Jubilate, the 3rd Sunday after Easter + John 16:16-23a

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

When the Lord tells His disciples, “A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while and you will see me, because I go to the Father,” He means to comfort them ahead of His suffering and death. He speaks these words to them on Maundy Thursday, the night in which He was betrayed. He gives them this word as consolation though they don’t understand it as that at the time. “A little while and you will not see me.” Christ will be removed from them by death. He’ll be arrested in Gethsemane. Tried in the house of Caiaphas. Taken to Pilate’s Praetorium for questioning, beating, scourging, and the finally crucifixion. Jesus had told them this before on multiple occasions. But on the night in which His suffering would begin, He speaks to them as a father speaks to his children. This is how we talk to children when we know they won’t understand something. “How much longer do we have to drive?” “How much longer until you get home?” “How long do I have to sleep?” The answer “a little while” is often frustrating to children because they’re impatient. But “a little while” simply means that the current state of things won’t last forever, that it’ll be brief. That’s the comfort Jesus gives to His disciples on that night.

During that little while the disciples will weep and lament. Those who love Christ and have believed His teaching will be sorrowful. They’ll see Him treated shamefully. They’ll hear the world heap scorn upon Him, mocking and ridiculing Him as they kill him in the most painful way possible. They’ll sorrow for their teacher and friend, but also for themselves. What does it say about them that they’ve followed a man who dies the death of a criminal? What does it say for them that their Savior cannot save Himself in the hour of death? In the moment, “a little while” seems like a lifetime, like that moment is all that there is and ever will be. While they mourn the world will rejoice. The world rejoices because it hates Christ. That may seem strong but that’s what Christ says in John 7:7. “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.” No one appreciates it when someone else points out their faults. But Christ condemns the world as something altogether evil. The best works the world can offer, Christ condemns as godless and selfish. The best in mankind, Christ dashes to the ground by preaching that all men everywhere are to repent and look to Him for their goodness and righteousness. That’s why the world hated Christ. As John the Baptist had pointed to Herod and condemned Him for taking his brother’s wife, Christ preaches that the best in man is still abject wickedness. The world’s rejoicing and gloating only makes the disciple’s sorrow worse.

This is why Christ speaks such comforting words to them before it all began. “A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while and you will see me, because I go to the Father.” That “little while” lasts only three days. Then comes the joy which is different from every other joy they’ve ever experienced. “You will see me again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” They will see with their own eyes the resurrected Jesus. Not only will they see Him, becoming eyewitnesses of His resurrection, but the joy that this bring won’t be taken away from them by the world. The world doesn’t give this joy. The joys of this world and this life or transitory. They come and they go. They burn brightly then they fade. But the joy of the resurrection, that their Jesus lives, the world can’t take that joy away because the world doesn’t give that joy. Jesus lives, He has earned forgiveness for every sin! Jesus lives, He has paid the price for every sin! Jesus lives so that all who believe in Him will have everlasting life.

Nothing took this joy from them, not even Christ’s ascension forty days after His resurrection. Jesus leaves them again, though not through suffering and death. He ascends into the heavens triumphantly so that He might sit at the right hand of God, that is, the power of God. After Jesus ascends, St. Luke writes that after He ascended “They worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:52). Even though Jesus is no longer with them in the same way He had previously been, they’re joyful because they know Christ now reigns over all things. They rejoice because though ascended, Christ is with them where He had promised to be, in His church and in His sacrament. He had said to them, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them, (Matthew 18:20) and “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) and “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). They maintain the joy of the resurrection because they know He will return in the same way they saw Him go. Though He would be gone from they a little while, they knew He was still with them in the ways in which He had promised to be present among them to forgive sins and sustain faith.

Although Christ is risen and ascended the church still lives in this period of “a little while.” Individually we each have crosses to bear, hardships to endure, and trials which press down upon us. Money, financial security, health, or happiness. Each us must endure the hardships of this life even as Christ endured His, patiently committing our bodies and souls and all things to the Father’s care. Corporately, as the Church, the body of Christ, we must endure crosses and hardships from the world which still to this day hates Christ and wants to see His church and His pure gospel end. As the world treated Christ shamefully and put Him to death, so the world treats the true church shamefully, mocking it, heaping scorn upon it, and persecuting it in ways that are sometimes obvious and at other times more subtle. But in all things it seeks to siphon children of God way from the church and into the world through pleasures and the cares of this life. But Christ has said, “If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

But you have the promise of Christ, individually and corporately as the church. All this will last but a little while. He may relieve the cross and trial from you in this life. He may not and wait to grant you relieve in the life of the world to come. His will be done. Until He grants relieve in whatever way His wisdom chooses, He gives you this promise so that you don’t grow weary and faint. Your Lord, hated by the world, murdered by the world, is risen from the dead. Because He lives you know that the Father accepted His sacrifice for all of your sins. Because He lives you have a Lord who freely bestows all the benefits earned at the cross to you each day in His holy church. Because He lives you know He is with you always and that He is with you in His church and in His holy sacrament of His body and blood because He has promised to be. Let that be your true joy in this life. Every other joy, every other blessing from God will falter at some point. Enjoy those created gifts because they’re from God your Father. But remember that your true joy is that your Jesus lives, so that your sins are forgiven by faith in Him, so that by faith you have everlasting life. In this world you will have trouble. That much is certainly true. But while your hardships last a little while, “your joy no one will take from you” because it is the joy the resurrection. Amen.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!