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“A little time and you are no longer watching me, and again a little time and you will see me.” (John 16:16 — my translation of the Greek)
If we did not have the context of Jesus' crucifixion and death to guide us, and if we did not have the context of Jesus' resurrection from the dead to guide us, these words would be hard to understand.
Now, in this Easter season, we know that Jesus is saying this: “In a short time, you will not be able to gaze upon me, to watch and listen to me, to see the miracles and hear my preaching.” He is telling them He is going to die. The time of being learners at the feet of Christ will be over for the disciples. Once in His tomb, once the stone was rolled and sealed, Jesus would apparently be relegated to the memory of the disciples.
Yet, more than that, He would simply disappear in His death. The disciples would watch their Lord and teacher hung up on the cross before all the world in a gruesome spectacle. It was just as Isaiah was allowed to envision it many years earlier, “His appearance was so marred, [so] beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind…. He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him, He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” (Isaiah 52:14, 53:2b–3)
All of Jesus' disciples fled from Him when Jesus was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:50). Many of Jesus' followers then watched His crucifixion “at a distance” (Luke 23:49). Those who saw the grisly results of the crucifixion went home beating their breasts, a sign of intense sadness and sorrow (Luke 23:48). You can only look at this sort of ugliness for so long. Sin, death, and the power of the devil inflicted on a man are ugly things; if they show themselves to be beautiful, it is a false beauty designed to entice and trick. That true color and ugliness of sin was what marred Jesus “beyond human semblance”, that gave no appearance of beauty that we should desire to even look upon Him, so that people world avert their eyes and beat their breasts in horror as they walked away.
The death Jesus endured was not one that we would want to watch for more than aesthetic reasons, for more than the fact of its horror and misery. As the disciples would come to realize by the preaching of the Holy Spirit, that death was supposed to be our death. That ugliness was meant for us. That disfiguring horror, that tortured misery that Jesus endured was the punishment that we deserved since we were born in the sin of our first parents, and it is what we still deserve every time we commit our selfish acts of word and deed that fail to love God and neighbor.
No one wants to live with the consequences of sin, much less see them or be reminded of them. Some think that any cross is offensive — empty or crucifix — and so many of these so–called “seeker sensitive” churches do without a cross completely. We are in the midst of a Christ–less and cross–less culture, and it is exacerbated by many Christians, either mistakenly or purposefully. Too many want to “save souls” by not offending them, by catering to their misguided desires, which includes not dwelling upon what for them is mere history: that Jesus has suffered and died for them, because if I have to contemplate Jesus' suffering, I have to contemplate my own sin that caused it.
Too many in this culture refuse to believe, and do not want to admit, that they are sinners, by nature sinful and unclean, and that they are daily unable to love God and neighbor perfectly. They would rather ignore sin. But without Jesus' suffering on our behalf, we are chained in the misery of sin and held fast in the grip of death. One prominent female evangelical preacher on television claims that she left the Lutheranism of her childhood because she believes it is wrong to confess each week that she is “by nature sinful and unclean.” She believes that once she's forgiven, that's it, I never need to worry about my sinfulness ever again. Pray you do not fall into this temptation. Repent if you have. True repentance by faith acknowledges sin and the sinful state we are born into, and fleas to the refuge of God's mercy and grace and forgiveness which He has promised to give us for the sake of Jesus' suffering and death.
When we cannot gaze upon our Lord on His cross, when we cannot and will not acknowledge our sinful condition, when we are unrepentant, we cannot see. We are blind spiritually. We are lost. We can only see ourselves and depend upon ourselves in such a state, and there is no room in us for Jesus. Even if Jesus drew near to us, we would not recognize Him, just as the two disciples on the way to Emmaus could not, with no faith and no trust in what He has taught us and promised us. The disciples could not only not see Jesus who (they thought) was dead and buried. They could not see or understand what was happening. They did not remember or understand the Lord's clear teaching to them: He had come to seek and to save the lost. He had come to call sinners to repentance. God the Father had sent Him and given Him to the world out of love, to reconcile the world to Himself, so that whoever believes in Him should have everlasting life. He would be crucified and on the third day raised to life again to accomplish these things.
