"In Memory Of A Special Mother"


Sermon Delivered By Reverend Richard E. Stetler – May 13, 2012

Centenary United Methodist Church

Psalm 98; John 15:9-17

 

    Mother’s Day gives people all over the world a moment in time to give thanks for the woman that delivered them and introduced them to the world.  Have we ever wondered how many mothers have questioned what their efforts accomplished in rearing their children?  Many mothers only hope that they are happy and have the motivation to reach for their dreams.

    In that poem, One Solitary Life, one sentence reminds us how mysterious legacy formation is.  That sentence reads:

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned put together, have not affected the life of humanity on earth as much as that one solitary life.

    These words were referring to the impact of Jesus’ life on the human race.  What qualities cause the memory of some people to endure throughout history while others quickly fade from human memory?  This morning we are going to consider one woman’s legacy, a legacy that endured because she knew God was with her through every experience of her life. 

    Susannah was born the 25th and the last child of her family. Her father was an Anglican pastor that publically challenged the current theological conclusions of his day from his pulpit. His thinking was way ahead of its time, but his bishop took a dim view of his insights. Susannah’s father was abruptly moved from a wealthy parish where people adored him to one of the poorest.  And it was into this setting of poverty that Susannah was born.

    To broaden our understanding of the social climate of Susannah’s day, a highly respected statesman named Shelburn proclaimed publicly, “Women are domestic animals. It is a serious mistake to educate them because knowledge only makes them restless.  The only kind of education they require is how to sew, cook and do domestic chores.”

    No one chafed at such words because they accurately reflected the prevailing attitude in the society.  Susannah’s father and mother, however, gave their daughter an excellent education.  She grew up like her father, i.e., bright, confident, opinionated in a very healthy way and filled with the daily awareness of God’s presence. 

    Because Susannah’s father was so controversial in his theological views, he attracted open-minded seminary students to their home for discussions. One of those students was named Samuel Wesley.  When Samuel met Susannah, it was love at first sight.  It was not long thereafter that the two were married.  Susannah became a minister’s wife for the next 45 years and then a minister’s widow during the last seven years of her life.

    Once he was ordained, Samuel was appointed by the bishop to Epworth, a parish that was unlike all others in England.  Epworth remained a cold swamp dominated by unrelenting fog.  The area was virtually cut off from the rest of civilization. There were no newspapers, no libraries and no cultural stimulation.  The mail came once a week.  No one had an education.  People lived there because that is where they happened to be born.

    It was here that Susannah delivered a baby every year for the first 20 years of their marriage. She had very difficult pregnancies and the birth of their first son, Samuel, Jr., almost claimed her life.  Because there was no medicine being practiced, Susannah and Samuel buried ten of their children in infancy or in their early childhood.

    In spite of these conditions, the two managed to rear six extremely attractive daughters and three sons.  The Wesley girls were so beautiful that everyone talked about them; but only one of them had a happy marriage.  Susannah had home-schooled each of them as she had been, but five of them married Epworth men who prized their sensuality while despising their world-views.  In fact, life became so oppressive for her daughters that Susannah once wrote, “Sometimes it is better to lose them in infancy than to suffer with them during their adult lives.”

    The conditions of the Epworth parish were miserable.  The salary was worse than poverty wages.  What made matters worse was that Samuel failed at everything.  His people skills were nonexistent.  He appeared to possess no common sense.  He tried so hard, but his sermons only succeeded in angering people because he continued to condemn the quality of their lives.

    The relationship between Samuel and his congregation had deteriorated to such an extent that one night a riot broke out in front of the parsonage.  Samuel had gone to a religious convention.  Believing that he was home, members of his congregation burned fires, beat on drums and fired their guns until dawn.

    A number of hours before the riot started, Susannah had delivered a baby.  The baby was with a nurse across the street from the Wesley parsonage. In the very early hours of the morning, the nurse had fallen into a deep sleep.  Weary herself from being up all night, she rolled over on the infant and suffocated it.  Here was Susannah, totally exhausted, up all night from the noise of the riot, a house full of children, her husband gone, and in came the nurse to put a lifeless baby into her arms.

    Then there were the three fires in the Wesley home.  It was the third fire in 1709 that has meant so much to Methodist lore.   Little Hettie awakened to burning ambers falling on to her bed from the ceiling. She woke up everyone in the house and there was immediate chaos.  Once they gathered outside, Susannah counted the children and there was one missing.  Suddenly someone spotted little Jackie up in the second story window. Samuel rushed toward the house, but the fire was so intense he could not enter.

    He knelt and prayed for God to receive their son into his kingdom while Susannah organized a rescue operation.  She got strong men to stand on each other’s shoulders.  Jackie, who later became known as John, was snatched just seconds before the roof caved in.  Susannah later wrote in her diary, “God must have saved John for a purpose.”

