In the Name of the Lord
Read Luke 13:31-35.
What does it mean to arrive in someone's name, to travel under the banner of someone's name? It means you represent someone else, that your actions are not your own, but the actions of the person who sponsors you, who lent you their name. Ambassadors serving for the United States in other countries, for instance, are not acting on their own inclinations or thoughts. Rather, in everything they do, they represent their country, their president, their government. They are there "in the name of" the United States.
In this passage from Luke's Gospel, it's nearer the end of Jesus' life than the beginning. The storm clouds are beginning to gather. Herod (not the Herod from the Christmas story, but a later family member who ruled a much smaller area than Herod the Great) is beginning to threaten this traveling rabbi, but Jesus isn't worried. "I'll do what I want to do," Jesus basically says, "and there's nothing he can do about it...until I'm ready to turn myself over."
But it's that thought...the thought of the day when he turns himself over to the world's powers of evil...that begins to bring sorrow to his heart. It's not the threats from Herod (or any other religious or political leader)—those threats don't bother Jesus. What fills his loving heart with sorrow is the reality that Jerusalem will by and large reject what he has come to offer them. He remembers that Jerusalem's history is one of rejecting prophets and killing the ones God has sent to them, and it breaks his heart.
Yet, he knows there are a few—perhaps a very few—who will, one day soon, cry out in the language of the Psalms, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" They will, on what we've come to call Palm Sunday, recognize the one who sent Jesus the Son: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Blessed is he who did not come to do what he thought was best, but who came to do the will of the Father. Of course, when they make that proclamation, though they don't realize it, he is on his way to die, to give his life as his Father sent him to do.
Those of us who call ourselves "Christian" literally "come in the name of the Lord." We bear his name. Paul says, "We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20). We bear his name; we are his ambassadors, which means we do not act on our own. We come in the name of the Lord, as he did. And in his spirit, we are those who are willing to give all that we have—even our lives—for his sake. That's the essence of what it means to come in his name, to be Christian.
So are you going today in the name of the Lord?
In this passage from Luke's Gospel, it's nearer the end of Jesus' life than the beginning. The storm clouds are beginning to gather. Herod (not the Herod from the Christmas story, but a later family member who ruled a much smaller area than Herod the Great) is beginning to threaten this traveling rabbi, but Jesus isn't worried. "I'll do what I want to do," Jesus basically says, "and there's nothing he can do about it...until I'm ready to turn myself over."
But it's that thought...the thought of the day when he turns himself over to the world's powers of evil...that begins to bring sorrow to his heart. It's not the threats from Herod (or any other religious or political leader)—those threats don't bother Jesus. What fills his loving heart with sorrow is the reality that Jerusalem will by and large reject what he has come to offer them. He remembers that Jerusalem's history is one of rejecting prophets and killing the ones God has sent to them, and it breaks his heart.
Yet, he knows there are a few—perhaps a very few—who will, one day soon, cry out in the language of the Psalms, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" They will, on what we've come to call Palm Sunday, recognize the one who sent Jesus the Son: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Blessed is he who did not come to do what he thought was best, but who came to do the will of the Father. Of course, when they make that proclamation, though they don't realize it, he is on his way to die, to give his life as his Father sent him to do.
Those of us who call ourselves "Christian" literally "come in the name of the Lord." We bear his name. Paul says, "We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20). We bear his name; we are his ambassadors, which means we do not act on our own. We come in the name of the Lord, as he did. And in his spirit, we are those who are willing to give all that we have—even our lives—for his sake. That's the essence of what it means to come in his name, to be Christian.
So are you going today in the name of the Lord?
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