Are you ever speechless? It is rare for me, but sometimes it happens. What leaves you speechless? The internet says if you win the lottery you might be speechless, or if you found a whale in your front yard. Neither of these has ever happened to me.
Jesus left the religious leaders of his day speechless. Luke tells us in his gospel that Jesus asked them whether John’s baptism was from God. These accusers of Jesus had no answer. Speechless.
Now, Jesus’ disciples healed a man in Jesus’ name and left the religious authorities speechless again. They kicked Peter and John out of the Sanhedrin to confer among themselves. They couldn’t deny the healing. By now the whole city knew about it. But they wanted to stop this Jesus movement. Since they didn’t know what to say, they decided to tell the disciples not to speak the name.
In our day, too, the cultural elite would prefer that Christians just be quiet about Jesus. Their line of reasoning goes like this: believe in whatever you like but just keep it to yourselves. Unfortunately, we have largely acquiesced to their desires. Christians are strangely silent about Jesus these days. I see and hear Christians talking about cultural issues and politics in the public arena. But we say so little about Jesus.
Peter and John boldly told the people who crucified the Lord that Jesus was the only source of salvation (Acts 4:12). Do we believe that? Here is an experiment for today: say Jesus’ name in a conversation with someone. You can start in your own house. Then try it in public. In our country, we have freedom to believe in Jesus and talk about Jesus. Will we? Today? God has no other plan to get the news out. We are plan A. There is no plan B. We must not be speechless about Jesus.
