Dinner Church

More Vile

On February 17 1739 the world changed forever. A young evangelist named George Whitefield had just returned from the British Colonies, and found out shortly that he was banned from preaching anywhere in his hometown of London.

England at the time was dominated by the official state church, and because of George’s rather radical stance towards evangelism — he was no longer welcome to preach in the pulpits of the Church of England.

So George made his way to Bristol, a blossoming port city that was experiencing exponential growth as trade with “the new world” flourished. It was a coal mining town, known for being rough around the edges, which was a reputation that would also flourish. Bristol soon became the epicenter for poverty, alcoholism, and debauchery within the United Kingdom.

George found refuge in Bristol and also found purpose there. Though he was formally banned from mounting a pulpit within a church, he realized soon that the people that most needed to hear the message of salvation were not people he would run into if he were to preach from one anyway.

And so, on February 17 1739 he preached in an open field to about 200 coal miners. Within three weeks the crowd had grown to 10,000.

10,000. That’s astronomical. Not to mention that it was unprecedented. It was not kosher for preachers to bring the preaching of God’s word out into the world in this way. There was a very proper way of doing the work of God. It was to be done inside of a church, with the appropriate amount of pomp and circumstance. The proper attire was to be worn, the hymns sung just right — preaching in a field, worshiping in a field with coal miners wearing their coal mining gear was not something that anyone in their right mind would deem appropriate.

And yet, this illegitimate preacher was doing it. And the people came in droves. And it was only a matter of time before George realized that he needed help. So he sent for his friend and mentor, an Anglican priest back in London who had a penchant for trouble himself.

On March 31 John Wesley arrived in Bristol, quite torn between the tradition of the church that he served and the prospect of what his friend George had been pioneering. After reading and studying Jesus’s famous “sermon on the mount” John made a difficult decision, a decision that would change Bristol and would eventually change the shape of Christianity forever.

He writes in his journal dated April 2 1739 these words:

at four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people. The Scripture on which I spoke was this … “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord”

John then began to organize the people into societies, classes, and bands — his preferred method of discipleship — and the Methodist Revival began. The world has never been the same because of it. From the beginning it was a movement largely for and among the poor, those whom “gentlemen”and “ladies” looked on simply as part of the machinery of the new industrial system. The Wesleys preached, the crowds responded, and Methodism as a mass movement was born. We sit here today because of it.

Isn’t that wild. We are sitting in this church, adorned with stained glass and elegance because some dude nearly 300 years ago got banned from preaching in a church adorned with stained glass and elegance. So he mounted up in a field, preached to the poor and recruited a suspicious friend to come try it out. Peer pressure changes the world sometimes.

But we all know that something much deeper than peer pressure was happening. The Spirit of God was afoot during an act of worship, and though quite unorthodox in practice, the result was God’s unfathomable movement amongst God’s people. The world learned a lesson: Worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth as John’s Gospel instructs us is not dependent on four walls. Worshiping God in Spirit and in Truth is only dependent on a heart oriented toward service, and occasionally a willingness to submit to being “more vile.”

Painting with Ointment

George Whitfield and John Wesley weren’t the first folks to preach and teach in unorthodox ways. Jesus himself was quite satisfied to teach from anywhere the people were. But sometimes using Jesus as the example of how we should do things isn’t the best. Not because it isn’t true, but because Jesus is Jesus and Jesus is allowed to do whatever he wants.

I think that it’s important to look at the ways that Jesus’s followers lived and acted sometimes as well. And in John’s Gospel we get a really wonderful look at an unorthodox worship experience.

Now Jesus was in the town of Bethany, just after he had raised a man named Lazarus from the grave. Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha, had called on Jesus when their brother was sick and Jesus hadn’t made it there in time to heal him before he died. But Jesus raised him from the dead. And immediately after that the religious leaders decided that it was time for Jesus to die. So they began to plot against him. And then we get a curious story in John chapter 12.

John 12:1–8 (NRSV)

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

There is a lot going on here in this passage, but what I really want us to focus on today is dichotomy that is created here between Mary and Judas.

Judas, you may already know about. If you don’t, the spoiler alert is right there in the text. Judas is the disciple who is going to betray Jesus. Remember that I said that right before this interaction the religious leaders were formulating a plot to kill Jesus. Judas is going to be an instrumental piece of that puzzle, he will accept a payment of 30 pieces of silver for turning Jesus over to the authorities in less than a week from this interaction. And John wants you to know this as he proves his point.

So just keep all of that in mind. Now, Jesus and the disciples are at Mary and Martha’s house, presumably because they are throwing a dinner for him in response to the miraculous thing that Jesus has done — raising their dear brother Lazarus from the dead.

