tfl: The Flatiron Life

This Sunday we sang a hymn that struck me.  The title is “O Church of God, United”.  This hymn proclaims the truth of the One Church and the One Faith.  It also encourages Christians to confidently proclaim the Church, Faith, and Gospel.  Unfortunately, while there is one Church, my church-body, the UMC, seems to have a strangle hold on the copyright for the lyrics, and i cannot find them online.  The next time you are in a UMC I suggest you turn to #547 and give it a read.

This was the Opening Hymn for worship that lead to a Sermon titled “A Family of Acceptance” on the topic of Holy Conferencing.  Holy Conferencing is the principle that lead Wesley to create groupings of Christians below the gathering together for word and sacrament.  He created class meeting and band meetings.  The purpose of these groups were to help shore up the foundation of Christians to help prevent them from backsliding.  This was not more law or special revelation, but it is the pragmatic experience of Wesley on how to bring those given the Faith into the Church United and not have them lost on their own.

Since learning about this concept several years ago, I have thought it was essential to the whole Wesleyan Method that Methodism is supposed to be.  However when Bishops Coke and Asbury landed in Baltimore, they seem to have forgotten this part of the system, and I have never been in a UMC church that practices this in any way, discounting Sunday School.  The Chicago Temple is trying to find ways of bringing this back.  The Tomaws hope to be involved in this, and I hope this will lead to more blogging on the topic.

This all being said, I think it was a fine sermon.  I am still trying to figure out what a sermon is supposed to be.  The Methodist gathered at the Temple on Sunday learned more about Methodism, the liturgy was read, and the Lord’s Supper was served.  Outside of Absolution, I am not sure any non-believers heard about the freely given forgiveness of sins.  This is what my intuition tells me a sermon should be.

Charley Wesley is a well that never runs dry of hymns full of theological meaning. Today, he reminds us how those on Earth and Heaven form a single body of the Church and we, still on Earth, need to be committed join those who have gone before.

Come, Let Us Join Our Friends Above

Come, let us join our friends above, who have obtained the prize,
And on the eagle wings of love to joys celestial rise.
Let saints on earth unite to sing with those to glory gone,
For all the servants of our King in earth and Heaven are one.

One family we dwell in Him, one church above, beneath,
Though now divided by the stream, the narrow stream of death;
One army of the living God, to His command we bow;
Part of His host have crossed the flood, and part are crossing now.

Ten thousand to their endless home this solemn moment fly,
And we are to the margin come, and we expect to die.
His militant embodied host, with wishful looks we stand,
And long to see that happy coast, and reach the heavenly land.

Our old companions in distress we haste again to see,
And eager long for our release, and full felicity:
Even now by faith we join our hands with those that went before;
And greet the blood besprinkled bands on the eternal shore.

Our spirits too shall quickly join, like theirs with glory crowned,
And shout to see our Captain’s sign, to hear His trumpet sound.
O that we now might grasp our Guide! O that the word were given!
Come, Lord of Hosts, the waves divide, and land us all in Heaven.

The bold stanza gave Jos and I a double take with “the blood besprinkled bands.”