"...in Jesus' name"

 

Under the Old Testament law, infant boys were commanded to be circumcised on the 8^th day after birth.  It was also custom that they would formally be named at the time of their circumcision.  Because of this, the Church Year observes the Feast of the “Circumcision and Name of Jesus” on January 1 (or the evening of December 31), which is the 8^th day after we celebrate His birth on Christmas. 

 

In the Gospels, the adult Jesus frequently speaks of those who trust in Him doing things such as praying, preaching, gathering, and other actions “in my name,” and the epistles will also speak frequently of the name of Jesus.  In light of this, we English speakers might hastily jump to the conclusion that there is some spiritual power to be exercised simply by speaking the syllables of the name Jesus in these settings. 

 

Jesus, however, is promising something far greater than this.  In the Old Testament we frequently see the phrase “Name of the Lord” used.  That name is the one given to Moses at the Burning Bush—YHWH, or as we sometimes see it in English, “I am.”  In light of the commandment not to misuse the Lord’s name, the people of Israel eventually came to never speak it out loud and would instead substitute “Adonai” (which means Lord) or “Ha-shem” (the Hebrew words for “the Name”) when reading it out loud.  Later in the New Testament, St. Paul will proclaim the simple creed, “Jesus is Lord.”  In saying that, Paul is not making the assertion that Jesus is simply our master, but rather that “Jesus is YHWH”, eternal God with the Father. 

 

So Jesus is promising something far greater than the ability to use His name as a magical incantation or to assure our prayers are heard simply because we concluded them with a formula including His name.  After all, if this were the case, we would have the trouble of figuring out whether we should go back to the Hebrew Yeshua, its English equivalent Joshua, or the Greek Iesus or whether it’s ok to use the anglicized rendering Jesus. 

 

Instead, Jesus and St. Paul are assuring those who hear and read these promises that those who rely on Jesus are relying on God Himself, and those who trust in the promises of Jesus are trusting the promises of the Triune God Himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  As a result, those who pray trusting in Jesus have access to YHWH Himself, and those who gather around the proclamation of Jesus are proclaiming and receiving the same God who is their creator, who took on human flesh to be our Savior, and who still comes today in His Word and Sacraments. 

"...know that I am the Lord."

 “You will know that I am the Lord”

God stating that someone will “…know that [He is] the Lord”  is a familiar refrain for those who read the Bible even casually.  Chances are that this language probably brings to mind a picture of God’s vengeance for most who hear it.  In fact, the most famous cultural reference to this Biblical phrase comes from a movie almost 30 years ago where one of the main characters, a hitman, paraphrases Ezekiel 25:17 as the last words his victims hear before death, saying, “And I will I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger…  and you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!”

 

The Old Testament speaks of those who will “know that I am the Lord” 88 times.  Mostly in Ezekiel and Exodus.  In a few cases, such as the prophesy against Philistia quoted above, and the promises to defeat Pharoah in Exodus, these words are a reference to the defeated knowing God’s vengeance.  However, it is more commonly a sign of God’s mercy and rescue for His people instead.

 

Sometimes it is Israel knowing that He is the Lord.  Other times it is the nations knowing that He is the Lord, so that they might turn to trust in Him, when they witness Israel being rescued.  Never, though, is it merely directed vengeance executed for its own sake, nor is he achieving victory for His own sake.  Instead, whoever is to know that He is the Lord, it is in the act of rescuing His people, and His victory is on their behalf.  In His rescue of those He has chosen, He is known. 

 

The ultimate victory in which He is known is in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  While we might long for the kind of the displays Israel repeatedly witnessed throughout her history by which the Lord was made known, those served only to foreshadow the greater rescue which He would achieve in the cross of Christ and greater victory which would be displayed when Jesus rose from the dead.  That greatest victory is the foundation upon which all truth is built, and the assurance that God will rescue all who rely on Him from the penalty for sin and give them instead the eternal, resurrected life which is promised to all who trust in Jesus.

