The source of Joy and Peace (John 16:16-33)
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been learning about Jesus and
his last words to his closest friends before he would be betrayed, deserted, tried,
and executed. The disciples’ emotions are understandably all over the place:
they are shocked, they are sad, they are confused, they are in denial; soon
they will weep and mourn and grieve the death of their beloved friend, their teacher,
their messiah. Their feelings would be up and down and swirling all over the
place.
I think we’re all very familiar with this. These feelings all
swirl about, don’t they? Sometimes one emotion can grab hold of us and stick
with us for a long time, like grief after the loss of a loved one. Other times
a completely inappropriate emotion can just pop up at the strangest moment,
like when something is funny and you laugh and feel happy even despite overall
being sad or angry. Having had two years of covid uncertainty, we’ve felt
panic, fear, disappointment, grief, loneliness, boredom, frustration.
So when we read in our passage today Jesus talking about
emotions to his disciples – and not just talking about them, but promising them
specific feelings: joy and peace – I reckon he’s talking about something quite relevant
to us. I should point out I’m not a psychologist, I’m not trying to provide any
deep analysis of the human psyche or anything like that. All I’m saying is that
humans have emotions – we feel ways about stuff – and Jesus is talking about how
we feel.
And I actually feel a bit weird about that. Here is Jesus,
at the end of his farewell to his disciples, talking about his death, but also
about his resurrection (that’s what he means when he says “In a little while
you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me”) – here
is Jesus talking about the single most important event in history, one that
determines the eternal destiny of every human being who has ever existed and
ever will – and yet Jesus isn’t talking about that importance. Salvation,
freedom from slavery to our sins, victory over death, eternity with God… none
of that is mentioned here.
Jesus likens his death and resurrection in this passage to
the birth of a child – vs 21, “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because
her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of
her joy that a child is born into the world” – and his focus in that analogy is
not on how wonderful the thing coming out of the anguish is, but on how the
disciples will feel about it! Vs 22, “So with you: Now is your time of grief,
but I will see you again and you will” have a child; have salvation, something?
No, you will “rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” Jesus is talking
about how his resurrection will make the disciples feel, not its other results!
Imagine if someone had just had a child, but instead of telling you that the
baby is a boy or a girl, or that it’s healthy, or it looks like its mum, they
just talked about how they felt afterwards. To me that would seem a little
weird.
Are feelings really that important? Apparently so, because
Jesus talks about them again at the end of our passage! Vs 33: “I have told you
these things” – that probably refers to everything he’s said in his farewell,
so everything that we’ve heard in the sermons for the last however many weeks,
he’s told us these things – “so that in me you may have peace.” That might ring
a bell with you; you might remember back in John 14 when Jesus says, “Peace I
leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”
Here we are at the end of Jesus’ farewell – the next bits are all prayers – and
he’s again promising the disciples joy and peace.
I want to look at what Jesus is really promising here, but
before I do I think it’s important we understand the way he’s promising it.
What is this promise based on? And I’ve already said it’s based on Jesus’ death
and resurrection, but really it is based on what his death and resurrection
mean, for all of us. Yes, the disciples will be happy that Jesus is no longer
dead, of course they will. But the emotional consequences of simply seeing him
alive again are like the health consequences of Jesus’s healing miracles – they
don’t last forever. Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead, his most amazing healing
miracle – but does Lazarus walk among us still? No, of course not. He died
again, eventually. Amazing miracle, but only a temporary result. Were the
disciples happy when Jesus was alive again? Of course! But then they went on in
life to have other feelings. For one, Jesus left them again at the ascension!
Limited joy in that, and not really any peace.
No, the joy and peace that Jesus refers to is not simply
related to the fact that their best friend was alive again; it is based in the
fact that the resurrection proves everything else Jesus said to be true! That
means he is the messiah! His death does take away the sins of the world! He is
the way, the truth, and the life! Whoever believes in him will not perish, but
have eternal life! The disciples will know this to be true, because Jesus will
be standing in front of them raised from the dead! How’s that for joy! How’s
that for peace!
And so Jesus is saying that when you know these things are true
– when you have believed this truth about him, his death and his resurrection
and what they accomplish for us all – then you will have a joy that no-one can
take away. Then you will have peace in him.
But what does that actually look like? I’ve already said
that the disciples went off and lived life and had other emotions. They felt
sorrow, they felt despair, they got angry, they had disappointments, they
struggled. Jesus even says to them in verse 33, “In this world you will have
trouble.” What does it mean to have peace and joy that no‑one can take away if you
still have trouble, if you still have all the bad emotions? Isn’t that a
contradiction? Or: let’s bring it closer to home. I said at the start of my
talk that the pandemic has made us all feel panic, fear, disappointment, grief,
loneliness, boredom, frustration. If we’re all Christians, why haven’t we just been
feeling joy and peace the whole time?
