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“Again a little while and you will see Me.”
“I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
᛭ INI ᛭
Alleluia! Jesus Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
(5. Oops!: Christ never promised an easy life.)
Christ never promised you an easy life. He never promised you a life without sorrow. He never promised that you wouldn’t have to sacrifice and suffer for your faith in Him. In fact, quite the opposite! Christ promises, God’s Word is clear, that life in this world is and will be difficult. He promises, prophesies, that “you will have sorrow now.” He says that Christians will suffer for His name’s sake, that the Christian life is one of sufferings, bearing the cross, and even death.
This isn’t just in your daily life of serving those around you. It’s the mark of a true Christian: the world will hate you, persecute you, make your life difficult because you’re a Christian. Christians, true Christians, suffer and sacrifice to live faithfully as Christians. Christ says so in many places. We sacrifice time and money for work, sports, school, and even family. Don’t unbelievers do the same? Christ says His disciples do the same thing for His name’s sake.
The world will rejoice that Christ is gone. We’ll have sorrow as they take their joy out on us. So it was for the Apostles, all the way to suffering and death for Christ while the world danced over their graves!
(4. Ugh!: The troubles of your heart are enlarged.)
”The troubles of your heart are enlarged.” (Ps 25) Many of you carry a weight of sorrow. Maybe your heart bears the scars of sorrow and grief. There’s sorrow over the way the world’s going and how there is more trouble, pressure, and even persecution for being a faithful Christian, let alone the moral decay even in our country! Maybe there’s sorrow and grief over loved ones who’ve gotten old or sick and died. Maybe you’re sorrowful over the brokenness of your body and mind because of sin. Not any sin in particular, but our sinful condition wreaks havoc on our bodies, so we suffer from different ailments.
But there’s another way the world works sorrow in our hearts, as it lives out its temporary so-called “joy” in the time when Christ is no longer seen on this earth. The world masks its materialism, living for only this life, the pleasures of this life, by killing time so it can forget about eternity. The world lives as if Christ is dead, and so it lives its “joy” of “Let’s eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die!” YOLO. Doom spending.
We get pressured into that. We don’t live like we should. Our flesh all too easily dances to the world’s tune. We mask our sorrows in much the same way the world does. The world rejoices as Christians get pushed to the sidelines. Christians live in the world, but they don’t live like the world, of the world. That’s what’s all laid out in our Epistle reading: “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.”
The world rejoices only in Christians, so-called Christians, who live like them. The fleshly lusts are worldly joys and pleasures that don’t last. We have been set free from such things in Holy Baptism, “let us then as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.” We sorrow over our sins, or maybe we have reason to sorrow over how we so often live like the world. We use our Christianity to live however we so choose, like it doesn’t matter what we do, to have the temporary joy of the world.
Living out your Christianity on your terms rather than on Christ’s terms, keeping your Christian faith limited to a Sunday morning, rather than in your home and daily life—the world rejoices over Christians who live like that. We ought to weep and lament over that kind of worldly Christian life.
(3. Aha!: Christ promises that your sorrow is temporary.)
The world won’t last. The economy and stock market won’t go up forever. There will be a time when crops cease. Christ will come again. On that day the world will weep and lament, but those who are His will rejoice with a joy that will never end.
Christ not only says that the world will end someday, but He also says that your sorrow is also temporary. There will come a time when your sorrow and sadness will flee away. (Is 25) One day there will be no reason to have sorrow of how the world treats believers, no reason to have sorrow over how the world tries to trick believers into living like unbelievers 167 out of the 168 hours in a week. There will be a time when there will be no more sorrow or crying over death. There will be a time when sickness and pain will be no more. Paul puts it this way: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2-Cor 4)
(2. Whee!: IT WON’T BE LONG NOW, YOU’LL SEE CHRIST AND HE’LL SEE YOU, FACE TO FACE.)
Every cause of sorrow from the one Christ talks about in John 16 today, or the other causes of sorry are temporary. How temporary? From Christ’s own words today we know it’s a short time. It’s not long at all. “A little while” Christ says twice. Just a little bit, not a long time. Yes,
IT WON’T BE LONG NOW, YOU’LL SEE CHRIST AND HE’LL SEE YOU, FACE TO FACE.
That’s a very comforting promise of Christ. He fulfilled it for the disciples. They saw Him, then didn’t see Him. He died and was buried. Then they saw Him again. He rose from the dead. And after that first Easter Day no one ever took their joy from them. No one could make them balk or waiver. They rejoiced with an eternal joy as they went about the rest of their lives serving the Lord according to their vocations. This, of course, included preaching the Gospel to far flung places like India, like Thomas did. But it also included a joy in other their other callings: like Peter, and the other Apostles, as Paul says, caring for their wives, or John also caring for the blesséd Virgin Mary, the Mother of Our Lord and God, IHS Christ.
IT WON’T BE LONG NOW, YOU’LL SEE CHRIST AND HE’LL SEE YOU, FACE TO FACE.
We’re running a race where the finish line is Christ and eternal life with Him. It’s not a long race! What’s your little lifetime? We see a great many things that cause us sorrow, like I said before, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to eternal glory, seeing Christ face to face forever.
“The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” But that flying is away is one where we are carried off by angels to rest in the presence of Christ, His Father, and the Holy Spirit forever, and forever and ever!
(1. Yeah!: The pledge of this is given now.)
Christ’s promises gives us a comfort far surpassing worldly pleasures, which the world and our flesh often want to use to soften the sorrow we’re suffering with. The enticements and lures and temptations of the devil and society and even our own internal wants and desires often get the better of us. It feels like it’s never going to end! Like the rat race is never going to end! Like it’s pointless to actually exercise restraint and self-control so as not to use our “liberty as a cloak for evil,” as St. Peter says.
But it’s not pointless. Christ’s promise holds true: IT WON’T BE LONG NOW, YOU’LL SEE CHRIST AND HE’LL SEE YOU, FACE TO FACE. And He gives you a pledge and guarantee of that. He, of course, “forgives all your sins and iniquities.” He gives you the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of the Altar, but by bringing you here into this place we are in a miraculous and mysterious place, “for where two or three are gathered in His name, there He is in the midst of them.” In fact, we’re surrounded by those who already see Christ face to face, for they have departed to be with Christ, which is far better.
Some may remember the angels being up here, good reminder. But the area around the altar could be adorned with the covers of funeral booklets. Communion gives the promise that those who eat and drink Christ’s body and blood in true faith will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Life isn’t easy, the temptations and sorrows of life abound. But it won’t last to much longer for you. IT WON’T BE LONG NOW, YOU’LL SEE CHRIST AND HE’LL SEE YOU, FACE TO FACE. In fact, He’s here now, soon to give His body and His blood.
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