Walls Closing In

Children’s Sermon

Old Country Song, “Hello Walls,” written by Texas’ own Willie Nelson. “Hello walls, how’d things go for you today? Don’t you miss her since she up and walked away? And I’ll bet you dread to spend another lonely night with me but lonely walls, I’ll keep you company.” Solitude, isolation, loneliness can feel like walls closing in…You know, in my day, you might say we only had four walls to worry about. I don’t know how, but it sure seems kids these days have more walls to contend with. Social media walls, wokeness walls, people who see nothing at all wrong with the country and people who see nothing at all right.

Solitude and isolation are more dangerous than ever. That’s why it’s important you put your your armor, your shield…the most powerful armor/shield you have are Jesus and the Holy Spirit. No wall can crush them. And, gathering with others who confess Jesus as Lord helps a great deal too. Together, nothing can crush us. You should look to Jesus always…but always remember during those times when it feels like you’re about to be crushed, you won’t be. Speak, silently pray, plead, beg, scream to Jesus…He’s there.

Scripture

Proverbs 18:1 - Those who isolate themselves seek their own desires; they rage against all wise behavior.

Engage

Today is part one of a two part sermon series on early Methodism. How did it grow so fast? How did it have such an impact? As I was thinking about all this and the situation in England while it happened, it occurred to me that many people in the world felt as though walls were closing in on them. Some of you might remember the trash compactor scene in Episode 4 of Star Wars, the first movie released in ‘77…Luke, Leia, Chewie, Han escape into what they don’t realize is a trash compactor…and it starts compacting, slowly. Much of the world must’ve felt that way in the mid and late 1700s. As of matter of fact, some call this period in history the Age of Revolutions…the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Irish Revolt, etc, etc...

So, I named this series The Walls. The world likes to close walls in, the gospel blows walls out...

Now, I’d already named the series when I had a moment of serendipity. My AP English teacher my senior year of high school loved to talk about serendipities. In fact, he asked us to bring them to him when we discovered them…Serendipity is loosely defined as finding fortune or pleasure in an unexpected place.

Anyway, after naming the series I remembered that one of my favorite albums of all time is called The Wall by the band Pink Floyd. It truly is a masterpiece. It’s dystopian in a sense…the main architect of it, Roger Waters, lost his dad at 5 months old to WW2, and certainly is an astute observer of the world. It also occurred to me that the message of the wall might have some correlation to the Methodist movement and the walls it broke down…I searched for how others interpreted the message of The Wall album and found one writer who said, “Solitude can construct indestructible walls - that’s Pink Floyd’s ultimate message in their album The Wall.”

Solitude does indeed have dark power, friends. And the Methodist movement came along and provided an outlet from it…and, likely, saved England from facing the horrors of an awful revolution.

Encounter

England was divided pretty deeply. Some supported the monarchy, some didn’t. The wealth of the country was held by relatively few hands compared to the population. Disease, poverty, and oppression were quite common. Of course their world was different from ours in a bunch of ways…but I think our times have more in common with theirs than we might realize. Division is division, what the divisions are over doesn’t matter as much as the divisions themselves. England had been made up of a hodgepodge of sorts…different backgrounds. It was perhaps the melting pot of the world at the time before America really got going. People were so used to dividing one another by race, status, wealth, education level, that solitude was gaining great ground. Much like today. Our age is information soaked and intimacy starved. Roads, train tracks, buildings, asphalt, fences, garage doors, gates, signs…they often serve to divide us. Not that they’re bad in an of themselves but they can help lead us into further isolation.

Friends, solitude squeezes like walls closing in.

So how did a short, skinny, Anglican preacher who’d failed as a missionary with an eccentric father and a remarkable mother enter the scene? It started with George Whitfield. George was a dynamic preacher who had taken to preaching outdoors. He was having remarkable success with it. He was preaching to large crowds sometimes numbering as many as 20,000. Meanwhile, John and Charles Wesley, without a parish, were having trouble finding preaching gigs within churches because their message was too orthodox and evangelical.

John wasn’t crazy about the idea of field preaching outdoors. He didn’t like the dangers associated with it and, frankly, it was pretty bold for a Church of England preacher. But, he couldn’t deny the success it was having. And he couldn’t deny it was his divine duty. So, somewhat like Jonah but without the fish, he followed the Spirit. He first preached outdoors in 1739. He and Charles set out to preach to as many parts of London, and then England, as they could.

I’ll bet some of you are like me. I’m prone to paralysis by analysis. In other words, the unknowns when planning something, the what if’s, can paralyze me. As John Groth and I were wrestling the blowup screen and setup the other day, I thought, what have I gotten myself into? What about this? What about that? What about the weather? What about the sound? What are we going to serve? On, and on, and on...Thoughts flew across my mind, probably evil in origin, about simply abandoning the whole idea. But I didn’t. John Wesley may have experienced that at times in his life, but not this time. He didn’t overplan, he didn’t get paralysis by analysis. He admits that they started with a few orthodox goals and “no previous design at all, but everything arose just as the occasion offered.” In a way, that’s what we’re doing with The Chosen. I know it’s great, I know we want to share it, I know it powerfully portrays the person of Jesus…we’re starting there.

In other words, he just started doing it. Practicing. Paying attention. Learning from successes and failures…and, seeing the unmistakable hand of God in all of it. There’s no sin in trying, failing, and learning. There is sin in never trying in the first place.

Whitfield and Wesley started out with similar styles, but something ultimately separated them and their impact on history…more about that next week.

Solitude squeezes like walls closing in. The Wesleyan way, in a manner of speaking, is a terrific response to solitude. John Wesley is the source, the creator of Wesleyan classes, life groups, share groups, small groups…they go by many names but their impact sustains. More about that next week as well.

Empower

We humans often lean toward one or the other of two extremes…Either we think most everyone is better than us or we think most everyone is worse than us. The truth is, though there are individual exceptions of course, we’re all remarkably similar. The materially rich are poor in some things and the materially poor are rich in some things. Satan wants us divided, isolated. Are we going to let ourselves move that direction?

Story of someone finding the value of moving from isolation to sharing? Prison and kairos community....prayer and share