Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sixth Sunday of Easter (C)

            May 22, 2022

Text: John 16:23-33

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!

            And it is because Christ is risen that we can ask the Father anything in the risen Lord’s Name, and the Father will give it to us.  That is an amazing promise.  Do you believe it?  Have you tried it?  There is a flourishing industry of so-called “pastors” and “preachers” who specialize in “name-it, claim-it” theology.  If you really believe in Jesus, they say, you can simply name what it is that you want, and God will give it to you.  But that is not a Christian teaching.  Surely that is not what the Lord means in our Gospel this morning.  If we are to rightly understand what it is our Lord here says to us, we must know what it means to pray in Jesus’ Name.  For it is whatever we ask the Father in Jesus’ Name, that He will give to us (John 16:23).  It is in His Name that we are to ask, Jesus says, “and you will receive,” and for this purpose: “that your joy may be full” (v. 24; ESV). 

            Lutherans often think of praying in Jesus’ Name as simply adding the words onto the end of the prayer as some sort of magical formula.  “In Jesus’ Name we pray,” “for Jesus’ sake,” “through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”  Now, this is a good way to conclude our prayers, because it reminds us that we can only approach our Father’s throne and present our petitions before Him… in fact, we can only call Him Father… on account of Christ and His sin-atoning work on our behalf, His death, His resurrection, and our incorporation into Him by virtue of our Baptism.  This is why it is the historic practice of the Church to conclude our prayers in this way.  So also, these words mark our prayers as distinctly Christian, over against generic prayers to a generic god, such as are offered in American civil religion (when we sing “God Bless America,” which god, specifically, are we asking to bless us?  That’s the point, we don’t know!) or in the lodges (which are nonspecific on the surface, but end up calling their god by a mishmash of the one true God and pagan deities, which is why you should not belong to a lodge), and over against prayers offered to the false gods of other religions.  This is all very important.  But we must not think of these words as “the magic words” that move God to hear and answer our prayers, whether we think of them in the way we tell children to “say the magic word: Please,” or more sinister, as some sort of superstitious incantation that would bend the Father to our will.  That is evil.  But we do so easily fall into this misunderstanding.

            Now, when I was a kid, I was reading the Bible one day (which is a good thing to do), and I ran across this passage in our text, and, being influenced as I was at such a tender age by so much general Protestantism, and couple of Pentecostal friends, I decided to give it a shot.  (Now, this does fall under the categories of spiritual immaturity and testing the Lord your God.  In other words, this is sin, and I’m sharing this as an example of what not to do.)  The words of Jesus are clear and plain.  Ask the Father in My Name.  He will do it.  Alright, “Father, please make the locked door of my house fly open, in Jesus’ Name.  Amen.”  Well… I mean, I gave Him some time to consider my request.  Needless to say, it didn’t happen.  By the grace of the Holy Spirit, it didn’t lead to a crisis of faith in my case.  Instead, I rightly began to suspect there may be a problem in my method of biblical interpretation.  But for so many, this kind of thing leads precisely to a crisis of faith, which is why the "name-it, claim-it” teaching is so dangerous.  I decided to try it one more time a little later at the pool.  “Father, please make me to walk on the water like Peter.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.”  And I stepped out in faith.  Come to think of it, maybe it worked that time, because like Peter, I was baptized by full immersion on that occasion.  Now, I was eleven or twelve, and I repent.  Seriously.  I repent of putting the Lord my God to the test.  It’s funny now, and we should laugh at ourselves.  But there are some serious issues here.  When we pray to the Father for something in Jesus’ Name, and it doesn’t happen, what does that mean?  What about the Lord’s words in our text?  Was Jesus mistaken?  Did He lie?  Or is the problem that I’m not Christian enough?  Maybe I don’t believe enough.  Maybe I’m not really included in Jesus’ Promise.  Maybe I’m too sinful for the Father to hear me.  Or love me.  Maybe God has rejected me.  Let me tell you, there will be hell to pay for preachers who introduce such doubts into Christian consciences. 

            Beloved, the reason you don’t always receive exactly what you pray for is that God answers your prayer by giving you something even better.  So the problem is not that there is some deficiency in God’s Promise or His love for you.  Nor is the problem that you don’t have enough faith.  The problem is your eyes are blinded to the blessing He has poured out in response to your prayer.  God knew I didn’t need a trivial miracle with the door or at the pool.  I needed a greater miracle, which is repentance.  Faith, not sight.  And so, God be praised, that is what I received.

            Now, to pray in Jesus’ Name is not simply to add on the words at the end of the prayer.  We pray the Lord’s Prayer in Jesus’ Name without ever saying those words, and, in fact, I think Jesus is speaking about the Lord’s Prayer above all in our text, because His point is, now that He has redeemed us, we can go directly to the Father as our Father.  For the Father Himself loves you, Jesus tells us (v. 27).  And so we pray to Him as dear children ask their dear Father.

