Do you ever get the sense that there is something not quite right with the world? Oh, it's a good world. We wouldn't want to say that it wasn't. It is beautiful. It is filled with good things, with wonderful things. Things that bring us pleasure and joy and happiness and excitement. We witness the splendor of the night sky, the vivid colors of a summer sunset, the intricate details of the flakes of snow after a winter storm, the joys of love and family and new birth and new life, we see all of these things and we know that the world is good. There is a residue of its original perfection that remains.
But there is something wrong. While there is unmistakable goodness and beauty and joy in this world, there is something wrong. Something that is not quite right, something that is always at least a little bit off. It is hard to put your finger on it, but you just know that something doesn't fit, something isn't the way its supposed to be. And that something at times ruins everything. Every joy that we experience and feel is always qualified, there is always the knowledge that it won't last, that it will come to an end, there is always that understanding that for every sunset there is a storm. For every birth there is death. For every joy there is grief. And we don't quite know how to handle it. We don't always know what to make of it. This world is good. We love this world and we enjoy this world, but this world just isn't right.
As God's chosen people whom he has called to faith, we understand this problem, this wrench in the works, the fly in the ointment that spoils the beauty and tarnishes the joy. We know that it is sin. Sin is the additive that poisons the concoction. Sin is the rust in the underbelly. Sin is the destroyer the death inducer that ruins this good world that God has made. But the problem that we have, the trouble that we face is that we have become so used to sin and the effects of sin that we don't know how to distinguish the good creation from the bad. We don't know how to pick out what belongs from what doesn't. The problem is that we know how to die. We don't quite understand how to live.
Jesus said to his disciples “I have come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” Jesus has come so that we might live. We are so used to dying. We are so used to living with death and compensating for death that we don' know how to live. We are so used to our sin-induced grief that we don't know how to have joy.
What Jesus would have us to know, what Jesus would have us to understand is that Jesus is our life. and Jesus is our joy.
“You will have sorrow now”, says Jesus, “but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice. And no one will take your joy from you.”
Unending joy. Everlasting joy. Joy that cannot be taken away. Joy that won't ever diminish or tarnish or fade. It sounds like the stuff of dreams. It sounds like the substance of fairy tales. It sound too good to be true. But that is exactly the hope, no the promise, the guaranteed, signed sealed and delivered gift given to us by the crucified, risen and ascended Lord. Jesus, the God/man who sits on the throne of Heaven itself and who sends to us his Spirit and His Word, says to you that Joy is yours forever.
As we come upon the words of Jesus in our text, he was preparing his disciples for the events that were soon to come. The disciples placed all their eggs in Jesus' basket, but that “basket” was Jesus as he was, as they already had him and that was all they wanted from him. They wanted what they had to continue - walking and talking, teaching and healing. They hoped it would never end.
You know what that's like – you take a trip with your family, go to beach house, go to cabin in the woods, walk, hike, fish, site see, and you wish that moment could last forever. If only things could stay the way they are. We wax nostalgic for the present. If only those moments could last forever.
That was what the disciple were doing. But Jesus had more to give. While the present was good, the future was promised to be better. Jesus had in mind to give them more, to be with them more, to draw them closer, to be with them more fully. To do that he had to die. He had to suffer at the hands of rioters and magistrates and soldiers and executioners. He had to be punished and killed and buried. And this would cause them grief – pain, sorrow, gut-wrenching, earth shattering grief.
Have you ever felt that grief? Grief like the world was never going to be the same? Grief that twisted your insides around. Grief that hunted and haunted you from the day you first felt it. This world is filled with that grief.
Jesus knows that grief. He feels it. He lives through it with you. He knows how it is. HE knows what it is like. And he has the ability to end it. To squelch it. He can take your grief away. Imagine that. Joy in Jesus that will last forever while the pain and the grief perish, spoil and fade! Jesus can take your grief and turn it to joy.
"You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful but your sorrow will be turned into joy.”
He compares it to giving birth. A woman pregnant with life has no end of hope and joy and expectation. The pregnancy fills her with it. She plans and dreams and anticipates all that this little life will be and will bring to her and her family. But before that child can be born, before that child can nuzzle up to her and fill her with love and joy she must have the sorrow and pain of birth. She will cry. She will grieve. She will feel pain and suffering. But her sorrow and her grief will give way to joy. The moment of suffering will be replaced by a lifetime of joy.
And so it goes with Jesus. Jesus is pregnant with life, new and eternal life. Jesus carried in his body the life that gives us life. But in order for that life to be given he had to die. He had to suffer. He had to be beaten and abused and crucified and his death would bring a moment of grief.
And so it was for the disciples. They would witness the death of their teacher and their friend. They would weep as they saw him arrested. They would grieve as they saw him die. They would feel sorrow and pain and fear and anxiety. Because Jesus would be taken from them.
But their momentary sorrow would be turned into joy as they saw him raised from death. He would be returned to life and all their hope and joy would be given again, only this time in a greater proportion. And their joy would only grow and increase as they came to understand what this resurrection would mean. This life, this return to life would mean life for them. And not just for them, but for us. For you and me. This life would mean that we would have life. This life would mean that we would live forever.
And so it is for us. This world is filled with sorrow and grief. Even our joy is tainted with sadness. Despite our best efforts our joy in this life can be diminished. Grief can linger for years beneath the surface of our best efforts at an outward joy. That grief only has its healing in Jesus. That grief only goes away in Jesus.
Jesus gives life. IN the midst of death Jesus gives life. It all starts at baptism, a promise given and a seal delivered. This child is mine, says Jesus, never to be taken from me. The death of sin is tied to death of Jesus on the cross and the new life of faith is tied to the resurrection of Jesus. The once dead sinner is a new creation. A new life. A new birth. A birth from above by the Holy Spirit. The life of the baptized is wrapped up in heaven where it can never perish spoil or fade.
And so the Christian lives through this life of suffering, this veil of tears with an eye to the next life. I suffer now. But this suffering will end. I grieve now, but this grief will end. I will live today with the memory of yesterday. But the memory of yesterday is eclipsed by the hope of tomorrow. A string of countless tomorrows that will extend on and on and on into a forever of joy.
That joy is ours in Jesus. That joy is guaranteed in Jesus. Jesus earned it. Jesus died to achieve it. Jesus has sealed you for it, reserved you for it so that it can't disappear. That is his love for you.
But even in the interim. As you wait and as you cope and as you struggle and as you grieve, he gives you joy. He gives you joy in the good gifts of this life. He gives new birth and new life to expectant mothers and fathers. He gives blessings of home and possessions. He feeds us with good food. He gives us friends and loved one who fill our hearts full with happiness. He paints this world full with beautiful colors and harmonious sounds and music and laughter. And even when these things fade and tarnish because they are incomplete he sustains us and he strengthens us and he fills us as he feeds us with heavenly food, as He feeds us even with his own body and blood. He forgives our sin and gives us a foretaste of the Heavenly feast.
We live in a broken world that is so often stricken with grief and lends us to sorrow. But we have been saved from that grief and through that grief and we are brought to joy – an unending joy that is kept in Heaven just for you. You are sealed, your name is written in Heaven. Your joy will be complete. Your joy is in Jesus.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment