Acts 4:5-12, Psalm 23, 1 John 3:16-24, John 10:11-18
We have two references to power. The Lord Jesus said that he had the power to lay down his life, and the power to take it up again. The Apostle Peter said that the name of Jesus had to power to save the crippled man. Is this the same power, the same power of God, in two different expressions?
We are taught that we are saved, that is, made safe, somehow by the voluntary death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, kept safe like sheep within a sheepfold, that his laying down and taking up his life is powerful to secure us for God and to give us such security that you also may lay down your life in love for anyone in need.
Laying down does not have to mean dying, it’s like laying some cash down on the table or chips in the game, it means depositing and investing. For us it’s mostly not dying but living, and investing your life and livelihood in others who are in need. The point is that you risk your good living for those in need—not from general humanistic motivation, though we should not be critical of those who do so—but in the power of the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
How does the name of Jesus have power? It’s not an abracadabra, it’s not a spell or formula. It’s a pole star, a North Star, magnetic North, a compass, a gyroscope, to balance you and guide you. His name means his person and his life and reputation, what he stood for. Recently another pastor was worshiping with us and she said there was a lot more Jesus here than in her church. Indeed. It’s in the name of Jesus Christ that we want our church to find our power and where to keep our power centered.
Not narrowly, not simplistically, but broadly and richly, with sufficient intellect without the pride of intellect, with all the sophistication of the Christian faith, and all that comes under his name, which means the teachings of Jesus at his most comforting and at his most challenging, and his laying down his life on our behalf and taking it up to secure us—all that is in his name, and our church has no business looking for our power under any other name.
My second point is about the sheepfold and security. I’m glad for Social Security, which in three years I will be living on, but at the same time security has become an idolatry, that is, a natural good to which we surrender power and authority and made an idol of. For example, national security. Security has become through out the world, and in our nation too, an excuse for constant war, for authoritarian regimes, for the curtailment of human rights, for the oppression of refugees, for the policing of daily life, and for the constriction of our freedom to venture without insurance and to play without regulations. Security. Under the name of security shall we be safe, under the name of security shall we be saved.
Look, we can’t avoid realities. Bad guys are out there. But to believe in the power of the name of the Lord Jesus requires us to examine what we want to be saved from and to be kept safe from. Where do we look for our security and what do we want from it, and what security can we expect from God?
If you want to keep your good living, if you want to hold on to what you have as long as possible, if you want to secure your goods and your possessions, go ahead, but it is not the name of Jesus that will help you, not for that kind of savings and security.
But if, while being responsible to your social and economic obligations, while being responsible for the interests of your family and your own self-care, if then you also try to invest your life and livelihood in some real action of sharing with the oppressed and needy, your time, your money, your wealth, your efforts for justice, and then, when your conscience convicts you that you could do more, and the world needs more, and does it really make a difference, and you wonder whether you’re still being too tight and too careful about your own financial security, whenever your heart condemns you, his name has the power to reassure your heart, and to free your conscience from the guilt of having to live within the compromising entanglement of the world.
The power of his name is not that you lay down your life to die but that you lay down your life to live. The power of his name is that you can abide, and abide in his love exactly in this real world, and that his love abides in you.
Copyright © 2018, by Daniel James Meeter, all rights reserved.
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