“Overcoming the World”
John 16: 16 – 33
Introduction: D-Day and V-Day
1. How many people here recognize this date: June 6, 1944? On June 6, 1944, a date known ever since as D-Day, a mighty armada crossed a narrow strip of sea from England to Normandy, France, and cracked the Nazi grip on western Europe. The battle was far from being over – there would be months and months of more combat. But this battle, this day, was the beginnings of a decisive victory. Final victory was certain, even if the war was not altogether over.
2. And how many people here recognize this date: May 9, 1945? This is the day that the German army unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces. This is day known as V-E day, when the Allied victory in Europe was secured.
3. This brief history lesson tells us that the decisive battle of a war may be won before the enemy is willing to acknowledge defeat or before the enemy even realizes it is defeated. Fighting may continue for a time, although the outcome of the war has already been determined. The final “cease fire” and official declaration of victory are only the inevitable result of the decisive battle already fought.
4. Imagine having to fight a war but also knowing that ultimate victory was inevitable. You are on the winning side. There are more battles to fight, but D-Day has come and gone; and V-Day, while still ahead, is guaranteed. How would this affect your performance in battle? Would you be afraid of defeat? Would you still have the same fear of your enemy? Or would you instead feel confident and victorious even if present circumstances didn’t seem to justify such a posture and attitude? During WWII the Allied forces didn’t have the benefit of foreknowledge, of knowing that a victory at Normandy would mean ultimate victory for them and the defeat of Nazi Germany. But what about us as Christians? This is something that our passage talks about today: that there has been a decisive victory even if the final declaration and celebration is still “a little while” off.
“You will have pain . . .”
1. Jesus is spending his last few hours with his disciples. He is preparing them for his departure. When he says “a little while, and you will no longer see me,” he is referring to his death on the cross. He is referring to “his hour,” as he has called it. But he also assures them that “again a little while and you will see me.” This likely refers first to Jesus’ resurrection and the fact that he will appear to his disciples after he is raised and before he returns to the Father in heaven. Jesus, as we know, makes many post-resurrection appearances to his disciples.
2. Between Jesus’ death and resurrection, the disciples will experience the darkness of Jesus’ crucifixion on Passover Friday and the emptiness – the void of his absence – on Saturday. They will weep and mourn, and they will experience anguish and pain like that of a woman in labour. It is interesting to note that the word here translated “anguish” is often used in more apocalyptic contexts where it has to do with tribulation or persecution. And the word used for “pain” has more to do with emotional rather than physical distress. Both words are used to indicate what the disciples are going to experience.
3. You see, John’s Gospel often uses language somewhat ambiguously. Yes, Jesus is, I think, talking about the time between his death and resurrection. But I think that he’s talking about more than that. Jesus’ words can be understood on more than one level. This is often the case with John’s presentation of Jesus, as we have seen. I think Jesus here is also speaking about the gap of time between his death and resurrection and his coming again in glory at the end of the age.
4. I say this because Jesus tells his disciples here to expect persecution while in the world – anguish and pain – and it is a little hard to imagine that in the day in-between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection the disciples will experience much persecution. In fact, we know that they do go into hiding until they find out that Jesus has been raised and that they remain in hiding until the coming of the promised Holy Spirit. Certainly they do experience pain between witnessing Jesus’ death and becoming witnesses to the resurrected Jesus, but this is the pain of incomprehension, of sorrow, or mourning, of disbelief, the pain of losing their beloved teacher and friend. It is not the pain of opposition and persecution.
“But your pain will turn into joy”
1. When Jesus said, “You will have pain,” he continued on by saying that “your pain will turn into joy.” He wanted his disciples to know that what they were going to experience was not going to be permanent. The pain would not last forever. He says, “And again a little while, and you will see me.” While he would be taken from them, he was also going to return. Jesus was reassuring them that he would return, that he would be raised. He was coming back; and when he did, their hearts would rejoice.
