“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
(John 15:12-17, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
In 1653, James Nayler was tried for blasphemy in the town of Appleby.
On the stand, he revealed how he had been led to travel the English countryside and speak of his faith: “I was at the plow, meditating on the things of God,” he recalled, “and suddenly I heard a voice saying unto me, ‘Get thee out from thy kindred and from thy father’s house’ — and I had a promise given in with it. Whereupon I did exceedingly rejoice, that I had heard the voice of that God which I had professed from a child but had never known him.”
The answer may have caught the prosecutor off guard; he asked if Nayler had truly heard God speak to him. Nayler confirmed that he had, but added that although he had “gave up my estate [and] cast out my money,” he did not leave home. For that disobedience, “the wrath of God was upon me… and none thought I would have lived.” Even after he regained his health, he remained uncertain about leaving his wife and children.
Then God spoke to him again.
“I was commanded to go into the west, not knowing whither I should go nor what I was to do there,” he testified. “But when I had been there a little while I had given me what I was to declare; and ever since I have remained, not knowing today what I was to do tomorrow.”
(Please pardon the anachronism.)
Nayler spent about twenty weeks in confinement following this trial, then picked up right where he left off, soon becoming one of the most prominent figures in the growing Quaker movement. Following God’s instructions eventually led Nayler to Bristol, where he and a group of followers re-enacted Jesus’s Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem. (Some of you may recognize this story.) Puritan authorities, and the weighty Quakers who sought to distance themselves from the controversy, suggested that he had come to believe himself Christ reborn, and he once again faced blasphemy charges.
Nayler insisted that God had simply told him to give the people of Bristol a prophetic performance: “It pleased the Lord to set me up as a sign of the coming of the Righteous One.” Unconvinced, the English Parliament found him guilty and had him publicly flogged, branded his forehead, and ran a hot iron rod through his tongue—all this before throwing him back in prison. Yet Nayler remained steadfast in his faith until his death in 1660.
Because the passage from John’s gospel at the top of this message gave the Religious Society of Friends its name, we inevitably focus on Jesus telling his disciples “you are my friends if you do what I command you” and “I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” But I think we should look more closely at what Jesus said next: “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
We may bristle at this suggestion.
We may insist that we made the decision to become Quakers by ourselves, of our independent free will, and that we’ll continue to decide how to live our Quaker lives on our own terms. We may have plans for our future that don’t leave any room for inconvenient instructions from God (whether Jesus enters into it or not). We may not even believe that Spirit has any guidance for us, that we all just have to figure out how to live together as humans in a human community.
Or what if we find the idea that God has chosen us terrifying? What if we try to convince ourselves that God must have gotten it wrong, that we can’t possibly do whatever God has called us to do? I think James Nayler might have felt something like that at first. After all, remember, he told his prosecutors at Appleby that he “did exceedingly rejoice” when God spoke to him—and yet he still wavered, even though God’s instructions came with a substantial promise. What promise, his interrogator wondered? “That God would be with me,” Nayler replied, “which promise I find made good every day.”
God’s constant presence did not make the last seven years of Nayler’s life easy. You may find that it doesn’t make your life any easier, either, especially if God has assignments for you as difficult as those Nayler received. But living in the Light of that presence may also provide the deep sense of purpose that Nayler felt. We have only one way of knowing for sure.
Would a loving God terrorize, torture, threaten, and enslave, or even allow it?
Thank you, Ron. This is a good reminder that those led by a loving God may find themselves asked to go ~ for love ~ into difficult places and hard times.
Martin Luther King was also told by God that he would not leave him alone.