ACTS IN ACTION: ALMOST OR ALTOGETHER CHRISTIAN

Scripture: Acts 26

 

So we come near the end of the ministry of the first great evangelist, the first missionary of the Church, St. Paul. Arrested for disturbing the peace, challenging the power and politics of Rome and the authority of the Jewish establishment with his claim that Jesus Christ is Lord, he plays the card of his Roman citizenship, appeals to Rome, and his final journey begins. He will carry the Gospel to what is now the Italian peninsula, to Rome, courtesy of the Roman army transporting him all the way. The last stop is the court of King Agrippa where he shares his own personal witness and the message of the Gospel. When he has finished his witness, the King responds with the classic words (in the King James Version): “Almost thou persuades me to be a Christian.” And Paul says, “Would that not only you but all who hear me would be not only almost, but altogether Christian.”

 

John Wesley preached on this text to the Oxford University community at St. Mary’s Church on July 25, 1741. He had planned to preach a sermon castigating the university community for their lack of faith under the title “How Is the Faithful City Become a Harlot,” but thought better of it and decided on this one instead. Historian Sugdeon says, “No wonder there was a large congregation. Since his last appearance at St. Mary’s three years before, he had become the best known and most abused man in England.” Excluded from the churches, he had begun open-air preaching. He founded the societies which would become the germ of Methodism and a thorn in the side of the established Church. He allowed laymen to preach in the societies. The newspapers were full of attacks on Wesley and the Methodists. Sugdeon says, “It was surprising the university allowed him to preach, and it was not at all surprising that the university flocked to hear him.”

So St. Paul was in trouble for preaching against Caesar in Rome and Mr. Wesley was in trouble for preaching against the hollow apostasy of the university in Oxford—both around the theme “Almost Christian.” More recently, Kendra Creasy Dean wrote a book about the study of religion among youth and used the same image as the title for her book: Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.

 

So what is the “Almost Christian”?

Mr. Wesley described the “Almost Christian” as one who is willing to go “only thus far, almost persuaded to be a Christian.” He gives three characteristics:

 

1. The person with what he called “heathen honesty.” We would call it human decency, basic goodness.


2. Having the form of religion—That is, religious practice, doing good, avoiding evil, the outside of a Christian. Of course, he does throw out a zinger for those who come to worship “…gazing about, with all the signs of listlessness, careless indifference, either asleep or reclined in a most convenient posture.”


3. Sincerity—A desire to serve God, to do his will. In more contemporary language, Kendra Dean says the Almost Christian is “Christian-ish.” She says young people in America see religion as a nice thing for nice people; “an adherence to a do good, feel-good spirituality that has little to do with the Triune God of Christian tradition and even less to do with loving Jesus Christ enough to follow him in the world.” So she says American youth grow up to imagine God as either a butler or a therapist, someone who meets their needs when summoned, and helps them feel good about themselves.

 

She concludes: The problem is not that we are teaching young people badly, but that we are doing an exceedingly good job of teaching young people what we really believe: Namely, that Christianity is not a big deal, that God requires little, and the church is a helpful social institution filled with nice people focused primarily on folks like us. (page 12) You might say Christianity-lite, Christian-ish, and Almost Christian.

 

So what is the answer? What does it mean to be Altogether Christian?

Well, I can give you Wesley’s answer or Dean’s answer, but instead, let me give you a picture—three examples of what it looks like to be an Altogether Christian.

 

1. First, Judson Collins

Some of us recently ventured out to visit his grave, but relatively few Michigan Methodists know his story. Collins was born in 1823, the seventh of ten children born to his parents. The family moved to Michigan when he was a child and settled in Unadilla. (Where the heck is Unadilla? Just west of Chelsea.) When the University of Michigan opened its doors, he was one of five in the entering class. It is interesting to note that at the time, U of M students were required to attend weekday worship services at 6:00 every morning! During a revival meeting at First Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, he was converted and felt called to the mission field. He graduated from U of M in the first graduating class in 1845 and went to teach at the newly opened Albion College, a school for women. While he was there, he pleaded with the mission board to send him to China, and the answer he got was: “No mission there—no money to send one.” But he was determined. Finally, in April 1847, he set off from Boston Harbor and sailed around the Cape of Good Hope….it took five months to make the journey through five oceans to reach China. He was 24 years old. No one welcomed them, distrust surrounded them. With only a Bible and a few leaflets, within a year he had learned the language and established both a boy’s school and a girl’s school and was preaching regularly. But his health began to fail, and after just three years he was forced to return home without having made a single convert. No one knew he had returned. The Michigan Methodist Conference was meeting at the time and when the door opened and he walked into the hall, only his brothers recognized him because of his weakened condition. He died on May 13, 1854 at only 29 years old. But the work he began provided a toe-hold for education in China. He gave his life for Christ. He gave his life for China. An Altogether Christian.

