Easter 6: John 16:23-33 by Joshua Palmer
John 16:23-33
23 In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. 24Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
25"I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.26In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me andhave believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father." 29His disciples said, "Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!30Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God." 31Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? 32Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. 33I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
25"I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.26In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; 27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me andhave believed that I came from God. 28 I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father." 29His disciples said, "Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!30Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God." 31Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? 32Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. 33I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
"I have said these things to you in veiled sayings. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in veiled sayings but will tell you openly about the Father."
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
For each Sunday in the church year, we read a specific passage of the Bible. These readings have been part of the life of the church since ancient times. The readings as we have them today go back at least to AD 471. But the idea of specific readings being attached to specific days is much older. That was a feature of synagogue worship among the Jews. We read in Luke 4 that Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, which was His custom, and they handed Him the scroll of Isaiah. We read in 1 Timothy 4, Paul’s instructions to Timothy: “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” So we, in keeping with Paul’s advice and in keeping with the ancient practice of the Church, read this passage from the 16th chapter of John on this Sunday of the church year.
But if you think about it, this is a little strange. We are now in the season of Easter, that festive time after the celebration of the Resurrection. But this passage comes from John 16 and records what Jesus taught just before his death.
So why did the Church Fathers choose this reading for this Sunday? They did not leave us a definitive record of why they made the choices they did, but one
reason might be the place we are in the church year. As we follow the life of Christ, we find ourselves looking forward to the Ascension, which will be celebrated by the Church this Thursday, so this is the last Sunday before the Ascension. In this reading Jesus is preparing His followers for His death. He will leave them and they will worry and have doubts. In this passage of John, Jesus reassures His
disciples. That reassurance is for us as well.
When Jesus ascended to Heaven, in a way, He left us, too. He is no longer
When Jesus ascended to Heaven, in a way, He left us, too. He is no longer
walking among us. Unlike doubt-filled Thomas, we are not given the benefit of asking to touch the holes in His hands and put our hands in His side. This reading is given to us on this Sunday to remind us of God's disposition toward His Church as we wait for His return.
Just before Jesus goes to die, he celebrates Passover in an upper room with His disciples. Jesus has specially chosen this room. After attending the temple ceremonies, He and Peter and John and all the rest of the disciples went back to that room to rest. There, in the evenings, they reclined on cushions arranged around a low table, eating and talking.
During a typical Passover observance, the head of the household catechized the children - that is, he spoke the words of God to the members of his house and they repeated them back to him. He would recall the stories of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt in the book of Exodus, instructing the children about God’s provision for His chosen people.
During this Passover, Jesus was also instructing His disciples. As they ate together, as they recalled God’s deliverance of Israel, just as they had during each Passover they had celebrated before, Jesus began instructing them in a new way. He is thinking about His crucifixion, of course. It is only hours away. And He is trying to prepare His disciples for what is about to happen. The teaching that Jesus gives His disciples was written down by the Apostle John, who devotes five chapters of his Gospel to this upper room discourse. The passage from the Gospel of John that we read today comes at the very end of that discourse. It is the last thing Jesus taught his disciples before being crucified. These are the words of comfort He gave them before he left them. These are the words of comfort He gives us as we await His return.
If we look at this passage closely, we will notice that Jesus emphasizes over and over again that things are about to change. Five times in 10 verses Jesus tells us that something new is about to happen. “The hour is coming,” Jesus keeps saying. “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come.” Twice he says, “In that day.” What day is Jesus talking about? He is talking about the day God will die for sinners and finally, once and for all, conquer sin, death, and the devil in His glorious resurrection. He is talking about the crucifixion and resurrection. “In that day” everything will change. The entire world is about to be stood on its head. All of human history that has gone before looked forward to that moment, and all of
human history that comes after will look back to it. That day is going to change how mankind understands God.
Jesus knows that the god mankind has hitherto known can be hard to trust, much less love. The god we see in Nature is sometimes terrible. Earthquakes and tsunamis, tornados and hurricanes, droughts and famines, cancer and miscarriages. There is no comfort for humanity to be found in Nature.
Every culture on earth has devised some explanation for sickness and natural disaster. Every culture has tried to earn back God’s favor or stay God’s wrath. Every culture tries to do that by sacrificing their produce, their livestock, their children, their very lives to appease the god of Nature. Because deep down everyone knows what God tells us in Hebrews 9: “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” But the blood of calves and goats is not enough. God is not so easily bought off.
The God of the Old Testament is not much easier to understand. He does things that bother us. As we read this morning, He sends fiery serpents among His people when they complain. He floods the earth and kills all but Noah and his family. He destroys Sodom and Gomorra with fire and brimstone. He allows Satan to kill Job’s children. When He sits atop Mount Sinai the earth shakes, sulfur fills the air with the stench of rotten eggs, there is lightning and thunder, the mountain is cloaked in darkness and trembles under the weight of His glory. He seems
insatiable. He institutes a system of sacrifices, then says in Psalm 51 He does not “delight in sacrifice” and “will not be pleased with a burnt offering.”
