Sunday, May 17, 2026… Seventh Sunday of Easter
“The Power of the Name”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 96:1-11; Acts 1:12-26; 1 Peter 4:12-19, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
Service Order: Divine Service IV with Holy Communion, p. 265, LSB
Hymns: “Oh, for A Thousand Tongues to Sing” #528; “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name” #549; “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds” #524
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
What’s in a name? Does what your parents choose to name you really matter? I know that little baby looking up at you is just so cute, but you do have to remember that they’ll live with that name for the rest of their life. It’s tempting to name a little girl Fluffy or Muffy or Cutiepie or Sweetpea, but it won’t be so cute when they’re thirty. You can name your little boy Rage or Chaos or Spike or Jihadi, but that just might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You might want to avoid names that are sixteen letters long and hard to spell or pronounce, even if you’re pulling an obscure name out of the Bible like, Zerubabbel or Mephibosheth. Elon Musk has a son named X AE A-12 (he pronounces it Axel). I hear Donald for a first name and Trump for a middle name is trending right now, as in “Donald Trump Johnson.” (I’m not sure about doing that to a child). It’s your name, man, the name that will be yours all your life, the one you’ll put on your school papers, the one you’ll use to sign your checks. Your name is your identity, and hopefully a name you can be proud of. (I have no idea how my mother came up with “Larry Gene,” but OK…)
Last names are important, too; that’s your family name. I was told growing up that I carried the family name with me whenever I was out in the world, “so don’t do anything that will bring it to shame.” Your family name might reflect what your ancestors came from or what they did for a living, if they were smiths, or millers, or carpenters -- or shepherds. That name you have, if you’re a Christian, was the name given to you at your Baptism. It’s your Christian name, the name God gave you and wrote in His Book when you were washed in the water. Your name is important; it means something; you’re the one and only you.
God, when He sent His Son into the world, told His parents to name Him Jesus. That name is a name with great meaning. They didn’t have last names back then, like we do now. You were identified either by your father’s name, or by the place you came from.
So Jesus, to His neighbors, would have been known as “Jesus, son of Joseph” or “Jesus of Nazareth.” “Jesus” was a very special name. There was no one in father Joseph’s family line by that name, which is how Hebrew boys were usually named; it was the name God the Father in Heaven chose for Him. The name Jesus – in Hebrew, Joshua, or Yeshua –means “God is Salvation.” The name Jesus tells about where He comes from, and what His purpose and mission and calling is in the world. Jesus, the God of Salvation, came to save us from our sins. That’s who He is, that’s His holy identity, and that’s how we are to know Him. Everything He did, from Christmas to the cross, was to live out the name He was given -- all so that we could know Him as He is, and live and be saved by the power of His name.
That short reading we have this morning from the Gospel of John is part of a much longer dialog that Jesus had with His disciples, His last teaching to them before He was taken away and crucified. It was the Maundy Thursday conversation, the night before He was crucified. The dialog starts in John 13, where He gave them the Last Supper, and declared it to be His own body and blood. There He washed their feet, and asked them to do the same for one another. He told them then that one of their number would betray Him; and they asked Him, one by one and name by name, “Is it I, Lord, is it I?” Jesus told Simon, whom He’d given the name Peter, that before the night was over, he would deny the name of His Savior three times.
John 14 is where Jesus tells His disciples He’s leaving the earth to prepare a place for them in heaven, and that He is “the way and the truth and the life” and the only way for them to get there. He tells them, “I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it.” And He promises them, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 15 is the chapter about the vine and the branches, and about all the blessings that will be ours if we keep our hearts attached to Jesus and live our lives in His name.
It’s the chapter where He commands His disciples to love one another, and where He tells them how the world will know we belong to Him by the love that our lives show.
And Jesus also warns them that there will always be people in the world who hate Him, and who hate His Word and the very mention of His name. And He tells them, “If the world hated Me, it will hate you, as well.” Carrying the name of Jesus with you, being identified with Him, having J-E-S-U-S written on your forehead and on your heart, won’t always be an easy thing. Persecution and abuse will often go along with carrying and proclaiming that Name. “Pick up your cross and follow Me,” Jesus says in another place.
