Scripture: Acts 1:15-26 Series: 2023
Opening a season-of-Easter series tracing Acts alongside the origins of Methodism, this sermon reads Acts 1:15-26, where the early church’s first act is mundane governance: filling Judas’s vacated slot by casting lots for Matthias. Wilson argues church leadership has no skill or experience requirement because God, not credentials, equips and qualifies servants, so ‘I’m not qualified’ is an excuse, not reality. He then narrates John and Charles Wesley at Oxford forming the Holy Club through journaling, scripture study, communion, and prison/poor visitation, with ‘Methodist’ and ‘Holy Club’ beginning as insults later embraced, claiming holiness is offered to all, not a select few. He closes inviting every hearer, even first-time visitors, into a heart full of love that displaces anger, fear, and self-doubt and into a role in what God is doing at Bee Creek UMC.
Illustrations: matthias-casting-lots, day-after-christmas-decorations, emmaus-thomas-recognition, samuel-wesley-job-commentary, wesley-coded-journal, william-morgan-prison-visits, galen-vs-methodists, holy-club-insult-appropriated
April 16, 2023
The Holy Club
During this time, the family of believers was a company of about one hundred twenty persons. Peter stood among them and said, “Brothers and sisters, the scripture that the Holy Spirit announced beforehand through David had to be fulfilled. This was the scripture concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus. This happened even though he was one of us and received a share of this ministry.” (In fact, he bought a field with the payment he received for his injustice. Falling headfirst, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines spilled out. This became known to everyone living in Jerusalem, so they called that field in their own language Hakeldama, or “Field of Blood.”) “It is written in the Psalms scroll, Let his home become deserted and let there be no one living in it; and Give his position of leadership to another. “Therefore, we must select one of those who have accompanied us during the whole time the Lord Jesus lived among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when Jesus was taken from us. This person must become along with us a witness to his resurrection.” So they nominated two: Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. They prayed, “Lord, you know everyone’s deepest thoughts and desires. Show us clearly which one you have chosen from among these two to take the place of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.” When they cast lots, the lot fell on Matthias. He was added to the eleven apostles. - Acts 1:15-26
The season of Easter lasts for a few weeks, all the way up to Pentecost. Like a lot of holidays in America, most of us try to move on rather quickly from it. There may be 12 days of Christmas, but many people the day after Christmas, are cleaning up their Christmas decorations; moving on and getting ready for New Year’s: getting ready for the next thing. It’s hard to stay in the moment when everybody else is moving on. Easter lasts this long because the season of Easter marks the time that Jesus walked the earth after his resurrection. It is the time that he ministered in a radically new way. He was a man that many people knew, but even the people who knew him best couldn’t recognize him after the resurrection. Thomas didn’t recognize him until he touched Jesus’s wounds. The disciples on the Emmaus road didn’t recognize him until Jesus revealed himself to them, until they broke bread together.
Series Intro
In the season of Easter, we’re going to take the time to look through the beginning of the Book of Acts. Acts is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. Jesus makes a small appearance at the very beginning of the book, but then he ascends to Heaven and the disciples have to figure out what to do now. What do we do now? For Bee Creek United Methodist Church, that is the season that we are in right: 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?
Beyond the Book of Acts, I want us to also hold together the beginnings of the Methodist movement in general. What does it mean to be a Methodist? There are all these names of churches out there, you know, unless you go to seminary, a lot of people, it’s like this church is pretty similar to the next church. There’s some ways to differentiate it. The word denomination is kind of icky, but I so take the time to dig into what does it be to be a Methodist and what do we do now. This Sunday, we’re starting at the beginning of the Book of Acts and at the beginning of the Methodist movement with the Oxford Holy Club
Beginning with the Book of Acts, we have this moment where Jesus ascends to heaven and the disciples are left with what to do now. This is the reading that we have for today. And the first thing they have to do with their religious organization is not a worship service. It is not a revival. They don’t ask for money. They fill a committee slot. That is what happens. They fill a committee slot. Judas is off the team, for obvious reasons. They have 12 slots to fill, and they only have 11 people. So there’s two candidates they have to choose between.
I think it’s very interesting on the first level that this is the first thing they do. And it’s not often lifted up. The actual work of governing the church is not very sexy, but this is what scripture tells us to do and shows us to do: we start with bureaucracy, with filling the slots, and then we go from there. The next interesting thing about this passage is that it does not have requirements to be a disciple. Mateus and Barsabbas don’t interview for it. Nobody’s checking out their cv. Nobody’s seeing if they’ve had any experience in business or leadership or finance or the church. They draw lots. Basically they flip a coin to see who it’s going to be. They don’t flip a coin out of apathy or indifference as we might understand it today. The point of leadership in the church is not that it should only go to the most gifted people, but that God is the one who equips the leaders of the church. We can never train enough for what we are faced with in the leadership of the church. Just ask any of our current board members. There are some things that may make it easier or harder, but there’s nothing you can really do that can prepare you for it. God is the one who prepares us. God is the one who equips us. The only requirement in Acts is that it be someone who had been with them the whole time from the beginning. That a disciple not be a new convert to the faith. This is what is asked of those who lead. One thing we should take from this is that all of you are qualified for leadership in the church. The issue of serving the church is not one of certain aptitudes or skills or experiences. All of us are qualified to lead the body of Christ because it is Christ who qualifies us. So if there is a need in the church, to say “I am not qualified” or “I am not gifted,” is an excuse, not a reality. None of us are qualified: only God can prepare us to serve. But we are all able to serve and grow in holiness together.
