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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!)
How long is “a little while”? To a crying baby needing to be changed or fed? To an older child longing for individual attention from mom or dad? To a young man or woman expecting a positive answer to a marriage proposal? How long is “a little while”? To a worker waiting for a job or for a promised promotion or raise? To someone who is sick or otherwise afflicted hoping for help in a hospital or nursing home or to be healed or otherwise delivered? To a widow or widower mourning a spouse and wishing to be with him or her? How long is “a little while”? In today’s Gospel Reading, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night when He was betrayed, spoke of the “little whiles” both before His death and between His death and resurrection, although His disciples by their own admission did not know or understand what He was talking about, as perhaps we also may not know or understand how Jesus’s words in the Gospel Reading apply to us. So, this morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “A little while”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is largely unique to St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, and there Jesus had already told His disciples and others that He would only be with them for “a little while” longer. Jesus told them months earlier (John 7:33), days earlier (John 12:35), and even moments earlier that very night (John 13:33; 14:19). Yet, apparently the single‑largest concentration of the New Testament’s uses of the Greek expression for “a little while”—and apparently nearly half of the uses—comes in today’s Gospel Reading. In the Gospel Reading, the “little while” before Jesus’s death was less than 24 hours, and the “little while” between His death and resurrection was perhaps some 36 hours. Both were very short periods of time that would come very quickly.
People may sometimes say they will be with someone in “a little while” when they actually want to put that person off indefinitely, and such a potentially‑sinful practice may heighten potentially‑sinful impatience while waiting for whatever is supposed to be delivered. In the Gospel Reading, the disciples’ circumstances that Maundy Thursday night, with all that Jesus was telling them, may well have contributed to their inability at that time to “bear” the many things Jesus still had to say to them, as well as contributing to their fear of asking Him about, for example, the “little whiles” (confer Luke 9:45). However, especially since Jesus is also speaking about the coming of the Holy Spirit, we can also think of the disciples’ and our own inability to bear or understand spiritual things, such as Jesus was talking about, without the Holy Spirit. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we do not accept spiritual things, for they appear to us to be foolishness, and we are not able to understand them, for they are spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14). By nature, we are all dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1, 5)—trespasses and sins for which we deserve nothing but punishment here in time and in hell for eternity, trespasses and sins from which God calls us to turn with repentance and faith, and trespasses and sins for which God sent the long‑promised Savior, Jesus Christ.
God’s people had been waiting for thousands of years from what might be said to be the first “little while”, God implied in the promise of the woman’s Offspring that would crush the devil (Genesis 3:16). Although Eve appears to have thought that that Human Being was born into the world right away (Genesis 4:1), not Eve but the Virgin Mary had that joy (Luke 1:47; confer Delling, TDNT 9:678 n.18). So by the time of the night when Jesus was betrayed, the disciples were only hours away from Jesus’s death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave—from the fulfillment of all of the prophecies about the Savior, although the disciples did not understand all of that until later (confer John 2:22; 12:16; 20:9). A little more than fifty days later, on Pentecost, the Holy Spirit guided them into all the truth, the many things Jesus still had to say to them, the things that were to come, whatever the Holy Spirit heard the Father say to the Son in the confines of the Holy Trinity, the things the Father gave to the Son, and so the things the Spirit declared to the disciples—and to us. By the Holy Spirit’s work of glorifying the God-man Jesus Christ as the Redeemer and Savior of the world, we turn in sorrow from our sin and, for Jesus’s sake, we trust God to forgive our sin through His Word and Sacraments.
As I studied today’s Gospel Reading preparing to preach this morning, I was struck by the change from Jesus’s speaking of the disciples’ in a little while seeing Him no longer and then in a little while seeing Him again to Jesus’s speaking of His own seeing the disciples. Although in some sense that change may only be in perspective, the disciples’ and our seeing of Jesus arguably is the result of Jesus’s seeing us. The Triune God reveals Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ, and so we see Him with the eyes of faith. For most of us probably that revelation is first made and faith first given in connection with the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, by which whole households are saved, as in today’s First Reading (Acts 11:1-18, with Acts 10:47‑48). Those so baptized privately confess to their pastors the sins they know and feel in their heart, and so they are given individual Holy Absolution. Those so absolved are admitted to Holy Communion, where they receive Christ’s Body in, with, and under bread and Christ’s Blood in, with, and under wine, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In all these ways Jesus encounters us and so we have fellowship with Him.
Commentators on today’s Gospel Reading sometimes want to distinguish too sharply the disciples’ and Jesus’s seeing of one another between His Resurrection and Ascension and all of our seeing and being seen by Jesus on the Last Day. Yet, more than those seeings’ being inextricably connected, the fellowship the disciples had with Jesus during that time—and the fellowship we have with Jesus even now—need not be interrupted, at any time! In the Gospel Reading Jesus Himself says no one ever takes away from them or from us the joy that we have in the Resurrected Christ, Who brings us the forgiveness of our sin. As we sang in the Hymn of the Day, only His Easter triumph, Easter joy, can destroy sin (Lutheran Service Book 633:7). To be sure, however, on the Last Day, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Revelation 21:1-7), we will have the greatest and fullest appreciation of the joy that is ours already now. And, that Last Day is only “a little while” away!
Time, they say, is relative, and we know from our own experiences that one person’s “little while” is another person’s seeming “eternity”! The Greek expression Jesus uses in today’s Gospel Reading emphasizes “the shortness of the time interval”, as if to say “oh, how little” time. As we live each day with repentance and faith, we patiently wait the “little while” before beginning the real eternity of our greatest and fullest appreciation of our joy in Christ.
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 + + +