2. We all know the saying, “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” In their song, “Yahweh,” U2 sing these lines: “Yahweh, Yahweh, always pain before a child is born; Yahweh, Yahweh, why the dark before the dawn?” Sometimes in the middle of pain – in the midst of tribulation – it’s hard to believe that there is “light at the end of the tunnel.” But this is what Jesus is promising his disciples. While the worst was yet to come, so was the best. The best was yet to come. And the disciples had no idea. All they knew was that Jesus was leaving. The dark of night was approaching. There is no night without an approaching dawn; there is no dawn without a night before.
3. In northern Chile, between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, lies a narrow strip of land where the sun shines every day. Clouds gather so seldom over the valley that one can say, “It almost never rains here!” Morning after morning the sun rises brilliantly over the tall mountains to the east. Each noon it shines brightly overhead, and every evening it brings a picturesque sunset. Although storms are often seen rising high in the mountains, and heavy fog banks hand their gray curtains far over the sea, Old Sol continues to shed his warming rays upon this “favored” and protected strip of territory. One might imagine this area to be an earthly paradise, but is far from that! It is a sterile and desolate wilderness! There are no streams of water, and nothing grows there. We often long for total sunshine and continuous joy in life, and we desire to avoid the heartaches that bring tears to our eyes. But though showers do come, they will also end, and the sun will shine again. Jesus’ disciples would know nothing of that sun-drenched spot in northern Chile, but despite the sorrow and pain they would come to experience, joy would eventually shine through. The darkness of the cross and their crucified Rabbi will turn into the joy of an empty tomb and their risen Lord. Remember what John 1: 5 tells us? “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Psalm 30: 5 says this to us: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” And what morning brings more joy than Easter morning?
Between the Pain and the Joy
1. In just a couple of days the movie version of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will come out on DVD – and I certainly recommend it! In fact, I wish I could use it today rather than tell you about it! In this book (and in the movie!) a young boy named Edmund falls under the spell and is enslaved by the White Witch. Edmund had been foolish and rebellious and treacherous, and as a result had fallen under her power. When the great lion, Aslan, came to rescue him, the witch reminded him of the deep magic that was written on the Table of Stone – that every traitor belonged to her and that she has the right to the blood of every sinner. But, to the amazement of all, after Aslan spoke to the witch she let the boy go. Later that night, Aslan surrendered himself into the witch’s camp. They took him, shaved off his magnificent mane, ridiculed him, beat him, spat on him, and tied him to the Table of Stone. The witch whetted her knife, drew near to great lion, and plunged the knife into his heart, killing him. In the distance, Aslan’s dear friends, Lucy and Susan, cried and cried. The next morning, when they went to recover his body they found the Table of Stone broken and Aslan was nowhere to be found. And then suddenly the turned around and saw him: Aslan, the great lion, king of Narnia, and he was bigger than they remembered him, shaking his magnificent mane, fully and physically alive. They hugged him and kissed him, and weeping for joy they asked him, “But Aslan, what does it mean?” This was Aslan’s reply: “It means that though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
2.Between the pain of Jesus’ death and the joy of his resurrection stands the cross. With the death and resurrection of Jesus death has started “working backwards,” as Aslan put it. To return our history lesson, the cross represents D-Day. Jesus’ going to the cross and his being raised marked the decisive defeat of the enemy, the overcoming of the darkness by the light of Jesus Christ. While victory may not be evident when we look at the world around us, we know that in Christ the world has been overcome. V-Day is on the horizon and its arrival is guaranteed! Jesus’ death and resurrection are the central event in all of history. As preacher George Sweeting puts it: “The most crucial event in all history, the one crisis that forms a watershed by which we number our years, write all our history, and reckon on our relationship with God – the crucifixion of Christ.”
