Becoming Great

John 14:11-14

March 27, 2022 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Have you ever settled for less? You know, you go looking for a car with specific features, but the ones on the lot don’t have everything you want. So you settle for something with less than what you wanted. Or maybe the house that has everything you wanted is out of your price range, so you find yourself deciding what the bare minimum is you have to have so as to stay in your budget. In these days, maybe you go to the store to shop for a certain product and of course it isn’t in stock, so you settle for something else, maybe a generic version of the item you originally wanted or something similar. Or maybe you settled for less in some bigger area of your life. I love this Peanuts cartoon from Charles Shultz. Snoopy says of his friend Woodstock, “Someday, Woodstock is going to be a great eagle. He is going to soar thousands of feet above the ground.” Then, after watching Woodstock, Snoopy reconsiders. “Well, maybe hundreds of feet above the ground.” After more reconsideration, as Woodstock plummets to the ground, Snoopy says, “Maybe he will be one of those eagles who just walks around” (qtd. in Dunnam, With Jesus in the Upper Room, pgs. 87-88). Have you, like Woodstock, struggled with settling for less than what you want?

This last week, we watched the film American Underdog, which is the story of all-star quarterback Kurt Warner. From childhood, Warner had set his sights on playing football for the NFL, and yet circumstance after circumstance had blocked his chances. He was offered a chance to play Arena Football, which Warner considered “lesser than” because he was going to play in the NFL. But the doors to the NFL kept closing, and finally, in order to support his family and keep a roof over their heads, he agreed to settle for the arena. Ironically, it was because he made that choice that he finally got his shot at the NFL. Have you ever settled for less? Sometimes it’s not actually “less.” Sometimes what we consider settling is actually leading to something better.

Let me ask the question this way: have you ever settled for less than everything God wants for you? Have you ever settled for less in your spiritual life? And if we’re honest, most (probably all) of us would have to answer, “Yes.” Listen again to what Jesus told his disciples on that last night he spent with them: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (14:12). When I first was planning this series, I read that and the note I wrote said that these are audacious words, audacious promises. No other word seems appropriate because what Jesus promises is far above what most (probably all) of us have experienced. Greater things…than what Jesus has done? What does he mean here? And how can we get beyond settling for what we have and become truly great?

During this season of Lent, we have been looking at some of the things Jesus shared with his disciples on the final night. In the hours following what we know as the Last Supper, Jesus shared some last things with his disciples, things he knew they would need to know. Where we are in the story, it’s late at night, but they are still in the Upper Room. Most likely, there may still be dishes on the table, maybe the lamps are burning low, and not long from now they will leave and begin walking toward the Garden of Gethsemane at the other end of the Kidron Valley. But here, in the safety of this room, in the solace of this place, after Judas has left, Jesus makes some promises to these friends of his, promises about where their strength is going to come from not only as he is crucified, but in the years to come as they fully embrace the mission he has in mind for them.

A lot of times we read these words as if Jesus is speaking to us. We actually do that with a lot of the Bible, so I may upset you by what I’m about to say, but the reality is Jesus is not talking to you. Or me. He is speaking to his disciples, the eleven that are still with him at this point. That being said, that doesn’t mean what he says isn’t applicable to us. It wouldn’t have been written down if it wasn’t. In fact, in this passage, Jesus seems to “see” beyond his own time. His words have wide-ranging implications for “whoever believes” (as he says). So first we have to ask: what did it mean to “believe” for those first disciples and what does it mean for us?

