NOT FISH HOOKS

When we pray, we ask for something (see my last). And in many cases, we end our prayers, often mechanically, with ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’.  It comes from the age-old Latin per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. But what does it mean? The origin of the phrase is in John 14:13-14: ‘And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.’

What do these two expressions mean? To ask A (who is in authority, and can therefore refuse the request) for something in the name of B implies that B has more influence with A than we have; to ask for something in B’s name means that we ask it as if B were asking it, hoping thereby to give the request more weight in A’s eyes. If B is someone to whom A has an obligation; or someone of whom A is exceptionally fond, and to whom A can, as we say, ‘refuse nothing’, then our putting our request in B’s name (with B’s permission, obviously) clothes that request with something of B’s special relationship with A.

The Latin expression per is not quite the same. To ask A for something through B is to persuade B to do the asking for us – again, because B’s requests carry more weight with A than ours. In court, we plead through our lawyer, our advocate. And, as John puts it elsewhere (ep. John 2:1), ‘if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous.’ In Greek, the ‘advocate’ is a paraklètos, someone who appears on your behalf to plead for you. And we have heard that the Holy Spirit is also referred to as the Paraclete. So when we ask for something through Jesus Christ, it is as if we are putting a request via our lawyer.

Either way, such an expression is not and should not be a simple tag. It has enormous implications. In the first place, we are engaging Jesus to plead for us. This is not nothing: we are presuming to implicate the Meshiach, the Saviour, the Son of God, to carry our little requests to the Throne of the Father. And we can do so only because he has said that we may: and in saying so, he has appointed himself our paraklètos. One does sort of feel like removing one’s shoes before asking for things in those conditions; and one doesn’t easily ask for fish hooks. Moreover, John has told us that he is our advocate if (well, when) we sin – when we screw up, when we act as if we were refusing love, when we briefly think we know better. So in the moments when we bugger things up most, when we feel least proud of ourselves, we don’t get some junior from the Public Defender’s Office: we get the top man himself to plead for us.

Secondly, we are encouraged to go beyond the courtroom, and to ask in his name. This means that he is offering us the mantle of his status, his influence, to ask for things from the Father as if he himself were asking them. Again, this makes you think twice before asking for stupid things. What sort of mantle is it he is offering us? A mantle that has been torn by Roman soldiers. A mantle stained with his blood. A mantle he put off only when he was nailed to the cross. The more you think about this, the more sheer awe you feel, and the more humility.

Thirdly, what both these expressions do, at least potentially when experienced to the full, is to give us a way into the immense and secret intimacy of the Triune God. Remember, we are told to ask in his name ‘that the Father may be glorified in the Son’. We are entering into very high and deep mysteries here; and yet he has allowed us in, he has invited us in. Into the relationship between the Father and the Son: into the highest love of which the universe is capable. We are allowed to put our requests in his name to the Father, as if he himself were doing the asking. This really is holy ground.

‘Grant, we beseech thee,

merciful Lord,

to thy faithful people

pardon and peace:

that they may be cleansed from all their sins,

and serve thee with a quiet mind.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.’