Neither Brand Nor Bat

Neither Brand Nor Bat--July 10, 2018 

"When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?' Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is

“the stone that was rejected by you, the builders;
   it has become the cornerstone.”
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.’ " [Acts 4:7-12]

I have seen kids at the grocery store pausing with impish smiles at the display of walking sticks and canes near the pharmacy aisle and muttering, "This would make a great sword!"  

I have seen it, because I have that kid... and because I used to be that kid.

It's harmless enough, I suppose, the creative impulse we often have in childhood to see every possible way to turn ordinary household objects--even ones intended for healing and helping people to walk again--into makeshift weapons.  It is, perhaps, an unavoidable element of childhood imagination to see a world full of swords (walking sticks), spears (brooms), and ray guns (spray hose nozzles) everywhere.

But outside of the realm of play, it is a sad and bitterly ironic thing when we grown-ups--especially we religious grown-ups--take things  that were meant to bring healing and life and use them as weapons to beat people up with.  It is especially tragic--not to mention wrongheaded and quite nearly blasphemous--to do it with the power that belongs to the name of Jesus.

This is one of those stories where such power is evident, practically bursting from the page, and yet we are so very easily led to imagine the walking stick is a sword--to (mis)use something intended to bring life, and to use it to smack other people down.

The power is brought out in the open in that familiar last verse of this scene.  Peter says of Jesus' name, "There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."  Those are, to be sure, good words to lean on. And indeed Jesus has power--power for life, power for healing, power for overcoming the rottenness in our hearts with self-giving, cross-shaped love. So, without a doubt, there is confident trust in Jesus' powerful name spoken in this verse.  What is funny-but-really-sad to me is the way this verse is so often taken out of its context and then used to beat people like a religious stick, when that's not how it enters the conversation in Acts at all.  Here's a whirlwind tour through what's going on:

First, we need to remember that this sentence about salvation only in Jesus comes at the end (or rather the middle) of a conversation. For those of us who learned Bible verses apart from the stories in which they come, we might think that this was how Peter started his small talk, or that the disciples went running down the streets of town shouting, "You're all going to burn in hell!"  These followers of Jesus aren't afraid to talk about hell, but it's not used as a threat to scare people into faith, and it's certainly never the only thing they have to say.  We religious folk sometimes hear this line, "There is no other name..." and assume that it gives us license to dangle heaven in front of people like a big divine carrot and to threaten with hell behind people like a big stick of self-righteousness.  But this sentence of Peter's comes within a larger conversation. And this particular conversation had started with the question, "By what name did you do this?"—as in, on whose authority, and with whose power, are you able to heal people? 

So to be clear, let's remember that it's the religious authorities who open the can of worms with the "name" issue.  Peter doesn't use the speech about "no other name" as a crude recruiting tool—he speaks the truth that the only name which speaks for the living God and carries the authority of the living God is that of Jesus, the one who shows that authority by dying!  This isn't a matter of promoting a brand, like someone saying, "There's no refreshment like the refreshment you'll get from a glass of Pepsi--don't try that Coke stuff!"  This is about saying, "Here is water that brings the parched and dying back to life!"

At the start of this whole episode in Acts (which starts a whole chapter earlier), the crowds marvel that Peter and John were able to heal this man. And they immediately point away from themselves and ask the gathered people, "Why are you worked up about this event, as though we did this by our own power?"  The point for Peter is clear--it's not by his own authority or power or ability that anybody was healed.  In fact, any time you find folks pointing to their own greatness or putting their own name up in giant gold letters or chiseling their titles in impressive granite blocks, it's generally a sign they are out of step with the character of the living God who actually does have the power to restore life.

Peter has been pointing away from himself to Jesus the whole time, from the moment of healing right up through this scene with the police and the religious authorities who have imprisoned him for continuing to talk about Jesus. He's not trying to put himself above the religious authorities by insisting his religion is better than theirs, he's making it clear to them that it was never in his own power to heal in the first place—it is the power of Jesus, not Peter, and not John, and not anyone else.

Second, we have a language issue: the same word in Greek, sōzō, means both "save" and "heal."  These are related ideas in the Greek mind (think of the word "salve," for example, and you can see it is related to our word "salvation") even though in our day, we tend to isolate healing, which we usually think of as strictly physical (as in, "I had a cut on my arm, but it healed"), and keep it miles away from salvation, which we usually think of as strictly spiritual (as in, "When did you get saved and learn that you'll go to heaven when you die?").  But for Peter, to talk about healing IS to talk about saving, and the other way around—being "saved" is not about being yanked out of this world to float around in heaven as a disembodied ghost playing a harp.  Being "saved" is about being made whole again, being rescued, being brought through danger, and being pulled into a new reality.  

Put this back into the story, and all of a sudden, Peter's final sentence sounds a lot less like a weapon to beat people with and a lot more like a lens for making sense of the events they had all just lived through.  The question put to Peter is, "By what name did you heal/save this person?"  And Peter answers the only way he knows how—"Certainly not by my own ability, but in the name of Jesus, which is the only name that has any power to heal/save."  Now, Luke, who is telling us this whole story, knows that more is going on than just a single man's physical healing from paralysis—he knows that "salvation" is a bigger reality than just physical healing.  And surely our message to the world about Jesus as "savior" is not that Jesus will fix all your bruises and diseases and wounds with a wish and a magic invocation of his name.  

But it is important for us to recover the background of the story here, otherwise, it seems as though we are invited to use the name of Jesus as a weapon to attack others, rather than the name that has the authority to bless and heal and welcome people.  And that's just it: a walking stick is a tool intended to help someone walk again--to restore health and renew life, and it is a childish game to take what was intended to give life and use it as a weapon to beat someone else up with.  Jesus' name is the same--Peter is not peddling a brand. He is pointing to the power beyond himself... a power that doesn't need to put its name on things in giant letters to attract attention or take credit.

In a religious atmosphere where so many are quick to use Jesus' name as a stick to bludgeon people with, and in a wider culture where success is sometimes defined as putting your own name up on a building in giant gold letters, we have an alternative message to speak.  We point to a power and a name beyond our own, a power for life, rather than a weapon to smack people down with. But Jesus is neither a brand nor a bat. So like Peter, we will not peddle Jesus with sales pitches, and we will not swing a big religious stick in Jesus' name to threaten others, but we will do acts in his name, and when we are asked about it, we will say, "Certainly we have not done these things by our own ability, but in the name and authority of Jesus."  

The word we have to offer is not merely the shallow message that people can buy their ticket to heaven if only they will speak the name, "Jesus," but that lives can be made whole again, even now, and we can be a part of the healing and saving of others as the community gathered in the strong name of Jesus.  That is an invitation worth making.

Lord Jesus, we will name you boldly today as our Savior and Lord, and we will name you alone as your Savior and Lord.  But teach us what it means to name you by these titles, and teach us how to live in your name, too, so that we will no longer slander your name by our pettiness, our egotism, and our self-righteousness, nor misrepresent your name by treating you as a deal or a scheme or a weapon.  Train our lips to speak your name rightly, and our hands to live your name for the world faithfully.