Manifested love, Pt 28: Grief into Joy

John 16:16-22                        16Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” 17At this, some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” 18They kept asking, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what he is saying.” 19Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

John 11:47-50                        47Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. 48If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” 49Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”

In a little while

I think many of us have had the experience of feeling something wonderful and mysterious was about to happen, and, not understanding, would wonder just what the heck was happening.  Jesus has been mentioning lately that he was about to go away.  I have occasionally wondered why Jesus didn’t give all the details to the disciples in advance and thereby remove all the mystery.  It is in my nature to be organized and structured, and so is being fully prepared.  God wants us to trust Him and trust that things are unfolding exactly as they should.  So having all the details interferes with full dependence upon God.  Also, have you ever wondered why Satan would do such a stupid thing as to kill the Son of God.  Surely, he wouldn’t have done so if he had known the Resurrection and consequent defeat was coming.  Removing the mystery would also have alerted Satan to his imminent defeat and that might have changed the course of human history.

So the disciples were left wondering what was going on.  But Jesus is attempting to reassure them by saying, “Not long from now I will be gone, but very shortly after that I will be back.  You will grieve, but then your grief will turn into joy.” 

The world will rejoice

Times had been hard for Jesus and the disciples; opposition to his teaching had been strengthening, not from the people but from the religious leaders of the day, and nothing was more appealing to them than to get Jesus out of the way.  So the world, which in this case means the governing religious authorities, would be rejoicing.  They will have thought they had gotten a rabble-rouser out of the way.  Certainly Satan was rejoicing because he thought he had just killed the son of God.  (Little did he realize what was about to happen in just three days.)

Your grief will turn to joy

The turning of grief into joy plays out in more than one fashion.  First, there must have been a rising sense of panic in their hearts as they began to realize that Jesus was about to die.  “What about us?”, they must have thought.  “What will we do without Jesus?”  Certainly, between crucifixion and resurrection their deeply felt mourning must have been overwhelming.  But that joy was coming in the form of the various appearances of the post-resurrection Jesus.  The shock must have been profound; Thomas even needed to see Jesus’ wounds to know it was truly him.

There is deeper joy here too as the death and resurrection of Jesus is a sea-change in the progress of humanity.  Where once we had been completely burdened by the consequence of our sin nature, that is, that we had been completely cut off from relationship with our Father, now we have restored relationship because of what Jesus has accomplished.  The child-birth metaphor is completely appropriate; Jesus’ death and resurrection signifies the new birth that becomes available for all humankind.  Paul puts it this way:

17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2Corinthians 5:17-21)

What about me?

It is not easy living as a believer surrounded by the burdens and deceptions of a corrupted world.  Even the most Godly, loving people are occasionally confronted by struggles not of their own making.  The world is an evil place and is getting more so by the day.  It is how we respond to those struggles that marks us as a child of God.  More importantly though is the mark of joy we carry.  From the moment of our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior we became a new person, a new creation.  You might say, “Well I don’t notice anything different!”  But, actually, everything is different.  Yes, we do have a sin nature so we do and say things that are inappropriate, even evil.  But we don’t have to stay in that place;  we know that all we have to do is go to God and repent.  You might also say, “I do the same thing over and over!”  God answers that too.

21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

In other words God says, “My forgiveness is unchanging and eternal.”  So let’s not let Satan steal our joy at what God has done for us.