    The Wesley family never recovered economically from that fire.  Samuel’s years of labor on his book went up in smoke. Susannah lost all her father’s papers and sermons that had become her most precious possession.  Even years later, people coming to the rebuilt parsonage saw how partially furnished the home was and how poorly dressed the children were.

      For 45 years, this was the garden in which Susannah grew.  Where was the joy?  Where was the pleasure?  Where were the happy moments, the sense of personal fulfillment and peace that comes with God’s presence?   Did Susannah ever wonder, “What is the purpose for all of these events?”  Apparently, she never had such thoughts.

    Our lesson today from the Gospel of John provided words of encouragement for Susannah during the years of chaos and drama in her life.   Jesus said, “I love you just as my Father loves me.   If you follow what I have taught you, your spirits will always be expressing love, just as I have followed and remained in my Father’s love.”  (John 15:9f) 

    Susannah loved God more and more with each passing year.  She refused to make any judgments about her experiences.  She never speculated about the meaning of anything. Three times a day she withdrew from her worldly cares for moments of prayer, scripture reading and quiet.  Every day she practiced extending her loving presence in all circumstances just as Jesus had instructed and had done himself.   She also followed through on instantly letting go of feelings that did not serve any loving purpose.

    Out of the swamps of Epworth grew this lovely, energy-filled woman.  She was armed with a verse from our lesson today, “I have chosen you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.”   The fruit that endures is what produced that one solitary life. 

    Susannah’s father and mother had taught her self-worth.  When a young woman is told all her life that she is a domestic animal and society reflects that image back to her, think of how difficult it must have been for Susannah to learn that.  She had inherited a lot of her father’s defiance of their society’s prevailing attitudes.

    There came a time when her husband, Samuel, left Susannah and the children for a year.  The tension between the two had grown so great that they could not remain under the same roof.  The Assistant Minister that assumed responsibility for the Epworth parish could only preach about money.  Sunday after Sunday every sermon was some new exposition about money.  The congregation grew weary and started to dwindle in numbers.

    Sensing what was happening during her husband’s absence, Susannah began holding meetings in her kitchen, a setting that later expanded into her lawn area.  Within a few months, the number of people attending had grown to over 200.  The Assistant Minister wrote Samuel about Susannah’s activities.  Samuel was furious and wrote a scorching letter ordering her to stop immediately, citing that it was inappropriate to hold meetings outside of the church, but even more so because she was a woman.

    She responded by picking up her pen and writing Samuel a long letter discussing all the wonderful things that were happening.  Then she said, “If you want me to stop these meetings, you are going to have to give me such an absolute command to do so that I will be absolved of all guilt when you and I stand before God during the final judgment.”  Samuel did not respond.  Instead, he decided to return home.

    Susannah spent six hours each day home schooling her children.  Their three boys all became Oxford scholars and were published. Susannah had a method she used with each child, a discipline that produced consistent results.  It was from this home environment that Charles and John found the seeds to produce a training program for Christians that their critics unkindly labeled “Methodism.”

    She became a self-taught lay minister and theologian.  She was responsible for lay preaching in the Methodist Church, without which the movement would have failed.  As meeting houses were being established all over England and later in the United States, there simply were not enough trained pastors to serve them.

    Thomas Maxfield was the first lay preacher. When John Wesley heard what Thomas was doing, he returned to England immediately to put an end to the practice. Susannah said, “John, I never have told you what you need to do, but I am convinced that this man is called by God every bit as much as you are. Go listen to him before you make any rash judgments.” John followed through.  After hearing Maxfield preach, John was convinced that his mother was correct.  Lay preachers became a permanent part of the new Methodist movement.

    Susannah had given Methodism its name, she provided the disciplines for teaching others and she introduced lay preachers to the movement. What caused her fruit to endure was her love.  The miracle was that she loved her husband deeply in spite of his faults and failures.  Her love grew to embrace the world community.  When John Wesley wrote, “The world is my parish,” those words came from his mother’s influence.

    By this time, John and Charles were traveling hundreds of thousands of miles preaching, establishing meeting houses and writing thousands of hymns.  One day with her death close at hand, Susannah sent for her children. Just before she lost the power to speak, she said, “Children, as soon as I am released, sing a hymn of praise to God.”

    Susannah had discovered that all circumstances, in spite of the misery they can produce, had the power to refine human life rather than define it.  Because Susannah never forgot that, she produced loving energy patterns that transformed every obstacle into an opportunity to serve, an opportunity to bear witness to her faith.  In so doing, she became the mother of Methodism.  More than likely, we would not be here this morning had it not been for her ability to make her faith visible.  As we have said before – now it is our turn to pass it on.