O For a Thousand Tongues

Charles Wesley

My first church appointment out of seminary was not in this country. A lot of people joked with me when I came to the Eastern Shore about my “overseas mission” but I had a previous overseas mission to England. For a year Suzanne and I served in the British Methodist Church on the York:South Circuit in northern England. It was a great year. We got steeped in English history, learned how to drink hot tea properly, and came to love fish and chips. I also got to meet my first British eccentrics.

You know these folks. People who have an extraordinary interest in very specific subjects. Like Cyril Nutbrown, who was an inventor and who used to tell me all about his latest ideas. When I left England he was ready to revolutionize the potato chip industry because he had figured out that if the packagers would just put the opening to a bag on the side rather than along the narrow top then people would be able to get more of their hand into the bag and would therefore grab more chips with each dip into the bag and would therefore eat more chips.

Cyril could tell you everything you needed to know about potato chip bags, but Oliver Beckerlegge could tell you anything you could ever want to know about Charles Wesley. Oliver was a retired Methodist minister who kind of took me under his wing at Methodist gatherings in York. He was probably in his 80s when I met him and I didn’t realize then what an accomplished man I was meeting. Oliver was the editor of Charles Wesley’s unpublished works. He also compiled all the names of Methodist ministers who served from 1797 to 1932. He was such an eccentric that he actually had an entry in The Indexer, the international journal of indexing, the mark of a true professional, but that’s another story. What really put the fire in Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes was Charles Wesley.

Now why should that be? Many of you may not even know who Charles Wesley is or was. What is it about him that would inspire an aging Methodist preacher to devote so much time and energy to studying him? Well, this being the 300th birthday of Charles Wesley I think you ought to know about the object of Oliver Beckerlegge’s passion. Because his passion was not just about Charles Wesley. His ultimate passion was for God and his desire was that everyone should find the words to do what we were all designed to do, which is to praise God.

Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707 about 30 miles down the road from York in a place called Epworth. It’s still a small town in the Lincolnshire countryside. His older brother was John Wesley, who is usually credited with being the first Methodist, and their paths were closely intertwined for the rest of their lives.

Their father was a priest in the Church of England, an institution which was at one of the lowest points in its history. There were many people who felt that all the fire had gone out of the church. The church still had a prominent place in the society, but it seemed to have no power to move the people to love God. Even so, John and Charles were soon set on a course to being priests, partly as a result of their mother, Susannah, who is one of the most energetic figures in our history. She had 19 children, 10 of whom reached adulthood. Even with all those children, she devoted an hour each day to teaching each individual child. It had a profound impact on the brothers.

John grew up to be the driven, public leader with many of the qualities of his mother. Charles was a little more carefree. They both went to Oxford and one day John was trying to counsel his younger brother to be a little more restrained and studious. Charles replied, “What, would you have me to become a saint all at once?”[i] But he eventually did buckle down and become a pretty good scholar. He mastered seven languages and followed John into the priesthood.

In 1735 the two brothers took off as missionaries to Georgia. It was not a pretty sight. Charles got shot at, slandered and shunned. By December of the next year he was back in England, a broken and discouraged man. John lasted another year and then came back in a similar state. Someone who saw the two soon after John returned said that Charles was “at present very much distressed in his mind, but does not know how he shall begin to be acquainted with the Saviour.”[ii] It was a dark period.

But then came a remarkable week in May. The two brothers were in London and Charles was lying ill in the home of some Moravians, a small band of Christians whose faith had inspired him in Georgia. On May 21st he opened his bible to Isaiah 40:1, which reads: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” In the care of the comforting Moravians he was changed at that moment. He wrote in his journal, “I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ…I saw that by faith I stood, by the continual support of faith…I went to bed still sensible of my own weakness…yet confident of Christ’s protection.”[iii] Three days later his brother, John, was sitting in a service at a meetinghouse on Aldersgate Street when he felt his heart strangely warmed. It was the week of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit had embraced the Wesley brothers. They were never the same. Neither was England.

Right away Charles Wesley started writing a hymn. It was the first of about 6,500 hymns. He wrote and additional 2,500 poems. Some have figured that this means he wrote an average of twelve lines of hymnody every day, seven days a week, for the next 50 years.[iv]

But this is the thing that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes light up when he talked about Charles Wesley: It wasn’t just that he was prolific, but Wesley knew how to give people words that allowed their hearts to sing. There has been a legend in Methodist circles for many years that Wesley took old bar tunes and set his words to them so that people would sing them. That’s probably not true, but it is true that people took to Charles’ gift.

Methodists changed the world by singing their faith. That was new. There was music in Anglican churches and in other Christian churches, but it was primarily done by large, formal choirs. Methodists believed that everybody could sing….that everybody should sing! One year after his conversion, the Methodists had their first hymnal made up almost entirely of songs by Charles. Before John Wesley died in 1791, he had published at least 64 hymnals,[v] and Methodists were singing at the top of their lungs. One observer said of them, “Never did I hear such praying or such singing. Their singing was not only the most harmonious and delightful I ever heard, but they sang ‘lustily and with a good courage’….If there be such a thing as heavenly music upon earth I heard it there.”[vi]

One year after his conversion, Wesley wrote a hymn to recognize the anniversary of his being claimed by Christ and sent forth by the Holy Spirit. In it he talked about how much he wanted to multiply the praise he wanted to give to God. In the hymn he calls for others to join him in singing – especially those who felt far off from God, who were wounded and searching and looking for God to come and save them. You probably know this song. It has been at the front of many, many editions of Methodist hymnals, including our current one.

1. O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace.

3. Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
That bids our sorrows cease;
'Tis music in the sinner's ears,
'Tis life, and health, and peace.

