Life in His Name

Life in His Name – Rev. Tony Romaine
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What does it mean to live a life in the name of Christ? Well, lots of people call themselves Christians, in fact, the latest study of those around the world who identify as “Christian” numbers it at roughly 2.4 billion. But what does it actually mean, as John beckons us to at the end of our Gospel message today, to live a life in Christ’s name?

Well one clue can be how Christ Himself greets the disciples as they are gathered in the locked room on the days after the resurrection. Here we have the disciples locked away in fear and so Jesus greets them by saying, “Peace be with you.” This must mean that the very first thing we are to offer one another is peace. Peace can be a tricky word and some can get hung up on the semantics or history or stereotypes of what peace can mean, but if we want to be truly Christian in our approach to one another, then the very first thing we must offer is peace.

This is not any normal peace either, this is the peace that Christ offers us. So that same peace is what we must offer one another; the peace of knowing that no matter what happens to us in this world, Christ’s peace is ours and that peace can conquer death itself. If we know nothing in our world can harm us or destroy us or kill us that Christ has not experienced and conquered through His death on the cross and ultimate resurrection, well then, Peace is what we must have in our hearts.

Why is it so difficult though for us to accept this? We add parameters to Christ’s peace, we add exceptions to when and where we will offer it, we add expectations that we should not have to offer it if we are met with strife or personal disadvantage or attack. We think about our family and friends and careers and positions and comfort and the list goes on; and rightly so, but if Christ promises us a peace unlike any other, then why can we not just abandon ourselves to this peace and accept what Christ offers? The answer lies in the very thing that Christ offers us peace to get rid of…fear. This is why the first words the disciples hear as they are huddled behind locked doors for “fear of the Jews,” are “Peace be with you.” The peace we offer one another will not necessarily mean that fearful situations will not ever arise, or that we are not ever going to face fear. But the peace we are called to offer one another is one that meets us in that fear to be Christ’s light and love in that moment and offer the calm, sweet, peace that can only come from Christ. What a world we could have if we lived into Christ’s peace and offered it to one another as Christ freely offers it to us!

This leads us to the second way we can have “life in His name.” Jesus tells us that just as God has sent him, so Christ sends us. Yes, you heard it correctly, Jesus is sending us out just as God sent Him to us. That means that we must accept the mission of going to a people that will not understand us, going to the margins to help the afflicted, going to the poor to lift them our of their misery, going to the sick and needy and healing their wounds, going to the immoral leadership and challenging them to live as God longs for us to live, and raising disciples who can follow and be sent themselves, just to name a handful of Jesus’ ministry God sent Him to accomplish.

But wait, there is one even larger thing that being sent as Christ was sent to us by God means: It means that we are to die to ourselves and abandon any notion of pride, ego, god-like status and humbly offer ourselves over, even unto death for the Good News of God’s love. It means that we are to love one another selflessly and fully and for who they are. Woah! This sounds near impossible, let alone puts us right back into that place of fear we were in before, right?! Christ wants us to die on a cross just like Him? Not exactly, Christ wants us to, again, be sent as He was sent, meaning, that we respond beyond our fears, that we respond in prayer, that we respond by going forth in His name, that we respond by doing and being and teaching and trying, and that we may have to bear a cross in order to do it, that cross may be costly and lead to death, and that is the very cross we all know Christ has called us to carry already!

But hear what comes next, because Christ, God, knows we are not capable of accomplishing this alone. And just when you could imagine the disciples trembling in the thought of experiencing the very same death they just witnessed their rabbi go through, Christ breathed on them, gave them, and subsequently us, the Holy Spirit He had been promising they would receive. That’s right folks, we always think of the Holy Spirit being received by the disciples and the church at Pentecost, and rightly so, but here we have Christ breathing it out on these early church people locked away in fear so that they can accomplish this monumental task Christ is calling, so that they, and we, can have life in Christ’s name. Yes, He calls us to “Receive the Holy Spirit.” That means we have to embrace it, we have to catch it, we have to take it in, we have to grasp this Breath of God, inhale it, and allow it to change us forever. And thanks to this gift of Jesus, we can do anything.

Spoiler Alert for what we will come to talk about during the season of Pentecost, each of us has the Holy spirit emblazoned upon our soul, breathed into our lungs, inspiring gifts in us, empowering actions in us, and guiding us through it all. But we also have to do the work, we have to engage, we have to answer the call just as Jesus did when God sent Him to us, we have to receive the Holy Spirit breathed upon us and go forth in It’s peace-filled power.

But just in case we are wondering how we could ever start to have life in Jesus’ name, how could we ever start to offer Peace like Christ offered, accept the call like Christ accepted, or receive the Holy Spirit and go forth in Christ’s name, Jesus gives us the first step of many and shows us just what power we have just inhaled by telling us, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Step one is forgiveness, STEP ONE!!!

How do we live life in Jesus’ name if we do not offer forgiveness, that is what every Christian knows about Him and believes about Him and even non-Christians if asked would be able to recite. Christ is love and forgiveness, like the old song by Dean Martin, love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other…love and forgiveness. Living a life in Christ’s name and forgiveness, you can’t have one without the other!

So let’s recap, to have a life in Christ’s name begins with offering Peace, continues with a life that sacrifices the “me” for the “we,” is a life filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit, and the first step we must take to accomplish this is forgiveness. But like those great infomercials on tv, just when you think that is all…there is more! There is one more amazing thing that Christ does in this Gospel passage; He allows for doubt, but conquers it with belief. We know more than ever, and even more than those disciples huddled in fear all those millennia ago, that Christ is not going to physically be with us on this journey, at least not yet! But through the “doubting Thomas” narrative, we are taught a great lesson: we can believe even when we cannot see or touch or feel; we can believe in faith.

Our faith is what we can counter a whole world of doubt with, our faith is what can move us beyond the inertia that might otherwise ensnare us in inactivity, our faith is what can take us from needing to see it to believe it to not ever needing to see it to believe it; because, while it would be AWESOME to have Christ come and offer us Peace, breathe on us Himself, and to see/touch our Savior, is it not even more AWESOME how we can live a life in Christ’s name without ever having done so?! My friends, that is why John finishes this passage by saying, “through believing you may have life in His name.”

Our world would be an amazing place if we all had the peace of Christ, if we all accepted our call to a life of selfless service like our Savior did for us, if the whole world breathed in and received the Holy Spirit and went out and forgave one another, but it is only when we believe that any of it is possible. Moreover, it is only when we believe that it is necessary, it is only when we believe that it can happen without Christ physically with us, that then we are not just pretending to be Christians in a world of billions of them, but we are actually living “life in His name.” That is how we take something as life-changing as Christ’s resurrection, that is how we take the Lenten work we did on learning how to change our lives for Christ, that is how we live into Christ’s command for us to love God and love one another, that is how we are not just Christian in name alone, but truly living into a life of Christ, a life in His Name, Amen!