The power of the Name

Acts 4.5-12

1 John 3.16-24

John 10.11-18

The high priest asked, ‘By what power or name did you do this?’ (Acts 4.7)

 

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The first passports that bear the name of King Charles III, rather than the late Queen Elizabeth, are now being issued.

 

And on the inside of the first page is a statement that says: 

 

His Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance…

 

There’s an interesting phrase: ‘…in the name of His Majesty…’.

 

It sounds a bit old fashioned and antiquated: the King’s name is invoked as the authority by which his subjects should be able to travel freely.

 

Many things in our country are done in the name of the King.

 

What we have in the Acts of the Apostles, our first reading this morning, is the apostle Peter who says he has acted, and now speaks, in the Name of Jesus, who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

 

What Peter had done – and for which he was now on trial before the high priest - was to heal a man, disabled from birth, and speak about the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

 

This brought about scandal for the Jewish authorities and, as they were interrogating the followers of the Crucified and Risen Lord Jesus, their question was, ‘by what power or by what name did you do this?’

 

It sounds like an odd question.

 

It is we moderns who seek to do everything in our own name.

 

In some ways that is good.

 

If I act in my own name then I am taking responsibility for my actions.

 

But when we only act in our own name then we are suggesting that we have no frame of reference other than ourselves.

 

Putting ourselves at the centre of things the logical conclusion is that we put ourselves at the centre of day to day affairs

 

It is the ultimate in self-autonomy.

 

That was the aim of the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century: ‘I think therefore, I am’.

 

It’s about defining everything on my own terms when I act in my own name.

 

That is not the way of the Christian, as shown by Peter in the reading, and the saints throughout the ages.

 

The Christian acts in the Lord’s name.

 

How do we begin each Eucharist? ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’

 

Frankly, that’s how we should begin every day, committing the new day, our tasks and our lives to God, our Maker and Redeemer, in whose name we are baptised.

 

Try that tomorrow morning when you wake up, make the sign of the cross and say ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’

 

Do it when you undertake a new task, when you face a difficult challenge, when you have to break bad news, when you have to speak the truth in a hostile situation.

 

As Christians we are to speak and act in God’s name.

 

The Name is an important motif in the Bible.

 

Remember Moses at the Burning Bush:

 

But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ (Exodus 3.13,14)

 

From that encounter Moses acted in the name of the LORD to claim freedom for his enslaved people the Israelites.

 

This name, ‘I am who I am’, is invoked by Jesus because he acts in the Name of the Lord, but is the Lord in his divine nature: that’s why we get the sayings, ‘I am the bread of life’ (John 6.35), ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ (John 14.6) and, today, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (John 10.11).

 

Jesus, who is God, acts in God’s Name – I am who I am – there is no other authority by which he acts and by which he saves and gives life.

 

It’s only because he is God that he can act authentically in his own name.

 

For us mortals we can only act in another name, otherwise we are uncommitted hirelings.

 

It’s a blunt question to consider: are you ready to be more than Christian in Name Only?

 

For the Christian the Name in which we act is always and only Christ.

 

Anything that distracts from this is corrosive to our nature, who we are made to be.

 

That is what Peter is proclaiming when he says at the end of the first reading, ‘There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved’. (Acts 4.12)

 

Not only do we act in Christ’s name, we are saved by his name.

 

This is what St Paul is articulating as he writes in his Letter to the Philippians:

 

at the name of Jesus

   every knee should bend,

   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

   that Jesus Christ is Lord,

   to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2.10,11)

 

That’s the origin of the laudable practice of bowing one’s head when the Name of Jesus is spoken.

 

It is in his name we are saved, when we are named before him as his beloved child at our baptism: I have called you by your name, says the Lord.

 

It is in his name that we are to act and think and speak.

 

And as a hymn puts it, ‘His Name shall stand forever | That Name to us is Love.’ (Hail to the Lord’s Anointed, New English Hymnal, 51).

 

Go back to our second reading from the first letter of John to see what this looks like: living in his Name, living in Love, is how we fulfil the commandments.

 

John writes: ‘And this is [God’s] commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.’ (1 John 3.23).

 

‘That Name to us is Love’.

 

When you travel abroad King Charles’s name will get you through passport control.

 

When you live your life as a Christian the Name of Jesus is your power and hope and salvation for your journey, the journey to abundant life he leads you on as the Good Shepherd.

 

Almighty God,

you gave Jesus the name that is above every name:
give us grace faithfully to bear his Name,

and to hear his call as our Good Shepherd,

to lead us to the table you spread before us.

In his name we pray.

Amen.

Easter Day sermon - Receiving the Body: Alleluia.

[NB the section in square brackets was not preached on the day, but may be worth a read!]

