Bible Text: John 16:16-22 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Easter 2022 | After Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to his disciples during forty days, and after the forty days he ascended into heaven. At this point in the Church year we’re over halfway through these forty days between Easter and the Ascension. The readings shift slightly. Rather than teaching us what his resurrection is for us, Jesus begins preparing us for his departure.
Now we don’t have many of the words recorded in Scripture that Jesus spoke during the forty days, and so on the one hand we don’t know how Jesus prepared the disciples for his departure. Yet on the other hand, we know exactly how Jesus prepared his disciples for his departure, because he prepared them before he even went to the cross. Jesus’ death was a far more disturbing departure for the disciples than was his ascension, and therefore if they were prepared for his death they were already prepared for him to ascend into heaven.
And for that reason we have the reading before us today from John 16, in which Jesus speaks to the disciples about his upcoming departure to the cross. Jesus spoke these words on Maundy Thursday, not long before his arrest. “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” The disciples began weighing these words with one another, trying to determine what Jesus meant by them, “What is this that he says to us, ‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.’?” After some discussion amongst themselves, the disciples narrow the question down to this: “What is this that he says: the ‘little while’?” This little while is a little while of not seeing Jesus, and therefore they want to know what precisely this little while is going to be.
The disciples were discussing this question with one another, and for some reason hesitated to ask Jesus about it. Fortunately, Jesus knew their desire to ask, and asked for them – and not only for their benefit, but for ours as well, that we would take heart during this little while: “Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, ‘A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me’?” Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly what we want to know. Jesus, tell us about this little while.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” Jesus is talking about the time between his arrest and his resurrection. During that little while the disciples were afraid, and hid, and cried, and mourned. It seemed that all was lost, that God had failed and the devil had won. Meanwhile, the devil and his minions rejoiced as if they had achieved a great victory. They laughed and jeered as the Son of God suffered and died. The one whom they had come to hate so much was reduced to a corpse.
As I mentioned before, these words of Jesus come up at this point in the Church year because they apply just as well to the little while in which we find ourselves: the little while between Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his appearing at the Last Day. During this little while the world appears to be a great army with the devil at its head, and we Christians seem like the dirt being trampled beneath their feet. The words of Jesus don’t find a home in many hearts, while Satan’s lies are extremely popular. Besides this, we still have a sinful nature, and that which we want to do we do not do, but what we hate, that we do. You weep and lament, not only over the sufferings of the Church, but also over your sins. You sincerely desire never to sin again against your Lord. And yet your good intention never to sin does not become a reality during this little while. So in short, the world rejoices as if it has won the day, and you are sorrowful because of enemies and afflictions and sins, and moreover sorrowful because you do not see Jesus.
Yet Jesus says, “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” You have a limited time of sorrow followed by endless joy, while the world has a limited time of joy followed by endless sorrow. In other words, you have hope, but the world does not.
Now hope is a very important word to understand, so let’s pause for a moment and define it. What is hope? Hope is the certain expectation of eternal joy. Hope is the certain expectation of eternal joy. This is not a phrase directly from Scripture, but I will show from the Scriptures that this is the proper definition of hope. First, hope is an expectation, that is, a looking forward to the future. We heard in the reading from Lamentations that hoping is closely related to waiting: “‘I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for him.” St. Paul writes similarly in Romans 8, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
So hope is an expectation for the future. Yet hope is not a mere wish, “I hope it’s sunny tomorrow,” without any guarantee that it will be. Rather, hope is a certain expectation for the future. It would be prideful of us to make any certain claims about the future if we had nothing but our own resources. We can’t say whether or not it will be sunny tomorrow; we can’t even say whether or not there will be a tomorrow.
But concerning the truly great things like eternal life and salvation, the Father has revealed the future to us through the Word of his Son. Jesus has made us promises concerning the future of those who believe in him. Therefore it says in Hebrews 10:23, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Hope is certain because it is not founded on men’s wishes or reasonings. Rather, hope is founded on the Word and promise of Jesus.
And what has Jesus promised? “Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you,” as we heard in the Gospel. And so you see from the Scriptures that hope is the certain expectation of eternal joy. As Christians you, and you alone, have this hope.
As for those who do not have Jesus Christ by faith, Paul describes them in Ephesians 2 as “having no hope and without God in the world.” The world may rejoice now, but it’s a baseless and fleeting happiness. The world chuckles uncomfortably and has only dread for the future, or else deludes itself into thinking there is no such thing as tomorrow. Whatever the case, the world has no certain expectation of eternal joy. Dante in his poem Inferno expressed this well: on the sign above the gates of hell is written, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
But you have the promise of Christ that light follows darkness, and sorrow gives way to joy. Jesus expresses this with an analogy, “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a man has been born into the world.” As a woman labors, she is acutely aware of her sorrow and tribulation, but she endures the pain and pushes on with superhuman strength. Hope bears her along: the hope of receiving a child. And when the hope is fulfilled, then hope ceases and becomes reality, and remembrance of the tribulation ceases with it.
Now when Jesus says that she no longer remembers the tribulation, he does not mean that she loses all historical knowledge of having been in labor. In Scripture the opposite of remembering is not always forgetting. In many cases remembering means calling something to mind and giving it your attention. Not remembering something can therefore mean giving your attention to something else. So when a woman gives birth, she does not remember her tribulation, in the sense that it is no longer the focus of her mind; rather her mind is completely devoted to the child. So also when we depart to be with Christ, we’ll remember the historical fact that we had once been sinners living in a fallen world where the devil was prince. But what will we care about it? Such historical facts will not cause us any grief, and the only fruit of knowing them will be honor and praise to Christ for saving us.
But more than being an analogy, the image of the woman giving birth shows us the basis of our hope. For a little while after the fall, sin, death, and the devil reigned, for a little while Mary braced herself against the labor pangs. And yet the little while came to an end, and what was our joy when a man was born into the world, a man who was God in the flesh! We see from this that God knows how to preserve his people through the little while, it is well within his power to turn sorrow into gladness, and he always remains true to his promises, which again puts the certainty into our hope.
And another little while has come to an end: the little while of Jesus’ suffering and death. The disciples were afraid and hid and cried and mourned. And then Jesus rose from the dead, saw his disciples again, and gave them peace and joy. We see from Jesus’ resurrection that Jesus really does make the little while a little while. For three days he had to be in the grave to fulfill the prophecy of the sign of Jonah, who was in the fish for three days. Yet Jesus was not dead for 72 hours. He died around 3:00pm on Friday, and had risen at or before sunrise on Sunday. If Jesus can shorten three days to forty hours, then he knows how to speed his return. He knows how to keep the little while little, as he says in Revelation 22, “Yes, I am coming quickly.”
And therefore how great is our hope as we find ourselves in this little while between Jesus’ ascension and his appearing! We don’t even have to wait to begin partaking of eternal joy, so great is our hope. The little while of waiting for the promised Savior has already culminated in the Incarnation of God’s Son. The little while of sorrow and grief has already ended in the Resurrection of Jesus. And therefore what is the world’s joy but vanity and vapor? What is the sinful nature but an impotent old Adam drowning in the Red Sea of the baptismal font? What is the devil’s boast except that it was the Son of God himself who gave him his mortal wound? We might experience tribulation in this little while, but Jesus himself is the one whose hour came, who suffered the labor pains to give new birth to us who were dead in our sins but have now been made alive together with Christ. And thus we rejoice even now, so certain are we of our hope that we begin to taste the joy already. And, as Jesus has promised, “no one will take your joy from you.” Amen.