+ 6^th Sunday of Easter – May 25^th, 2025 +

Series C: Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:9-27; John 16:23-33

Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church

Milton, WA

“In Jesus’ Name”

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Prayer,” wrote Lutheran pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “begins not in the poverty of our hearts but in the richness of the word of God.”

Yes, you say the words and pray the prayers, but if your prayers are like the framing of a house, they are not built on the quicksand of your heart, but on the solid rock foundation of Christ’s promise and name. Prayer – like every other gift from God – is also given, sustained, and granted by his good and gracious will.

That’s why, when you learn to pray it’s not all that different from the same way you learned to speak when you were younger. A child learns to speak when his father speaks. Dad or mom say words and the child says the words back to them. Sometimes over and over…again and again. So it is with God’s gift of prayer. You learn to speak to God in prayer because God the Father has spoken and speaks to you in his word. You learn to pray by hearing and receiving his word.

With our heavenly Father’s words, you his children, learn to speak with him. Repeating God’s own words after him, you begin to pray.

When you pray it is also at Jesus’ invitation. Always on the basis of his promise. Always anchored in his cross for you and his resurrection for you.

This is one of the great and gracious and mysterious gifts Jesus gives his disciples – then and now – in John 16.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 

The more you think on these words the more astonishing you will find them. Jesus is giving you something that you and I on our own have no basis to claim apart from Jesus’ promise and blessing. Outside of Jesus’ name and his dying and rising…You and I have no rights or merits or demands to make and bring before him in prayer.

We come as beggars before God and have no right to ask him anything. As you learn in the Catechism. We are neither worthy of the things for which we pray, nor have we deserved them, but we ask that He would give them all to us by grace, for we daily sin much and surely deserve nothing but punishment.” And yet, Jesus invites us to pray – not in our name – but in his name.

To call pray in the name of Jesus…to come before the Father in prayer…is not a right in the way we think of them…like the bill rights or the amendments of the constitution. Prayer, like all of God’s gifts is a blood-bought gift to you in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Prayer belongs to you not by right, but by Jesus’ redemption. Not by your merits, but by his mercy. Not by your goodness, but by his grace to you in Jesus. Not in your name, but in his name.

To do something in the name of someone is a recognition that the name comes with authority or a claim by which you can do certain things. Think of an ambassador to a foreign nation given the authority or name of the United States to negotiate peace or a trade deal. Or think of the old stories when a messenger was sent throughout the kingdom with a decree and it was read in the name of the king.

To pray in the name of Jesus means to pray under his name. To pray under his authority and with his blessing. To pray in the name of Jesus means to ask for the things Jesus gives and desires for you.

You see, then, how astonishing and gracious this gift is. To pray in Jesus’ name is not to pray on the basis of your own name, but his. He grants you an authority and a blessing and a claim that is not your own but he makes it your own in his dying and rising. It’s just like his righteousness. You are given and clothed in a righteousness that is not your own, but his. So it is with prayer.

That’s why to pray in Jesus’ name isn’t some kind of mystical or magical formula you include in the end of the prayer – like rubbing the magic lamp three times to get the genie to grant you your wishes like Janis Joplin sang…O, Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz. No. Jesus’ name isn’t given as an incantation, but for intercession.

To pray in Jesus’ name means to pray in faith in what he has done for you when he died for you, atoned for your sins, and rose from the grave. It means to pray in faith in Jesus who gives you such gifts as prayer and his promises in his word, water, body and blood.

Praying in the name of Jesus means you pray, not on the basis of who you are and what you’ve done, but who he is and what he has done for you.

Praying in the name of Jesus means to pray as he has taught you, and in the name of him who is your Savior. That is, we pray for what Jesus wants and desires for us. For the things that would draw you to him. For the things that give you his grace and mercy.

To pray in the name of Jesus is to pray as our Lord prayed in Gethsemane before his suffering and dying on the tree…Lord, not my will, but yours be done.

There in the garden Jesus was praying for you. On the cross while bleeding and suffering and dying for you, Jesus was praying for you. On the throne as God-man, Jesus your advocate and mediator is always praying and interceding for you.

This is why Jesus’ invitation and instruction to pray is so remarkable and gracious. When he says pray this way, “Our Father,” He invites you, as you learn in the catechism, to sit next to him on the throne of heaven as a brother – you and I who were wayward, lost sons and daughters – and call upon God as Father. For he tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true Father and we are his true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask him as dear children ask their dear father.

This is good news…when your prayers falter…Jesus prays for you. When your prayers are like you and I are – saints and sinners kinds of prayers – they’re all covered in the blood of Jesus. When your prayers are good, bad or ugly, your prayers – like the rest of you, are washed in the blood of the Lamb. And you live and work and pray and die and rise…all in the name of Jesus.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.