It’s still true that if you ask the question, “Do you believe in God?” the vast majority of the population (Gallup Polls says 87%) will still say, “Yes.” Yet, especially since the pandemic, church attendance in our country is at an all-time low, and many public figures who proclaim belief in God seem to live as if God doesn’t exist. It seems to me that a lot of this hinges on what we mean by “believe.” When Gallup asks the question, it seems to be along the lines of, “Do you believe God exists?” So belief is equated with mental agreement. I think that is true; I “believe” it. But that’s not what these disciples would have equated with “belief.” Jesus has more in mind when he talks about believing in something, or someone—specifically, believing in him. And that little word “in” is very important. The word Jesus uses there that is translated as “belief” means to put your faith into something or someone, sort of like placing one hand in another. It has to do with grabbing on, with trust. In fact, trust is the biggest part of Christian belief. It’s not enough to say you think something is true; faith or belief is about “putting your money where your mouth is,” trusting what you say you believe. I think about it this way a lot. As a lot of you know and maybe remember, four and a half years ago, I needed my heart valve replaced for the second time. Before it was scheduled, I visited with both my cardiologist and the surgeon. I was privy to their credentials and I knew how much education they had. I believed they had been taught the skills they needed to have to do the surgery. That’s head knowledge, mental assent. But I had to move beyond head knowledge and actually literally place myself in their hands, trusting that they could and would do what was necessary to save my life. I could only lay down on that operating table if I believed in my surgeon. I had to trust completely.

As Dr. Maxie Dunnam puts it, “Our problem is that we trust in Jesus with some things, some of the time, when we need to trust Him with all things all of the time” (88). The thing is, we usually already think we’ve trusted Jesus as much as we can. These disciples, sitting around the table with him, no doubt thought, “We’ve followed you for three years. We’ve given up so much and we’ve come here to Jerusalem with you for Passover, even though we know it’s dangerous. How much more can we trust you?” They were about to find out, because in the next 24 hours, they would experience Jesus arrested, beaten, and see him hung from a Roman cross. By this time tomorrow night, they would be scattered, hiding out in the city, while Jesus’ body would be in a tomb. What does trust look like when life gets hard, when life gets impossibly difficult?

Michael Kelley, in his book Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal, tells the story of his family’s journey through a cancer diagnosis for their then-2-year-old son Joshua. Leukemia. The word made him feel like someone had punched him as hard as they could in the gut. 82% of the blood cells in Joshua’s little body were affected, and the doctor’s words made Michael question everything he thought he knew to be true. What did he believe? And could he still believe it? Could he trust in a God who would allow his little boy to have cancer? As the treatments began, Michael was driven back into the Bible. He didn’t know where else to go, and one of the most powerful words to him during that time was this short little verse, the shortest in the Bible. It’s John 11:35, and in most translations it simply says, “Jesus wept.” That happens as Jesus stands outside the new tomb of his friend Lazarus, and the question that kept nagging Michael Kelley is why did Jesus weep? He knew he was going to raise Lazarus. Why weep? Then it hit him: Jesus weeps because of the pain and the brokenness all around. He wept for his friends, and he weeps for you and for me. In Jesus’ tears was a beacon to Michael Kelley to trust Jesus more, even when it’s hard. He writes that maybe what we need more than more cliches or more words are tears. “Tears of the One who understands. Tears of the One who empathizes. Tears of the One who doesn’t just tell us that everything will be OK in the end but of the One who feels our pain as deeply as we do.” Jesus’ tears call us to deeper trust.

And that trust, that belief, Jesus says, is what will enable us to do “greater things.” This is a thorny matter. Greater things, Jesus says, than “these.” What is he talking about? “These” seems to refer to the “works” Jesus has been going, but that includes, as I just said, raising Lazarus from the dead. The disciples and us are supposed to do “greater” things than that? Maybe our problem is with the word “greater,” which in American language generally means “more spectacular.” You know, if you have a great fireworks display this year, you have to have a “greater” one next year, bigger, louder, more. If the first movie was great, the sequel has to be “greater,” meaning more explosions, car chases, risks and bigger name stars. But what if “greater” doesn’t mean “bigger” in that sense? What if “greater” means these eleven disciples will actually be able to multiply what Jesus has been doing? When Jesus was on earth, he could only be in one place at one time. But these disciples are going to go “to the ends of the earth,” and they will share the story of Jesus with untold number of people, who will tell others, who will eventually tell you and me. What started out as eleven disciples around a dinner table now numbers 2.38 billion people around the world because of a witness that has been passed from generation to generation (cf Whitacre, John [IVPNTC], pg. 355).

