morning, 271 years later, hungering and thirsting to have our hearts strangely warmed, longing for a sense of spiritual intimacy with God and with one another, thanking God for the inclusive welcome we experience here, because of John Wesley’s Aldersgate experience.

In the scripture Jesus prays for his disciples. He thanks God for calling these people whom he loves and prays protection and guidance for them. John Wesley believed that also. He believed that he had been called by Christ to ministries of love, justice and reconciliation, to his church, his community and his world, and he believed that we are all God’s people. But it wasn’t a straight line from Wesley’s Aldersgate experience to us this morning, and the long and winding road that Wesley followed has important implications for us at Morningside.

Wesley was raised as a preacher’s kid. His dad was a Church of England pastor, and that was a lot of baggage for a kid to carry. When he was just 6 years old he nearly perished in a house fire. His devout mother told him that God had saved him for a reason, that God had a great purpose for his life. So he became a Church of England preacher too. But only certain people were welcome in those churches in the 1700’s. You had to speak “the King’s English.” You had to dress a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way. There were thousands and thousands of people who were excluded from worship, who were unwelcome in the formal, sophisticated Church of England in Wesley’s day. No wonder he was depressed. No wonder he felt like his life was a failure. His heart was not in the ministry that he felt called to, because his heart was bigger than the church as it existed in his time.

So he began going to where the people were, the people who had been rejected, who were unwelcome in the proper churches of his tradition. He went to the mines and to the factories as people were getting off work, and he began telling them that God loved them, that they were all God’s people, that they were called by Christ! Nothing like that had ever been done before in England. There are stories of miners, with coal blackened faces streaked with tears. Nobody had ever told them they were children of God before, that they were sacred beings who were loved and accepted by God just as they were.

John Wesley’s open heart and his open mind started a spiritual revolution. Actually, it’s called “The Wesleyan Revival,” and we here this morning are rooted in the radical acceptance that he began preaching 271 years ago.

Roots are important. We are here this morning because the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired and empowered those first disciples, and John Wesley, and many others in an unbroken line of splendor, to preach the Good News of God’s love to all. Thanks be to God.