Even Jesus is sometimes hard to understand. Jesus’ words are often veiled, hidden, obscure, and hard. In today’s reading, Jesus says that until now He’s been speaking in “figures of speech.” At least, “figures of speech” is the ESV translation of the word that Jesus uses for this idea. Another translation of the same Greek word is “dark saying,” a saying which is hard to understand. Until now, Jesus has been talking to his disciples in a veiled way. How true that is!
Both now and back then, people who really should have understood Jesus have a hard time with His “veiled sayings.” I recently heard a pastor, a man with 35 years of pastoring experience, admit that he has never been able to understand the parable of the sower, even though Jesus Himself interprets it for His disciples. C.S. Lewis, the famous Christian apologist who spent much of his life explaining Christianity to people through radio, books, and novels, once confessed that he found Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats disquieting and scary. In Jesus’ own day, Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, comes to see Jesus by night. Jesus tells him, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus, confused, asks, "How can these things be?" Even some of Jesus’ own disciples left Him when He said things they couldn’t understand or accept. In John 6:54 Jesus said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” Some of the disciples said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" And John
tells us that, “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.”
You and I probably would have left Him too, if we had been following Him. Let’s not kid ourselves. If we were born in a time and place without Christ we too would have sacrificed goats to appease the storm god. We too would have tried to live good and upright lives hoping not to be found wanting on the last day. We too would have attributed disaster to some cosmic ledger keeper or Karma. Without faithful preaching of the Gospel today, we would easily be lead astray by those who claim Jesus came to teach us how to keep the Law. Without faithful preaching of the Gospel, we would be reading Jesus’ words to try to find just how much we needed to obey in order to “show fruit” and thereby reassure ourselves of our salvation.
How can we be saved from that fate? We can’t save ourselves. Jesus saves us by showing us the Father. First through the cross, then through the teachings of the apostles, now through the preaching of the Gospel, we discover that the God of Nature, the God of the Old Testament, the God who can be so hard to understand, had a plan all along to redeem us, that is, to buy us back from sin, death, and hell, from our own sin-filled flesh, which clouds our understanding of these things.
Are you curious what God’s disposition toward you is? Jesus tells you in today’s reading. He says, “The Father Himself loves you.” The Father sent Jesus to
die for you, to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil. The Father Himself loves you.
God the Father washed you in Baptism. We witnessed this last Sunday when St. Victor was baptized and on May 4th when St. Nathan was baptized. And we will see it again when the newest Brodhagen is washed by the Water and the Word. It is through Baptism He adopted you as His sons, and clothed you in the righteousness of Jesus, all so that you can be in His presence. The Father himself loves you.
God the Father gives you his only Son to eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper, for your peace. Jesus says in today’s reading, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.” In a moment pastor is going to raise the body and blood of Jesus and proclaim, “The Peace of the Lord be with you always!” Jesus is that peace, sent by the Father, for you. The Father himself loves you.
God the Father has given you this place, the Church, and her pastors to reassure you time and again in confession and absolution of God’s disposition toward you in Christ. At the beginning of the service pastor said, "I therefore forgive you all your sins." The Father himself loves you.
And Paul writes in Philippians 2, “Therefore God has highly exalted [Jesus] and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” That is, the Father has subjected
all creation to Jesus so that Jesus can say to you, as He does in today’s reading, “Take heart; I have overcome the world.” This is for your assurance. The Father himself loves you.
The cross, and the resurrection, are the change that Jesus is telling His disciples about in the upper room in our reading for today. The Father does not take pleasure in the death of a sinner. But instead He sends His only Son into the fallen world to take your burdens to the cross, to die a shameful criminal’s death in your place, to overcome your death, to free you from the devil, your master, to bury your sin in the tomb, and to rise again for you. That is the Gospel. That is the Good News that Christ proclaims to you. This is Christ speaking plainly to you. First, through the cross and resurrection. Then, through His apostles. Now, through His Word, spoken by His Church, declared to you today even from these lips, which are still being trained. And this message reinterprets all the previous revelation of God.
This time, the message is so simple a child can understand it. David writes, “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” But because the Gospel is so simple and straightforward, it is sometimes treated as if it must be learned once so that we can move on to more interesting and compelling lessons. But we must hear it again and again and again because, as we are warned in 1 Peter 5, the devil prowls about like a lion seeking whom he may devour.
So we have doubts. Doubts about our salvation, doubts about the fate of our children and loved ones, doubts about our worthiness. Meanwhile the world and our flesh constantly assault us with piddling troubles and great trials. We are prone to forget. Forget that we know God’s disposition toward us, forget that we have a Savior who is greater than us, who took our trials and tribulations and replaces them with His peace.
We wonder what God wants, what He intends, what He wills for us. But Jesus speaks plainly and shows us the answers to these questions. What does God want? God wanted Jesus to die so that you could live. What does God intend for you? God intends to keep you firm in your salvation. What does God will for you? God willed his only begotten Son to drink from the cup of suffering so that you don’t have to.
In the crucified Christ, the love of the Father for you is revealed to you. He says, “The Father Himself loves you.” Without Jesus we stand in terror before a God who is great and mighty, terrible in His wrath and just in His judgements. But when you see the cross, with the perfect, innocent Son of God hanging on it, you see to what lengths the Father will go redeem you. God is no longer hidden from you. He has come, died, and risen from the dead for you.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
