"By What Name?"
Acts 4:5-12; 1 John 3:16-22
Rev. Laura J. Collins
May 11, 2003
In our morning text from the book of Acts, the leaders of the religious establishment have gathered and are debating what to do about Peter and John. Peter and John have been out preaching about Jesus and people are getting in line to join the newly enspirited community. Moreover, they are beginning to practice the kind of miraculous healings that led to crowds following Jesus at every turn.
The leaders thought they'd taken care of this problem by executing Jesus, but now the power seems to have spread to his disciples. What can they do? If they condemn these preachers, the people would riot. But if they don't condemn them, they've got a revolution on their hands. So they call Peter and John before them and ask, "By what power or by what name are you doing these things -- healing and baptizing and preaching?"
Peter responds, "Are we being brought to court for helping someone who was sick? If so, then you should understand that we do this in the name of Jesus Christ. You killed him, but God raised him; he was like a stone rejected by a builder who became the cornerstone."
By what name do you do this?
We who are Christians bear the name of Jesus. When we pray, we pray in the name of Jesus. In the letter of 1st John we hear this phrase again, "the name of Jesus." The writer spells out what it means to believe in the name of Jesus: "We know love by this, that he laid his life down for us -- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?"
For Peter, to call on the name of Jesus meant to heal those who needed healing. For the writer of John, to call on the name of Jesus meants to help those in need. But for all of them, calling on the name of Jesus was an essential piece of the puzzle. Not just healing, not just helping, but doing so in Jesus' name.
This morning we baptized Eric David in the name of Jesus. What does it mean to call on the name of Jesus in a pluralistic world?
There are at least two answers to that question which I know for a fact some of you in this congregation hold:
One answer is that Scripture is clear in saying that we call on the name of Jesus in a pluralistic world with confidence and gratitude because we know that he is the one true way to salvation, as witnessed in this morning's Scripture which read: "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." This line from Peter's speech in Acts 4 is echoed in other New Testament readings, like John 14, where Jesus tells his disciples, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through me." Or Philippians when we hear that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."
A very different response, also alive in this congregation, is that Jesus is one teacher among many, that Christianity is one faith among many and whether one calls on the name of Jesus or not is irrelevant. Those who hold to this view believe that God is larger than the experience of Jesus and that Jesus is just one path among many, maybe not all equally valid, but certainly not for us to judge how valid any one of them may or may not be.
Adherents to this view may point out that there is much discussion of God's saving love throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and that if God was at work in the world for the purpose of saving grace before Christ, then surely God can be at work in the world today in whatever form God may choose to take. In particular, some might add, God is faithful to all God's covenants and so God would not forsake the covenant made with Israel, because it is against the nature of God to forsake covenant love.
I would like to offer a third way, which I believe to be both Biblically faithful and grounded in spiritual experience. Like those in the first group, I am a firm and unequivocable believer in the holy, miraculous, saving power of Jesus Christ. Like those in the second group, I believe that God is capable of using whomever or whatever God desires to be a healing presence in the world and that God cannot and will not be limited to one religious expression.
So, holding these two views in tension, what does it mean to call on the name of Jesus? Let me share with you what it means for me. Off and on, for much of my life I have been part of small, intentional prayer communities - in high school, in college, in seminary and in my latter years of ministry in Rochester, NY. I have found that when I was part of such small groups, I was more faithful, more trusting, more grounded, because I was expected to be honest about my spiritual life and I was held accountable and I knew people were praying for me regularly and with particular concerns in mind.
Some of these groups were specifically Christian and some of them weren't. In fact, I can say quite sincerely, that the two groups which were the most meaningful in my own spiritual growth and journey were interfaith, rather than Christian groups. And they weren't more meaningful because of some intellectual exercise in interfaith dialogue, but because of the genuine faithfulness and intention of the members of the group, the level of prayerfulness and honesty present when we met. And the real joy we found in being together.
Some of my adult life I have been a Christian for whom Jesus seemed sort of like an afterthought on my journey of faith - especially during years of awakening to feminist concerns and interfaith dialogue. When I began to question why I might need a male savior, I decided I could leave Jesus out of the spiritual equation, though I still kind of liked the gospel stories. When I began to explore the meaning of other paths of faith, I decided that Jesus was not really central to me; that he just happened to be the teacher on the path I had chosen.
Now here is the interesting thing to me: the deeper I go into my own spiritual journey, the more important Jesus becomes to me. And I have found this not by just hanging out with other Christians, but by getting deep and honest and personal with non-Christians. And not by way of finding their spirituality lacking. On the contrary! By being in dialogue with brothers and sisters of other faiths in full confidence that God may well use them to teach us something we need for our own salvation. By experiencing what is central in other people's faith, I am pushed to know what is central in my own. And what I find, again and again, is the power of the name of Jesus in my own life.
Not just as a teacher, not just as an example of a really good person, but as my savior, my healer, my resurrected Lord. Like Peter, I have experienced the power of Jesus's name to heal physical infirmities. Like the writer of the letter of John, I have experienced the power of Jesus to draw me into a kind of active love that seemed too sacrificial, too demanding when I thought about it apart from reliance on Christ.
I suppose I could leave Jesus out of the equation still. But then I might need to become a practicing Jew or a practicing Buddhist or a practicing Muslim, because what I find is that if I want to call myself by the name of Christian then I also need to call on the name of Christ. If we want to find God on a path other than Christianity, we are free to do so. But if we want to choose this path, this Christian way, then let us embrace it whole-heartedly, faithfully, joyfully.
There is power in the name of Jesus. It is a power to heal, a power to transform relationships and communities, a power to impact the direction of the world. It is the power experienced by the early church community which transformed them from the timid and confused followers of Jesus to the history-changing leaders of a new way of faithfulness.
When we practice Christianity, we have access to that power. We are an Easter people, a people who have a Risen leader whose divine power is accessible to us here and now. We are people with the power to heal and the power to help. Why in the world would we not call on the name of Jesus? So let us take advantage of this path we're on together. Let us stand firmly on the name of Jesus and call on him and trust him and believe in the power of the resurrection.
By what power or by what name do you do these things?
By the power and the name of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God!
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