Wesley's Sermon 15: The Great Assize

[This is part of the Getting to Know John series on John Wesley's Sermons. Click here to see the other posts.]

Since I had no idea what the word "assize" meant before reading this sermon, I'll quickly put the definition out there: it was a court in each county in England that administered criminal and civil law. I have to mention the correct meaning so quickly to keep your mind from wandering into potential parodies of what a sermon with such a title could possibly be about. (Even though I've done so, I'm sure that friends of mine like Robert, Barry, or m.coy will will still be able to come up with some entertaining options.)

Needless to say, we wouldn't give this sermon this title today, but would probably name it "The Great Judgment." But then, regardless of the title, the likelihood of any of us writing this sermon in our time is pretty small. It focuses on God's judgment, "the day of the Lord," when after the general resurrection, Christ will sit in judgment over all people. This simply isn't a topic I've often (if ever) heard preached.

One thing about this sermon that catches my attention is that despite the teachings of Jesus and the rest of Scripture regarding the judgment, many of us (particularly us Protestants) have somehow come up with a doctrine like this: because of salvation by faith, there will be no judgment based on works.

But really? Did Jesus ever say anything to indicate that? Or, since I'm talking about my fellow Protestants, did Paul? Paul certainly says that in Christ we will not be condemned at this judgment, but he never indicates that the judgment itself won't happen. (See Scripture Plaques You Won't Find at the Christian Bookstore, #11). And what kind of interpretation is needed for teachings of Jesus like Matthew 25:31-46, for us to give up thinking what Wesley obviously thought, that we should always have in our mind that this kind of judgment awaits us?

Summary: Wesley gave this sermon to a crowd at the legal proceedings (assizes) on May 10, 1758. He begins by pointing out how judgments benefit society, and says that as helpful as those proceedings were, a much greater judgment was coming when Christ would judge the world. He then summarizes some of the prophecies of scripture about what signs would take place before "the day of the Lord," describes what the judgment itself will be like, and then discusses the revealing of the new creation after the judgment.

For further reading: You can download my ePub file of the original text of the sermon. (The sermon text is also available online here.) Or, just check out my outline of the sermon.

An accompanying Wesleyan hymn:

From the 1889 Methodist Hymnal: #55 by Charles Wesley

1 THOU Judge of quick and dead, Before whose bar severe, With holy joy, or guilty dread, We all shall soon appear; Our cautioned souls prepare For that tremendous day, And fill us now with watchful care, And stir us up to pray:

2 To pray, and wait the hour, That awful hour unknown, When, robed in majesty and power, Thou shalt from heaven come down The immortal Son of man, To judge the human race, With all thy Father's dazzling train, With all thy glorious grace.

3 To damp our earthly joys, To increase our gracious fears, For ever let the archangel's voice Be sounding in our ears; The solemn midnight cry, "Ye dead, the Judge is come, Arise, and meet him in the sky, And meet your instant doom!"

4 O may we thus be found Obedient to his word, Attentive to the trumpet's sound, And looking for our Lord! O may we thus ensure A lot among the blest; And watch a moment to secure An everlasting rest!

FUN

(This is the fourth post on the life of Chester Tyra. See also the other posts: The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day, Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it, My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too, and What Made Him Who He Was) I've already written about Chester's generosity and hospitality, and any list of words about his life would be incomplete without including joy and fun. He knew that fun was good, and in having a lot of it, his joy became contagious into the lives around him. Everyone who knew him likely has some story to tell of having fun with him, particularly if they were kids. His daughter told me about a time when she was young and they were visiting their their cousins in East Texas during the winter. They got some very rare snow, and the kids were thrilled. (Now don’t try this at home, but) Chester went to the hardware store and bought a ladder, nailed a piece of lumber into it to hold it together, tied it to the back of his car and drove the kids around town “sleighing” on the snow. She said they had so much fun... The strongest cousin had to sit in front so that any time Chester hit the brakes they could put their feet on the bumper and prevent the whole crew from sleighing right under the car. It left bruises, but it was fun.

Much of our fun with him happened in two places: the back yard of his house, or in church. Our times in his back yard at his swimming pool were a kid's dream: a diving board, toys to play with, and he even had a dome that went over the top so that we could still swim when the weather was cool. ...And there were always hamburgers and "yeller-meated" watermelon.

In church, my favorite fun thing to do with him was to make up names to sign on the attendance register to see if we could get them printed in the bulletin the next week as having been visitors. Our favorite names were Otto J. Krunk and JoAbner Ticklebritches. Chester's legacy carries on- these two men have now visited various churches across the country.

My brother, Adam, recalls a time when he was about 5 years old, as they were waiting for the ushers to come to their row and direct them to go to the front to take communion by taking a piece of bread and dipping it in the cup of grape juice, Chester elbowed him and said, "Hey boy, it's better if you stick your hand all the way to the bottom of the cup. So when Adam's turn came, he trusted Chester's advice. He took the small piece of bread and instead of just wetting the tip of it in the juice, he plunged hand and bread all the way to the bottom of the cup. He then walked back down the aisle with his sweet-soaked hand proudly in their air, proudly looking like he'd just killed something.