Acts 10:34-43

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

John 20:1-18

 

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The first Easter Day is characterised by disciples being at a grave, by running about looking for the dead body of Jesus and by meeting the Risen Lord in person, often without being aware.

 

It echoes the spiritual quest: seeking God, not always recognising him and encountering him even when we are fearful and living life in the shadows.

 

We can believe sometimes that God is absent.

 

God was famously declared dead by atheists in the nineteenth century, yet he’s been declared dead before – indeed he was on Good Friday.

 

But the proclamation  of the Gospel is that by entering death, facing it unblinkingly, God has the capacity to bring true, deep and authentic life.

 

The Resurrection of Christ says God is alive, vibrant, Creator, giver of all that is good, the one who sustains our lives and loves us, you and me.

 

The Resurrection of Christ says God is more present to us than we are to ourselves.

 

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Yet, as we commemorated on Good Friday, Christ has died. His body was placed in the ground.

 

 

His blessed Mother, Mary, knew this.

 

She had seen the dead body of her Son removed from the cross and - echoing the time she nursed him at her breast - has him on her lap, but now wiping dried blood, sweat and dust from his cold brow.

 

The women with Mary knew.

 

They had been there when his body was placed in the tomb, and they were ready to come back to wash and anoint him.

 

Yet when Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb, early on the first day of the week, she found it empty: ‘they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him’ (John 20.2b)

 

[Who is ‘they’? Did Mary Magdalene suspect that Pontius Pilate or the Jewish authorities had taken Christ’s body?

 

That’s what tyrants do. Still. Today.

 

A contemporary tyrant did this just last month.

 

Even though he had died, Alexei Navalny’s body was not released to his family.

 

What possible power could his dead body have now? But power it had and tyrants want to control even dead bodies.

 

It’s the worst distortion of the legal principle of Habeas Corpus, ‘you have the body’, which means no one can unlawfully take your living body from you, and imprison you falsely.

 

But tyrants will even take a dead body because they know a dead body can inspire as much as a living one: and that’s what Mary Magdalene suspected.

 

Receiving the body of a loved one who has died, knowing that their body rests is so important to us.

 

That’s true for the Navalny family and for those people in Hull recently who discovered that some undertakers had not been putting the right bodies in the right coffins: it was intensely distressing.

 

To have the body of a dead person and bury it with dignity is so important to us.

 

I know that pastorally when I take funerals, prepare the dying for their death and, something we all should do, seek to comfort the bereaved.

 

And that’s why Mary Magdalene was at the tomb that first Easter morning, to be in the presence of Christ’s body.

 

But in the case of Jesus, his body was not spirited away, or snatched, or fraudulently swapped: something more radical, startling and breathtaking has happened.

 

It’s true though: Jesus’ tomb is empty; his body is not there.]

 

Mary Magdalene, Peter and the Beloved Disciple descend into confusion, because at that point, as John tells us, ‘they had failed to understand the teaching of scripture, that he must rise from the dead’. (John 20.9)

 

Easter speaks of the power of God to raise even a dead body to life.

 

God, the Giver of Life, desires creation to be fulfilled and human lives completed by union with him fully alive: the scriptures are absolutely consistent about that.

 

Christ’s resurrection it takes us deep into (1) the mystery of life and death, (2) our destiny in the life of the world to come and (3) abundance of life here and now: today.

 

Life. Life. Life.

 

St Irenaeus of Lyons, who lived in the second century AD, writes ‘Gloria enim Dei vivens homo’, ‘the glory of God is humanity alive’ (Adversus haereses, IV, 20, 7).

 

This is what the Resurrection of the Lord makes possible for you and for me, when we are drawn into life of his Risen and Glorified Body, the Church.

 

The world needs us to be this.

 

Western society is at sixes and sevens about the human body.

 

Body image, both negative and narcissistic, is a source of pain to many; the relation of the body and personal identity is an anguish and agony for those for whom it is unresolved; assisted dying says that some bodies are dispensable before their natural end, and society has largely accepted that the unborn human body is too.

 

The Bodily Resurrection of Christ, and that he shared our human experience by his Incarnation, is ultimately why Christians have always cherished the human body, even, or especially, the weakest and most vulnerable.

 

The call is not to discard bodies but to see them fulfilled, loved and flourishing.

 

Life, in Christ’s resurrected and glorified body, is the destiny we hope for and long to share in, so that our mortal bodies are renewed and transformed, as St Paul puts it, and mirror Christ’s glorious body.

 

An ancient heresy suggests that human beings are essentially either body or soul, or that body and soul war together within us.

 

It’s known as dualism, i.e. two parts, not one whole: Christianity rejects that account of being human - we are body and soul together.

 

A spirit without a soul is an angel; a soul without a body is a ghost: neither are human.

 

The Crucified and Risen Lord is not an angel and he is not a ghost because his body is resurrected.