Heritage and Truth

 

It would probably be safe to conclude that everyone agrees that the church should have a concern for truth.  Our history in the English-speaking world, not to mention some modern-day yard sign battles, might indicate a divergence about what that truth consists of, but that divergence actually highlights the common understanding that the church is concerned with truth. 

 

At one time, it was also commonly understood that the church had a concern for heritage.  Some might see the term tradition, when referring to this heritage, as derogatory, but the term as used in Scripture simply means that which has been handed down.  It was used to refer to the teaching of the apostles, as it was handed down to their students, and as they recorded it in their writings, but it also referred to the heritage of the way they conducted themselves as the church gathered. 

 

In fact, the apostles had such reverence for what had been handed down that they retained many practices from the synagogue as they began to gather around preaching and the Sacraments after Pentecost.  If your congregation follows a Church Year (whether just Christmas and Easter or a fuller calendar), if you hear a series of three readings on Sunday, or if you sing a canticle in the Communion liturgy called the Sanctus, which begins with the words “Holy, holy, holy” from Isaiah 6, these are just a few examples where you witness elements which go back not just to the apostles, but which they and Jesus would have experienced in the synagogue during Jesus’ earthly ministry. 

 

At the time of the Reformation, the question of how to handle this heritage emerged.  Some advocated keeping what was handed down to them, only editing where necessary to remove error that had arisen, while others chose to build new forms and orders, after which later generations of those streams largely repeated the effort. 

Advocates for constant novelty in the church often have good intentions, seeking to avoid thoughtless repetition and encourage sincere expression, but notice how unique this is in human experience.  Opening ceremonies of sporting events, the awarding of Olympic medals, academic graduations, never face such accusations, but rather we largely embrace what has been handed down because it teaches and assimilates those who observe and engage in the event.  How much more appropriate when that tradition carries eternal truth to those who participate!

 

The Vocation of Matryoshka

 

Several weeks ago, as St. Peter’s and a number of other congregations in greater Grand Rapids joined forces to raise funds to support a seminary in Siberia, we had a number of Russian Matryoshka dolls that we would sometimes give to donors or volunteers.  Having a genuine Matryoshka doll in hand for the first time caused me to recall an illustration I had frequently used them to make while teaching in the past.

 

That is that the various roles we serve in human life, also known as vocation, serve to reveal insights into the relationship between our Creator and humanity.  The clearest instance of this is in marriage as Paul describes in Ephesians 5, saying, “…it refers to Christ and the Church,” and another frequent and familiar example is the reference to God as Father.  The roles we hold in family, church, and society are all variations which reveal to us facets of the truth about how our Lord relates to us. 

 

So we see in the relationship between husband and wife an icon of Christ and His Church.  Just like Christ does not die for Himself and the Church does not worship herself, a husband is united to a wife in marriage.  In the life of the church, pastors represent the Lord Himself as they baptize, absolve, and commune the gathered Church, which is collectively Christ’s bride.  Pastors serve as spiritual fathers in their roles, and the Church herself is routinely referenced in the history of Christian thought as the mother of Christians.  For example, 3^rd Century bishop Cyprian of Carthage wrote that one cannot have God as His Father without the Church as his mother. 

 

Likewise, the relationship between father and child, brother and sister, ruler and subject, master and servant (or employer and employee), or manager and property serve to reveal other facets of how God and man relate.  We see these and many other examples sprinkled throughout the writings of the prophets, and we see them vividly portrayed in the parables of Jesus.  Viewed together, they nest into one another like the Matryoshka, to jointly reveal to us the greater reality of our Creator and Redeemer who desires to forgive sin, preserve the world in order, and ultimately restore His creation to its uncorrupted state on the Last Day, which Scripture commonly portrays as the wedding feast between Christ and His bride the Church. 