And to answer that question, I want to talk about Spider‑Man.
There is a new Spider‑Man movie. Perhaps I should say ANOTHER Spider‑Man movie.
If you don’t know the story of Spider‑Man, let me break it down for you. A kid
gets bitten by a radioactive spider, gets spider powers, becomes a superhero
and fights super villains. There have been at least four movie franchises built
on this basic story – that’s nine movies, with a tenth coming out later this
year! And at least two of those movies are actually about how many different
Spider‑Man stories there are!
Now you may ask, “How many Spider‑Man movie franchises do we
really need?” But here’s the thing: although all of these movies are built on
the same foundation – kid gets bitten by spider, gets superpowers, becomes a
hero – the other story elements – the characters, the plots, the morals of the
story – are different in each. One of them tells a dramatic story of power and
hubris; another tells a story packed with action and charisma; while another
focuses on the coming of age story of a teenager with teenage problems; and
another speaks about belonging and family.
The fact is that even if you make Spider‑Man a woman, or a
1930s noir detective, or a teenage schoolgirl with a futuristic
spider-controlled robot, or even make a spider that was bitten by a radioactive
pig, even though all those elements change, each Spider‑Man story has the same
basic foundation when you drill down on it.
Sometimes the movie that gets built on top of that is great, and
sometimes it’s less great. But they’re all built on a strong foundational story
premise. The foundation matters. You can have all different things built on top
of it, but you will always come back to the foundation.
What Jesus is offering us when he talks about joy and peace
is not just a temporary feeling; it’s a foundation. Jesus is offering us a
foundation of joy and of peace. Yes, there will be other emotions that come and
go on top of that foundation. There will be other momentary happinesses, there
will be sadnesses too, there will be anger and worry and grief and confusion
and hope and calm. And they will all swirl about, sometimes bubbling to the top
as if they are the only thing we will ever feel again, sometimes disappearing
so that we wonder if they are gone for good. Because that is life as a human,
and Jesus went through all of these same emotions too. But if we believe Jesus,
he gives us a foundation of joy and of peace which will never be taken from us.
And if you don’t like Spider‑Man, that’s okay. You can
substitute Batman. Or Jane Austen. Or Shakespeare. There’s a new West Side
Story out at the cinemas too, which is a remake of the 1961 movie, which is
based on the 1957 musical, which is of course based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet. I haven’t seen the new movie, nor have I seen the old one, or the
musical! But I have read Romeo and Juliet, so I will bet that boy meets girl,
boy and girl are from warring families (gangs), mixed messages are sent, and it
ends with tragic death. Different setting, different themes, same foundational
story. That foundation will always be recognisable.
We all live different lives; we go out into this world and
live out hundreds, thousands, millions of individual stories that will all be
different. But as Christians, we are all building on the same foundation, and
that foundation of joy and peace will be recognisable, because it’s the same
foundation that all those stories are built on.
It doesn’t always look the same. For some Christians, they
just have this base level joy and peace in their lives that seems to be present
at every moment no matter what trouble they face. For others, they will still
have reactions to trouble, but this foundation of joy and peace helps them restrain
the upswing, keeping them grounded like an anchor in a storm so they blow less
off‑course. Some of us – myself included – we careen through life emotionally,
with big feelings that can hang around for a long time, but I find that this
foundation of joy and peace helps keep me sane in the long dark stretches, and
perhaps makes them a little shorter than they otherwise would be. Maybe for
many of us it’s a mix of these things at different times; maybe it looks
different for you. Our stories are different, but the foundation is the same,
and it is always recognisable. We will see the impact on our lives: not always
immediately, sometimes not until after the troubles have passed; but we will
see it. And other people will see it too. This shows you how important our emotions
are: this foundation of joy and peace is a real, tangible difference that
people will notice, because how we feel is important to our lives.
And Jesus is able to offer us that foundation because his
death and resurrection put him in a position of strength over our biggest
problems; and he works for our good because we are on his side. The world is
not on our side. The world – that is the created order of humans and their
human affairs – is set up in rebellion against God, it is against Jesus, and
because we’re on his side it’s against us too. We’ve heard Jesus talk about
that in earlier passages, but it’s also in our passage here: Jesus says about
his death and resurrection in verse 20, “you will weep and mourn while the
world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” And in verse
33 he says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In
this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” The
world rejoiced when Jesus died, but it broke out the champagne a little too
soon, because he is risen! Christ’s death and resurrection to pay for our sins
has given him victory over the world. It’s given him the power, the authority,
over that world.