These “greater works” will be done by “whoever believes in” Jesus, and of course whenever we put “belief” and “works” together, we have to have the discussion about how those two work together. It’s not that we work to earn our salvation; the Bible is clear that salvation is a gift of grace. It’s not something we can earn or buy our way into. It’s something we receive. The “works” that Jesus talks about are the evidence of that salvation. When we begin to trust Jesus, we want to do things for him that please him. Our works don’t produce faith in us, but our faith produces works—things that other people can see, witnesses to the life of Jesus among us. As Paul will say in his letter to the Galatians: “The only thing that counts is faith [same word there, by the way] expressing itself through love” (5:6).

And then the last two verses in this morning’s passage point us toward the power for these “greater works,” and that is found in our connection with Jesus. Which comes through prayer. We often grab these verses out of context and make them say that if I just ask enough or with “enough faith,” Jesus will have to give me whatever I want, right? I mean, he said, “I will do whatever you ask in my name” (14:13), so if we just tack on the magic words, “in Jesus’ name,” to the end of every prayer, he has to do what we ask, right? He says it twice, actually. “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (14:14). Just use the magic formula, right? Then we’ll always get what we want? Not quite. There’s something in between those two statements that is absolutely critical to what Jesus is saying: “so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (14:13). Here’s this whole passage in a sentence: we are to pray to receive power to do things that glorify the Father. It’s not about getting what we want. It’s about God getting glory.

Praying “in Jesus’ name” is not a matter of just tacking that phrase onto the end of every prayer (like we do) because, honestly, not all of our prayers really qualify to be “in Jesus’ name.” When we just say the phrase without intentionality or purpose, we treat it like a “magic phrase.” Praying or speaking in someone’s name means those things are in agreement and alignment with that person’s character and their concerns. Remember Paul says we are “ambassadors” of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20)? An ambassador does not speak for him- or herself. An ambassador represents the concerns, the character, the priorities of the person who sent them. So to really pray “in Jesus’ name” means we focus on praying for things that are in alignment with his character, his priorities. That is what will bring glory to the Father. Here’s another way Paul puts it in his letter to the Colossians: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). If we pray for anything less than the things that will bring God glory, then we are settling for less in our Christian life—less of a blessing than Jesus wants to give us.

Just to throw another wrench into the system, I’ll remind you that the prayer book of the early church, in fact the prayer book of Jesus, was what we know as the book of Psalms. Jesus grew up praying these ancient hymns, and we know he was praying at least one of them, probably more of them, as he hung on the cross. And not all of these psalms square with our image of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” We tend to gravitate toward the psalms that are quiet and soothing, but what do we do with those psalms that are called “imprecatory,” the ones that ask for judgment on the wicked? What do we do with a psalm like 137 that even rejoices over the prospect of the children of the people’s enemies being dashed against a rock? (Even my word processor program didn’t like that; when I typed it, the computer autocorrected “dashed” to “washed.”) In a world of injustice, in a world that is violent and dark, in a world of war and racism and political strife, a world that is far from what Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom of God, I wonder if praying in Jesus’ name might sometimes mean we need to go back to those difficult and even dark psalms. I wonder if we could use more time praying for justice, for God to judge his enemies—not ours, remember, but his. Praying “in Jesus’ name” doesn’t mean we pray only for nice things. Praying for God’s glory means we lift our hearts, broken as they are, to a God who knows and who cares and who is angry and grieved by the evil in the world even more than we are. Abraham, back in the book of Genesis, asked, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” He will, and we can count on it. We can trust him by praying “in Jesus’ name” for his glory (cf. BreakPoint commentary, “Praying All of the Psalms Over Russia,” 3/21/22).

