They never knew whether the blaze was an accident or arson, but back in 1708 the home of Samuel and Susanna Wesley started on fire while the family of eight children and one on the way were asleep. About 11 pm the parents awoke to flames and smoke and rushed to get their brood outdoors, but one was left behind. The sleepy in home nurse snatched baby Charles from his crib and called to little Jackie, just five years old, to follow. But Jack slept through her calls only to awaken to the confusion after all were down the staircase and out of sight. Disoriented and frightened, Jack made his way to the window of an upstairs room. There Samuel saw his son from the garden, plunged back into the house, but the stairs were an impassable inferno.

A good hearted neighbor had an idea and boosted another bystander onto his shoulders directly beneath the window. Reaching upward, he eventually coaxed the reluctant Jackie to leap into his arms. To mother Susanna, the deliverance of her son was a sign. He became for her “a brand plucked from the burning”; a person marked by God for some special purpose in life.

As he grew through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, John Wesley struggled with this identity as “a brand plucked from the burning”. Schooled at Oxford, ordained at the age of twenty-five, founder of the Methodist movement and a missionary to the American colonies by the age of 32, John Wesley appeared publicly as the envy of many, yet privately he longed for rebirth. John gradually and painfully discovered that outward success and accomplishment is no substitute for inward purpose and peace. Sailing back to England after a missionary expedition in Georgia, John Wesley lamented in his diary, “I went to America, to convert the Indians…but O! Who shall convert me? Who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?”

The Apostle Paul wrestled with this same longing for rebirth in our passage from Romans chapter 7. He recognized his inability to consistently make healthy choices and engage in constructive behaviors. Paul acknowledged his deep need for a power beyond himself to save him from himself. For John Wesley, for Paul, for us, God is not some abstract philosophical concept created by the human mind. Oh, it’s sometimes fun to research the biblical revelations of God or debate the theological attributes of God…but finally, we have not experienced Pentecost; we have not had a rebirth of the soul; if we have not recognized empty spaces in our own lives and longed for that emptiness to be filled by a reality beyond what we can create for ourselves!

In their Dances to Life movement just preceding, the choir sang, “Here I sit the candle to its end, heedless of the grace of youth long past. Drip out aged wax until it’s gone. Burn on bright, burn on true, burn till I remain as morning dew…”