John 16:16-24

07/25/10
John 16:16-24
Hudson UMC

In this passage, the main point that Jesus wants his disciples to know is that He is going away in a little while and they will not be able to see him, but, after only a little more time after that, they will see Him again. We know that it has to be the point of the passage because it is said three times in a row. First, Jesus says it to His disciples, then they respond by asking each other about it because they do not know what it means, and then Jesus repeats it again because He is aware that they do not know what He meant and is going to explain it. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a single other passage in the entire Bible where a sentence is repeated so many times in a row. It must be really important.

First, I want to try to enter into the world of the disciples at this moment. How would they have heard and understood this statement? The first part is that, in a little while, the disciples will no longer see Him. Is Jesus going to go somewhere? They are eating supper together. Will He be taking an evening stroll? Will He be going on a journey? It is not clear. It seems that Jesus means something more serious than this, otherwise He would not make such a point of saying it in the midst of this serious conversation where He has spoken of leaving them and their need for an Advocate in His absence. The question is, why won’t they be able to see Him?

The fact that Jesus is getting at is that He was about to be executed. They will no longer see Him, not because He is going on a trip or hiding from them, but because He will no longer be living. If the apostles at that moment could have understood this point, it would have caused all kinds of problems for them. In fact, it is entirely possible that, in light of the various hints that Jesus was giving throughout this last supper of theirs, that they understood that death is exactly what Jesus was talking about and it was because they understood it that they felt like they did not understand it.

Let me explain. I have said before, but it bears repeating, that we only use the Greek word “Christ” or he Hebrew word “Messiah” in relation to Jesus, and so they have a specific meaning that is governed by who Jesus is, or at least who we perceive Him to be. Because we only ever hear Christ and Messiah used of Jesus, it is easy for us to forget that they were words that had a much broader range of meaning in the ancient world than they do today. “Messiah” and “Christ” are words that are used to refer to someone who is anointed. This might be someone who is anointed as a priest or a prophet, but it was, by far, most often used to refer to a king. More specifically, not just any king, but a king who was of the line of David who was God’s very own chosen ruler for the people of Israel. The prophets of the Old Testament had predicted that there would come a time when God’s Messiah, or Christ, would come and deliver the people. According to the way most people understood those words at the time, they could have come to no other conclusion than that God would send a king to deliver them from the oppression of the Romans and they could finally be a nation like they thought they were destined to be.

And yet, even though Jesus was of the line of David, even though He was indeed the deliverer of Israel, and not just of Israel, but the entire world, even though Jesus is indeed a king, He was not the one that the people expected or even wanted. The people wanted a king that was going to come in, rally the nation, and then overthrow the Romans. Jesus is saying that He is about to die and they will no longer see Him. How can He be the Messiah who leads the people to political victory if He is dead? He can’t be the Messiah that the people wanted if He allows Himself to be killed, but He can be the one they need if He does so.

The other reason why, if the disciples grasped that Jesus was speaking of His death, they would have been confused is because He not only says, “A little while, and you will no longer see me,” but also says, “and again a little while, and you will see me.” If, when He says that they will no longer see Him, He is speaking of His death, how in the world will they see Him again? Before Jesus actually went and died and was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven and poured out the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, the disciples could not have made any sense out of this whatsoever. Could you make any sense out of someone who has always seemed to be quite in their right mind, telling you, quite calmly, that they are about to die, but that you will see them again in only a little while? No wonder the disciples were confused.

Most of the Gospel narratives are stories about what Jesus has done, or accounts of what Jesus has said. However, they were being written by particular people at particular times and, every once in a while, we hear the author insert a thought or two to help us understand what is going on. There is one moment in John that is incredibly important and it could only have been written after all of these events had taken place. In chapter twelve, we are told that the disciples did not understand what Jesus was saying at first, “but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things to him.” When Jesus was with them and the were following Him, but without having the Holy Spirit dwell inside of them, they heard all the words of Christ, the same words they wrote down for us to read and hear, but they did not understand them. After Jesus was resurrected and the Spirit was given, all of a sudden, those very same words took on a whole new meaning and they understood what was confusing before.

This is a key point where this takes place. Before Jesus was raised from the dead, any talk about His resurrection would be confusing at best, but more than likely dismissed as symbolism or crazy talk. However, once it had actually happened, all of a sudden, it became clear that all those things that made no sense before, because resurrections, according to everyday experience, simply do not happen, were actually legitimate predictions that showed that Jesus knew exactly what was going on and what He was doing.

Now that we understand what Jesus is talking about when He says that His disciples will no longer see Him and that they will see Him again after a little while, we must turn our attention to His actual description of what is going to happen. “Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

The first part of this statement is that the disciples of Jesus will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. Over and over again, Jesus has told us that the “world” is very much opposed to what He is doing in their midst. This can not really be in doubt because the world, even the part of the world that we might think would be excited about what Jesus was doing, reacted violently against Him and crucified Him. In fact, just a moment ago, at the beginning of chapter sixteen, when Jesus had been explaining how the disciples would share in the hatred that people had of Him, He said that “an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.” If Jesus, this great teacher and leader, who is adored by this small group of people, is hated by so many, then if the world takes Him and crucifies Him, it would certainly be a cause for weeping and mourning for the disciples but for rejoicing for the world.

