My wife is a TV nut! She loves it. Can’t get enough of it. I confess I love it, too. More than anything else, I love the way it gives us something we can do together that we both enjoy. She loves murder mysteries and forensic who-done-its but I draw the line at gore for the sake of gore. Like, for example, (and I’m going to get hate mail on this one!) I quit watching CSI after the second season when it began to seem like a competition between writers to see who could come up with the most grizzly and grotesque programs. And I also confess more than a little concern when I came home and found her watching shows about women who murdered their husbands (but that’s a topic for
another blog).
In one episode Sam Seaborn, played by Rob Lowe, is asked by a friend of a friend to get a pardon for her grandfather, a long dead man from the Roosevelt days who was accused of treason. The charges were dropped but he still died in prison while serving for some minor crime. Sam initially considers it a justifiable request for an obvious miscarriage of justice. Near the end of the show he is shown a still classified file showing that the man truly was a spy, but the charges were dropped to protect other espionage assets still in the field. When the secretary who got him into this asks him how it is going he turns to her and says that the man was guilty, that he was a spy. The secretary says it doesn’t matter, they are all dead now. Sam turns to her and in the course of a beautiful soliloquy that to lie about it just to make one family feel better would be a slap in the faces of not just the brave Americans of World War II but in the faces of all Americans down through the years who have given their “full measure of devotion.”
That speech stirred me so, knowing that I had heard the phrase before, I ran to the authority of all things in our world today, Google, and looked it up. The phrase, it seems, was used in a speech that I was supposed to have memorized in the fourth grade, The Gettysburg Address! I had to go back and reread it.
Now I’m a moderately renowned scholar of American Military History (being the only student in the history of my university at that point to ever have made 100% for the entire course in American Military History) and so I could tell you all about Seminary Ridge and Little Round Top and Picketts charge, but as I reread the words of Abraham Lincoln on November 19th of 1863, knowing of the tremendous bravery on both sides and the tremendous price paid in human life by both sides, tears rolled down my cheeks as I read it! The words stirred my heart and I thought as I read it what great power is there in true words crafted well.
Then I thought of one of the few things dearer to me than my love for this great nation of ours and that is my love for my Savior because of His love for me and I wondered why our pastors weren’t standing in their pulpits and on the street corners and in the mission fields proclaiming equally stirring oratory of our Savior’s love for all of mankind.
Sunday I sat in my church service and the reason slapped me in the face as I listened to my pastor talk about the power of God and our faith in God. He related to us the story of the Roman Centurion, a leader of less than 100 and more than 80 men, in Matthew chapter 8. If I may, let me refresh you on it:
5 When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, 6 “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.”
(Let me interject a little cultural history at this point. The Jewish people at this point in their history, even though they were a people living under Roman rule, were a very proud race and would have considered it improper to go into the home of a Gentile [non-Jewish peoples] because it would have made them ritually unclean [unfit to partake in Jewish religious rituals]. Undoubtedly, having been stationed in Palestine, we can assume that the centurion was aware of that and probably a little shocked that Jesus had even suggested it.)
8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.
If I may, let me put this into a perspective that many of you may have already grasped and certainly anyone with military experience should have. This Roman Captain, or Centurion if you would rather, has not just been polite, he has just declared himself to be subordinate or of lesser rank than an itinerant Jewish teacher and at the same time respectfully recognized the customs of Jesus’ people. He goes on to explain that he knows exactly what he is doing because he is both a man under authority and in authority over others. He does not hesitate to demonstrate his understanding by saying that when he tells one of the men under his authority to do something, he expects it to be done without question or hesitation. By saying all of this he also says that he understands that Jesus has authority over things way beyond mere men’s authority. That’s why Jesus says that no where in Israel, even among His own disciples at this time, has He seen this kind of faith. The story ends with this remarkably simple and direct ending:
13 And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.
It was at that moment that I realized the problem, our problem.
We magnify the name of Jesus, we honor the name of Jesus, we glorify the name of Jesus, we even proclaim the name of Jesus truly as our Savior, but we no longer live in the name of Jesus! Oh, don’t get me wrong, we aren’t slow to speak the name of Jesus, or to give thanks in the name of Jesus or to even pray for our needs or the needs of the sick in the name of Jesus. But we have forgotten, I have forgotten, the authority in the person and in the name of Jesus. In Matthew 28, as Jesus was preparing to go back to the Father, Yahweh, in victory over sin and death and hell and the grave He stated in the verse before the verses we call the Great Commission: “18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And before this occasion in John 14 He tells His disciples:
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
and He gives the disciples proof on the day of Pentecost in a mighty wind and tongues of flame and 3,000 souls are saved and we see it again in Acts chapter 3 when Peter and John (Peter, the one who betrayed Christ at His crucifixion and John, the baby of the twelve being the youngest) were going into the temple to pray:
Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. 2 And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple. 3 Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. 4 And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” 5 And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. 6 But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” 7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 And leaping up he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
The miracle wasn’t in the “magical” phrase “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth”, the miracle was in the knowledge that the authority of the One who calmed the storm and the One who healed the sick and the authority of the One who raised the dead and the authority of the One who conquered death had been entrusted in them to use to magnify and to bring honor to the Christ, the Worthy Lamb who was slain and who lives now as the coming King of Glory. I recognize that none of us ever saw Jesus walk on water or heal a blind man with some mud made from spit and clay but I’ve seen Him take a life that was filled with despair and thoughts of suicide and change it into a life filled with joy and purpose. I’ve seen Him take a man who was absolutely burdened down with sin and failure and remove that burden with just a touch of forgiveness and I’ve seen Him take a teenage girl who the doctors said would be dead by morning and when she was prayed over and anointed her with oil as James tells us to do, with faith in His ultimate power, cleanse her body from disease and give her health and life. When we remember that Jesus has not just goodness and righteousness and victory but authority over our entire world and that He has entrusted that authority to us to use for His glory, from the pulpit to the pew to the pavement we each walk on, then and only then will we, as “the Church”, be a force for satan to fear again.
