Before Our Very Eyes
On Wednesday, February 8, 2023, students from Asbury University went to the chapel just like they would any other chapel. A few minutes before 10, students begin to gather in Hughes Auditorium. Students are required to attend a certain number of chapels each semester, so they tend to show up as a matter of routine. But when it was supposed to end, when it usually would end, it didn’t. The final chorus was sung, but the students did not leave. They were struck by what seemed to be a quiet but powerful sense of transcendence, and they did not want to go. Students stayed behind worshipping and praying with each other for an extra hour. And then two hours. Then three. Suddenly, Asbury Seminary students caught wind of the Spirit’s work in their chapel and headed over too. In the Hughes Auditorium Chapel, students led each other in prayer, confession, repentance, reconciliation, and recommitment. Students dragged mattresses in so that they could continue to belong to this holy moment. As night fell over the auditorium, students stayed up through the night to worship their God. Something incredible was happening.
Word began to spread in the community of Wilmore, Kentucky, and in Methodist spheres. Folks began to use the word “revival” to describe what was happening. Professors of church history chimed in on discussion boards to compare this to other revivals in the college’s history. They recalled the great 1970 revival that broke out at the university and led to a nationwide revival throughout the Methodist world. They recalled smaller revivals like 1992, which brought new life to the campus and changed the lives of those present. Word of this revival has spread beyond Wilmore. Folks from surrounding communities came on Thursday and Friday. By Sunday, alumni, seekers, and the curious had found their way to Hughes Auditorium. The spectacle has made the rounds in local news, on Twitter, and in Methodist pockets around the globe. The story has now been featured on CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, and just about every major news outlet. As the group continues to hold this sacred space for twenty-four hours a day, I and others are once more asking, “Do you believe in miracles?”
This is, admittedly, an old question. Methodism and America have been home to five great revivals. The first great revival raised up leaders such as John Wesley, his brother Charles, and their friend George Whitfield to awaken the halfway and lukewarm church.[1] Their work spurred the formation and growth of Methodism and led many Americans back to God. Figures such as Charles Finney and D.L. Moody carried similar messages of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation in the second and third revivals before and after the Civil War. The fourth revival, the Azusa Street revival, sparked the Pentecostal movement at the turn of the century. It led the church to reconsider the place of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts within the institutional church. The fifth revival, led by Bill Graham and Billy Sunday, occurred up to and after the two World Wars in times of great uncertainty within the nation. Organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse and Alcoholics Anonymous were formed in response to this work of the Spirit. Previous concerns that the church was dying and that the moral fabric of society was decaying fell away as millions were reconciled to God. Revival has left its imprint on our denomination and our country's social and moral fabric. Do you believe in miracles?
In the transfiguration, we find the miraculous and the unexplainable. It is a work of the Spirit that leaves the disciples stunned in silence and the gospel writers with little commentary beyond the eyewitness accounts. Peering through the veil of the unknowable, infinite God, we find Jesus. Jesus is not just the next great figure in the line of Israel’s prophets, but the Son of God, the true Messiah, and the one who is our salvation. However, this unexplainable, indescribable, miraculous revelation is not the final signpost of God’s glory. Perhaps the most beautiful mystery of the transfiguration is that Jesus came down from the mountain. It is that the transfiguration was a catalyst for a deeper revelation and revival. God could very well have revealed God’s self on a mountaintop in glory and strength to all. Jesus could have invited all the disciples, the bands of followers, and his enemies to the mountaintop as proof of his glory. Yet, would they and would we not have been left stunned and confused? Would we not stammer out a strange response about making tents? Would we not descend down the mountain as ones sworn to silence? As humans, we cannot yet comprehend the glory of God face-to-face, and even if we had seen God in this way, we would be left hopelessly confused and no closer to faith. The greatest mystery of the transfiguration is that Jesus would reveal himself not on the glory of a mountaintop but in the humiliation of a cross. Jesus did not have the mind to dwell on the mountain with Elijah, Moses, and his three disciples, instead he willed to descend the mountain, to be among the prisoner and the common folk, and to reveal that the powers of this world—empires, economies, evil, sin, and death—cannot surpass the glory of God. A true and definitive exodus of this order from under the power of the Roman Empire and the temple’s religious leaders has a cost. From this shimmering glory down the mountain, we find that Jesus must “set his face like a flint” to get to Jerusalem.[2] Descending down the mountain into the valley, Jesus opts to take the way of the cross to be the very avenue for the penultimate revelation of God’s glory.[3]
Perhaps the question is not, “Do you believe in miracles,” but “Why should an infinite, all-powerful God fit in our boxes?” Beyond skepticism and doubt, we find a Jesus who meets us where we are. A God of transformation, revival, and resurrection. One who transformed eighteenth-century America’s religious apathy, revived nineteenth-century America after the shattering of the Civil War, and resurrected institutionalized and Spirit-less religion. This very Jesus, who reveals the Father by the power of the Spirit, cannot, does not, and will not fit neatly into our boxes of what we think is and is possible. Indeed, this God is present in this very place. The fervor in Hughes auditorium is just one instance of God’s miraculous work. It is just one profound miracle in the sea of God’s saving work. The church is not dying, just as Jesus is not dead.
My prayer for us this morning, on the precipice of Lent, is that God would begin a fresh work of the Spirit in us. As at Asbury, it is my prayer that the Spirit would move in us to prayer, resurrection, and wholeness. That we would walk into this building and find ourselves breathless at the incredible presence of God. That hearts would be softened, lives transformed, and this community would be a beacon of faith, hope, and love. That word would once more echo through the valley that something special is happening at Corvallis United Methodist Church. My prayer for us this morning, on the precipice of Lent, is that God would begin a fresh work of the Spirit in us. As in the history of United Methodism, it is my prayer that the Spirit would move us to confession, repentance, and new life. These signs of revival would lead to hearts desiring and working to end systemic homelessness in our valley. That these manifestations of the Spirit would lead to hands creating a valley that acknowledges the physical and mental health crises and works to ensure that children, teenagers, and adults have access to the health care they need. God's empowering presence would lead to feet that carefully walk the line of sustainability, mutual interdependence, and mutual thriving. My prayer for us this morning, on the precipice of Lent, is that God would begin a fresh work of the Spirit in us. Let it be so.
[1] Half-way refers to the Half-Way Covenant. It allowed children of non-believing parents to still be baptized in “good faith” that they’d be reared with the morals of the church.
[2] Luke 9:51.
[3] Henrich, “Commentary on Luke.”