Skin in the Game: Why Praying "in the name of Jesus" matters ~ John 16:23-33

²³ On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. ²⁴ Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. ²⁵ “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of the Father. ²⁶ On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; ²⁷ for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.” ²⁹ His disciples said, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! ³⁰ Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God.” ³¹ Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? ³² The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. ³³ I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!”

His feats were legendary. Good looking, accomplished military commander, successful merchant – many looked at him as a model of heroism and truth leading to him becoming a major-general. Distinguished in many battles – Saratoga, Ridgefield, Fort Stanwix, often with a small force against superior odds, he proved himself time and time again as one of the more successful military strategist of the American Revolutionary war – a claim substantiated by the throngs of people who would shout his name as he entered towns that dotted that the eastern coast of the colonies: “Benedict Arnold, Benedict Arnold, Benedict Arnold.” His one act of treason altered his story, changed his name.

Names aren’t magical. Being called a Benedict Arnold doesn’t make you a traitor but its associations and inner meanings can change how you are perceived by others and how you even see yourself. In the same way, Jesus’ name isn’t some magical password of prayer, some mantra, or mystical “open sesame” for the spiritual life. But it does have some powerful associations that can affect your life deeply. I’d like to explore those today.

What does prayer “in the name of Jesus” mean? 

          1.      To pray in the name of Jesus is to understand that God can be trusted because God has skin in the game.

To pray in the name of Jesus is to recognize what Jesus has repeated so often in these last few chapters and throughout the John’s Gospel, “the Father and I are one.” So to pray in the name of Jesus has everything to do with who Jesus is and who God is. Jesus says in vs. 26, “One day you will pray in my name” and claims to speak “plainly of the Father.” To pray in the name of Jesus is to confess that God has skin in the game; that in Jesus we see God in action, God at work, God spoken and God revealed. It means that we can know to whom we are praying and how to pray. To pray in the name of Jesus is to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord and that the Father is teaching us through Jesus how to pray.

This brings us to that inscrutable mystery that plagues pastors and church-goers alike – the Trinity – that there is one God in three persons! Now when you hear the word “Trinity” maybe your response is “AHHHHHHHHH!” Or maybe you hear the word “Trinity” like I hear my mechanic talk about what’s wrong with my car – “so your exhaust manifold is leaking due to a busted gasket, wah wah wah wah.” Just fix it, I say to myself, I don’t need to understand it.” But prayer is the perfect context in which to discuss and understand this difficult truth because it has everything to do with how we pray, why we pray, what we should pray for, and whom we pray to. 

Praying in the name of Jesus means that the Father and the Son are one and that God the Father reveals himself bodily in Jesus. So what Jesus tells us of the Father is trustworthy and true. What one wills and does, the other wills and does – this is further added to by Jesus who says the Spirit only says what Jesus speaks, vs. 16:14. How does this affect how we view God? Well, in vs. 26 Jesus says, “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you,”.  So Jesus does not placate the Father or do something that the Spirit refuses to do. So Jesus is claiming more than being the messiah but saying that he has a unique relationship with the Father who loves us. Trinitarian prayer stresses that all who God is expressed in all that God does. So Jesus doesn’t have to mediate for us in the sense of shielding us from a God who wants something for us other than salvation. I continually struggle with a bad Trinitarian theology in which I ask Jesus to go and speak to the scary God for me. Jesus’ own words are not, “I change God’s mind toward sinful human beings” or “don’t worry, he’s grumpy right now but I’ll put in a good for you”; rather Jesus says, “Ask in my name and you are talking to God, I am God and the Father loves you like I do.

More than that, however, it also means that Jesus is uniquely qualified to teach us what to pray for. To pray in the name of Jesus is to know what God wants. What God want us to pray for – is to pray about what Jesus said and did. Jesus is God’s answer to the riddle about God’s will. Too many evangelicals agonize over God’s supposedly secret, personal plan for their lives. Take heart – God’s will is Jesus Christ, God’s will with skin. 

          2.      To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray knowing that we have skin in the game.

I recently heard a marvelous story about a four-year-old child who awoke one night frightened, convinced that in the darkness there were monsters hiding in the closet. Alone, she ran panicked to her parent’s bedroom. Her mother calmed her down and, taking her by the hand, led her back to her own room where she turned on the light and reassured the child saying, “You needn’t be afraid, you are not alone here. God is in the room with you.” The child replied: “I know that God is here, but I need someone in this room who has some skin!”