So, here we are in the Easter season revisiting our Lord's crucifixion. It is the pinnacle of God's justice and of His mercy at the same time. What Jesus says in this text brings us there, because we must learn to believe that because of our sinfulness, it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die in our place to forgive our sins. But the story is not complete, it is Eastertide after all: “Again in a little while, you will see me,” says Jesus. He was crucified, dead, and buried, and descended into hell. On the third day, after a little while, He rose from the dead.
In your gardens, good things come after the seed is planted. But it is necessary to bury that seed. In your families, good things come after a child is conceived. But it is necessary for the child to be in the womb and to undergo labor pains. Both mother and child experience a lot of pain and discomfort before and during birth. In God's plan of salvation, good things were going to come after Jesus died. But it was necessary for Him to suffer, die, and be buried in the tomb. After a little bit of time there, we would see Him and just as there is joy in seeing the fruit borne by the seeds we plant, just as there is joy in seeing the newborn baby emerge from the womb, so there is great joy for us in seeing our resurrected Lord.
We see Him by faith now. He is ascended into heaven. Yet He keeps coming to us and invading our lives with the fruits of His cross and empty tomb. His death and resurrection is not mere history. It is a present reality for us. By faith we hear His voice in preaching and absolution. All that the mortal eye beholds is water in the baptismal font, but before the eye of faith pours out the blood of Jesus' merit. By faith, we see and touch and taste our Lord in the bread and wine, His resurrected body and blood given over for us to forgive us and bring us to everlasting life. Just as those Emmaus disciples finally saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread, so too, by faith, do we rejoice in the presence of our resurrected Lord here at this altar. It is a joy that no man can take away from us. It is a gift of God given for our eternal good.
Our joy is not fully complete. We are still beholden to sin. The sinful flesh clings to us. Eternal victory is ours now in Jesus, but it is still not yet a final reality. There is a little while to endure by faith. We are still going to die to this life. We are going to be buried like a seed in the earth. We are still in the womb of this earth. We still have to undergo a sometimes painful and uncomfortable process that is every bit as difficult as it is to be born — to die. “So also, you have sorrow now,” Jesus says. So also, you are going to suffer and not everything will go just the way you want it. So also, you are going to lose your job, your home, your health, your spouse, your children, and all your worldly possessions. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, sometimes all the time. You will have sorrow in this life. You are going to die to this life.
God desires to bring good for us. His will is always right and good and is what is best for us. Something better will someday come of our death. All of us have grieved over the loss of loved ones to death. Some of our brothers and sisters do even now. But something better comes out of this sadness. The believer's soul is in the safe and loving arms of their Lord Jesus in heaven. Their body is at rest awaiting the final resurrection. “So 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.”
This life and its sorrows and our death to this life are not all that is in store for us. Just as Jesus died and rose, so too, in our baptisms, we follow Him through death to life. God is bringing something good for us out of apparent defeat. You will see Jesus with your own eyes at the last, in the flesh, because you know and believe that your Redeemer lives.
Until then, despite the suffering and sorrow brought on by sin, we live with confidence and faith because God intends for us to live life, because God has a purpose for us in living. As long as the Lord gives us life, we must believe that He needs us. Even when all our physical powers fail, even when we have nothing to offer by our own strength, when everything of this life has been stripped away from us, our fellow neighbors may still need our prayers for others, or just our humble example of faithfulness. Each Christian should pray for the strength to remain faithfully at the place where God has need of Him, even unto death. And then we pray that we each go thankfully through the gates of life when the portals open to the joy of the Lord. (Bo Giertz Preaching From The Whole Bible, p. 59) Then, our joy will be complete, it will never be taken away, and at last we will be set free from misery and death, redeemed as we are by the death and resurrection of Jesus. For us, to live is to live in Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:21)
God grant His forgiveness, strength, perseverance, and mercy until He gives us the joy of resurrection and life in His eternal presence. We pray this for Jesus' sake. Amen.
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