Scripture: Acts 2:14; Acts 2:36-41; Mark 1:4 Series: 2023
An Easter-season sermon launching a series on Acts (‘What do we do now?’), preached on Confirmation Sunday with a baptism. Drawing on Peter’s Pentecost call to ‘change your hearts and lives,’ Wilson frames conversion as metanoia—a change of mind, not mere emotion or logic—fulfilled in Christ the logos. He parallels Pentecost with Wesley’s Aldersgate experience of assurance: grace cannot be earned, and God, not the believer, is the agent in baptism (so baptism is not polish that grackles can ruin). Confirmation lets the infant-baptized claim faith through the bold renunciation questions. The life offered is one of self-sacrifice rather than self-protection (as Peter learned at the cross), available to all regardless of origin. Closes with the Aldersgate Sunday prayer for hearts warmed at the altar fires.
Illustrations: having-first-child-changes-everything, peru-sand-hill-call-to-ministry, thanks-bob-change-your-heart, kafka-gregor-samsa-cockroach, mind-changing-meme, wesley-aldersgate-warmed-heart, car-polish-grackles
April 30, 2023
Aldersgate
Acts 2:14,36-41
Peter stood with the other eleven apostles. He raised his voice and declared, “Judeans and everyone living in Jerusalem! Know this! Listen carefully to my words “Therefore, let all Israel know beyond question that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” When the crowd heard this, they were deeply troubled. They said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter replied, “Change your hearts and lives. Each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you, your children, and for all who are far away—as many as the Lord our God invites.” With many other words he testified to them and encouraged them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Those who accepted Peter’s message were baptized. God brought about three thousand people into the community on that day. Acts 2 :14,36-41
One of the most universal forms of advice that people give couples who are about to have their first kid is that everything is going to change. Get ready. It’s all going to change. How you may ask, all of it. You will be a completely different person. But can you explain it? No, I cannot explain it.
Your life changes after having a child, but it is not the only life change. Your life changes after leaving home for the first time. In some ways that are clear, and in some ways that are not clear. Your life changes after falling in love. Your life changes after a breakup or a divorce. Your life changes after grief or loss or terminal ailment. Your life was going one way and then it’s going a different way.
My life was going one way when I went to college. It went a different way after I received my call to ministry. After I went to Peru and talked about Jesus to the indigenous folks who were coming in from the rainforests to the outskirts of Lima and the favelas there. I remember running up a hill of sand and feeling God’s love and feeling that my ambitions before that time were suddenly dust, they were nothing, they were like the sand I was standing on, and that God was calling me to serve his people wherever they were. My life changed directions. I believed in God and loved God before that moment, but my life changed directions. It was my Aldersgate Moment.
At Pentecost, Peter shares about the changed hearts of the people and their hearts actually change. They become new people. At Aldersgate, John Wesley, the stodgy young church of England priest who had failed to convert the Native Americans, felt his heart strangely warmed and felt that God loved even him.
Serious intro.
In the season of Easter, we’re going to take the time to look through the beginning of the Book of Acts where the disciples are left with the question:What do we do now? For Bee Creek United Methodist Church, that is the season that we are in: What do we do now? And as we worship together over the next few weeks, I want us to be praying and thinking through and responding actively to God’s movements as we not only ask this question, but answer this question, what do we do now?
Today, Conversion and Aldersgate
Very few of us enjoy being told to change our hearts and our lives. “You know what you should do, Wilson? You just need to change your heart and your life, and then everything will be better. Okay?” “Thanks Bob.” There’s a natural human reaction to that form of judgment. We each need to find our own space to receive that call to change. That’s why conversion is metanoia, the Greek word for conversion is similar to the term metamorphosis. Like the beginning of Franz Kafka’s, the metamorphosis. Gregor Sansa woke up and found himself a giant cockroach. Metamorphosis is a change of your body. Metanoia is a change of your mind. Your noos. If conversion in the Bible was just about the soul and not the mind, the word would be metapsyche. But it is not. Metanoia is often translated as repentance as well. In Mark 1:4, when John the Baptist proclaims a baptism of repentance, he is proclaiming metanoia.
I don’t know how often you have seen someone’s mind changed. Not just about religion but anything. Sports, politics, favorite foods.
This photo has been turned into a meme. For me, the absurdity of it is that actually changing our minds is rather difficult. Logical debate only goes so far. Conversion, repentance in the Bible, is not the result of logic. That doesn’t mean it is illogical, just that there is an extra step filled in by the source of actual logic, Jesus Christ. The logos. The word made flesh. Logic is fulfilled in a person, God with us.
Pentecost
At Pentecost, a change took place with the many people of Jerusalem. Peter had shared his message of revival, who was excited for the possibilities, but it wasn’t just an entertaining speech for people to go back to what they were doing before. No, he said, “change your hearts and your lives. And you know what happened? Their hearts and lives changed. Their minds changed.
