FAITH forum 7B WESLEYAN WISDOM UMC must share grace message with confidence


BY DONALD W. HAYNES UMR Columnist


The final mandate for me to write


a book on Wesley’s grace theology happened one day in the church parking lot. Our United Methodist church was sponsoring a “Commu- nity Children’s Day”—replete with huge inflated cartoon characters, games galore, and hot dogs with all the Southern trimmings! I was cook- ing when Susan came to me with a tract. A neighbor- hood fundamental- ist church saw a gathering of people and thought it a good opportunity to evangelize for their church and for Jesus.


Donald Haynes


While I admired


their passion, the doctrine of the tract really bothered me. I said to her, “Susan, this tract (entitled ‘God’s Plan of Salvation’) is false doctrine to me and all us children of John Wesley.” Like many United Methodists, she re- sented their “crashing our party,” but had no clue what I meant by “false doctrine.” I went home to mow the yard and


decided that I must write a book. I called itMethodist Fundamentals. The editors at UMR Communications improved on that by calling it On the Threshold of Grace. It’s for the Susans among Wesley’s theological progeny. Many Sunday school classes,


small groups and individuals are finding it to be their “playbook” for the doctrine and practice of Christian faith as understood by Mr. Wesley. This is what we understood and this is what we taught in class meetings until about 1850, when such meet- ings experienced a quiet demise. This is the message we preached from “brush arbor” and “meetinghouse” pulpits when Wesley’s legacy was har- vesting phenomenal growth among Americans of German, Scandinavian, African and British descent.


What is our witness? As we come to the General Con-


ference of 2012, my concern is that we will fill our all-too-brief legislative hours with heated debate about structure and acrimonious “talking past each other” in a catfight about homosexuality. Meanwhile, St. Paul’s question will be hovering on the side- lines, “How will they hear without a preacher?” He also spoke of the need for “the trumpet to blow with a cer-


tain sound.” So what is the message of Wesley?


In a day of religious pluralism and ecumenicity, should we be enunciat- ing one denomination’s convictions about the nature of God and God’s “way of salvation”? No, if we are con- tent with only voices of fundamental- ist or liberation theology to be heard in our time as our mainline church grows smaller and we reach fewer and fewer people with the “good tid- ings of great joy.” In the preliminary debates about


the issues likely to dominate the 2012 General Conference, we hear little of the famous “catholic spirit” that Wes- ley accented—“If your heart is as mine give me your hand.” We seem bound for a very cognitive confer- ence, not one of the “holy conferenc- ing” which Wesley espoused. If we were to adopt and teach and


practice something of a Wesleyan schema, what witness would we carry


implying “journey.” A plan is a pre- meditated, pre-defined strategy that has lots of control measures and cir- cumstantial caveats built into it. A journey does not. A journey is deter- mined by choices we make based on a relationship that continues in spite of circumstances. St. Paul uses the Olympian lan-


guage of “running a good race and finishing the course.” To“win” the race means ridding ourselves of hin- drances that hold us back, defeat us, or entice us to detours—all of which define a “way” or a “journey,” not a “plan.”


Starts with God’s love Now let’s get to Wesley’s “#1” as he


understood the “way of salvation.” Number “1” is not I! God is #1, and what is God’s nature? Indeed how do we define God? I heard a young, evangelistic, motivated Bible teacher last week tell a large audience that he


‘. . . God loves us—warts and all. . . . How can we possibly ascribe to God—whose name, character and nature is love—a love that is less than the love of human parents for their children?’


to a broken and confused world? In- deed how do we bring people to a reconciling and redemptive relation- ship with Jesus? To use the most common soteriological phrase,“What does it mean to be saved?” First of all the typical fundamen-


talist tract entitled“God’s Plan of Sal- vation”begins with #1:“You are a sinner.” As a proof text, Romans 3:23 is indexed: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” My re- sponse is,“That is not #1; that is #3!” For starters, Mr. Wesley in his Ex-


planatory Notes Upon the New Testa- ment insists that the best translation from the Greek is “fallen short,” not “fall short.” That is, we were made in God’s image and have fallen from God’s creation to a state of estrange- ment, alienation and lost-ness. We have “lost our way and cannot get home alone.” This word“fallen” is a clue to some earlier identity! Secondly, Wesley used the Latin


term“via salutis.” That is, rather than using the corporate language,“plan,” Wesley would have us use the word


teaches children and youth that “God is a God of justice and love—that God cannot love us in our sin be- cause we are violating God’s sense of justice.” He went on to say that until Jesus died on the cross and blood was spilled, God could not forgive sin be- cause that would violate God’s sense of justice! It is a theology which my Old Testament seminary professor defined as “Jehovah will get you if you don’t watch out.” Poppycock! That is not biblical! Is


not most every biblical character at some point in life or career a disap- pointment to God? Yet God loved them and God loves us—warts and all. “Like as a father pities his chil- dren, so the Lord pities those who trust Him.” How can we possibly as- cribe to God—whose name, charac- ter and nature is love—a love that is less than the love of human parents for their children? Jesus was clear, “If you love your children, how much more does your Father who is in heaven love you!” Being saved begins with God’s love, not our sin.


Number “2” in the way of salva-


tion is that God’s love is a seeking love. Jesus taught about “Abba” and il- lustrated “Abba’s” love with three parables which Dr. Luke the Gentile physician placed all in his chapter 15—stories Jesus told of a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a lost boy. In each case, that which was cherished and loved was gone, but not forgotten. The love continued as the woman looked for her lost coin, the shepherd looked for his lost sheep, and the fa- ther grieved for his lost son. God’s love seeks us out, pursues


us like “the hound of heaven,” and al- lows us to find our way home along differing paths.


Sin doesn’t define us Sin is real. It does indeed alienate


us from a relationship with God but does not separate us from God’s love. St. Paul is clear with his rhetorical question, “What shall separate us from the love of God?” Then he reels off a litany of potential separations (Romans 8) and says, in effect, that like the proverbial “hound of heaven” metaphor in Francis Thompson’s poem, God will never abandon the trail!


My sin might characterize me but


it does not define me. I am defined as “a son or daughter of the Most High God.” I fail, but I am not to be defined as “a failure.” The essence of grace theology is sung when we raise our congregational voice in the words of Methodist Fanny Crosby:“Down in


the human heart, crushed by the Tempter, feelings lie buried that grace can restore. Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness, chords that were broken will vibrate once more.” Now that is the Wesley theol- ogy of evangelism! God, whose name and nature is


love, loves me. God seeks me through the Holy Spirit, often using music, or witness, or sermon, or a walk by the sea or in the woods. God is never without a witness, regardless of my life circumstances. I sin. I might run and hide, or rebel in some despicable way of personal moral/ethical decay. I might embrace systemic evil and suc- cumb to structures of prejudice. However, “Jesus is tenderly calling thee home.” That is the nature of grace theology. United Methodism has a message.


We must know it with competence and share it with confidence. God needs this message of grace in a reli- gious marketplace injected with“law and justice.” Humanity needs this message of grace as a “way home” from the “dark, far country.” Wesley’s dying words are an affirmation we need lest we be bushwhacked by wrong doctrine or sleep our way through the revolution. Those affir- mative words were,“Best of all, God is with us.”


Dr. Haynes is a retired clergyman of the Western North Carolina Conference. He is the author of On The Threshold of Grace. Email: dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.


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UN ITE D METHO DI S T REP O RTER | S EPTEMBER 3 0 , 2011


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