Posts by Bob Rhodes

Introduction We continue our Wesleyan Vile-tality series, and have followed the history of the people called Methodist. As the movement they built grew into an institution, more than once, the people lost their nerve. This week we turn to the ones who worked prophetically from within, refusing to leave and refusing to behave. They formed communities of accountability and care, and kept asking one plain and profound question: How is it with your soul? In the face of ridicule, the prophet Jeremiah…

Introduction Our series has followed the people called Methodist from the prisons of Oxford to the open fields of Bristol, wherever respectable religion had drawn a line and decided who was worth its time. As the movement grew into an institution, it began to prize its reputation, its membership rolls, and its standing in polite society. Again and again, when faithfulness and respectability seemed in opposition, the Methodists chose respectability. We built beautiful churches and even growing churches, and we…

Introduction This week our series follows the Methodist movement out of the church and into the open air. After Wesley preached in the fields of Bristol in 1739, going beyond the walls became a pattern. He and the people called Methodist visited the imprisoned, welcomed laborers and outcasts, placed women in leadership, and called slavery the evil it was. Respectable religion had already decided who was worth its time, and Wesley continued his “enthusiasm” and kept pushing further, toward those…

Introduction As we continue our Wesleyan Vile-tality series, we go back to the years before Bristol, when Wesley and a small group of Oxford students spent most of their time in the prisons of Oxford, among people the rest of the city preferred to forget. They called themselves the Holy Club. Others called them Bible Moths, Sacramentarians, and eventually, Methodists. This last word first appeared in print because of the stir they caused. In our text this week, Luke frames Jesus’ mission…

Introduction This Sunday is Pentecost, and it’s also the beginning of a new six-week series: Wesleyan Vile-tality. The series takes its name from Dr. Ashley Boggan’s book, which asks what it would look like for The United Methodist Church to reclaim its original identity as a movement of people willing to go where they weren’t supposed to go and say what they weren’t supposed to say. The title comes from John Wesley’s journal entry of April 2, 1739, when he “submitted…

Introduction This is the final week of our post-Easter series Reckless Love. Over the past five weeks, we have explored what it means to begin with love, expand the circle, love lavishly and openheartedly, and value the vulnerable. Along the way, our understanding of what love requires has widened. This week, we consider these core questions that undergird the entire series: whose examples are we following, and what does it look like to follow them with our whole lives? In John…

Introduction As we near the end of our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we arrive at a question that has been building for weeks: what do we do with the people we’d rather avoid? We’ve explored what it means to begin with love, expand the circle, give lavishly, and love openheartedly. This week, we are called to go further, toward the people our communities have written off. In Mark 5, Jesus crosses into Gentile territory and encounters a man living among the…

Introduction As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we turn to John 4, where Jesus walks his disciples straight through Samaria, a region most Jewish travelers went out of their way to avoid. He sits down at a well, starts a conversation with a woman no one of his day would bother to speak to, and when the Samaritans invite him to stay, he stays for two days. Paul, in his letter to the church in Corinth, might call this…

Introduction As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we turn to Psalm 103 and Luke 6. The psalmist remembers a God who forgives, heals, redeems, and crowns with steadfast love. God does all of this, the psalmist says, because “he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust.” Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies, give without expecting anything back, and be merciful as God is merciful. This goes well past the point where most of…

Introduction As we continue our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we return to a central question from our source book: who exactly is our neighbor? Last week we explored what it means to begin with love. This week we ask who that love is actually for, and whether the answer is as broad as Jesus seems to intend. In this week’s reading, we follow Jesus from the shores of Gennesaret to the home of a tax collector, and the pattern of who he chooses…

Introduction As we begin our post-Easter series Reckless Love, we open with a question central to our Judeo-Christian faith: of all the commandments, which one comes first? Most Christians remember Jesus’ response when asked in the synoptic Gospels, and perhaps we might consider that we’re a bit too familiar with what Jesus says. Perhaps we’ve been looking at it backwards. This Sunday, we take that backwards look seriously. Reading from Mark 12 and Galatians 5, we ask what it means…

Introduction As we come to the final week of our Lenten series The Last Supper: Conversations That Led to the Cross, our journey reaches the table it’s been heading toward all along. Over the past five weeks, we’ve watched Jesus tell stories about a God who scatters seed recklessly, who keeps sending servants into the streets with invitations, who throws a party before an apology is finished, who sees those lying outside our gates, and who sends a beloved son…