4. He breaks the power of canceled sin,
He sets the prisoner free;
His blood can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.

5. He speaks; and listening to His voice,
New life the dead receive,
The mournful broken hearts rejoice
The humble poor believe

6. Hear Him, ye deaf; His praise, ye dumb,
Your loosened tongues employ;
Ye blind, behold your Saviour come;
And leap, ye lame for joy!

There were other verses, too, that didn’t make the hymnal. 18 of them in all. And in these other verses Charles was trying to extend the realm of singers. He knew what his life had been like. He knew that coming to know Christ had not just a little bit of his life – it had changed everything about his life. He knew he had no more right to the kingdom than the lowliest person he met. They were all welcomed in by God’s grace:

Harlots and publicans and thieves,
In holy triumph join!
Saved is the sinner that believes
From crimes as great as mine.

Murderers and all ye hellish crew,
Ye sons of lust and pride,
Believe the Savior died for you;
For me the Savior died.

With me, your chief, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven;
Anticipate your heaven below
And own that love is heaven.

There were other Wesley songs that have survived, too. When we sing at Christmas time, “Hark! the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the newborn king!’” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we sing on Easter morning, “Christ the Lord is risen today! Alleluia!” we are singing the words of Charles Wesley. When we gather at annual conference in a month’s time, one of the first songs we will sing is one that Methodists have been singing a long time: “And are we yet alive and see each other’s face? Glory and thanks to Jesus give for his almighty grace!” Those, too, are the words of Charles Wesley.

We still sing these songs because the words have not lost their power to tell us who we are and how great God’s saving grace is. They are full of references to Scripture. When Bernard Manning looked at the Wesley’s hymns he found that there were only five books that weren’t represented: Ezra, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Third John.”[vii] You may not have heard of Nahum and Zephaniah, but if Wesley had written a hymn about them you might have!

Charles also knew how important it was to lift up the love of God. He didn’t have any illusions about what the world was like or what our lives are like when they are trapped in sin. He was capable of describing it in some graphic detail. Like us, he lived in a time of wars and he wrote about it in a poem he called “For universal peace.” We’ve got it on page 449 of our hymnal:

1. Our earth we now lament to see
With floods of wickedness o’erflowed,
With violence, wrong, and cruelty,
One wide-extended field of blood,
Where men like fiends, each other tear
In all the hellish rage of war.

In the second hymn he uses Satanic images from the book of Revelation and a reference to the child sacrifices condemned in Jeremiah and 2 Kings to talk about the devastating consequences of human violence:

2. As listed on Abbadon’s side,
They mangle their own flesh, and slay;
Tophet is moved, and opens wide
Its mouth for its enormous prey;
And myriads sink beneath the grave,
And plunge into the flaming wave.

Then there is the plea for peace:

3. O might the universal Friend
The havoc of his creatures see!
Bid our unnatural discord end,
Declare us reconciled in thee!
Write kindness on our inward parts
And chase the murderer from our hearts!

Wesley knew that death and destruction could not ultimately win the day. God had already claimed that prize through Jesus and the cross. That’s why he could also write these words in one of my favorite Wesley hymns ‘Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown’:

’Tis love! ‘Tis love! Thou diedst for me,
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
Pure, Universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move;
Thy nature and thy name is love.

That’s the vision that made Oliver Beckerlegge’s eyes glimmer. He knew how much life and beauty and energy had been captured in the words of that old eighteenth century Methodist. He knew that in the harmonies of heaven, there is a strain that rings with Wesley’s words of praise. I suspect Oliver is singing those words right now.

So why do we care? Why do we bother to remember a 300-year-old poet? Because there is still a place for poetry. There is still a place for people who can look at this world and see beauty. There is still a place for words that open worlds untold. There is still a place for people who can talk without shame and without hesitation about a love that lies behind all the dangers and darkness of the world.

In the gospel reading for today, Jesus prays to God for his disciples, that they may be one. He knew that they would be tempted to division and breaking apart. He knew that the world would doubt their story. So what he prays for is that they will be united and in their unity they would testify to the love that God showed forth on Jesus and in Jesus. And because God loved Jesus, God loved the followers of Jesus and because God loved them and drew them together into a new community, it showed that God’s love has the power to overcome all those things that threaten to pull us apart and that threaten to make us less than God’s own people.

We still have that calling…to be one people…but to offer praise in our language, in our tongue. We all have a song to sing to God. You know molecular biologists have discovered that when you get right down to it…down into the cells, into the atoms, into the smallest fragments of the way we are made…at the most basic level, what we are made of is vibrations. Each of us is a tone, a unique note quavering to a beat we cannot even consciously acknowledge. That note is singing a song of praise to God. What we need is to liberate that song so that we can join the angels in singing. How can we keep from singing?

So happy birthday to Charles Wesley. And thanks be to Oliver Beckerlegge and all the other eccentric saints of God who have not been ashamed to lift up their voices in praise of the God who has not let us go and will not let the world be until it becomes the place it was created to be – the realm of God’s glory. Thanks be to God.

John 17:20-26
“I do not ask this only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one. Just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so may they also be one in us, so that the world might believe that you sent me. The glory you have given to me, I have given them, so that they can be one just as we are one. I in them and you in me, so that they may be made perfect in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them just as you have loved me.

“Father, those whom you have give me, I will it that where I am they may be there with me, so that they may see my glory, which you have given to me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Just Father, the world has not come to know you, but I know you and these know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”

[i] www.igracemusic.com/hymnbook/authors/charles_wesley.html
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] William C. Goold, Good News, May/June 2007.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Ibid.