Holy Club
In 1728, John Wesley was living in the north of England. He was a curate for his father, Samuel Wesley. Samuel Wesley was the rector of Epworth and Wroot. And that means he was appointed to those positions by the bishop and he had the rights to the tithe for the area. The tithe was basically a tax that he would receive. But he also had responsibilities for the church. And Samuel Wesley was a scholar as much as a priest. He was working on an extended Latin commentary of the Book of Job for much of his life. He wanted to spend most of his time doing that. And so he had hired out young Church of England priests to serve as curates, especially in Wroot. After John Wesley finished his Masters, Samuel wanted his son to come closer to home and to serve. At the same time, John was getting frustrated at Oxford. And so he came home. John was still officially a fellow of Lincoln College Oxford, and would return every once in a while, but the rest of the year he stayed in the north of England and served as the curate of Wroot. Now about this time, John’s younger brother, Charles matriculated to Christ Church Oxford from the Westminster School. At first, Oxford was a challenge to the young Charles, very different from life in London, but then he got used to it and got some close friends. He had conversations with his brother every time they went home
John was also eventually asked by the dean of Lincoln College to return and be in residency since he was basically getting paid to be a professor at Oxford, but he wasn’t living in Oxford or teaching in Oxford. So John was returned to Oxford and began to spend more time with Charles. Some of Charles’ friends started sporadically meeting to talk about the Bible and talk about books of divinity and talk about the classics, John had given Charles a reading list before he got to Oxford, of the books he should be reading. And Charles wanted to ask his brother to help him and his friends to read through them. So they started in a disorganized manner to do this. As well, before John became a priest, about four years prior to this, he had started journaling at the recommendation of his father and keeping what was called at the time a commonplace book. And so he wrote down what happened during his day. He wrote down quotes of things he was reading. Eventually it became more of a devotional diary that included temptations that he faced. He also started writing it in code so that nobody could read it and nobody actually could read it until about 50 years ago, when the code was finally broken by my teacher, Richard, Heitzenrater. Journaling became a practice that he recommended to the friends. One of the other young Oxford students, named William Morgan, started going to visit people in prison. And John and Charles liked this idea. It seemed very biblical to them. So they added this to what they were doing. Eventually people started calling it a holy club or a godly club. They didn’t name themselves, they didn’t have a name for it. It was friends gathering together once or twice a week to talk about God and hold each other accountable in those conversations. And over the next two years, not only were they called the Holy Club as an insult, they appropriated it. They said, sure, we’re trying to be holy. Call us the holy club. That’s not gonna hurt us. Oxford was a very snooty place then, as now. And the education requirements meant that a lot of your studies were not only in Greek, ancient Greek and Latin. Most testing included oral recitations in Greek or Latin or oral answers to questions in Greek and Latin. So to actually be in Oxford, you had to know your Greek and Latin fairly well and understand Greek philosophy and, and science. So a lot of people in Oxford understood the different competing medical movements of ancient Greece in a way that we don’t really today. The most famous one was the school of Galen, but there was a competition, around that time, between Galen and a group of people called Methodists. Now, Galen thought that doctors could only come from the best bred people, from the wealthy, basically from the upper crust. And the Methodists thought that anybody could be a doctor if they were trained well, if they followed a method. This was also an insult that was thrown at John and Charles Wesley and their friends. They were called Methodists because they were trying to be holy and they thought anyone could be holy. And this also was a term that began as a term of abuse and then was appropriated. To be a Methodist was to claim that God offers holiness and righteousness to all of us, not just for a select few. That loving God and loving our neighbor has no limit and we should all Seek to love God and love our neighbor in concrete ways. Not just by this generic language of love, but by the actual studying of scriptures, the actual praying together, the actual going to communion. Visiting the imprisoned, visiting widows and orphans, caring for those in need, holding each other accountable to that, not letting it slip or slide. Not letting excuses be used. “Oh, I’m not into that. It’s not easy for me, it’s not a comfortable thing for me.” To the holy club and to the church in acts, it is not about you but what God can do through you. As we move forward in this season, as we discern these questions, may we remember that the questions matter, the questions of structure matter. The questions of who is going to lead matters. But leadership in the church, service in the church, is not limited to select few. Service to God is not limited to just those who have time for it. You are each offered the opportunity of a heart filled with love. That’s not limited. It’s not an extra burden. When your heart is filled with love, that means that the other things in your heart that are not love are displaced and pushed out. Anger, frustration, self-doubt, fear is pushed out by the heart of God. May you receive his love. May you see your inclusion in God’s plan in this state. May you realize that you right now, even if you’re a visitor for the first or second time, have a role to play in what God is doing here and your life will never be the same.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for your love and Grace in giving us the questions: what do we do now? Help us to answer boldly with you as you change our community and world for the better. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.