This is why, as I said a couple of weeks ago, I’m leaving more “room” in my prayers these days for God to do what is best, not just tell him what I want. I’m trying to tell God less what to do and simply lift my heart concerns to him. I say “simply” but it’s not really that simple, because my tendency is to prescribe the solution. It’s in my nature to try to “fix” it myself. But what if by doing that I am settling for less? Jesus tells these disciples, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (14:13). Let’s imagine that, during the next 24 hours, the disciples had gotten together and decided they wanted to pray that Jesus didn’t go to the cross. And so, while they are hiding out from the Roman soldiers, they get together and they pray, “Lord, we know that this cross thing can’t possibly be good for anyone. We can’t imagine that Jesus being killed is really what you want. So we pray, in Jesus’ name, for the cross to be avoided. We pray, in Jesus’ name, for Jesus not to die. And there are enough of us here, God, that you have to do what we want.” I actually heard someone pray that last sentence one time in college about a presidential candidate! So, if we think that saying the magic word “in Jesus’ name” guarantees what we think ought to happen, then this prayer should be answered in exactly the way it was prayed, right? But, hard as it was to imagine on that night, Jesus going to the cross was exactly what needed to happen to bring God glory, to bring millions upon millions, billions upon billions of people throughout the ages into the kingdom of God. The disciples, on that night, had limited vision. They couldn’t see how a brutal instrument of death like a Roman cross could bring God glory. Besides, it would take Jesus away from them. Just so, we have limited vision most of the time. We can’t imagine how this horrible instance or that one could bring God glory. But it will, and our prayers and participation in what God is doing (rather than insisting on what we want to do) is the path to becoming great.

I’m not saying—hear me clearly—I’m not saying everything that happens is good. Cancer, fires that destroy someone’s home, wars, death—these are not and were not God’s intention for the world. I’m not putting on my spiritual blinders and saying everything is good. I am saying that God can bring good out of absolutely everything. That’s what Paul means when he says, “In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). I used to hate that verse, because I knew deep down that not everything that happens is good. And people would quote that verse at me during some of the lowest moments of my life, and I wanted to punch them. I didn’t, but I wanted to. But what Paul is actually saying there is that God is always working, bringing good out of the ways we find to mess things up. He brings good out of the most tragic things life can throw at us.

I will always remember where I was when I got the news that a little girl, 5 years old, had received a horrible diagnosis. It was a disease I’d not heard of, but it was incurable though there were some treatments they tried. She fought hard, and her parents took her anywhere there might have been a shred of hope. And it was a February day when I was on a mission trip in Arizona that I got the call—she had not made it and she was now home with Jesus. Five years old. What do you do with that? Her funeral was hard and yet a celebration of her life because what people remembered about her was the way she came to church with a smile, even when she lost her hair. They remembered the way she spread joy and Christ’s love, even when she was sick. They remembered her smile. I began to get the feeling that she touched more lives in her five years than I had in my many more years. God can take anything and no, it’s not good that she was sick and she died, but God brought good out of it. God got glory even out of her brief life and her death. We didn’t get what we asked for, because we were all praying for her to be healed, and I still don’t understand it, but I can tell you God was glorified still. Here’s how The Message translates this word from Jesus: “From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I’ll do it. That’s how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I’ll do” (The Message Bible, pg. 1950). Single-mindedly pursuing the glory of God is the path to greatness in the kingdom of God.

Let me go back to the question I began with this morning: are you settling for less in your faith? Let me ask it another way: are you settling for just what you want instead of what God wants? God’s way will always be better and higher. Are you settling for less by trusting more in what you think than in what Jesus wants? Do you want to become great? Then listen to what I think are wise words from Maxie Dunnam: “I am convinced that the primary reason most of us are not empowered to live more effective Christian lives is that we don’t spend enough time on our knees…[W]e trust Jesus with some things some of the time, when we need to trust Him with all things all of the time. We don’t believe what Jesus said” (93). But we can. We can start today, this very moment. We can become great as we trust Jesus more deeply. Let’s pray.