Wesley
When John Wesley returned to England after his failure in Georgia, he didn’t really know what God had in store for him. He tried different things, but they were unsatisfying. He was a member of some societies, but they didn’t quite fit the bill. until one night, late in May of 1738, John Wesley was at an evening prayer service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Then he went to a society meeting with a reading from Martin Luther’s preface to the letter to the Romans, and as he left, he was on Aldersgate road in London. It is still a road today. John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed. He was warmed by Grace. He was more warmed by an assurance of grace. He couldn’t earn his salvation. He couldn’t make God like him. He was already surrounded by love.
Confirmation
Today is confirmation Sunday day where we confirm together the faith of young people who have decided to follow Jesus. There will also be a baptism. That’s why we got the tank here.
We confirm people in the Methodist tradition so that those people who are baptized as infants can accept faith for themselves. We baptize infants because the Bible says that whole families were baptized. Families include children. It doesn’t say the parents were baptized or only the older kids were baptized, but families were baptized. There’s nothing in scripture that excludes children from baptism. In fact, baptism, the central actor in baptism is not the person, the child, the adult, the believer is not the one doing the action or performing the act. It is God. God is the agent in baptism and God doesn’t change. God doesn’t make a mistake. So when we baptize a child, God doesn’t make a mistake. A baptism isn’t like polishing a car, where even if you do a great job of polishing your car, if you park under a colony of grackles, they totally mess up the polish. You wouldn’t even notice that the car had been clean before. No. Baptism is not a wash job for your soul. Not is it a guarantor that later in life the baptized person will not make bad decisions. Baptism doesn’t turn people into holy robots who no longer err or sin. Sometimes we present it in this kind of way. You talk about, oh, I don’t know if the baptism really stuck. Again, it’s not polish, it’s not a new set of clothes. It is a life that has been buried in Christ’s death and risen in Christ’s life. God is the one who baptizes. We offer confirmation to give opportunities for people who do not remember their baptism to confirm their faith, to answer the same strong questions, powerful questions. There’s some bite to these questions.
On behalf of the whole Church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
I do.
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
I do.
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?
I do
These are not meek questions. They are asked parents at the baptism of their child, and they are asked of confirmands at confirmation.
Aldersgate was not the beginning of the Methodist movement. It really started in Oxford. It was small and they gathered together. Aldersgate is the confirmation of the Methodist movement, the confirmation of grace, that the grace of God is not limited by where you are from. The Holy Spirit moves where it wills. And whether you come from a good family or not, whether you are wealthy or poor, a sinner or a saint, there’s grace for you and you are worthy of it. And you can be assured that you are loved by God. Not only receive grace, but be assured of that grace. That you have done enough because there’s nothing we can do. It is grace all the way down. Aldersgate is a release of guilt, a letting go of guilt for the past and a step again to the future.
We can only let go of the past if we have repented of the past. Remember. Repentance in Greek is the same word as conversion. If we have repented, God is there with mercy. If there is something you need to repent of, do so. If there’s someone whom you have harmed, seek forgiveness. But don’t linger in guilt. You are worthy of forgiveness. Christ assures you of that. You have new life in Jesus Christ. It is offered for you.
Peter was a logical man. This is why he denied Jesus. He was confronted by his own mortality and sought to protect it. Peter showed them limit of earthly logic that has the goal of self-protection and self-satisfaction . The cross changed him. Peter offers at Pentecost the life of faith that no longer has the goal of self-protection or self-satisfaction. It has the goal of self-sacrifice out of the love of Jesus Christ. That is what is offered at Baptism and confirmation. A new life with a new goal.
John Wesley’s life had a goal before Aldersgate and it changed. Whether you were confirmed today or not, your life can change. Your mind can change. Not just because of Logic, but because of Grace. The Grace that you are loved. The Grace that you are forgiven. The Grace that you are good enough to live the life of love Jesus shows us and teaches us in the love commandments. For those being confirmed, this is the life offered to you. A life where you can love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself. For the rest of us, this life is also offered to us. Our past does not define us. It molds us, but it does not define us. We are all offered a chance to change our hearts, to repent, to convert, to go a new way as Peter did, as John Wesley did.
We’re going to say a prayer together for this day. It is a prayer of Aldersgate Sunday, which is officially next month, but we can celebrate it early. Remember that powerful experience and remember that we can have a powerful experience of God too. God can move in our lives, too. We should be able to expect God’s movement and assurance in our hearts,
Let us pray, Almighty God, in a time of great need you raised up your servants John and Charles Wesley, and by your Spirit inspired them to kindle a flame of sacred love which leaped and ran, an inextinguishable blaze. Grant that all those whose hearts have been warmed at these altar fires, being continually refreshed by your grace, may be so devoted to the increase of scriptural holiness throughout the land that in this our time of great need, your will may fully and effectively be done on earth as it is in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.