"Setting the Prisoner Free"
The Legacy of Charles Wesley
Freedom in Christ
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Text: Psalm 150
There can be no doubt that one of the greatest challenges to faith occurs when we encounter illness. It is not only those who believe who have moments of doubt; those who have little or no faith often wonder whether there is a benevolent, loving God when they encounter illness or a crisis in their lives. Part of the reason people are down and dejected when they are ill is physical. Your system can be naturally depressed and your body either shuts down, or fires up to fight the illness. Either way, it can result in an emotional rollercoaster of a physical nature.
When you are struggling with physical illness the body does very strange things. So much so, that you can feel depressed simply because of what is going on physiologically. When ill, many of us turn to medications for help, which often have a depressing effect and quiet down the system. Even though they offer relief, taking them can be very difficult.
But it is not always physical aspects of illness that cause us to be down or question spiritually. Often times, and I have mentioned this before, it is due to guilt. “Why am I ill? What have I done wrong? Is it something that I have left undone? Is it because I have abused my body and have not been a good steward of what God has given me?” There are many different reasons why people feel their illness is brought on by something they have done wrong: by their sin and their guilt.
Other times, it is just inconvenient: all the things we wanted to do, but now our illness prevents us from doing them; all the good that is left undone; all the disappointments because we are ill. Sometimes, it is simply a question. “Where is God when I am sick? Why has God not acted to bring about my healing?” That is why so many of the encounters in the Bible between Jesus and people who are ill deal with those real, existential questions.
There are people in the Bible who, like us when we are ill, question whether Jesus is there for them. There are those who laugh at him and mock him, as in the story from Luke's Gospel. They feel that he doesn't understand. Then there are those who are religious, who point a finger at those who are ill and say, “You must have done something wrong.” When Jesus comes along and heals that person they are completely flummoxed by what he is doing and saying.
On nearly every occasion when Jesus brings about a healing there is this overwhelming sense that someone is set free and the bondages and chains of illness hold to one side. But even if the person dies, there is the assurance that they will live forever. Even the bond of death cannot hold, because of the power of Christ's resurrection, which sets them free. That is why the healing ministry of Jesus was so central to everything that the early church proclaimed. When Peter went out and preached for the first time, he talked about the sick being healed and the dead receiving new life.
All of this leads to what I want to talk about today as we celebrate the 300th anniversary of Charles Wesley's birth. What a lot of people don't know and don't realize is that the works of this prolific hymn-writer emerged from a man who struggled with illness. In this encounter with illness, he wrote many of the greatest hymns of Christendom.
In May of 1738, Charles Wesley took ill with pleurisy. He was already feeling depressed. He and his brother, John, had gone to the United States on a mission, which had failed. For all his great intellect, abilities and studies at Oxford University, for all his passion for the truth of the Gospel and the good of the church, he was really in many ways a failure.
While studying the works of a Moravian called Peter Böhler, he became very ill. On the night of May 21st a group of Christians came and prayed with him. Wesley was at an all time low. He was wondering if he was going to survive - pleurisy killed many people in those days. But as they prayed with him he felt an amazing sense of peace and the presence of God. From that moment on Wesley started getting better. He attributed this to the prayers of his friends, the love of God and that great moment.
What is staggering is that on the first anniversary of his illness, he decided to celebrate his recovery by writing a hymn. The hymn is one of my all-time favourites: O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing Our Great Redeemer's Praise. The illness, struggle and depths he'd experienced culminated in this magnificent song of praise.
I think it is quite uncanny that just a short time after Wesley experienced a moment of overwhelming peace, his more famous brother John, at Aldersgate, had an equally powerful experience in which he was invigorated by the power of God's spirit. In both cases God intervened in their lives to set them free from tradition, to set them free from the past, to set them free from sin, a profound sense of failure, illness and possible death.
What makes Charles Wesley's hymns so magnificent? What is it about this hymn-writer that makes his music a lasting legacy to the glory and the praise of God? I think there are two things. First, he had an awareness of humanity's plight. The religion at the time of Wesley was what I like to call “cold and old.” It was old because even in the light of Reformation, theology had become very dour, dark and severe. It had knocked down many of the idols, but had not built up with much passion. Although it was theologically correct, although it had a profound sense of the Bible at the centre of it and Christ as Lord, it was passionless. It was cold and it was old!
The Anglicanism of his day, the state church of his day, had become moribund. People were leaving it in droves. They were questioning whether they were going to have to sell their buildings. Nobody had a sense of mission and the church itself was, again, cold and old. The people on the street, the poor, those who worked in the mines, labourers, those who were sick and suffering - ordinary, everyday people had no sense of connection with the church anymore. The church had become remote; the church had become cold and dispassionate.
Then, along came the Wesleys. Rather than having a faith that was just predicated on good theology or born within the Anglican tradition, they had a fire in their hearts. They had the passion of the Holy Spirit. They had encountered the depths - particularly Charles - and Christ had lifted them out of those depths.
This last week, I was listening with great interest to an interview on The Current with a man called Morgan Tsvangirai. He is the leader of the opposition party in Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai is, by most accounts I've heard from people who know him, a good man. The problem he and his country are having is that members of the opposition party are being oppressed, tortured, imprisoned and often driven out.
I understand, as any student of history knows, that what Zimbabwe went through in the 60s and the 70s was terrible. We can empathize with the parties that fought for political liberation - the ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) and the ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union) parties and with Robert Mugabe and what they were trying to do in the 70s. The problem is, having brought that political freedom, having released the captives from prison and tyranny, they have forgotten what it was like to be the liberator. They have now become the oppressor.
