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.
Let us
pray! O God, our maker and redeemer, You
have made us new creatures and enabled us to see and experience the resurrection
of Your Son for all of mankind. Yet, some still question and doubt Your Words
and the Witness of the scriptures.
Enable us to see not with fairy tale eyes, but with eyes of faith and be
able to discern that this is not mystery or magic, but the clear manifestation
of the salvation of all of mankind including all of us saints gathered here at
Emmanuel this morning. AMEN.
With the
bombings in Boston and the manhunt to find the perpetrators this last week
uncertainty in our world is clearly and definitely manifest daily, whether in a
major city like Boston during the running of the best known Marathon in the
world or even in a small farming community like Goodland, KS. We daily encounter uncertainty especially as
we are exiting winter the slowest, coldest and dreariest part of the year. When we look to the fields as we drive by we
wonder if the winter wheat that in the Fall didn’t germinate will this
Spring. We ask God and ourselves, did we
get enough moisture during the winter and will the corn that we plant whether
dry land, irrigated circles or sunflowers will get hailed out, have a pest that
our sprays can’t combat or a wind storm that lays everything down. All of this is uncertainty manifest in our
lives right now. We wonder and worry
about things that we do not have any control over.
Uncertainty
is a daily occurrence for us today and even for the disciples of Jesus day. It is a daily battle everybody faces. Consider if you will our passage this morning
is from before Jesus was betrayed, crucified, died, buried and resurrected from
the dead. For Jesus to know the future
and speak directly to the uncertainty of what would occur should be a comfort
for us today. Jesus knew what He would
encounter, knew what He would endure and knew that we would hear about it today
with the uncertainty of our spring and summer crops. But why should we not be uncomfortable, but
comfortable with uncertainty?
Mark
Batterson in his book, “In A Pit With A Lion On a Snowy Day” speaks clearly about
uncertainty and how we could relate to it today. He says:
p. 89 – “[We should] Embrace relational
uncertainty. It is called romance. [We should] Embrace spiritual
uncertainty. It is called mystery. [We should] Embrace occupational
uncertainty. It is called destiny. [We should] Embrace emotional uncertainty. It
is called joy. [We should] Embrace
intellectual uncertainty. It is called
revelation.”
Uncertainty
is not our enemy, but our opportunity.
With Jesus disciples from our text the uncertainty of what would occur led
them through three distinct stages and reactions that our text delineates. The disciples questioned, they grieved and
they rejoiced. Each of these three
stages are natural and we do them as well.
When the
disciples heard Jesus words, “A little while, and you will no longer see
Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me.” The disciples were just like the kids with a
magic trick, always trying to figure out what and how the trick occurred. The disciple like all of us begin with a list
of questions trying to figure out what it means or how it was done. We cannot let the ‘magic trick’ have any
mystery or uncertainty. Hence the disciples
asked questions of Jesus both to clarify what He meant and for it to make more
sense for them in their present circumstances.
But
Jesus knowing their questions will not be fully answered until they experience
and in this case ‘lose’ Him tells them what their next stage will be. He said, “you [that is the disciples] will
weep and lament…you will grieve” because you have lost that which you
knew, that is me, Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Just as a family grieves for a family member that loses the battle with
cancer or any disease that takes them from them, or a family loses all their
possessions in a house fire, or a farmer loses all the wheat that was ready to
be harvested because of a freak thunderstorm, tornado or wind storm. Or a husband or wife experiences the sudden
loss of a job, a friend or family member moving because there is no more work
in the community or their parents employer is transferring them, when we lose
something that has become a part of our genetic makeup we lose a part of
ourselves. We grieve in the deepest way
because what we have lost we felt was almost an extension of ourselves. It was so tangible because of our experiences
that nothing will be able to fill the gap that was left.
Jesus
knew His disciples would experience this in the most horrific way when they saw
Jesus crucified on the Cross. When Jesus
endured the pain and torture of the whips, the spitting of the guards and the
despising by the crowds, Jesus knew the disciples would turn and run and then
grieve after the fact that they didn’t do anything to prevent it, make His pain
less bearable or intercede on His behalf.
Yet the reality is that there was nothing that anybody could do. Jesus Christ had to suffer the pain, torture
and turning of His disciples and even His own Father in order to pay for our
sins.
For in
Jesus experiencing this, His suffering and death yielded the greatest gift
given to mankind, our salvation through His resurrection on the third day. Because of His fulfilling the plan of
salvation our questions turned into grief would be transformed into our
rejoicing after His resurrection. It was
through Jesus Christ resurrection that the disciples “grief will be turned into joy.” The question to understand transformed into
grief then into rejoicing, because the plan of salvation from the beginning of
time was for Jesus to pay the ultimate price.
Thus, just as Jesus reminds His disciple, even women who have
experienced labor do not remember the pain, we just as well do not remember the
questions or grief, but only the rejoicing of the salvation of mankind.
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