To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray to the God who came and took on flesh, presence, and action. But the incarnation, God taking on flesh, is not simply a thirty-three year experiment by God in history but God’s continued bodily work in the world. God still has skin in the game, human skin, powered by His Spirit – the church. We are, Paul tells, the Body of Christ. We are God’s skin.

To pray in the name of Jesus therefore is not some desperate need to have a go between to save us from an angry God. To pray in the name of Jesus is to recognize that we are part of God’s concrete, enfleshed presence and plan to redeem and heal the earth and all that is in it. This is what it means to pray as a Christian rather than as a theist. Both believe in God but a theist prays to a distant God in heaven. A Christian prays to a God who brings “heaven to earth.” To pray in the name of Jesus is to recognize that the answer to prayer is now partially dependent upon being what we pray for. So when we finish a prayer “in the name of Jesus” we are not only asking God in heaven to act. We are also charging ourselves as the Body of Christ by the power of the Spirit with some responsibility for that action. To pray as a Christian, in other words, demands concrete involvement or it is not Christian prayer. To pray as a Christian is to demand God’s intervention but also our own. If my friend is sick and I pray that she gets better, but do not drive her to see the doctor, or visit her, I have prayed as a theist, not as a Christian. I have not given any flesh or skin to my prayer. This is the point of James who asks, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” There is always a politic to prayer, there is always some necessary action for it to be prayer “in the name of Jesus.”

There is an Ingmar Berman movie called “The Serpent’s Egg” which powerfully illustrates my point. A priest has just finished presiding over a mass and is taking off his clerical robe when a woman confronts him. Middle-aged, needy, lonely, and suffering from a burdensome view of God she sobs to the priest, “I’m so alone, Father, nobody loves me! God is so far away! I don’t think he could love me anyway. Not the way I am! Everything is dark for me!” At first, the priest is more irritated than compassionate, but he finally says to the woman: “Kneel down and I will bless you. God seems far away. He cannot touch you right now, I know that, but I am going to put my hands on your head and touch you – to let you know that you are not alone, not unlovable, not in the darkness. God is here and God does love you. When I touch, God will touch you.” This is someone praying as a Christian, praying in the name of Jesus. This is someone who understands that we are God’s skin – that we have skin in the game.

          3.      To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray by the power of the Spirit who rose Jesus from the dead. 

In other words, to pray in the name of Jesus is to pray knowing that God has already acted and won in the death and resurrection of Jesus. To pray in the name of Jesus means that there is no such thing as a bad or wrong prayer but that all prayer is animated, worked with, empowered by God. When we pray in the name of Jesus we recognize that we are joining God in his work and he is not worried. I’m not suggesting that there’s not heart ache in this life nor that prayer can’t be vexing as we struggle to understand why some are answered and some seem not to be answered. I’m simply saying that in the end, heart ache doesn’t win because Jesus rose from the dead. And that same Spirit who rose Jesus from the dead, Jesus says in chapter 16, will guide and direct us. Friends, because God has skin in the game – God has already won and we can join him in his work. So to pray “in the name of Jesus” - to end your prayer with that phrase - is not some sort of divine magic but to remind yourself that you need not worry about life being redeemed, you are simply waiting and working with the God who will make it so.

Like the disciples, you may scatter when trouble comes your way. But be of good cheer – your life is not determined by what you fail to do but by what God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have done. Jesus says, “I have conquered the world!” Doesn’t that make you want to pray?

But Also Lazarus . . . ~ John 12:9-19

⁹ Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ¹⁰ So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, ¹¹ for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and believing in him.

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. ¹³ They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna!”

“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Blessed is the king of Israel!”

¹⁴ Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:

¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, Daughter Zion;
    see, your king is coming,
    seated on a donkey’s colt.”

¹⁶ At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they remember that these things had been written about him and that these things had been done to him.

¹⁷ Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. ¹⁸ Many people, because they had heard that he had performed this sign, went out to meet him. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!” ~ John 12:9-19

In Ephesians 5 the Apostle Paul offers a provocative and poetic discussion of marriage only to turn the tables on his readers at the end by quoting a verse from Genesis about the two becoming one flesh and stating, “This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.” Well, today I would like to take such a strategy as we look at this mysterious story of Lazarus and also apply it to Christ and the church. What does it mean for us to be a Lazarus community?

