WHERE AND HOW DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Third Sunday after EASTER
13 April, AD 2008
TEXT: St. John 16:16-24
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“16:22So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. 23In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.”
Those of us who hear or read these words today have made it through what mystics and other religious call the “Dark Night of the Soul”. Even though removed from the original events of this season by a span of almost two thousand years, we have been with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. We have seen Him arrested and dragged before the Sanhedrin. We have been present with Jesus as He stood before Pilate. We have been at His scourging and his mocking and His crowning of thorns. We have ascended Golgotha with Him and we stood at the foot of the Cross with His blessed mother and the Apostle that He loved and gazed with them upon Jesus as He gave up the Ghost. Our hearts, like those of all Christ’s disciples, were full of grief; but the world rejoiced or worse, took no notice of those salvific events on the darkest Friday in the history of humankind. Yet on the third day something else happened, something beyond all measure of our comprehension. The reports came in sporadically; women, tomb, empty. What did it all mean? And then the Apostles saw the Risen Lord on the evening of Easter Day. Jesus is not dead, but very much alive – and very different, also!
So this is where we are in the timeless account of the Easter season. Jesus is Risen and is making post-Resurrection appearances to His disciples all over the vicinity. Is this the way it is going to be forever – Jesus popping in and out of the picture at opportune moments when we need Him? You already know the answer to that question, but the Disciples did not when these events first unfolded.
For the next few weeks we are going to hear from the Gospels another message of preparation. We preached, last year, on these next few weeks as a season of Advent – the Advent of Pentecost or the coming of the Holy Ghost. Those who revised the Lectionary in 1943 seem to have envisioned a type of course reading through the Gospels from now until Pentecost to help us get our minds around what is going on and should be going on with our souls during Easter, through Ascensiontide, and on to Pentecost and beyond – where we are at present. Yes, we rejoice like we’ve never rejoiced before at Jesus’ Resurrection, but there is still more to come.
In order for Jesus to be in, though, and around the world completely and simultaneously, He is going to have return to the Father and send the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, His Spirit, to the whole world. That’s the culmination of the Father’s will and our destination – the coming of the Holy Ghost to the Church, to the hearts of believers. But to get there, we have to begin our journey first and today is when it begins.
There is much to focus on within this Gospel lesson this morning. Jesus plays a figurative game with His Apostles called “Now you see me, now you don’t – and now you see me again!” Which does nothing but confuse the Apostles, to begin with. And it might us also unless we remember that Chapter 16 of St. John’s Gospel is part of the Farewell Discourse which takes place just hours before Jesus’ crucifixion! We’ve gone three weeks and some days back into the past to remember what Jesus said to His Apostles, because what was said back then has a tremendous bearing on not only where we are now, but where we are going and how we get there in the future!
On this side of the Resurrection we know now what Jesus meant by the Apostles sorrowing and the world rejoicing and the first hint of sorrow turning into a permanent and never-ending joy. We understand Jesus’ analogy of the pain of birth turning into joy after that birth is complete – not just as a part of the physical birthing process, but the birth of our souls into a new relationship with God heretofore not possible under the old dispensation. We understand that sometimes we have to be grieved in this life. It is a part of life. Just as sure as death is a part of physical life, unending life in God’s presence is a part of physical life also, if we believe in Jesus Christ. So in the twenty-second verse of the sixteenth chapter of St. John, Jesus says to His Apostles, “So it is now 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. In that day you will no longer have to ask me any questions. [But] I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” Jesus now speaks to His Apostles, plainly. They will grieve because of the Crucifixion. They should. It’s only natural. But when they see Jesus again, they will understand so fully, that they will have no need to ask Jesus any questions and a new relationship will have opened up to them as it has for all of us, today. Now we have a relationship through prayer with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ in the power of His Holy Spirit. And because of that, not only the Apostles’ joy, but our joy is complete as well. But there’s one more aspect we need to examine, and that is the very last word of our lesson.
The last word in the twenty-fourth verse of the Gospel today is usually translated from the Greek as “full” or “complete” – “and your joy will be full/complete.” Yet, it seems, that there are many different levels on which our joy can be made complete as seen in that one little Greek word. It can literally mean full, as in the cup is full. It can mean that a person is complete with power such as a king after his coronation. It can mean complete as in a period of time elapsed, as in the old age is complete and the Kingdom of God has begun. It can mean to bring something to completion, like the Crucifixion and Resurrection brought an end to the slavery of sin, death, and hell. Full or complete can mean to fulfill a promise, as in, “Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” It can signify an answer or completion to prayer, and finally, as something made whole or complete. All of those meanings in that one little word – complete or full. It’s a word that was used on purpose by Jesus, not by accident; for it speaks to our former condition in the past, where we are now, and where we are going in the future. In point, the Gospel lesson reminds us of the joy that was made full on that first Easter Day, how our joy continues to be made full and complete on subsequent Easters, how we now live as Easter people full of God’s grace and joy in our lives and then, in the future, on that great and terrible Day of the Lord when all secrets shall be disclosed and we stand before God Almighty at the particular and general judgment on the day of His return, how He, after His Son’s mediation of our case, will embrace us with His everlasting arms and lead us to the real and true completion of His joy for our soul. The “where we are going” is into the fulness of joy in our Lord’s eternal presence. The “how we are going to get there” is by faith and belief in Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Word to you by the Holy Ghost is “Start that journey today”, if you haven’t already done so, so that you may experience a joy even greater than that of the Resurrection, itself; the joy of being in the presence, fulness, and reality of God. Jesus stands at the door of your soul and knocks. All you have to do is let Him in!
And now, unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all might, majesty, power, and dominion as is most justly due this day both now and forever; world without end. Amen.
SOLI DEO GLORIA - JEU+