Pathways through Lent

This week we celebrate the feast of Charles and John Wesley. You might be wondering what we in the meet, right, and proper Episcopal Church are doing commemorating the founders of Methodism. While now most commonly associated with the Methodist Church, the brothers Wesley were life-long Anglicans whose mission was to breathe God’s life, fire, and grace into an Anglican Church that had grown stuffy and staid. These passionate reformers preached a Gospel of grace freely given, grace that enflames hearts and transforms lives.

During Lent, we can turn to the Wesleys for a reminder that faith isn’t a waiting game. God loves us freely so that we might freely act in love—now. Today. As Charles Wesley penned in one of the twenty of his hymns found in our hymnal: In Christ your head, you then shall know, shall feel your sins forgiven. Anticipate your heaven below, and own that love is heaven!

As we journey through Lent, let us heed Wesley’s invitation—God is acting in the here and now. Heaven isn’t some far off dream beyond the clouds; it is God’s love acting in our lives today.

Lord God, you inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls and endowed them with eloquence in speech and song: Kindle such fervor in your Church, we entreat you, that those whose faith has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

— Collect for the feast of John and Charles Wesley

Clayton McCleskey
Pathways Editor

Links to the appointed readings for today:

• 2 Kings 5:1–15b

• Luke 4:23–30

• Psalm 42:1–7