I have said from this pulpit on more than one occasion that this is a travesty the Commonwealth in particular should address with greater vigour. But what astounded me about Morgan Tsvangirai, and about many of the Christian people who support him right now in the struggle for democracy, is that they understand that political freedom, while important, is not enough in and of itself. The prison of tyranny is not just the prison of party lines, racism or government; sometimes it actually resides in the hearts of people. How easy it is for someone who was one day a liberator to the next day be a tyrant, unless they are set free by the power of the grace of the living God.
Morgan Tsvangirai understands that his people need to be set free. They need to be liberated, not only that democracy might prevail, but also so the people themselves might break free from the prison around them. I would say to you that no one could identify with that more than Charles Wesley. Time and time again Charles Wesley's hymns speak of prisoners being set free. They are not just freed from sin and guilt in that classic, forensic sense of the Reformation; they actually have the hold of sin broken and are released to feel the freedom that is received from Jesus Christ.
O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing lists what the dying receive. There is new life and triumph. Those who are lame - and I love the language - “can leap.” Those who are in bondage can feel like they are prisoners who have been set free. The hopeless poor - and there were so many poor, particularly in the inner cities including London in Wesley's time - receive a feeling of belief. And then, in my favourite line from a verse that is not in our hymn book and should be, Wesley writes about the “hellish crew” (I think they are supporters of Manchester United or something like that!) They are the ones who can turn to the Son of God.
You see, Wesley understood that those who are at the bottom, those who are in need, and those who are imprisoned are set free. Who are they set free by? They are set free by Jesus Christ. And how does Jesus Christ set them free? By his cross and Resurrection. This was the centre of Wesley's faith.
This past summer, Marial and I visited the New England Aquarium in Boston. It is a wonderful place, with a great big spiral that goes up many floors, and the fish swim up through it. I was staggered to find that everything swam in the same direction for the most part. I learned that the sharks in those tanks never grow to their full length. According to marine biologists, a shark will grow to the size of its surroundings.
Wesley understood that human beings are like that. As long as we are in prison by the bondage of sin and guilt, as long as we are in bondage to fear, we don't grow; we don't become what God intended us to be. But once the bonds are released, once we know that in Christ we are free, we become what God originally intended. For the people down in the mines, on the city streets, the lame, the sick, the ill and the outcast, they saw the truth in Wesley's hymns that the woman who encountered Jesus felt when she touched his coat; the truth Jairus' daughter experienced when she encountered Christ: the freedom Christ brings!
Not only did Wesley have a sense of the human condition and a heart that reached out to people in need. He also had a profound sense of praise. I think a lot of this came from his mother, Susannah Annesley. She had somewhere in the region of 18 or 19 children. That might make some of you mothers give pause for a moment! John was the 15th child, and Charles the 18th. When she was on her deathbed with her children gathered around her, she said, “Children, as I am about to be released (listen to her language), sing a psalm of praise to God.” And with that, Susannah Annesley died. She understood the freedom of the Resurrection and a sense of the freedom it brings. But what should it produce? Praise! As what should it manifest itself? Rejoicing! This is what Charles had in his soul. And that is why I chose Psalm 150 - that great psalm that uses the word “praise” 10 times, a full and complete number, to finish the Book of Psalms. And what does the psalmist give praise for? He gives praise for God, but also what God does in God's firmament on earth, in the sanctuary and in heaven.
Wesley picked up that theme of praise. He saw in it the presence of Jesus Christ, and he knew that the hymn, the song, was a powerful way for people to reaffirm the life-giving, liberating power of God. Martin Luther rightly said, “Next to theology, I give thanks and honour to music.” He understood with the same passion as Wesley that praise is the response to the power and grace of God. Thoreau was correct: the moment people get together and sing, there is no longer an “I” and a “Thou.” There is no longer a separation: it is one voice that sings to the glory and grace of God. When we sing, we sing with one voice in praise to God. Whoever we are and whatever the condition of life we may be in, it is our declaration of faith and a statement of what we believe to be true.
There is an incredible story told by a man called Samuel Scull. Horrible name! Many years ago, he moved to Arizona. When he got there, he bought a farm, but he didn't realize that the farm was located right in the path of high winds and terrible storms. They arose from the desert, whipping up hot air and bringing down torrential rain and driving sand. One day, a storm hit his farm. In the middle of the night he heard cracking trees, smashing glass, falling fences, and animals making strange sounds. Finally, near dawn, the storm died down. Scull came out of his farmhouse and saw total devastation. He felt as if God had abandoned him; everything was lost and there was no hope. He looked under the rubble and heard something rustling. Out of the rubble came a bald rooster (with which I soon will be able to identify!) All his plumage had been blown off; he was scraggily and he looked horrible. The rooster climbed the fence and faced east. All of a sudden, the sun began to rise over the decimated farm and this rooster got on top of the fence and began to crow. It was the loudest sound that the rooster ever made in his whole life. Scull said, “This is God at work!” When everything around is destroyed, the cockerel still sings to the new day!
Wesley's hymns are just like that. They cause us to understand that whether we experience poverty, sickness and death, or joy, celebration and peace, it doesn't matter. We praise Christ as those who have been set free. There is only one thing we can do whatever the stage of life we are in: That is to praise and thank God. “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise.” May we do that everyday! Amen.