                1.      We gather to tell of what Jesus has done for us.

We must never underestimate the power of our stories of Jesus to change people’s lives – to believe in him, to let us know of what’s possible. Personal testimonies remind us how much our lives matter and that the deepest spiritual truths are not found in dry facts or impeccable logic but the courage to share our experiences of God, to ask meaningful questions of one another and the patience to listen closely for the answers.

This is not about ego so some reluctance is not a bad disposition to have – for Lazarus hadn’t truly done anything, he was dead at the time - but about people coming to Jesus “on account of” what Jesus has done for us (vs. 11). And some of you have had Jesus walk up to the tomb of your dreams, your health, your life and bring you back from the dead. And you removed every stitch of grave clothes but that which covers your mouth. Some of you are being story selfish or story phobic – not sharing with others the hopeful story that others might need to hear so that they can believe in Jesus. That’s why we are going to start hearing more testimonies. Someone rightfully asked me, “Why would we want to do that in worship?” Well, we need to look no further than the Bible to recognize this truth – the Bible is filled with stories, the Gospels promote them, and we are thrilled, joined together, and excited by them.  Stories are the stuff of faith.

When I went through my divorce I knew what the Bible said but longed for others who shared such a story of pain to give me comfort, to let me know that I was not alone. 

Melissa Caputo sharing with the teenagers about her experience as a high schooler in the Philippines.

For us to be a faithful church, like Lazarus, we must never fail to share what Jesus has done for us. You can start by sharing with Don or myself.

               2.      We gather as a fragile community whose life is often in jeopardy.

But if we have exciting stories to tell of resuscitation, it is also true that that’s not the whole story of our lives. We gather as a community resuscitated by Jesus but still waiting on the resurrection. This is an important distinction. Lazarus being brought back from the dead is not resurrection. Resuscitation is breath coming back into the body, the heart beating once again but still capable of stopping, dying. Resurrection is an entirely different kind of life, a very different state of being – an incorruptible, non-decaying life - like Jesus’ body after the crucifixion and all the amazing things it could do. Don’t get me wrong – Lazarus’ resuscitation may be one of the more dramatic and awe-inspiring miracles of the Gospels but we would do well to remember that while such a thing might be amazing, our story reminds us in vs. 10 that there are things, people, shadowy parts of this world which after the fact still want to end our fragile, little lives; that plot to kill us.

I’m always surprised by how many believe that the church and its worship are meant only to be a polished service for happy people. Such a vision, because it’s pure fantasy and not biblical, leaves many people hiding and wounded. People who fail to mention that lingering illness, that withering depression, that painful divorce, that financial mistake, that plot to end their lives. I’m not blaming individuals for this lack of sharing but trying to express a frustration at something the church often seems to fail to understand – this is a place and we are a people which acknowledge our resuscitations as well as our threats of death. And like Lazarus we didn’t ask for them, maybe we didn’t even cause them, but they’re still there. So we need people who have the courage to say, “Jesus saved me and now I am struggling.” “Jesus pulled me out of the grave and now I fear those who seek to take my life.” 

Story: I met a woman who had been a recovering alcoholic and Christian for 13 years - she understood that her new life in Christ still needed a place for the broken parts, a place to struggle with life-killing tragedy like a child abused by a relative. But she couldn’t go to church for that, she told me despairingly, she would go to AA where others could accept her pain.

It’s funny to realize that we often speak of the church as a hospital but then are surprised to find sick people there. Can you imagine the folly of showing up in the ER only to respond, “I feel great. I’m fine. No troubles here.” Or to be told, “Hey, if you’re so sick, why did you come?”

If what I am saying is correct then we should not be surprised that we find every kind of sickness within our churches. The presence of those pathologies should then not deflect us from going to church but, instead, positively beckon us there.

               3.      We gather as a Hosanna community committed to lament and praise.

Lazarus’ story and Jesus’ triumphal entry are a good model for balanced thinking about who we are as the church. It reminds us that we aren’t simply people brought back to life nor are we victims known only by threats of death. It means that the life of faith is never only triumphant or struggling, that this life, cannot only be praise or merely lament. Luke’s account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is always a sobering reminder of the exciting journey of faith – amidst praise and adulation, Jesus, Luke shares, weeps. We worship a praise-worthy yet weeping King.  

