"I submitted to be more vile..."

It was on this date in 1739 that John Wesley preached his first open-air sermon.  A few days earlier he had been witness to the “field preaching” of his friend and fellow Holy Club member George Whitfield.  Wesley was at first appalled by the idea of preaching anywhere but in a consecrated church/chapel. But, the pragmatist (and evangelist) in him could not argue with the result.  People were coming to affirm salvation even here, in the most unlikely of places. 

His Journal for April 2, 1739, records:

At four in the afternoon I submitted to be more vile, and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation, speaking from a little eminence in a ground adjoining to the city, to about three thousand people. The scripture on which I spoke was this (is it possible any one should be ignorant that it is fulfilled in every true minister of Christ?), “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.'

The reference to “be more vile” is from 2 Samuel 6.  When Israel brought the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, King David danced wildly at the head of the procession.  When he came home his wife Michal reproached him bitterly, accusing him of acting in the manner of a vulgar commoner before the people of Israel and even before his servants and slaves.

David’s response was that he was dancing and exhibiting his exuberance before God with no thought of what humans might think.  He then told her, “I will be even more vile,” promising to do such things again in praise of God, who had delivered the ark to David’s capital.

Wesley appeals to the same sympathy.  He himself – as noted above – had not been a big fan of preaching in the open air.  But he quickly came to see it as a way of glorifying God and serving the Divine purpose.  In that realization, he embraced the practice wholeheartedly and continued in it all his life.