That’s why Jesus talks in this passage about his name. When
Jesus talks about us praying in his name, like, “my Father will give you
whatever you ask in my name” in verse 23, he’s not talking about the word
“Jesus” being some sort of magic word that makes evil flee or somehow binds God
to do what we ask. Do you remember the seven sons of Sceva from Acts 19? Great
story: these Jews heard that Paul was driving out evil spirits “in Jesus’
name”, and so they were going around to demon-possessed people and say, “In the
name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” They didn’t
believe in Jesus, they just thought the name had some sort of magic power. So
we’re told in Acts 19:15, “One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I
know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” 16 Then the man who had the evil
spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating
that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.” The name “Jesus” didn’t do
them much good, did it?
Because Jesus’ name isn’t a magic word. In Namibia people
believe in magic words like that. You might think that in the west we’ve
evolved past believing in magic words, but you hear them all the time! Any time
someone says some word or phrase that they think has some arcane power, like,
“I want to speak to the manager!”, “The customer is always right!”, “I have my
rights!” I can tell you that in legal circles we come across these people all
the time, who think that the law is simply a bunch of magic words which, if said
in the right order, can get you out of speeding tickets, taxes or vaccination.
But when we say “in Jesus’ name” we really mean “by his power and authority”.
When someone says, “I come in the name of the queen!” it’s not the queen’s name
that’s important – Queen Elizabeth could die and the new monarch with a new name
would immediately replace her! It’s the authority that is behind the monarch that
is important.
And it’s not that Jesus becomes a sort of messenger for us,
to deliver our prayers between us and God. In verse 26 he says, “In that day
you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your
behalf. 27 No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have
believed that I came from God.” The whole point of Jesus’ death was to stop us
from needing such intermediaries – priests and prophets and kings, temples and
altars and sacrifices. Jesus could do away with all that because Jesus is not just
an intermediary between us and God – Jesus is God. And in the same way, the
Holy Spirit that lives within us is not an intermediary between us and God –
the Holy Spirit is God! These are more truths that Jesus’ death and
resurrection proves, more truths that build that base of joy and peace!
This is important, because it has a big bearing on what our
response to all this should be. After all, which of us controls our emotions?
Who can say to their heart, “feel joy now” and click their fingers and just
instantly feel happy? At best we can try to manage our emotions, which at times
is like trying to herd cats. This joy and peace foundation not a mere “positive
thinking” solution where if we try and trick ourselves into believing that it’s
true so it will make us feel better. This promise from Jesus is to some degree
independent of our actions: the foundation of joy and peace that Jesus is
offering comes from the reality of his death and resurrection and its
consequences, not simply our believing in them.
Our emotions tend to be the first thing to kick in and react
when something happens to us – we don’t think, “Hmm, how should I feel about
this?” and then select the appropriate emotion from a list. But our emotions
are still affected by what we believe. Not because what we believe changes the
joy and peace – those are assured, they comes from Jesus, and his death and
resurrection are proof of that – but the more we accept that truth, the more we
are able to recognize that joy and peace in our own lives. Recognising Christ’s
promised joy and peace in our lives allows us to live more like they are really
there, and as we mature in that faith – that trust that Jesus is who he says he
is and has done what he says he has done – we see this joy and peace more
clearly and they have more effect on our lives.
We are not like the disciples in that we are not traumatised
by the idea of the death of Jesus. We already know how that story ends – for
us, Jesus has always been the resurrected Christ. Jesus is talking to the
disciples this way because they are about to go through an incredibly distressing
event in his death. But we are living through a time that is unlike anything
we’ve seen before in our lifetimes. And it is distressing. So today I want you
to walk away from this passage knowing that Jesus cares about how you feel, and
Jesus has done something to help us face the distresses and troubles that this
world throws at us. He has given us a foundation of joy and peace.
When Penny and I were stranded in the UK with no way of
getting home to Australia, living out our days in a single bedroom with no way
of knowing how long that would last, I was feeling pretty down. I did not feel
like Christ’s joy and peace were particularly with me. I was struggling. And
yet others were saying to me and to Penny, “I am so amazed at how well you are
facing this! I would never be able to face it as well as you are.” And looking
back a year later, I can absolutely see how much Christ’s peace and joy were
with us throughout that whole time.
Have you seen it already in the midst of this pandemic? Can
you recognise it helping you through right now? Or will you perhaps look back
after all this is over and see how Christ’s joy and peace helped you through?
Have others said to you, “I am amazed at how you’ve dealt with the difficulties
you have faced”? Or have you seen that others here at church, other Christians
you know, seen the peace and joy in their lives? Be encouraged by that!
Recognise the joy and peace that Christ has given us, trust its source - his
death and resurrection – and remember Jesus’ words: “You will have trouble in
this world, but take heart! For I have overcome the world.”
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