Easter 5, Year A | John 14:1-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 7, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” – John 14:14[1]
“In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
For generations, many of us have learned those are the “right” words to use at the end of our prayers. It’s sort of like the formal close of a letter or the black screen that appears before a movie’s credits with “the end” written on it. It’s a nice little formulaic wrap up that indicates we’re done with what we have to say and marks a clear distinction between our time of prayer and the beginning of whatever we plan to do next. But how often do we really think about what we’re saying? How many of us have taken the time to understand what exactly that little phrase might mean or indicate?
Those of us born into Western culture tend to make a sharp distinction between what we understand to be religion and what we consider to be more along the lines of superstition or magic. Nearly 2,000 years of monotheism leads us to think of religion and prayer as methods to approach the one true God while we tend to relegate spells and that sort of thing to the realm of paganism or make-believe. But in non-Christian cultural traditions, that distinction can be much more blurry, with the ideas and words for prayer and spells or “energy pathways” blending and mingling so as to be nearly, if not completely, indistinguishable from one another. Although we don’t tend to see or think about it, largely because of our mental constructs and general lack of contact with polytheistic or indigenous religions, once you start to give more consideration to the concepts, it makes a lot of sense. In fact, prayer and spells share an identical structure.
A few weeks ago I went over the basic structure of most of our prayers, with the Invocation, the Petition (or request), and the Exchange forming the backbone of what we say.[2] It’s identical to formal magical incantation. In the Invocation, one addresses a deity or unseen power, frequently including a specific element of praise that moves us toward the next part of our prayer. Once we reach the Petition, we get to the point of what we’re really there for—what it is we’re asking or would like to have happen. With the Exchange, we offer something we hope will be of value to the deity. In “magical”[3] traditions, that might be some type of food or an animal sacrifice or even one’s own body or blood—something that represents or proves one’s commitment to the deity. In Christianity, our Exchange is Christ, the idea being that there’s nothing more valuable that we could possibly give God than God’s own self already offered and subsequently proven to be acceptable through the Resurrection. For us, the most we as humans can hope to add to our Exchange is gratitude and thanksgiving—our celebration and enjoyment of the feast God has already provided on our behalf.
Let’s look at our Collect of the Day, found on page 4 of your bulletin, as an example. We open with our Invocation: “Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life.” Our Petition is then, “Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life.” The Exchange is, as always, Jesus: “through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.” The collective “Amen” at the end is essentially an ancient way of adding all our signatures to the mystical document, all of us agreeing together that this is the prayer we do indeed wish to offer.
In personal prayer things tend to be a bit simpler, and a lot of us use “in Jesus’ name, Amen” as how we present the Exchange portion of our prayer: “Dear Heavenly Father,” [the Invocation] “please help Aunt Mary to feel better,” [the Petition] “in Jesus’ name, Amen” [the Exchange].
Before we go any further, I want to make absolutely clear that there’s nothing wrong with praying this way. It’s an ancient and traditional pattern that’s functioned across cultures throughout human history. In everything I’m explaining, I’m not trying to denigrate prayer, take away its power or authority, or suggest that we’re somehow offending God. What I want is for us to understand what exactly it is we’re doing so that we can pray with both attention and intention.
Because we do have the distinction in our culture, I want us to pray in a way that isn’t simply “magic words,” which is a very easy trap to fall into. When Jesus told us to “ask in my name,” he wasn’t teaching us how to properly close off a spell. He wasn’t providing us with a Christian version of “abracadabra” or “hocus pocus.” He was making a very specific statement, and we need to understand what that statement is.
We don’t often use “in the name of” phrases anymore, although they do exist. You might remember TV shows about Medieval times where someone says, “I command you, in the name of the king,” or maybe a police drama where a character shouts, “Stop, in the name of the law!” We understand the meaning when we hear it, but most of us probably don’t spend much time really thinking about what it’s saying. The phrase “in the name of” is, in itself, a sort of invocation. It indicates that the speaker isn’t attempting to act as an individual but is calling on or acting under the authority of something or someone outside themselves. When we ask something “in the name of Jesus,” that’s probably what we assume is happening: we’re making a command or request containing the authority and power of the one named—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. While that makes sense under some circumstances, there’s an alternate translation of the phrase that I suspect might be a little more along the lines of what Jesus intended.
In Jesus’ era, invoking “the name of” someone fell more into line with our idea of “for the fame of.” It’s kind of like when we say someone is “making a name for themselves.” What we mean is that their reputation is spreading. More and more people are coming to know about that person, whether or not an individual’s encountered them directly. I suspect that’s the kind of thing that Jesus was talking about here. The idea of power or authority is still connected to it, but there’s no power or authority to a name if that name isn’t well known. When Jesus tells us to “ask in [his] name,” what we should be thinking is that our request is intended to “spread Jesus’ fame”—to make him better known, more highly honored—genuinely beloved. To ask “in Jesus’ name” then isn’t simply a way to put a stamp on our letter or encourage God to do what we want or even a means of invoking a particular authority for our request. “In Jesus’ name” is in and of itself a request—we could even call it a condition—that we’re adding to our prayer, stating that it should be done only if it helps to positively spread Jesus’ reputation, to bring fame, glory, and honor to our Lord and Savior.
Maybe that’s why it seems like so many of our prayers never seem to receive an answer. It isn’t necessarily that we’re doing something wrong. The structure or formula for the prayer is perfectly functional: we’ve invoked God; we’ve made our Petition; we’ve addressed our perfect Exchange. But there’s another essential aspect of any mystical entreaty that we’ve barely even mentioned: the Intention. Intention is the heart of prayer. As long as Intention is focused and intact, it doesn’t matter if you screw up the words completely or stumble through sections in the “wrong” order. You could even mess up the deity’s name, but the message will still get to the right place. Intention without structure still makes an effective prayer. But structure lacking intention is simply recitation, the rote repetition of an empty spell.
So, what if the problem with our prayers isn’t that we’re doing it wrong or invoking the wrong God or offering an inferior Exchange? What if our real problem is Intention? What if what we aren’t actually seeking to spread God’s glory but simply hoping to make our lives easier? What if we’re simply trying to use magic words to force whatever it is we want to happen? What if our request might actually damage Jesus’ reputation? In that case, when we pray “in Jesus’ name,” God is still answering our prayer—it’s just not the portion we were hoping for.
Over the centuries, both individual Christians and the collective Church have committed terrible acts “in Jesus’ name.” From practical genocide to abusing children to condoning slavery and conquest to—even today—oppressing specific subgroups within our own society, we—those who invoke it and sing about it and pray “in” it—have badly tarnished Jesus’ name. That isn’t his fault—it’s ours. And it’s beyond time we start correcting our failures and mistakes.
So, what if we begin today? What if we stop using Jesus’ name to hurt other people? What if we stop using his name to justify our own selfishness or laziness? What if we stop invoking it as an expression of condemnation or dominion or as some sort of magical approval for our own desires? What might happen if we would stop demanding of others “in Jesus name?” What if we stop nitpicking one another or searching for the “right” way to pray, the way to make prayers somehow “work?” What if we instead learn to focus our intention where our words claim we want it to be? What if we not only pray “in” Jesus’ name but choose to live and love and serve “for Jesus’ fame?” When our lives themselves become true prayer, what wouldn’t God do among us?
“If you ask something for my fame, I’ll do it.”[4]
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] We could also include the concept of the Response—a sort of preemptive “thank you”—but that’s more of a polite addendum to the other three sections that a formal requirement.
[3] I use this word not to denigrate but simply to maintain the distinction common to the Western mind.
[4] My translation