We’re low-church Protestants for the most part and so we don’t ‘do saints.’ But we can (and should) learn from people who are admirable examples, who, despite human failings, revealed God’s saving love with vivid clarity.
John and Charles Wesley were those kinds of people and their lives are commemorated liturgically on March 3rd in the Anglican tradition. These brothers (the 15th and 18th children born to their parents!) were both scholars trained at Oxford and priests who served in the Anglican Church as missionaries, pastors, teachers, evangelists and hymn writers.
Not long after they were ordained, they each experienced their faith in a heart-felt, passionate way that transcended their previous experience of faith. This warm-hearted faith impelled them to go beyond the bounds of the church building to minister to the poor and the forgotten. If the working peasantry wasn’t coming to church, the Wesley brothers would preach in the fields or in the streets. They would write hymns that used the tunes of drinking songs so that the words might find a way home into the hearts of their hearers.
Their concern for those outside the traditional culture of the church led them to become fierce advocates for social reforms, opposing child labor and advocating for the rights of workers and women – those who were not important within the 18th century British caste system.
When the Gospel gets lodged deeply within us it doesn’t merely make us pious. As we are drawn close to God, we are also drawn out of our selfishness to help others. God isn’t content to only change hearts; God changes hearts so that we might change the world to reflect the vision of the Kingdom that Jesus shared.
Prayer: Lord God, you inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls and endowed them with eloquence in speech and song: Kindle such fervor in your church, we entreat you, that those whose faith has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
(The prayer is a traditional Anglican collect for the day, found in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. United States: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2006.)