John Wesley on Forgiveness
The grace of God herein confirms to us the pardon of our sins, and enables us to leave them. As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ [consumed at the Eucharist]. This is the food of our souls: This gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection. If, therefore, we have any regard for the plain command of Christ, if we desire the pardon of our sins, if we wish for strength to believe, to love and obey God, then we should neglect no opportunity of receiving the Lord’s Supper; then we must never turn our backs on the feast which our Lord has prepared for us. This is the true rule: So often are we to receive [communion] as God gives us opportunity. Whoever, therefore, does not receive, but goes from the holy table, when all things are prepared, either does not understand his duty, or does not care for the divine command of his Saviour, the forgiveness of his sins, the strengthening of his soul, and the refreshing it with the hope of glory.
—Sermon 101, The Duty of Communion 7.148
We are all afraid of exposure. We don’t want that switch to get flicked and light to shine on all our mess. We much prefer to skulk around in dim light. After all, everything looks better in dim light. Any of you who have, perhaps in some past life, frequented clubs (you know who you are), know that there is a reason they keep the lights in those places low. It is so that nobody will notice how ordinary looking everybody actually is. Believe it or not, these are the same tired people trudging to work on Monday morning. Why are candlelight dinners so romantic? They are romantic because they allow us to imagine everything is more attractive than it really is—the food and, of course, ourselves.
Most of us spend our lives trying to search out the dimmest light. We want to be noticed, but not too clearly. We want to be thought of as better than we are. At work we try to hide our flaws to make people think we are better looking, smarter, more creative, more competent, more poised than we know in our hearts we actually are. There are whole courses on writing resumes to show ourselves in the best light. Of course, what the best light means is light dim enough not to shine on what we don’t want to be seen.
When there is the possibility that what we want to keep obscure might come to the light, we work hard. We do what it takes, out of fear of exposure (which is shame), to keep others in the dark about what we don’t want revealed of our inner reality. We create a false self, one better than we actually are. We then spend lots of energy managing our inward disorder to keep our orderly avatar (our impressive Facebook page self) front and center before the audience of the world. And like my day spent cleaning, keeping up this image is exhausting. We try to play that game in church, with brothers and sisters in Christ, and even with God.
