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Dear Centenary Family,
I hope you will look through this week’s newsletter and see the opportunities for gathering together for fellowship and spiritual growth. Our class on Being United Methodist Christians has had 17 participants in our Sunday morning and online gatherings. If you’re interested about understanding more about your own faith and what Christianity looks like from a United Methodist perspective, I hope you’ll consider joining us for one of these meetings on Sunday morning or Thursday night. Even if you can’t come to all the sessions, you are welcome to join in when you can. There’s a movie night and a trip to Gordonsville that would be great opportunities for fellowship as well as opportunities to invite a friend to join you.
As we’ve begun reviewing some of the basics of our version of the Christian faith, I’ve been reconsidering the centrality of God’s grace in our Wesleyan heritage. We believe the gift of God’s salvation is offered to all people. That might not sound radical to you, but in Wesley’s day, that position stood in contrast to the Calvinists who taught that salvation was only for an elect few. Wesley also taught that we experience God’s grace in three distinct forms. He called these prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.
I’ve been thinking a lot about prevenient grace. It’s a strange way of speaking, I realize. But it simply means, “the grace that goes before.” It is the grace of God operative in our lives from birth. It is the grace, presence, guidance, and power of God throughout all the ups and downs, disappointments and triumphs of our lives. Prevenient grace prepares us for a life-changing encounter with God in which we claim the gift of God’s forgiveness and start on a new path toward becoming more like Christ, growing daily in our capacity to love God and neighbor. (That’s what Wesley called sanctifying grace).
The important thing about prevenient grace, and justifying or sanctifying grace for that matter, is that we believe that God gives us freedom to resist that offer of grace. Even in our resistance, however, God’s grace does not cease flowing to us, wooing us, sustaining and protecting us. If you take a few moments and review your life, perhaps you can point to places and times where God was working for your good, even through experiences that seemed at the time to be heartbreaking, disappointing, or confusing.
The Gospel reading this week is Matthew 22:1-14. It’s about God’s offer of grace and God’s persistent invitation to open ourselves to receive God’s invitation to be part of God’s family. This text has beautiful imagery—a king inviting his friends to a wedding feast for his son. But there’s a dark side to God’s grace depicted in this text that I am struggling with. For whatever reason, those closest to the King reject the invitation.
Not only do they reject the invitation, they do unspeakable things to the messengers who bear the King’s invitation.
I’ve been wondering, “What happens when we as individuals or a community persistently reject God’s grace?” It is not hard to look around the world see what it looks like when people refuse to come to the banquet God has provided. It looks like war in Ukraine, terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel, endless cycles of violence we cannot seem to end. That is a bleak and sobering reality. You can read the United Methodist Council of Bishops statement regarding this latest violence below.
But the good news in this passage, is that God will keep on inviting not just a few select people, but all people. And one day, we believe that finally everyone will say, yes, come home and join the party! Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, you’re invited!
Peace,
Matt
United Methodist Council of Bishops Statement on Middle East Violence
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