Sixth Wednesday of Lent

Lectionary text:

Mark 14: 1-25

First, let me note that next week is Holy Week. We'll interrupt our usual blog schedule. I'll be spending each of the days of Holy Week blogging about the events in this final week in the earthly life of Jesus. 

Today we return to our study of early Methodism. Susannah Wesley had 19 children and at least one miscarriage. There were two sets of twins, one of whom both died in infancy. John was 15th in the birth order; Charles, 18th.

John's earliest years were spent in a small English village called Epworth. The crucial event for him during those years was a fire that burned to the ground the Epworth parsonage where they lived. John was six years old. All were saved. The parsonage was not. John was the last to be saved, "a brand plucked from the burning," as he would quote from Zechariah 3:2 and apply to himself. Vivid memories of the flames all around him, the heat, the smells, would remain with him all his life. He felt as if he had a clearer understanding of what hell was like and was desperately determined not to go there. 

Susannah home-schooled all the children in their early years. All could read by the age of five, including all the girls, which was something rare in those days. 

For Protestants in the 18th and 19th centuries, pastors were always the smartest and best educated people in the community. More men were trained for ministry at Oxford and Cambridge than for any other profession. In America both Harvard and Yale Universities were founded for the explicit purpose of training Protestant ministers. Alas, all  that changed in the 20th century. 

 

Both John and Charles Wesley had exemplary educations. John went to Charterhouse School in London starting at age 10. He excelled. The core of the curriculum was Latin and Greek, which prepared him well for entering Oxford at age 17. 

It was the beginnings of the "Age of Enlightenment" in Europe and the attendant movement toward secularism in higher education. Oxford was beginning to feel these "enlightenment" tendencies. It tended to be a bawdy place where the sons of upper class English enjoyed much drinking and a bit of studying. Wesley was neither teetotaler nor drunkard but a serious student who excelled in languages and literature. He rejected the student culture and sought a more rigorous and disciplined life, particularly when it came to religion. After three years his brother Charles joined him. They along with George Whitefield and a few others formed a group with the name The Holy Club. 

The Holy Club members had a highly disciplined religious life, arising for prayers at 4:00 a.m. everyday and participating in a tightly organized and methodical schedule similar to The Daily Office in the BCP, in wide use at the time. Although they did not parade their piety, they were held in disdain by many Oxford men, who adopted a sarcastic name for them. They called them Methodists.

 

Lord God,

We pray that we might be faithful followers of the Wesleyan path of continual learning ever deepening faith. In the name of Christ, who taught us. Amen.

 

Faithfully,

Christian