Photo by Angela K. Severn

Growing up United Methodist, I loved, but did not fully appreciate some of the classic hymns. Certainly there are many that I still do not fully appreciate. But this morning I was meditating on that great hymn by Fanny Crosby, Blessed Assurance:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;

It's really nice to have a song like this (or frankly, any of Charles Wesley's hymns), that I can sing wholeheartedly, affirming every phrase. I'll spare you, but I believe we could find a verse in scripture as the basis for each phrase in "Blessed Assurance". Wouldn't it be great it all songs we sing in church were like that?

One of the great things about old hymns is that we're getting the best of the last...400 years.  If it's bad, it didn't make it! What "hymns" (widely singable songs of praise and worship) being written in our time will be around in 50 years?
   

photo by lel4nd

Note: apologies for the repost. I need to add an "edit" feature to this blog...

What do we mean when we talk about the name of Jesus? It requires a lot of effort for me to not formulaically add "in Jesus' name" to close my prayers, only because my ears are so accustomed to hearing it.  Certainly praying in Jesus' name is more than lip service!

The phrase "name of Jesus" appears only 11 times in the New Testament, 10 of which are in Acts, where it is mostly used in reference to actions (e.g. speaking, baptizing). The 11th reference is in the poetic passage in Philippians 2:5-11 that I briefly mentioned yesterday. Here "the name of Jesus" is part of the vindication that Jesus receives from God because of his actions.

Just as Jesus does not exalt himself, Jesus does not make a name for himself (as opposed to the workers at Babel, who said "let us make a name for ourselves"). Instead, it is God who "gave him the name that is above every name..so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend... , and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

It seems that the name given to Jesus is, more or less, "Jesus Christ the Lord." That is, God did what he did through Jesus so that everyone would recognize that Jesus, the Christ, the Jewish Messiah, is the Lord of everyone, and indeed everything in the universe. And this is all "to the glory of God the Father." (see Michael Gorman's translation/explanation of this passage).

In light of this, I think that when we pray in Jesus' name, we are affirming several things:
1) That Jesus is in fact the Lord/Master of the Universe who is able to accomplish all things;
2) That we ourselves are "in Jesus" or "in Christ" -- associating ourselves with everything he is ("the way, the truth, and the life," our mediator with God the Father, etc.);
3) That we are not (and this is the hard part...) praying for the sake of ourselves, but for the greater sake of the glory of God the Father.

This deserves some more research and thought. But next time, I think I'll discuss the implications of Jesus being given this new name.

Having a site called "crossability" has turned out to be quite meditative for me. What "ability" could be gained through a painful, humiliating death on a cross? Said another way, how is it possible that the seeming display of weakness on the part of Christ at the crucifixion could lead to a great display of the power of God?

In the book of Romans, it doesn't take Paul long to mention Christ's power. Paul introduces himself as a called apostle set apart for the gospel. He says that this is the gospel "concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead" (1:3-4, NRSV).

The NRSV leaves ambiguous whether we should read "declared to be Son-of-God-with-power" or "declared, with power, to be Son of God." The NET bible makes its preference clear (which, incidentally, coincides with the opinion of several scholars who have earned my trust), reading "was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power."

The point here is that through the resurrection, Jesus was declared to be Son-of-God-in-power. This implies that he was not previously known by this title (or for that matter, "Jesus Christ the Lord," as conjectured in my last post). It also seems to lend itself to the interpretation that Jesus was shown to be Son-of-God-in-weakness through his crucifixion.

I concede that this is a fine point, but it nonetheless highlights a broader point that I think is central to understanding Christ, and God. God did not chose to reveal himself through a great militaristic king who would unlatch the vise grip of the great beast Rome, but he chose to come as a quite normal baby (albeit in some extraordinary circumstances).

The story of God throughout time has been his ability to make something out of nothing -- to make powerful the weak. Nowhere is this more clear than the image of the glorified Son-of-God-in-power, who is the resurrected, crucified Christ.

But I believe that God does something similar in the lives of the faithful. Paul learned this personally when God said to him, "my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 9, see also 1 Cor 2:1-5).  

I am amazed with God's ability to use the weak in powerful ways. The hardest part, for me, is believing that God is able to use me in spite of (or dare I say because of?) my weakness! 

Yesterday I commented on our tendency to measure success based on worldly things, whereas what was important to Jesus was our service to others. Jesus' very life was like that of a servant. But how can we know that this was indeed what God desired of him?

Consider the following passage (which in and of itself deserves much more attention than I'll give it now):

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that 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 2:5-11)

Jesus had every right to declare himself an earthly king with great power and authority. In fact, Jesus was tempted in this way. But instead of exalting himself, he humbled himself. And because he humbled himself and was obedient to the point of a most humiliating and painful death, "God also highly exalted him." He did not exalt himself, but he let God do the exalting. Because God exalted him, I can have confidence that Jesus knew what he was talking about.

The questions for me are clear: am I desiring that others will exalt me (or wanting to exalt myself), or am I striving to live out God's will in hope that he will exalt me (see Luke 14:7-11)? Am I ready to count the cost of discipleship (that it may mean humiliation and even death) and yet be obedient?
 
Next time I'll take a shot at talking about "the name that is above every name."

I've been thinking quite a bit about the path that society plots for us versus that which Christ showed us. We all want to be "successful", but what does this even mean? How do we measure the success of someone's life? How do we measure the success of our own lives?

We can measure someone's success by how much stuff they have. But of course, it isn't the quantity of stuff that makes someone successful -- it's the quality, right?

Even the scale of stuff-success is relative, though. Certainly I've uttered the words, "he has done well for himself," countless times.  When I say that, I generally mean something like "his living conditions could be better, but he makes good use of what he has." Conversely, I might say of someone who spends his inheritance wildly, "if only he would use his money for something useful."  Publicly, we love rags-to-riches stories, but I imagine that privately, many of us could do without the rags. After all, we don't need to be poor before we're rich, right?

Aside from money we might look to the amount of power or influence someone has. We recognize this type of success when we see it. The CEO that started as a janitor-- that's success. The young engineer whose hobby-turned-start-up-company now employs hundreds of people to make The Next Great Thing for the masses-- that's success.

You get the point -- it's how much fill-in-the-blank you make for yourself that makes you successful.

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28)

 
I am constantly amazed and challenged by seemingly "upside down" world for which Jesus advocates. The great are servants, and the first are slaves. Could it be, perhaps, that it not Jesus' world that is upside down, but ours?

If we're looking for success in the world, we'll have to look where others are not -- to those who are servants.  And what better place to start than Jesus, who "came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

What else can we learn from the way that Jesus modeled servanthood? How much can we be like Jesus? What exactly is involved in being his disciple?  I hope to look at these questions in some future posts.