Another way of capturing what I’m trying to say can be found in the crowds cry of “Hosanna!” Commentators puzzle over the ambiguity of this Hebraism which means “save” and what the crowd is actually doing. Some point out that “Hosanna” was a prayer for help – used for any number of petitions. “Helps us, O Lord, Save us, O God, give us what we need!” Other scholars point out that the term was used as an acclamation or a cry of praise. “Praise and thanks, O God! Blessing and honor to you, O Lord!”

And Lazarus? Which one would he be saying? Well, I imagine that as he joined the throngs crying “Hosanna! Hosanna!” Lazarus who was brought back from the dead, whom the chief priests plotted to kill, who loved Jesus and who was probably afraid – he understood better than anyone what it means to follow the Jesus riding slowly on a donkey, to the sounds of praise while tears fall from his eyes. This side of the resurrection we can’t decide which “Hosanna” is the right one – praise or lament - we simply have to say them both. 

And there is an odd promise in this text if we will be that Lazarus community that shouts Hosanna! The chief priests offer it as a complaint but for us it should be our prayer. “Look,” they said, “how the whole world has gone after him!” May our “Hosannas” bear witness to that.

When Misery and Mercy Meet: the Story that almost didn't make it ~ John 8:1-11

¹ but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

² At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. ³ The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group ⁴ and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. ⁵ In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” ⁶ They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. ⁷ When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
⁹ At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. ¹⁰ Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
¹¹ “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and sin no more.”

How should we as Christians address sin faithfully – in the way of Jesus?

To address sin faithfully we need to learn to draw in the dirt.

Most of us know this story fairly well. “What did Jesus write?,” is one of the most fancifully imagined details of any gospel story. I’m less concerned about it because if we needed to know we would know. I am more interested in the “why.” Why is a much more interesting question. Historically, “doodling” in the ancient world was used as a way to think carefully or to contain one’s feelings. Ironically, modern science supports this ancient practice: a recent study on doodling found that it provided the doodler a 29 percent increase in information retention. Contrary to popular belief, doodling seems to prevent people from losing focus by helping them pay attention. We doodle to focus. It gives learners who may otherwise mentally check out an opportunity to check back in. So Jesus is doodling to focus on God – silently and carefully. And if Jesus had to doodle to think carefully about how to respond to a sin? If Jesus learned to wait silently, patiently, even prayerfully before speaking? If Jesus’ first inclination was to focus on God in the face of sin, shouldn’t we?

Sin hides in the cracks and crevices. Our patience, our slowness is needed because sin is often much harder to see than we realize, more difficult to name and easily transferable. We need to wrestle with sins ambiguity, its immense power for deceit, its ability to fuel self-righteousness. We need to remember that faithful, Bible believing men and women have been blinded by it - opposing the abolition of slaves, working to undercut women’s equality, diminishing and exploiting others. Sin longs for us to bear witness of it rather than the gospel, to use it to teach a lesson, to make examples out of others and like the teachers of the law “make sinners stand before the group” in shame and disgrace. And nothing is more deadly to the powerless, the broken, than shame. In my opinion, this is the danger of social media –the new stoning ground where we no longer even address people face-to-face but can condemn them with angry rants from afar. There is something about this image of dirt that is worth pondering. 

Many of us don’t write in the dirt– silently pondering our own sin and praying for God’s mercy to be made manifest in us. Instead, we write with dirt smearing it on the walls for all to see. Never forget – whether intentional or not, you are God’s ambassador and therefore reflect the heart of God to others. So before you go about representing his interests maybe the first thing you should do is be silent before Him. Maybe, just maybe, such silent attention will be the sermon that disarms self-righteousness and challenges sin. Such careful and attentive silence acts as the protective gloves and mask that keep us from succumbing to sin’s self-righteous infections. Maybe it’s silence that will save you, that will save them.

To address sin faithfully we need to learn to take misery to heart. Notice how our story moves from “this woman” of the teachers of the law to the personal address by Jesus and the asking of a question, the invitation of response, the opportunity for dialogue. 