 

Christians Mark Time Differently

 

Just a couple weeks ago, we celebrated Easter.  Of course, we in the English-speaking world are the only ones who use this term, or anything like it.  The ancient Church, and present day Christians of other languages use some variation on the term Passover or Resurrection to refer to the day of celebrating Jesus’ rising from death.  This is because the day celebrates more than a mere season, but an event that occurred in real time and space, and that event is the anchor of a way of marking time completely different than that of the surrounding world.  Much like the future eternal life of the Christian is one that will be lived out in space and matter, the present life of the Church is also one marked within time and space, rather than one which disregards these material facets of our existence. 

 

Days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, and Super Bowl Sunday are not a part of this calendar, since those are national holidays, unique to the United States.  Instead, this includes seasons like Advent, Epiphany, or Lent, and festivals like Pentecost, Ascension, and All Saints.  The resurrection is the anchor point of this calendar, as both the oldest and most significant event it contains.  Leading up to Resurrection Sunday is a series of seasons and festivals related to the life of Jesus, and following the 8-week festival of the Resurrection continues with a time that reflects on the teachings of Jesus and the life of the Church as it awaits his return.

 

This way of marking time was so prominent in the lives of Christians that during many centuries of church history, they did not date their letters and speeches with the Gregorian dates we presently see uniformly used, like March 25, 2021, Instead, they would use a reference to the church year, such as “Fifth Sunday in Lent, AD 2021” or “Thursday of Pentecost 12, AD 2021.”  When we understand time in such a way, and revolving around the life of Jesus, we also live, knowing that our future is in His hands, and free from the anxiety of carefully watching the world’s dangers and disasters, or and living by its time and its fears, but knowing with certainty what is prayed during the Easter Vigil: 

 

“Christ Jesus, the same yesterday, today, and forever, the beginning and the ending, the Alpha and the Omega.  His are time and eternity; His are the glory and dominion, now and forever.  By His wounds we have healing both now and forever…  May the light of Christ, who is risen in glory from the dead, scatter all the darkness of our hearts and minds… Amen.”

 

Soul Doctor

 

This week marks the one year anniversary since everyone’s life changed in the name of protecting the body from infection.  We have changed behaviors, adjusted our distance in relation to one another, added precautions and barriers of various kinds, and so much more in order to care for the body. 

For a few centuries now, our culture has been conditioned to see the material aspect of our existence (the body) from the immaterial aspect of our existence (whether one wants to speak of the mind, the soul, the spirit, or some combination of the above).  It’s not that novel an idea, as it also can be seen in some of the Greek philosophers and other ancient thinkers.  However, it is novel in terms of a Biblical understanding of humanity and in terms of being introduced to a Christian worldview. 

 

Scripture doesn’t deal with humans as if the material body were incidental to the real person who is immaterial, and it doesn’t treat these material and immaterial aspects as if they were isolated entities with isolated needs.  Instead, it deals with people as an integrated whole.  One of these aspects cannot act apart from the other and one cannot be affected apart from the other. 

Medical science had even begun increasingly acknowledge (at least until the pandemic status descended upon us) that their efforts to heal the body are not entirely separated from what is going on in the thoughts and spiritual life of the patient.  This is something that had been a core part of the Church’s understanding of pastoral care, and Scripture even recognizes it as it speaks of the “soul,” which is not understood in Biblical literature to refer to the immaterial aspect of a human person, but rather should be translated as “self” or another term that includes the whole person.  At the time of Reformation it was even common to refer to pastors with a word that translates to “soul-curer” or “soul doctor.”

 

As we look back in hindsight, we will undoubtedly recognize that our protection of the body was undertaken with the false perception that I began with, which seeks to protect the body without regard for the whole person.  As we are beginning to see risk decline and people perceive formerly-normal activities as safe, it will be the task of churches to discern how they might correct the damage done by the widespread neglect of the whole soul this past year, and the task of Christians to work with their soul doctors to remedy the injuries they may have suffered and prepare a plan for whole-person soul-care in the future.