Not exactly reverent, but fun. I'm determined to find some good theology in that story one of these days.

Adam also makes a good point about how having fun with Chester in church when we were young shaped us for the rest of our lives. From our very earliest memories of church, we never had to be drug out of bed to go, sit through things that we thought were boring and were really only for adults, for one reason: because Chester was there. We don't remember many Sunday School lessons from those years, and certainly not any of the pastor's sermons, but we can remember how, as soon as we walked in the building we were looking for Chester and how fun it was to sit at his side every week. It was a very effective children's ministry program that didn't even require a budget (other than perhaps for Jolly Ranchers): have adults who help kids to have fun in church.

But the most telling testament to Chester’s gift of fun to those around him came from the person who knew him best. It came the day before he died when his wife told me, “You know, we were married in 1947 (that’s 63 years). That’s a long time.” Then she said, “And it was fun all the way.”

That's the stuff of a life well-lived. If my wife is with me 63 years, and one of the first things out of her mouth about me is how much fun we had, that will have been a truly good life.

I wonder how much fun we pass up for other things, and how often it's worth it? Thankfully, I'm one of many beneficiaries of Chester's ability to not pass it up very often.

My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too

(This is the third post on the life of Chester Tyra. Please also check out the others: The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day and Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it, and FUN, and What Made Him Who He Was.) I described Chester's generosity and shared one of his childhood stories that shaped him to be a generous person in "Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it." But Chester's generosity was not limited to Jolly Ranchers and money; the only reason my family ended up knowing him so well was because he was also generous with his time. He had an amazing gift for making people feel welcome. The clearest evidence for this was on the day of his memorial service when I had three different people introduce themselves to me by saying their names and then, "I was Chester's best friend." I know why they felt that way, because I felt that way too. I was 54 years younger than him, but there was something so genuinely hospitable about him that gave me the sense every time I saw him that our being together had made his day.

I remember writing Chester a letter some years ago because I had to express to him and Kathryn my deepest thanks for their hospitality. I was overwhelmed when I realized that through my childhood there were only two places where I felt perfectly at home: in my own house, and in theirs. And I never walked into their house without feeling completely welcome, being told that they loved me and were proud of me, getting a good hug from Kathryn, and Chester attempting to pick a fight with me. (As a kid, I always looked forward to the point in visiting him when he would look at me, put up his fists and say, "you wide-eying me, boy?" I knew something fun was coming.)

Hospitality isn't easy, nor does it happen by accident. They didn't decide to be hospitable some days and not others. Just like with Chester's generosity, I can remember their hospitality toward me being so consistent because it was deeply ingrained in who he and Kathryn were. Generosity with their resources and hospitality with their time were natural enough habits for them that it became the default thing for them to do, to welcome and to love. To make someone feel unwelcome would have been very difficult for them. (Many folks like me seem to excel at it.)

Perhaps part of Chester's legacy will be in challenging all of us to love so well that at our passing we have multiple people who will introduce themselves to one another saying, "Hi, my name is _____, and I was his/her best friend." That has to be at least as important of a goal as any of the other things we hear about aiming for in our later years, like net worths and nest eggs.

(One of the remarkable things about Chester's ability to make me and all of his other best friends feel so welcomed, with a deep sense that he loved us, was that it wasn't based on him telling us so. I've written about this in regard to parenting in the post "There's a Better Solution than Telling Your Kids You Love Them," but Chester also perfected this skill in friendship.)

Spiritual Formation Recommended Reading List

My friend Jesse recently asked me for a list of books I recommend for helping people become familiar with Spiritual Formation. There's a lot of good stuff out there these days, but I have listed the ones I consider the best of the best (so far). Since they vary in writing style, I've also noted how many pages each has and given each of them a "heaviness rating": pretty heavy, not-so-heavy, or no problem. Click here to see the list. (I've made it a static page on the blog rather than the text of a blog post, since it will always be a list in process.)

Any additions you would make?

Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it

(This is the second post on the life of Chester Tyra. Also see the other posts: The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day, My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too, FUN, and What Made Him Who He Was.) It wasn't by accident that Chester became the kind of man who, at the end of his 86 years of life, could genuinely say- as he always had- that he had never had a bad day. No, it was a lifetime of choices about how he thought, what he did with his time and resources, and how he interacted with others that all added up to make him able to see the profound good in every day he lived, regardless of what the circumstances said on the surface.

As I've become determined to end up having more of the kind of attitude he had when I come into my 80's, I've thought about those habits Chester had that added up to make him who he was, and the first one that came to mind was his generosity.