3. One major breakdown in my historical analogy, however, is that while the victory won at Normandy was clear, even to the world, the victory won by Christ on the cross is not. The world – those opposed to God and His ways – does not tremble at the foot of the cross, it rejoices. Jesus says that his disciples will “weep and mourn” at his departure and that “the world will rejoice.” Continuing that comment from George Sweeting, he says that the crucifixion of Jesus “was one of those events that passed without much notice.”
4. But we know we are victorious – that Christ has defeated death and won for us the victory to end all victories, and that the decisive battle has been fought and lost, not on a battlefield on the shores of France or anywhere else, but on an instrument of Roman brutality and humiliation, on a cross. What looks like a defeat is a victory. The one who looks like a loser is actually the victor.
Victory in Jesus!
1. So how do we know we have this victory? Take another look at Jesus’ use of the image of the woman in labour. Jesus uses a birthing process to describe what will happen to his disciples. They will pass from the pain of losing Jesus to the joy of meeting the resurrected Jesus. Images of birth are crucial in John to describe the new life that Jesus makes available; that the image is used here indicates that it is through Jesus’ death and resurrection that his disciples will experience new birth – hence, the sorrow that will turn to rejoicing. Through their experience of the cross and empty tomb the disciples will become a new community, “a people of joy.” The “woman stands as a symbol for the community, suffering through tribulation in order to receive God’s awaited salvation and new life.”
2. Our way into this victory, our way into this community of the resurrected Jesus, is faith. The call of the Gospel of John is a call to believe that Jesus is the Son of God who reveals the Father. 1 John 5: 4, 5 says: “For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” Our faith in Christ enables us to overcome the world. One scholar comments that our faith is like a “weapon of war.” Paul the apostle, in 1 Corinthians 15: 57, says: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” At the end of our passage Jesus himself says when assuring his disciples, “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” And to give you a brief lesson in Greek, the verb tense here for “conquered” is what’s called the perfect tense, and this denotes an abiding victory. This is a victory that is not going to end. It indicates that what Jesus did in conquering the world has ongoing consequences from now until eternity.
3. Just as the victory in Jesus is complete, so is our joy. The pain we sometimes know, the anguish of this life, is, as Jesus assures his disciples, not permanent. It will not last forever. Just as the disciples’ pain at seeing Jesus crucified was turned to joy by the empty tomb, so our pain is turned to joy knowing that we have victory in Jesus no matter what happens in this life. Turning again to Paul, we find these words: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We have joy because we know that nothing can separate those of us who have faith in Jesus from the victory that he has won. Jesus himself tells his disciples: “No one will take your joy from you.”
4. In a way, this message ties together the last couple of messages too: on persecution and the hatred of the world for Jesus and his disciples and the promise of the Holy Spirit. First, that no matter what we face in this life in terms of opposition, battles, struggles, and persecutions, we already have victory. Second, you see, the Holy Spirit is a promise in more ways than one. Yes, Jesus promises to send the Spirit; but the promise also includes our final redemption. In other words, the Spirit is the seal of our victory in Jesus, our guarantee of salvation. 2 Corinthians 1: 22 says, “But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first instalment.” Ephesians 1: 13, 14 says, “In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.” Romans 8: 11 says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” The indwelling Spirit of God, which we have through faith, is God’s promise that we share in the victory won by Jesus on the cross, that we too will be raised to newness of life and share the glory!
5. In these last few chapters that we have looked, Jesus is seeking to prepare his disciples for his departure. He wants them to be ready for what lies ahead. He wants them to know that the victory is already won, despite what they will have to go through. These words are also for us. Jesus wants us to place our trust in him and what he has done, to believe that he is the Son of God. Jesus wants us to be assured of his presence with us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus wants us to share in the victory he has won even in the present moment. Jesus wants us to rely on him in the face of hardship and persecution. Jesus wants us believe that one day he will return and that the pain we know now will turn into a permanent joy. And in the meantime, he asks us have courage, to take heart, because while we are still in the world, a world that opposes Jesus and all those who follow him, he has overcome the world.