John 16 is a chapter full of promises. It’s where Jesus promises to send us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and life and truth, the Spirit who’ll be in us and with us and beside us, and who’ll guide us and protect us from evil and keep us faithful. And it’s where He promises that whatever grief we have to endure for the sake of His name will be worth it all, and will one day turn to joy. "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace,” He tells them. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
And then we come to John 17, and this entire chapter of John is a prayer. It’s Jesus pouring out His heart to His Father, and praying for His disciples, and for you and for me. It’s Jesus interceding for us; and His prayer is wonderful and powerful and beautiful. “After Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the time has come.’” The time has come to take this name You gave Me and make it everything You meant it to be. “God is salvation,” and salvation for Your children has to come by the cross. “Not My will, Father, but Yours be done.” Jesus the Son will be glorified by the highest and greatest expression of love there could ever be. “Greater love has no man than this, than that He lay down His life for His friends.”
Jesus, He with the most powerful name in all creation, the One with all authority to rule over creation, and over the world, and over all people, lays that authority down to allow Himself to be crucified; gives up His own life to give life to us all. His name is Jesus, Yeshua, “God is salvation.”
“Now this is eternal life,” Jesus says in His prayer; “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” This is eternal life, this is the path to it, this is how you achieve it and receive it: By knowing God the Father, the only true God, through the One He named Jesus Christ, and whom He sent into the world to become our salvation and die for our sakes. “Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies,” Jesus says, “and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”
“Father,” Jesus prays, “I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do.” God’s glory, His joy, His desire, is to draw all men to the love of God and to bring all His children home. And Jesus’ glory was to be obedient to His Father’s will, to love us like the Father loves us. And He showed that love by stretching out His arms and giving Himself for our sakes, completing the work the Father gave Him to do. His name is Jesus, and His name is love.
The name of Jesus is bigger than the world, bigger than the universe. He was and is and always has been the Second Person of the Holy Trinity – and He loves us! The divine Son, “together with the Father and the Spirit is worshiped and glorified.” Jesus, name above all names, has left His place of glory in Heaven to come down here to save the likes of You and me. And His mission here was to reveal the true God to us, He says. God the Father is a Spirit, “whom no one has seen or can see.” Jesus came here to be a “God with skin on,” a God in the flesh, a God we human beings could hear and touch and see.
Jesus prays, “I have revealed You to those whom You gave me out of the world.” That’s those twelve disciples Jesus was talking to, yes; but it’s us, too. We’ve all been called by grace and mercy, out of the world and into the love of God. We become His own – children of heaven and no longer children of the world – when His name is written on us in Baptism, and when we turn our thankful hearts to obeying His Word.
“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” St. Paul says in Galatians. “The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
“They were Yours,” Jesus prays to His Father. “You gave them to me, and they have obeyed Your word. Now they know that everything You have given me comes from You. For I gave them the words You gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me.” That’s what they and you and me and everyone needs to confess and believe in order to be saved; it’s the same saving faith we confess in our creeds.
“I pray for them,” Jesus says. I pray for every precious child of God that God by His good Holy Spirit is calling to Himself. I’m not praying for the world, Jesus says. The world is what it is; full of evil, and full of sin, and destined soon to pass away. Jesus didn’t come to build a kingdom in this world, but to save us and bring us up out of this place. If you have name of Jesus written on you, you don’t belong to this world anymore. We’re already citizens of a better place. “I’m but a stranger here, heaven in my home,” the old hymn says.
“I will remain in the world no longer,” Jesus prays in the presence of His disciples. The cross was coming, and the Easter morning miracle, and the day when He’d ascend in glory and His disciples wouldn’t see Him anymore. If Jesus were here in the flesh today, wouldn’t that be a glorious and wonderful thing? But that’s a blessing we don’t have right now, not yet. Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly and come soon!
You and I are still in the world, and the world still does what it does. We’re not immune to pain or suffering or sorrow or death, any more than the rest of the world.
We may not belong in our hearts to this world, but we still have to live in it, for as long as the Lord would have us here. Our saving grace is in the last line of Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel today: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of Your name--the name You gave me--so that they may be one as we are one.“
What’s in a name? The real question is, what grace is ours by the One whose name has been written on us? The name “Jesus,” when we speak it and pray it and carry it with us, really does have genuine and holy power. “Jesus” isn’t just another name; great things – even miracles - still do happen when we speak and preach and pray in His Name. This Church of ours lives and moves and breathes by the powerful name of Jesus Christ. His name and His Word puts the blessings of forgiveness, life, and salvation into our Sacrament. His name – Jesus – is our protection and our power and our grace as we bear witness to Him in this world.
May we wear His name upon us like “Gospel armor,” or like a warm and comforting coat. And may we speak His life-changing name without shame, and with boldness and faith and great confidence, knowing His name truly is “the Name above all names.” “And at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, LCMS, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, LCMS, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com