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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Even the most‑sensitive man will never know exactly what it is like to give birth to a baby. In the wisdom of God, not even all women have that experience. Yet, enough people of both genders can relate to the experience, and so our Lord Jesus in today’s Third Reading used the experience of giving birth to a baby as the basis for an illustration. We find the experience of giving birth to a baby used elsewhere in the New Testament to illustrate such things as suddenness and inevitability (for example, 1 Thessalonians 5:3). And, already in the Old Testament we find the experience of giving birth to a baby being used (Isaiah 21:3), even as Jesus uses it here, rooted in the man and the woman’s fall into sin (Genesis 3:16), to illustrate the transformation of sorrow into joy (Isaiah 26:17-19; 66:7-14; Hosea 13:13-14; Micah 4:9-10). Thus, our theme this Fifth Sunday of Easter is “Sorrow and Joy”.
In our Third Reading, Jesus’s use of the experience of giving birth to a baby to illustrate the transformation of sorrow into joy comes as He finishes teaching His disciples on the night when He was betrayed. Despite all Jesus had already said both about His coming separation from the disciples by His death and about the work of the Holy Spirit with them and the world, and despite all Jesus’s answers to their questions, the disciples still did not understand. Knowing that the Holy Spirit would give them understanding soon enough, Jesus, in a solemn statement of truth, addressed their emotions, telling them that, after “a little while”, their sorrow would “turn into joy”.
This morning, what gives you and me reason for sorrow? Are we sorrowful because we do not have things that other people have? Are we sorrowful because our personal desires are not being fulfilled? Are we sorrowful because God allows the devil, the world, and our flesh to frustrate us in the various callings He has given us? Such sorrow we should not have, but we should have other sorrow! Are we sorrowful because we do not love God and our neighbors as we ought? Are we sorrowful because we do not stop sinning in some way and maybe even do not really want to stop? Are we sorrowful because by nature we are sinful and unclean? God calls us to turn in sorrow from all our sin and from our sinful natures. God calls us to believe that He forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and God calls us to want to do better. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. As the apostles and brothers throughout Judea in the First Reading (Acts 11:1-18) recognized that God had granted to the Judean Gentiles repentance that leads to life, so God likewise has granted also to us that same repentance that leads to life.
Years ago when I was in the Ft. Wayne seminary’s select touring choir, we sang a song based on today’s Third Reading; in that song one half the choir sang about the disciples’ weeping and lamenting, while the other half the choir simultaneously sang about the rest of the world’s rejoicing. The two disparate parts came together on the words “yet for the same thing”, and so the song emphasized the markedly contrasting reactions that Jesus in the Third Reading gives to one and the same event. His death and seeming defeat were the cause both of the disciples’ weeping and lamenting and of the world’s rejoicing. Yet, Jesus’s resurrection transformed His death into victory, and so turned the disciples’ sorrow into joy. St. John’s divinely-inspired Gospel account, in fact, later reports that the sorrowful disciples saw the resurrected Lord and rejoiced (John 20:20). One and the same event was initially the cause of their sorrow but later was the cause of their joy and peace, just as the birth of a baby is initially the cause of a woman’s sorrow but later the cause of her and others’ joy.
Although when Eve conceived and bore Cain she thought that she had the man who was the Lord (Genesis 4:1), her distant‑daughter Mary truly conceived and bore the Man Who was the Lord (Luke 1:32, 35). Jesus is not only the Son of Mary, but He is also the Son of God in human flesh. A Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit speaks of Jesus; Jesus the Holy Spirit declares to us: Jesus crucified on the cross for us; Jesus resurrected from the grave for us. The disciples wept and lamented, fasted, as it were, while the Bridegroom for three days was taken away from them (Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19-20; Luke 5:34-35), but when they saw Him again their sorrow was turned to joy. The disciples saw Jesus again with their human eyes and rejoiced, and we see Him with the eyes of faith and rejoice. As today’s Second Reading describes (Revelation 21:1-7), we in the Church, the holy city, new Jerusalem, are prepared as a bride for her Bridegroom, and God wipes away every tear from our eyes, and, when the former things have passed away, there shall be no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain.
We see Jesus with the eyes of faith and rejoice already now because by grace through faith in Him the very sins and sinful nature that gave us cause to be sorrowful are forgiven. Our sorrow over our sins and sinful nature is turned to joy in Holy Baptism, by water comprehended in God’s command and connected with God’s word. Our sorrow over our sins and sinful nature is turned to joy in individual Holy Absolution, as we believe and do not doubt that by the forgiveness that we receive from the pastor our sins are forgiven before God in heaven. Our sorrow over our sins and sinful nature is turned to joy in the Sacrament of the Altar, by bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is Jesus’s blood, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins and so also for life and for salvation. In these ways the Holy Spirit guides us in all truth and joy and peace. In these ways Jesus encounters us and we encounter Him. In these ways He gives us the objective reality of the forgiveness of our sins, and we experience what can be called the subjective emotion of joy.
Up in Arkansas this past Monday morning, when I got back from test-driving the 2003 Nissan 350-Z, the man who was handling the sale asked me if I had a permanent smile etched on my face. I had to say yes, though I knew the smile may not be permanent—the realities of the lower fuel efficiency, the higher cost of a better‑grade of fuel, increased insurance expenses, and fading paint may well remove the smile at some point. Especially when our joy is based on fleeting and fading things, our joy does not last in this world. However, even when our joy is based on the unchanging truth of the Gospel, our subjective experience of our joy in this world may well waver. Yet, grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we accept the crosses we bear, we even rejoice over them (1 Peter 3:6), for we know that, although the Lord’s discipline seems sorrowful, its peaceful fruit of righteousness is reason for joy (Hebrews 12:11). We deal with the loneliness that comes being called out of the world and yet remaining in the world. In this world, we will have tribulation, but we take heart, for Jesus has overcome the world (John 16:33).
Compared to eternity with our Lord, our time in this world is truly “a little while”. Even if we do not yet fully and always experience the joy that is ours, we truly have a deep-seated joy independent of the world, a joy that the world did not give, a joy the world cannot take away. Man or woman, parent or not, we have eternal life in the shared fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Among the many changes of this world, we live every day, both with the sorrow of repentance and with faith, fixing our hearts where that true joy is both found and experienced.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +