What Does the Lord Require of You?
When the Methodist Movement began in the mid-eighteenth century, it grew pretty quickly. I’ve mentioned before that the early Methodists didn’t start churches, but began by starting class meetings and societies. Small, local groups of Methodists would gather to pray, study, eat, fast, and perform works of mercy together. They were intentionally small, so that each person knew each person, and so that no one could fall through the cracks. When someone was absent from a class meeting, the class leader would follow up with them, making sure that nothing was wrong. Or, perhaps more accurately, making sure that something was wrong, as there was a limited number of unexcused absences that you could accrue before getting kicked out. Members met at least weekly, and would check in on one another throughout the week. It was at these meetings that the leader would get up and start by asking everyone “how is it with your soul today” and “what sins have you committed this week?” Not as a means of public shaming, but to hold one another accountable in love. It was a way of being the church that was built on trust, on intimacy, and on mutual accountability. It was a way of being the church that coupled personal spiritual growth with social action, and that stated unapologetically that one cannot walk as Christ walked if one is going to walk alone.
This way of being, this means of living out the faith which is a gift from God, was effective. These classes grew and grew and kept growing. The original model was for classes to split once they reached a certain size. If a class grew larger than about a dozen, it was supposed to break into two smaller groups. Methodist class members were still expected to attend worship in a Church of England parish, so that they could receive the sacraments and engage in worship and practice the liturgy. Over time, though, this whole splitting thing got less popular, and classes began to grow and grow until they had enough people and resources to buy or build a building and start their own “church,” in the sense that we would imagine a church. That’s why you can still find Methodist churches clustered together, so there’s one every five or ten miles in some rural areas, and at one point the bigger cities had a church in just about every neighborhood. This model of intimate accountability morphed into lively, top-down Sunday School systems with superintendents and professional teachers. Pastors, associate pastors, and lay ministers began to replace lay people as leaders of classes and communities. Public worship became the sole focus of many of these churches, and that intimate accountability, that lay-led operation, began to fade. It still exists, and don’t get me wrong, here at Fairport it can get difficult to keep track of how many small groups and classes we have going at any given time. But, by and large, we’ve become disconnected and less accountable.
We could get into all the reasons for that disconnection, both within the church and outside of it. I’m just waiting for a lectionary text to come up that would give me a good excuse to talk about the rise of car-centric infrastructure and the decline of Mainline Protestant denominations. It’s not just a COVID thing, it’s not just a social media thing or a smartphone thing. There has been a decline in our intentional means of organizing ourselves for the work to which God has called us, and is currently calling us. Did you know that that’s what liturgy means? It means the “work of the people.” Liturgy, the parts of the worship service that we participate in each week, that is the work of the people. I try to use plenty of liturgy so that you all have a lot of work to do. Each Sunday, we all get together and do work. All of us, not just those who get paid to be here. But this work ought not be confined to Sunday morning, and I know for many here, that work is not confined to Sunday morning. The work of gathering in community, the work of holding one another accountable in love, the work of practicing our faith in ways that are meaningful to us, the work of practicing mercy and building a more just world—that is our liturgy. That is the work of the people. Led not by me alone, nor by a few. Led by those in this community who hear God’s call to carry out that work, and to hold others accountable to sharing in that call, sharing in that labor.
This is the message issued by the prophet Micah. The prophet Micah, who we heard this morning pass along a summons—not to follow Jesus, but to show up to court. We see in this passage the prophet Micah challenging the people of Israel to present their case before God, so that God can argue Their case as well. God’s question for the people? Why aren’t you doing the work to which I have called you? Why aren’t you doing the things that I have asked you to do, the things that you know good and well that I expect from you, that you ought to be doing? And the response of the people? They ask God to repeat the assignment. And God does, phrasing it nice and simple so that no one can misunderstand: Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly With God. This is the work of the people. Not only to do the things that we associate with worship in the traditional sense, but to carry out the work of the people. This is our call. This is God holding us accountable through the prophet. How will we respond? Will we do the work? Will we hold one another to it, in love? This is who we are, this is at the core of our DNA as a community of faith. We gather. We care for one another. We do the work, and we make sure that others join us on the way. Through our Sunday School, through our Beyond These Walls and Sunday Dinner Ministries, through Adult Forum and Amplify the Light and Tuesday Small Group and UWF and UMM. We are called to be a community that gathers, that cares for one another, that does the work and holds one another accountable in love. May we do so, this day and all days. Amen.