At the end of the story, there stood just the woman and Jesus. As St. Augustine put it. “There remained two, the one in misery and mercy.” At last someone speaks to the woman directly and engages her in conversation. It was a simple one: A polite address, “Woman, has anyone condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on do not sin anymore.” She was not treated as an object but a subject of thoughts, choices, feelings and intentions. He did not call her “adulterous woman,” focus on the lurid details of her sin, or even demand an apology.

Allow me to play with the quote from St. Augustine, for he himself plays on words with misera and misericordia that we can’t see in English. In misericodia there are two words joined together: miseria and cor, misery and heart. Mercy, in other words, is taking person’s misery to heart. And so there remained two in conversation: the one in misery and the one who took her misery to heart, who treats her as a person beloved by God.

The space between not condemning and not condoning is wide - big enough to allow for human conversation, for the truth to be told, for soul-searching, even for confrontation - all the feelings and thoughts that would tumble into a person’s heart in a moment of crisis. But Jesus’ few words should give us pause even as we seek to name sin’s destructive power. The NIV translation has Jesus say, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” However, this is not what the text says – Jesus’ words are far simpler “go and sin nor more”. The NIV wants to make sin her life, Jesus’ actual words want to defuse sin’s destruction of her life. There’s no name calling, no sermon about unworthiness or the fires of hell, no guilt biting glee, and no labeling her entire life as sinful. In fact, Jesus’ offer of no condemnation occurs with no response on her part – no repentance, no verbal confession.

Always remember that sin loves for us to focus on it rather than the person. It wants us to ferret it out like exterminators who use a wrecking ball to get rid of rats in a house. I once heard a Vietnamese proverb that said, “What good is getting the thief out of your house by destroying the house.” We thwart sins power by listening to God in silence and realizing that to talk about sin is to talk about what destroys people. And to talk to people in love in all honesty is God’s gracious way of destroying sin.

To address sin faithfully we need to remember why this story almost didn’t make it into the Bible.

Many of you learned in the Preparing for Worship this week that this story is not found in our oldest biblical manuscripts allowing some commentaries to skip over this passages as if it did  not exist. But if this story was an ancient story about Jesus, as many scholars argue, why did it not immediately become part of the accepted Gospels? Why was it only inserted in John’s Gospel later? 

This is a delicate point because it’s an attempt to determine the intent and motives of people long gone and I know it's a bit of a stretch. But I think the historical reconstruction t is worth considering particularly as it engages our own current tendency to remove parts of Jesus’ words or actions that we don’t like. Many New Testament scholars argue that this true story about Jesus didn’t make it into our Gospels initially because of the ease with which Jesus forgave the women that was hard to reconcile with the early churches rigorous discipline of sexual sin and yet we know that the story existed in the second century. It’s true that in Paul’s discussion of sins, adultery and immorality appear repeatedly (1 Cor. 6:9ff; Gal. 5:18ff.; Eph. 5:3ff; Col. 3:5), and those warning are no doubt tied to the frightful immorality of the Roman Empire. But many early Church Fathers, particularly some of the more misogynistic ones, went even further to rank such sin among the very worst – it was often listed alongside homicide and apostasy and for others deemed a heinous act without forgiveness. 

Nothing gets people worked up into a self-righteous frenzy like sex. And I am not suggesting that we be cavalier about it either – this woman was NOT the only victim of her affair and sin destroys relationships, kills life. But we should be thankful for the effort of those within that early church who took extra effort to maintain and include this story in our Bible, who saw fit to challenge an over-indulgence fascination in the condemnation of others, particularly over sexual sin. We should read this story as a declaration by a faction of the church who rightly refused to let sin be fundamentally what our story is all about. 

Yet if this story was an independent story why did the church insert it here in John? Well, the best argument is that they sought to illustrate Jesus words in John 8:15-16, “You judge by human standards; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid for it is not I alone who judge, but and the Father who sent me.” “Judgment is always for the sake of salvation, since it is a bringing to light of that which has lain destructively in the dark” (Robert Barron). So let this story be for you the judgment of God and bring your sin to the light.

Jesus never passes out stones, he passes out bread – his body broken for us, for our sin.

He doesn’t pass out condemnation, but offers us something to drink – his blood shed for us to express the love of God. The meal of communion is Jesus’ response to sin and it is his invitation to us to doodle in the dirt.