            To pray in Jesus’ Name is to pray through faith in Jesus Christ, which is to say, as one forgiven of all sin by the blood and death of Jesus, baptized into Christ, bodied and blooded with Christ, and therefore risen and alive in the risen Christ, covered by His righteousness.  We approach the Father as our Father in and through Jesus, His only-begotten Son, as the one who came from the Father… that is, became flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary… came into the world… that is, dwelt among us, teaching and demonstrating by miraculous signs His ministry of release and restoration… left the world… that is, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again from the dead for our justification… and went to the Father… that is, ascended into heaven, where He is seated at the Father’s right hand, ever making intercession for us and ruling all things for our good and for our salvation.  The writer to the Hebrews says that we enter the Father’s presence through the new and living way that is Jesus’ flesh, our hearts sprinkled clean and our bodies washed with pure water, which is to say, as the Baptized (Heb. 10:19-22).  That is what it means to pray in Jesus’ Name. 

            To pray in Jesus’ Name is to pray according to His will, which is to say, according to all that He has revealed to us in His Holy Word.  The things He has promised us in Holy Scripture, such as the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, His Spirit, His help in times of trouble, consolation, sanctification, faith, hope, love, and the like, we should pray for unconditionally, because we know He wills to give us these things, and loves to pour them out upon us.  Other things that are not promised to us in Scripture we should pray with the condition that it be according to His will.  Even as our Lord Jesus prayed that His Father would take the cup of suffering from Him, “nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).  So we should pray that the Father’s will be done.  After all, His will is good for us, and we don’t want our Father to give us harmful things, but only things that are for our good, and for our salvation, and for the good and salvation of others. 

            And, of course, along these lines, we should never pray in Jesus’ Name for ungodly things, sinful things, things that hinder God’s blessing and salvation.  After all, we are praying in Jesus’ Name.  Therefore, we should only pray for things that are consistent with what we know of Jesus.  On the most basic level, to pray in Jesus’ Name means the same thing as it means to do anything in anybody’s name.  If I designate someone to speak to someone else in my name, they’d very well better say only what I sent them to say.  If I designate someone to make critical care decisions for me in the hospital (end of life stuff), or to be the executor of my will, they’d better do so according to my will as I have revealed it in writing and speaking.  So it is with Jesus, when we do and say things, including our prayers, in Jesus’ Name.  Whatever we can ask the Father as Jesus’ representative, that, the Father will assuredly give us.

            Now, this is hard for us.  So the Lord gives us His Spirit.  The Spirit of the Lord helps us in our weakness, to pray in this way, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Rom. 8:26).  He prays within us, and He sanctifies our prayers as He brings them before our Father.  So when we pray for a new car in Jesus’ Name, the real prayer is that the Father would get us where we need to be, when we need to be there, according to His will, and He most assuredly grants that, whether on new wheels of our own or by a ride from a friend.  And the Spirit leads us to pray for more serious things, like the Christian life and salvation of our children, like the welfare and salvation of our neighbor, like the prospering of the Church’s preaching, like the peace of Christ in our home, in our congregation, in our nation, and in the world.  We can and should pray for mundane needs in Jesus’ Name.  And we can and should pray for grand needs in Jesus’ Name.  We should not treat God as some sort of divine vending machine where we punch in our order, plug in the correct change of “in Jesus’ Name,” and out pops another tasty treat.  We should treat God as He reveals Himself to be… Our Father who loves us, who has redeemed us in Christ to be His own children, and who wills to give us His very Kingdom.  The Spirit helps us to pray for that.

            And in this way, as God answers that prayer in the Name of Jesus, the prayer for His Kingdom, our joy is full.  Because it is joy in Christ, and in the things of God.  Sometimes we pray for things, and God’s answer seems to be no.  The truth of the matter is, rather, that God’s yes is always better than our request.  That is, God, who always hears our prayers, answers by giving us, not simply what we want in the way that we want it, but what is good and right and gives us salvation.  Sometimes we have to wait for the delivery of His gift.  For example, when we pray for healing, we can be absolutely certain that He will heal us, but we may have to wait for perfect healing on the Day of Resurrection.  Sometimes He gives us what we pray for in the shadow of cross and suffering, such as our daily bread in times of inflation and supply shortages.  Sometimes He gives us what we pray in a hidden way, as when we pray that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven, when to all appearances, the opposite of His will is being done on earth.  And sometimes He gives us exactly what we pray for as we pray it, such as when we ask Him to forgive us our trespasses and that His Name be holy.  In any case, we pray for these things in Jesus’ Name, in and through Jesus Christ, God’s Son, our Savior.  And we know that He will give us precisely what we need, in the way we need it, and at just the right time.  So, ask.  And you will receive.  And your joy will be full.  Alleluia!  Christ is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!  And that, finally, is God’s answer to all our prayers.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.