So they are having dinner, gathered as a community, and in that setting Mary kneels down and in a strange act offers a very expensive gift to Jesus — a very rare perfume — and then continues to use it to wash Jesus’s feet — using her hair to wipe the oil.

It’s very odd. And kind of gross. And I’m pretty sure its not just odd and gross in our modern context. I think 2000 years ago that this was odd and gross as well for most who would look at it from the outside.

But when we look at this act from the inside, especially knowing two things that will soon occur, I believe that we see that its a beautiful act of worship. In less than one week Jesus would enter into Jerusalem as a king, and a week later would be killed and laid in a tomb, where his body would be anointed.

Mary, whether she realizes it or not, is pointing to this reality as she serves Jesus. In doing so, she is engaging in an act of worship that recognizes the power that Jesus has and the love that he has shown for her and her family.

It is that same power and love that we recognize in our worship today. We acknowledge the power of Jesus over the grave and his ability to bring new life to human beings. We recognize the love that he has for the world through the cross and how that love has been made evident in our lives through our living testimony.

So in this ordinary place, around a dinner table, Mary lays it all out on the line and worships the living God… unashamed at how odd and gross it might seem.

And it doesn’t go without being chastised. Judas, the one who would betray Jesus, the one who was the group treasurer, throws up his objection. “We could have sold that! She wasted it! We could have served the poor!” Honestly its a noble sentiment, but we know that that wasn’t Judas’s real motive. We don’t know at what point Judas turned against Jesus… I personally like to think that it wasn’t until much later on. Likely around this time.

But at some point, Judas’s heart was turned against Jesus and towards himself. And Jesus for sure knew the moment it happened. He could read people’s hearts. But Jesus kept him around until the very end. And that should give us a bit of pause as we tend to go down the “demonize Judas” road over the next several weeks. Judas was still seen by Jesus as beloved. In fact beloved enough that on the night before the cross Jesus washed Judas’s feet around a dinner table.

But that’s a bit of a side note. The real thing that we need to look at here is what’s going on inside of Judas. There is a self centered disdain towards the way that Mary is treating Jesus, perhaps towards what could have been a lucrative profit margin made on some perfume (which Judas could maybe skim some from the top of).

When we contrast that with what is happening inside of Mary, which is a deep selfless desire to show love and affection towards the Lord, we begin to see what the Gospel writer is really trying to teach us.

One attitude, though on the surface is valiant, will eventually lead to the destruction of Jesus’s flock, while Mary’s attitude characterizes the life of love that Jesus’s people are called to model.

And this is a lesson that continues into our own time. This was the same tension of attitudes that made preaching in a field to coal miners and port workers in Bristol England such a scandalous thing to do.

But here’s the fact of the matter. The early church, those who were left to do the work of Jesus after his death, they had no choice but to worship in unconventional places — around dinner tables and in courtyards. They didn’t have any buildings. And the result was a movement that took the known world by storm.

The result of George Whitfield and John Wesley’s vile field preaching was the Methodist revival that we still experience the legacy of today.

More Vile Remixed

So we are left with some questions to ask ourselves. And the first is this: When I take an honest look in the mirror… who’s reflection do I see most — Mary or Judas. Because oh boy are we quick to hit Judas with a stick — but I think that we all know that a lot more of Judas lives in us than we care to admit.

But when we look at our lives, and our relationship to the worship of God, do we really resemble that reckless abandon that Mary showed Jesus? Or are we chained to the common sense type of institutional rigidity that we have come to know and love? And it’s ok to have a dose of both. The institution isn’t bad, it’s the backbone that allows us to go out and be a bit vile ourselves as we seek to find new ways to connect the church to the world.

We do need to feed that sense of wonder and awe at what God can do both inside and outside of the walls of the church through the act of worship. I believe that the future of the church is a bit wild. That it takes place not only in beautifully adorned sanctuaries but also around tables in burrito joints, libraries, marinas, breweries, across the street in front of a mobile shower unit, and anywhere that people gather.

People are hungry for the Spirit and the Truth of God. They just don’t always know it. I don’t know that those coal miners knew what they were looking for in the fields outside of Bristol. But when a few people brought them the word of God the world changed.

And so as you ruminate on this I want to leave you with these words of Jesus, a commission that he gave before his ascension into heaven in Acts 1:8

Acts 1:8 (NRSV)

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

and these from Matthew 28:19-20

Matthew 28:19–20 (NRSV)

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

How will you bring a spirit of worship into the spaces that you naturally inhabit? How will you participate in the call of Jesus and the Legacy of our faith to be the church in the wild? To go out into the ashes of this world and help to paint a beautiful new future?