TWO KINDS OF DISCIPLINE [R, 10-17-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—TWO KINDS OF DISCIPLINE [R, 10-17-24]

 

 

I am not a very good Methodist. That is an embarrassing confession for one who spent sixty years as a Methodist preacher-theologian and gets his pension because of the contributions of Methodist lay people over the years. But I was just never very Methodistic.

Methodists got the name, of course, because John and Charles Wesley, and their fellow students in “The Holy Club” at Oxford University, were deridingly called Methodists, because of their methodical way of trying to follow Jesus, to live out the Good News.

They wanted to be sure they didn’t omit any part of living the Jesus way, so they designated regular times to meet for worship and prayer and Bible study and soul examination, for practicing the personal holiness, Gospel. They designated times each week for practicing the social Gospel, as well--to visit the sick, visit the prisons, feed the hungry.

I was in favor of all those things. I gladly sang both “Take Time To Be Holy” and “Are Ye Able?” But I was really more inclined to “Every Time I Feel the Spirit…” I was glad to follow the Spirit in the ways of personal or social holiness, in that irregular way the Spirit operates, but I didn’t have the patience or inclination to abide by The Discipline, the big rule book of the way all things Methodist should be organized and done, I was not a methodical Christian.

I admired the people who were. I thought it would be a great comfort to keep the good rules, to know that I wasn’t leaving out any part of being a Christian. I certainly tried. Quite often I would go to some assembly or retreat where a motivational speaker would talk about how their life had been changed by learning a few simple rules, and that I could have a renewed life, too, by buying their book and following the rules. I loved the fellow feeling of a retreat. I loved buying books.

I would go away, determined to follow the new set of rules from my new book. Occasionally, my determination would last a long time, like three days. Usually I was done in one. The need of some parishioner or child or friend would upset my new schedule. I always kept the book, though, as a reminder to the unseen jury of methodical people that I really did intend to rejoin them some time…

My late, great friend and cancer guru, Rosemary Shepherd, was a good Methodist. When cancer hit, though, she thought she needed a reset. “I just need to schedule in more serendipity,” she declared. She was such a good Methodist she couldn’t even be serendipitous without a method.

That’s kind of the point here. Rosemary and I were best friends, and I was also her pastor. She was often my pastor, even though she was actually The Regional Superintendent of Schools. But even though she was a good Methodist and I was a bad one, we lived out the Christian life together.

If you live life like it’s a string of beads, that’s okay. If you live it like it’s a handful of confetti, that’s okay, too. If we just hold hands, bad Methodists like me can pull the good Methodists out of the house of discipline when it starts going up in flames, and the good Methodists can pull folks like me back into the bucket line. Together, we can douse the fire.

John Robert McFarland

And if you’re not any kind of Methodist… well, you’re okay.