From Grief To Joy

John 16:16-24 (NASB)

16 “A little while, and you no longer are going to see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.” 17 So some of His disciples said to one another, “What is this that He is telling us, ‘A little while, and you are not going to see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’; and, ‘because I am going to the Father’?” 18 So they were saying, “What is this that He says, ‘A little while’? We do not know what He is talking about.” 19 Jesus knew that they wanted to question Him, and He said to them, “Are you deliberating together about this, that I said, ‘A little while, and you are not going to see Me, and again a little while, and you will see Me’? 20 Truly, truly I say to you that you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy! 21 Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. 22 Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one is going to take your joy away from you.

23 And on that day you will not question Me about anything. Truly, truly I say to you, if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you. 24 Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.

In this passage, Jesus is telling His disciples about the events that are about to happen. Judas was already taking the steps to betray the Lord, there was only little time left until Jesus would go to the cross. As happens often in the book of John, the author is making contrasts, eg: In verse 16 it says: you won’t see me (for a little while), but then you’ll see me again. In Verse 20 we read: the disciples will lament, whereas the world will rejoice. In v. 21, we read about the pain of the delivery and the following joy over the birth of a new human. In v. 22, we see the contrast of sorrow and the eventual joy. Verse 24 shows the difference between asking or not asking God.

As we read in the first couple of verses, it seems like Jesus not telling the disciples explicitly what He means, to thereby generate curiosity - maybe to remind them of the prophecies we can nowadays read in the Old Testament. Jesus generating curiosity can be seen as the first step towards building a relationship between Him and His disciples. In Mark 4:9, after telling the parable of the Sower, Jesus says: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” (NASB)

In v. 6 Jesus said because I said these things sorrow has filled your heart - the word “filled” means sorrow has pushed every other emotion out - they were really brought down emotionally by this. They were irritated and perplexed, what does this mean that he is going away, what is a little while, they were not willing to believe this part. However, Jesus was going to suffer - and he was preparing them for this even though they couldn't recieve it then.

In verse 20 we’re told that the religious world rejoiced at His death because it hated Jesus, because He threatened their system and confronted the leaders on their false teaching of who God is. Though the world will be glad when Jesus is crucified - one day, on that last day when Jesus returns a second time-God’s enemies will be saddened when the Lord will return in glory to the world He created. But in this passage Jesus said that the grief of His absence would last a little while for those who love Him.

In our days, even in the midst of all the crises we’re currently experiencing, our earthly time that, among others, implies sorrow and even grief, is very short compared to all eternity.

However, those little moments Jesus mentions would feel like forever. As we read in the first section of the Lenten guide this week, maybe you have or are facing some type of Weltschmerz that is causing you grief. McDonald defined weltschmerz as “a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.” Maybe it is the loss of a relationship, a job, your health, your home. Maybe you are saddened by the condition of this world. Maybe you are grieving over your past, your sin and its consequences. Maybe you are grieving because someone you love is suffering from a terminal illness or because you have lost a loved one. All of us have and will face those times but in the Lenten reading the author relays how “the Kingdom of God is for the broken-hearted.