We all know that few of us will give our lives as missionaries in China or anywhere else, so what does it look like in common, ordinary, everyday life? What would a home grown, human size, down-to-earth Altogether Christian look like? How about this one. We all knew him as the soft-spoken, silver-throated voice of the Detroit Tigers, but beyond his popularity and fame…

 

2. Ernie Harwell

…was a deeply committed disciple of Jesus Christ. He used to tell the story of the day in spring training—1961 on an Easter morning—when he happened to hear Billy Graham on the radio,

speaking at Peace River Park in nearby Bartow. He said, “That day, I gave myself to Christ. I’d been raised in the church. Christ had always been a part of my life. But on that sunny Sunday morning in Florida, Christ became my center, and that has made all the difference.” Twenty years later, when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, he said, “I praise the Lord here today. All of my ability has come from him. Without him, I am nothing.” All of his success, all of his fame, altogether a Christian. Judson Collins, Ernie Harwell—they modeled John Wesley’s definition of an Altogether Christian: One who loves God and loves his neighbor, and whose life is marked by faith. Wesley’s classic sermon ends with these probing questions, albeit in the language of the 16^th century: The great question of all, then, still remains. Is the love of God shed abroad in thy heart? Can you cry out, “My God and my All?” Do you desire nothing but him? Are you happy in God? And is this command written in your heart: That he who loves God loves his brother also? Do you then love your neighbor as yourself? Do you love every man, your enemies, even the enemies of God, as your own soul, as Christ loved you?

3. One more down-to-earth, human size, real life story…

My maternal grandfather’s name was Emerson Randall Radaker, but we always called him “Pup”—everyone did, even his children, my mother and my aunts. I knew him as a kindly old man, shall we say “pleasantly plump,” sitting in his wooden Adirondack chair on the front lawn, or rocking in his favorite chair in the sitting room with the ever-present coffee can on a piece of newspaper on the floor beside him. There was also a formal living room in his old farmhouse, but no one ever went in there. But my Aunt Mildred, the oldest of the five sisters and one brother, told a different story. She said she remembered him in his younger days as a bullish, hard-working, hard-edged western Pennsylvania coal miner with a foul mouth and a quick temper. Aunt Mildred said she could remember Sunday mornings when her mother would line up those six children to walk the mile and a half to the little Ramey town Church, wearing boots and carrying their good Sunday shoes with them. They would start out and my grandfather would stand on the porch cursing and shouting until she marched her little band around the bend and out of earshot. Then one day one of the Radaker cousins was preaching a revival at that little church, and for some reason, Pup went. When the altar call was given, he went forward, knelt at the kneeling rail, and gave his life to Christ. When the cousin came to pray over him, he said, “Emerson, if I come back tomorrow, will you still be a Christian?” And my grandfather said, “Yes sir.” Then he asked, “Emerson, if I come back next month, will you still be a Christian?” And Pup responded, “Yes sir.” “If I come back a year from now, will you still be a Christian?” Once again he said, “Yes sir.” And years later when his grandsons carried his casket past that little church to bury him on the hillside, we could all knew he had kept his promises…an Altogether Christian. Mr. Wesley would say an Altogether Christian is one who loves God, loves his neighbor, and has faith. Kendra Creasy Dean says being an Altogether Christian instead of an Almost Christian means “moving from niceness to holiness,” that just being good enough is not good enough, that

following Jesus means learning to love him, and loving him means participating in his mission and allowing God to change us into disciples. As Mr. Wesley ended his sermon: “May we all thus experience what it is to be, not almost only, but altogether Christians.”

What a heartbreak it would be to live an “almost” Christian life, then “almost” get into Heaven.

ACTS IN ACTION: ALMOST OR ALTOGETHER CHRISTIAN