Jesus tries to put the pain of the disciples into some kind of perspective by using an image of a woman giving birth. “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” Now I, myself, have never given birth, but those who have have insisted to me that Jesus’ words need a little bit of interpretation. It is not as though a woman undergoes a kind of amnesia after her child is born, it is not as though she literally does not remembers the pain, but that the child brings so much joy that the pain is seen as being worth it, that the benefit is so great that it is as if the pain is forgotten.

We need to be very careful that we do not push this image too far because, though he is connecting His disciples and the woman in labor in His metaphor, the source of joy that Jesus is speaking of is not something that the disciples will bring about on their own, as if the source of their joy is already inside of them and they just need to endure pain to bring it about. The thing that will transform their pain into joy, that will cause their hearts to rejoice, is the fact that, although Jesus is going away to die, they will indeed see Him again.

Even still, we need to pay careful attention to what Jesus means when He says that the disciples will see Him again because He says that it will make their hearts rejoice in such a way that “no one will take your joy from you.” It is true that in John’s gospel, we see the disciples rejoicing more after the resurrection than we do in other accounts, but even here it seems to be more the disciples’ reaction of awe and amazement that we see, shocked disbelief that Jesus is indeed alive again and yet being confronted with the reality of God so profoundly that they cannot help but cry out, “My Lord and my God.” We are reminded in the other Gospels that the resurrection in and of itself is not enough to bring joy that no one can take away. When the women in the gospel of Mark find the empty tomb and meet the angel, we are told that they went away frightened. We read in Matthew that, even after Jesus has been resurrected for forty days and is about to give the Great Commission, “when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful.”

Let us look at Peter, even within this very gospel, in order to understand better that, when Jesus talks about the disciples seeing Him again and having a joy that no one can take away from them, He means more than the resurrection. Peter, this very night, as Jesus is betrayed and taken captive, will deny Him three times. He who seemed so strong and dedicated, who offered to die with Jesus, is revealed to be far more wishy-washy than he would have ever cared to admit. Even at the very end of John’s gospel, when Jesus tells Peter something about what will happen to him and how he will die, he finds himself very concerned with whether or not he will be alone in his fate, or whether another of the disciples will suffer the same. Jesus, however, refuses to answer his question, telling Peter to mind his own business.

The point is that, in spite of the fact that Peter seems so weak and hesitant, even at his best throughout the gospels, he does not remain so. Peter does indeed become the rock that Jesus told him he was, but when does that happen? When does he truly step forward to be the leader of the apostles? Not until the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church. Within the context of our passage, this makes perfect sense and we should not be surprised. After all, Jesus has just gone to great lengths to explain that it is good for the disciples that He goes away because He will send the Advocate who will take the things of Christ and declare these things to them.

The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised is indeed the presence of Christ in the midst of the church. It was because the Holy Spirit was given to the church that Jesus fulfilled His promise that He would not leave His disciples as orphans, but would come to them. We can rephrase and interpret Jesus’ first words in this passage like this. “A little while and you will not see me, for I go to die, yet after a little while, you will see me, not only because I will be resurrected from the dead and you will be able to put your hands in my wounds, but because the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come upon you. This way, you will not only see me with your eyes, but will be so grafted into me that I will be closer to you than you are to yourself.”

What is absolutely amazing to me about this is that the promise of the Holy Spirit is not just given to the eleven disciples around the table with Jesus. Throughout the book of Acts, we see countless converts, indeed every convert, receiving the Spirit and being utterly transformed by it. Every single person who receives the Spirit in the Bible has a life that is changed in such an amazing and radical way that it simply cannot be explained in terms of anything but the very power of God coming and dwelling inside of them.

The good news of this gift of the Holy Spirit is that you and I are every bit as much recipients of this promise as the original disciples. We, too, have been promised the Spirit of God and that Spirit dwells inside of us. We, too, have been grafted into Christ in such a way that it is His blood that pumps through our veins. We, too, have been utterly bound up in the ministry of Christ in the world. This means that, when we gather together as the body of Christ, we should not be surprised if God moves mightily, touching our hearts and souls and empowering us to go into the world and make a difference, making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. In fact, what should surprise us is if we gather together, as the body of Christ, the ones who have received the Spirit, and we are not changed, if we are not empowered for ministry, and if we are not compelled to join in the work of Christ in the world today.

When Jesus was betrayed, every single one of His disciples scattered. Not one of them stood strong when their leader was in His darkest hour. And yet, even though there was an abundance of weakness, God did not turn away from them. In fact, because their weakness was shown for what it was, because it was more than clear that, on their own, they could not stand strong, it is an undeniable fact that, when they did indeed become strong in the blink of an eye, it was not because they got themselves all excited, but because God had fundamentally changed them. So if you are discouraged today, if you feel weak, if you are convinced that you are not up to the task of participating in God’s transformation of the world in Christ and through the Spirit, take heart that the strength you need is not your own. It is not something you can muster up, but something that God freely gives for no reason other than He loves us and wants us to be involved in what He is doing. So if the Christian life is anything less than a joy and a privilege for you, pray that God would make this same Holy Spirit that has transformed so many throughout history and so many even in this room, empower you in a new way so that you, too, can know the joy of the Lord. Let us pray.

AMEN