Not many Sundays went by when I was a child that I wasn’t sitting at Chester's side in his pew about halfway back on the right side of the sanctuary at our church, and if I was there at his side, Chester would always give me two things: a Jolly Rancher to put in my mouth and money to put in the offering plate. I’m sure that over the years he spent a small fortune on Jolly Ranchers, simply because of how much he enjoyed giving them out to kids. And I’m also sure that those dollars he gave me to put in the offering weren’t the only ones that he gave away for the good of others.

One of my favorite examples of his quickness to give to others was when I brought a friend home from college. I was off at school in Kentucky and I made a good friend named Paul, who to that point in his life had hardly been out of the bluegrass state and was making his first visit to Texas with me. I took him to meet Chester, and Paul mentioned to him that one of his goals for his time in Texas was to get a cowboy hat. When he said that, Chester got up from his chair, went into his closet and came back with one of his own for Paul to try on. It fit, and Chester just gave it to him. It ended up that Paul loved that hat so much that he will forever be the only person in our college yearbook who had his picture taken wearing a cowboy hat- Chester’s cowboy hat.

It's likely that the majority of people who ever knew Chester have some story of his giving which few others know about, and it's been fun to hear some of those stories even decades after they happened. For example, his wife recently mentioned that years ago Chester had a young man working with him on one of his oil rigs. Chester found out about the young guy’s desire to go to college. Rather than just wishing him luck and getting back to work, Chester told the boy, “I’ll put you through school.” Then he did.

He didn’t flaunt his generosity, so I’ll stop the stories of them here, and I only include them to illustrate how generosity was a habit for him, something that was ingrained in him deeply enough that it wasn’t at all difficult for him to give for the good of others.

Some of the moments with Chester that I’ll always cherish the most were in these last few years, after I moved back to Midland, when even though his health was declining, it gave me more chances than I’d had ever had before to just sit with him and hear stories of his life. One story from his childhood helped me to understand where his generosity came from:

He said that as a boy he was walking to town with his father one day. His father always kept a dollar bill folded up in his shirt pocket. As they were walking, a man came up to them saying that he was hungry and needed help and didn’t have any money to buy food, so the elder Mr. Tyra took the dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to the man.

As they kept walking, Chester said that he asked his father why he did that since it was the only dollar they had with them, and his father told him that the man asked for help, and he could help, so he gave the dollar.

Later in the day, as they made their walk back home, they walked past a saloon and saw the man they’d given the dollar to inside the saloon drinking. Chester said that he got angry and pointed the man out to his Dad. His father’s response was, “That’s okay, son. If you give a dollar to a hundred people, ninety-nine of them might go do something like that. But think of the difference you’d make to the one who really needed it.”

We often try to make ourselves into generous people, then we just revert back to being as we always were. But with people like Chester, to whom it was more natural to be generous than to be stingy, he never had to grit his teeth and make himself give to others while he really wanted to keep things for himself. No, his generosity began with a story like this that was deeply ingrained in him, then that story shaped his own habits throughout his life so that by the time I came along, giving to others was so deeply ingrained in him that it was simply part of him.

What's a story that has shaped the generosity of someone you've known?

The Man Who Never Had a Bad Day

(This is the first post about the life of Chester Tyra. Also see the others: Think of the Difference You'd Make to the One Who Needs it, My Name is Daniel, and I Was His Best Friend Too, FUN, and What Made Him Who He Was.) This afternoon I will be speaking at the funeral of Chester Tyra, whom I loved dearly. He was a remarkable man in a lot of ways, but foremost among them was his unshakable optimism.

I remember going to visit him in the hospital one day a couple of years ago. Even though he had trouble breathing over the last several years and fought a long hard fight with his health, that day he was just like he always was in the hospital: somehow making everyone's day around him better. Laying there in his hospital bed, he told me something I also heard him say a dozen other times: "I've never had a bad day in my life. I wake up every day, look out the window, and am sure that today is going to be a good day."

I left Chester's room that day and also visited a man in the hospital who was from my church, but whom I didn't know. He was about the same age as Chester (in his 80's), but was in better condition physically although it was hard to tell from the long list of complaints he started relaying to me from the moment I entered the door. He told me how terribly this was going, and how awful that was, while at the same time waiting to be discharged from the hospital because he was well! Finally, his daughter said to him, "Dad, things could be a lot worse." He replied, "Well, I sure don't know how!"

I wanted to tell him to take his Chester Tyra medicine and be quiet for a while, but thankfully I didn't.

I left the hospital that day realizing that neither of those men became like that overnight, but it was a lifetime of choices about how they thought, what they did, how they used their time and resources, and how they treated people that led one to say that he'd never had a bad day (even though I knew him well enough to know he'd had his share of bad things happen to him) and the other to only be able to see bad things around him regardless of how much good was present.

Then I realized that I am already in the process of becoming like one of them or the other. Assuming I make it into my 80's, with the way I live my life right now, how will I naturally end up at that age? How will you? And what do we do (in the midst of this world that has way too many tsunamis and child molesters) to cultivate an awareness of how utterly good today and every day really is?