John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn’t following us.” Jesus replied, “Don’t stop him. No one who does powerful acts in my name can quickly turn around and curse me.” – Mark 9:38-39
As we wonder what comes next for Methodism, I thought it would be useful to dig into some of John Wesley’s sermons that ground us in the strangely warmed heart of Wesleyanism. It helps to know who we are if we’re going to imagine who we’re becoming. Not to mention, when the divide in the church seems so potentially cataclysmic, it doesn’t hurt to remember what it is that actually does unite us. This week, we will explore John Wesley’s sermon, A Caution Against Bigotry, written in 1750. At the time, the Methodists were being accused of bigotry for their enthusiastic partisanship outside the norms of social religion. This sermon is written first to those in authority who were bigoted against the Methodist movement, but also secondly to the Methodists who were becoming bigoted in their assessment of the establishment. It does an excellent job of challenging all of us to check our assumptions about whether someone else is properly following God, and I find it to be a refreshing message for our present American culture. Here’s a summary.
When the disciples argued over which of them was closest to God’s real will, Jesus placed a child, uncomplicated by religion or theology, upon his lap and said, “Actually, she’s the closest to God right now, so…” To which the beloved disciple John quickly changed the subject by saying, “So we saw some people casting out devils in your name, and we were all like, ‘STOP BRO, You’re not even ONE of us’ and he was all like, ‘Oh, my bad.’ And so now, I’m wondering, based on your line about us welcoming this little girl, maybe, should we have been more friendly to that other guy?”
Let’s get some things straight. This scripture passage matters today. Really matters. The devil is at work in this world, and for most of us, he’s working as secretly as possibly to idolize ourselves, to think we are smarter than God, either by doing things our own way, or by trapping us in the belief that we must be so bad that God couldn’t possibly love or forgive us. The devil is quite clever at trapping us in a love for anything but God-For-Who-God-Is, enslaving us in habits and cultures that never satisfy. The devil has become even more clever in tricking many into thinking they are justified in their “righteous” anger, their physical or emotional violence against those who do not think like them. Many have given up on a moral code and assume that the ends justify any means necessary to get what they want. The devil seems to delight in tricking all of us into thinking that we alone know what is best and anyone who thinks differently is the real fool. He’s done a great job convincing us that people from different nations, cultures, or races are somehow further from God’s truth than we are (whoever “we” happens to be), as we all weren’t equally trapped in blindness and sin.
But God delights in freeing us from this.
God delights in casting the devils out of us, in freeing us with inward and outward freedom. God is stronger than the strongest devil, and no one, NO ONE, is so bound by the devil that they are beyond the reach of God’s redemption. God alone can set any of us truly free. And God does, but God uses all kinds of forgiven sinners to help get these devils the hell up out of some folk. Christ destroys the works of the devil, and regularly chooses the weak and unassuming ones among us to set others free. God is using university grads and high school drop outs to cast out devils. God is using ordained and new believers, Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians, Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Unitarians, the incarcerated and the cop. God is using Falwell’s followers and the LGBTQIA community. And for those with ears to hear, God is using our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, sometimes even agnostics and atheists. Because God is that big, that full of love for all people, and that much of a trickster that God is willing to confound our logical and theological systems by working through whoever we think the fools are to prove the devil never has the upper hand.
So forbid him not. Forbid her not. Forbid them not.
How stupidly unwilling men and women are to allow anything good in those who do not in all things agree with themselves. How quickly do even the best Christians let our difference of opinions poison our affection even for family and friends. How quickly are even the best Christians ready to persecute each other, even to death, thinking all the time they are doing God service. Real Christ-like ya’ll.
So look at the life: how has a person been changed by the Gospel of Christ? How is this person trusting God to work a new creation in her or his life? Now let me flip the script on you: who preached the message that led to this person trusting more deeply in Christ? The person whose message led to God transforming another’s life, whether the preacher was in your camp or not, was called by God for that purpose.
So forbid them not. Do not deny the work of God through these people. Do not despise them or belittle them. Do not draw them into disputes over your differences or undermine their work. To forbid them in there work is surely to practice bigotry, too strong an attachment to, or fondness for, our own party, opinion, Church and religion. Check yourself. Have God search your own heart, your motives, you’re affections, on the regular…because bigotry will always find a way back into our hearts.
So I say to you, Methodists who are ready to split over forbidding the LGBTQIA community from full inclusion, on both sides of the discussion: pay attention to the real fruits of ministry in the other. If you need to split in order to allow the other party to fully live into their ministry, then do it. But do it while openly acknowledging and rejoicing in the work of the other. Encourage and build up whoever God chooses to call and work through to transform others. Cut the name-calling and speak only well of them wherever it is true. Enlarge their territory, stop finding ways to box them out of your Christianity. And even if the other party never stops being bigoted towards you, even if the other party continues to forbid you from pursuing God’s call on your life, nevertheless, let you imitate Christ even if they refuse to. Let your choose to forbid them not, even if they only ever forbid you. One of us has to give first, one of us has to be the first to change the conversation and the attitude. That is the way of Christ, and I trust that no matter how wronged you think you are by them, you have the power to follow the better way of Christ until your enemies go insane from how counfoundingly Christlike someone like you can be.