 

The resurrected body of Christ unites the physical and spiritual: he eats and drinks; but he cannot be held onto; he defies space and time and yet Thomas can touch his wounds.

 

Jesus Christ is not immediately recognisable, even to his closest followers, and yet acts in a thoroughly recognisable way.

 

Across the Gospels disciples were fearful, weeping, incredulous when they met the Crucified and Risen Lord, but always propelled to faith.

 

Fears; tears; incredulity, faith: that instinct is right.

 

May I be frank?

 

The implications of the Resurrection should make us tremble with a holy fear; weep for our sin; realise that God ways are higher than our ways, for then we move to faith when we ask: ‘am I ready to embrace the Risen Lord? Can I hold onto him? Can I receive his Body? Can I live out his risen life, so people may see in my body the marks of love?

If the answer is a ‘yes’ then we are receiving the Resurrection faith and our lives, like those of the first witnesses, can never be the same again.

Easter Vigil homily - In Newness of Life

Romans 6.3-11

Mark 16.1-8

 

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

 

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There are three scenes in the Gospel of St Mark that feature the same small group of women: Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.

 

First, Mark records their presence at the Crucifixion. They look on from a distance as the dreadful and, literally, excruciating process of this form of execution took place. They will have heard the battle-hardened Centurion's astonished declaration that, 'Truly this man was the Son of God' as Christ breathed his last. (Mark 15.39)

 

The second scene is portrayed on the order of service tonight. The upper image shows the burial of Jesus. And there they are, along with Joseph of Arimathea and others, wrapping a linen shroud around Jesus’ lifeless corpse. And Mark notes that, as a stone is rolled against the entrance of the tomb, they saw where he was laid. (Mark 15.46, 47)

 

And the lower image is a portrayal of tonight’s gospel reading. That group of faithful, devoted, women go to the tomb. At the first opportunity as the Sabbath ended, that is today, the Saturday, they had ‘bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him’ (Mark 16.1). You can see the detail of the holder for the spices and oil that they brought.

 

So tonight we know them as 'The Myrrh Bearing Women', echoing the Magi who brought myrrh to the Infant Lord. Like the Magi they had come in devotion and reverence. This was not, though, to a newborn, but rather they had come to wash and anoint the Lord's corpse, to give his body dignity before, they thought, it would be received back to the dust from which, Genesis says, we all come and will return: ‘Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return' (Genesis 3:19).

 

As they made their way there the women were worrying over who would move the stone that had been so firmly put in place. Their expectation was that the tomb would be firmly shut, not open.

 

So they arrive and an angel, a messenger of God, tells the women, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him’ (Mark 16.6). Those women knew that place, they were there when the corpse was laid there. They knew it as a tomb, a place of death, where the earth reclaims those who have lived their lives. They found no body, instead they hear the first proclamation of Easter – he has been raised! - a proclamation we hear afresh tonight.

 

So we have come to rekindle, with that New Fire of Easter, the light of the Crucified and Risen Lord in our lives.

 

We have come bringing, not spices and oil, but our devotion, our hope and our love.

 

Last time we were in church Christ’s death was proclaimed but now the Easter alleluias ring out. Then there was the threefold proclamation ‘This is the wood of the cross whereon was hung the Saviour of the world’; tonight, we hear the threefold proclamation, ‘The light of Christ’ to which we respond, ‘Thanks be to God’, tonight ‘alleluia’ returns in threefold splendour.

 

The thing is though that we can’t rest on hearing and receiving the Good News. That group of women is given a commission, a commission that extends to you and to me.

 

The angel told the women, ‘go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ (Mark 16.7)

 

In other words go and be witnesses, communicators of what you have heard to the Church who in turn will be sent out in the power of the Holy Spirit to bring that Good News to the ends of the earth.

 

That Easter commission became ours when we were baptised, when we were washed with the saving waters of life, anointed ourselves with Holy Oil and incorporated into the enduring, vibrant life of the Holy One.

 

This promise unfolds throughout the Scriptures, and we have had a taste of that this evening, starting with the first week of Creation, a week echoed in Holy Week, through which God relentlessly creates, restores, delivers and renews.

 

All this he brings to our lives. That’s why St Paul, one of the very greatest of gospel witnesses, reflecting on the power of the resurrection and the implication of baptism, can write:

 

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6.9-11)

 

In baptism we are part of the risen, living, Body of Christ. In the Eucharist we seek out the body of the Lord and receive him: broken for us; living for us. What that group of women sought, we seek. And like them we will find the mystery and ultimately the life he came to bring. They were fearful at this news: and, make no mistake, embracing the life of the resurrection is an awesome thing.

 

So now let us prepare to ‘walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6.4) and renew the faith of our baptism and then seek his body at the altar and receive him.