A Rainy Night in Georgia

 Sixth Saturday of Lent

Lectionary texts:

Mark 15:16-39

I'm here in the OBX. I forgot to bring my Methodist Calendar, which has the Sunday Lectionary texts.

Since I also forgot to bring my Witherington Commentary on Acts, I'm not going to do our usual Saturday Bible Study. Rather, we will return to our study of early Methodism,

John Wesley was ordained an Anglican priest in 1725. He completed his Master of Arts degree at Oxford in 1726. That degree would be comparable to a Ph.D. for us. He taught Greek at Oxford for several years off and on. He also pastored a small rural church.

In 1735 he was recruited by the SPCK (Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge) to be a missionary in Georgia, in Savannah and nearby Frederica. His brother Charles and two other Anglican priests went on the ship with him. There were also 22 Moravians from Herrnhut in Germany. 

The voyage took over three months, from October, 1735 through much of January, 1736, the worst time of the year for transatlantic sailing. There were many frightening storms. Wesley very much admired the Moravians for their utter calm and lack of fear of death during the storms. He possessed neither of these qualities but desired them. Wesley got to know the Moravians well, perfecting his fluency in German during the process. He translated their hymn book into English, and eventually he wrote a German grammar book. 

Wesley's chief goal in his mission was to convert the Indians. He never got much of a chance to do that. The colony of Georgia had been settled in good measure by former prisoners in England. It was a rough crowd. There were plenty enough white Englishmen for him to convert. He proved not very good at it. His preaching had much more emphasis on their sinfulness than on God's grace. He was even worse in his brief forays with the Indians. He concluded that they were savages largely incapable of receiving the Word of God. 

Wesley's methodicalness made him a stickler for things being done the right way--the sacrament being administered in strict accord with the Anglican rubrics, rebukes in church of those who had previously been absent from the services, rebukes in public for colonists' behavior he regarded as unacceptable. His Oxford ways were not the ways of this rough fledgling colony. Charles fared worse than John. He remained only six months, then returned to England.

Although I have read a fair amount on this period of Wesley's life, I do not recall anything mentioned about his relationship with slaves. Wesley was anti-slavery from the beginning. It would be a substantial part of his message after he returned to England. 

Nothing went right for Wesley in his mission to Georgia. It might all have worked out far better had he not made what many regard as the chief mistake of his life, his failure to marry the woman who would have been perfect for him, young Sophia Hopkey. 

We'll pick up with John and Sophie on the first Wednesday of Easter.

O Lord our God,

Help us in our study of early Methodism to come to know You better and to know ourselves better. For the life of John Wesley we are thankful. Help us to learn from him. In Christ's name. Amen.

Faithfully,

Christian