When Jesus Says Goodbye…
John 15:16-23
16 “In a little while, you will no longer see me; again in a little while, you will see me.”
17 Then some of his disciples said to one another, “What is this he’s telling us: ‘In a little while, you will not see me; again in a little while, you will see me,’ and, ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” 18 They said, “What is this he is saying, ‘In a little while’? We don’t know what he’s talking about.”
19 Jesus knew they wanted to ask him, and so he said to them, “Are you asking one another about what I said, ‘In a little while, you will not see me; again in a little while, you will see me’? 20 Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will become sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. 21 When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world. 22 So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you.
23 “In that day you will not ask me anything. Truly I tell you, anything you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. 24 Until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.
There are many ways to say goodbye. You may recall the song in the movie The Sound of Music: “So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye.” And if you think about it, the different ways to say goodbye usually carry with them an additional meaning we normally don’t think about. Those additional meanings attached to the way we say goodbye can be put into one of three categories:
First, goodbye could simply mean “I’m leaving:” “Bye,” “Taking off,” “Gotta get going,” “I’m out of here.”
A second more common meaning would be “I’m leaving, but I will see you later:” “See you later,” or simply “See ya,” or “Later,” “Catch you later,” or “Until we meet again.” We see this goodbye expressed in other languages: “Arrivederci” (until we see each other again), “Au revoir,” “Auf Wiedersehen” (“On seeing again”), “Hasta luego” (“See you later”.)
But there’s a third way of saying goodbye that includes a blessing: “Good bye” (we don’t say “Bad bye”!), “Have a good one,” “Take it easy,” “Have a nice day,” “Take care,” “Farewell,” “Bon voyage” (“Good journey”), “Peace,” or “Shalom,” “God bless you.” And this one I figured out just a few years ago: “Adios.” It means “To God”, or “I commend you to God” (same with the French “Adieu”).
Again, we normally do not think about the meaning attached to these goodbye expressions. But they are there.
Jesus is saying goodbye in our text. But he is clearly saying goodbye in the sense of “I’m leaving” and “I will see you later.” But that later could mean “I will see you disciples in a few days when I rise from the dead,” or “I will see you when I come to you through the work of the Holy Spirit starting on Pentecost where I am brought to you in Word and Sacrament,” or “I will see you face to face when I come to you on the last day in all my glory.” Or, as Jesus sometimes does, he could be mean all of these.
We know from experience that goodbyes can be very difficult because they are followed by a separation, sometimes a permanent one; a separation from someone we hold dear, love, and trust. Think of having to say goodbye to a loved one who is dying or moving away or being deployed in a time of war. There can be mourning, weeping, and sorrow.
We see this in Acts 20 where St. Paul is saying goodbye to fellow Christians in Ephesus with whom he has spent several years. He tells them what this goodbye will mean: “‘You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you… I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus. And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there… I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again…[in this life]. I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.’ When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again.” (Acts 20:20-38).
One of the things that made Jesus’ goodbye difficult for the disciples was what they focused on. They were not focused on where he was going and why he had to go there; they were only focused on the fact he would not be there with them. They saw no advantage in him going. So Jesus seeks to settle them by assuring them this was a goodbye in the second sense – “In a little while, you will no longer see me; again in a little while, you will see me.”
He does not downplay how difficult it would be for them. He says, “Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will become sorrowful…” But he assures them, “your sorrow will turn to joy.”
And then he gives them another illustration to help put things in perspective; so they would understand their weeping and mourning would come to an end and in a way that would be really, really good. He uses the illustration of a mother in labor: “When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world.” This is where I should have one of you mothers come up here and do the preaching, for we men cannot relate to your childbirth pain – and we do not want to! And neither can we relate to the joy that follows as you mothers can.
But, again, during this time, this little while, it would not be easy for the disciples. Neither will it be for us. The words “weep,” “mourn,” “sorrowful”, apply to us just as well during this time when Jesus is not with us as he eventually will be when he returns. There will be weeping, mourning, we will be sorrowful. This is a reality.
We find Jeremiah – known as the weeping prophet – in our Old Testament lesson experiencing the same thing. The Lord had departed from his people. Jeremiah saw massive murders among the Jews, massive destruction within Jerusalem and other parts of Judah, massive deportations of his fellow Jews into captivity. Jeremiah experienced this ugly reality, a reality that came upon the Jews because of their apostasy, unbelief, immorality, and the rejection of God. Jeremiah wept as he saw all this. Plus, he was harshly persecuted. The weeping prophet said,
Then I thought, “My future is lost, as well as my hope from the Lord.”
(Lamentations 3:18-20)
Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison.
I continually remember them and have become depressed.
Peter in the epistle lesson picks up on this and applies it to the church of his day and ours; he calls believers on earth “strangers and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11). This is not our home. We are foreigners here. We are away from what is and will be our real home. We are strangers in a foreign, oppressive land, longing for something much better. This is a reality, even if it does always seem so. Things do go well for us here often, where what we have and experience seems to be a little paradise. But there remains something terribly wrong. And that is due to the fact that we are separated from our brother, Jesus Christ. He is there, and we are here. Things are not as they should be. The pain, weeping, mourning, and sorrow can become pretty intense at times.
And if you have trouble remembering that something is greatly amiss in this life, here are some reminders that we are separated from Christ for a little while:
1: We look into a mirror and we see, at least eventually, a body that will not get better with time. We look into a mirror that reflects our life, and we see sin that does not quit. That is painful for we hate our sin.
2: Though there is much in this world to enjoy and find great God-pleasing pleasure in, the world can turn on us at any moment. It has and it will. If you understand what is going on in our society today and you are willing to cling to Jesus, to remain faithful to your Christian convictions and confess them when you should, hold on to your hats. Know your Bible well, know the commandments, know exactly what God says about sin, and know the only solution, the greatest love, is found in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. Jesus predicted that knowledge would increase, and it has. But he also predicted lawlessness would increase and the love of most would grow cold. He was right. The world is not really getting any better.
3: Behind the scenes is Satan, the father of lies, who is directing all these evils and who promotes murder and destruction and disruption wherever he can.
These are all reminders or marks that we Christians are in this little time of separation, this period of labor pains. And what keeps us going, what allows us confidently to put one step in front of the other, is the goodbye of Jesus to which he attaches a promise: “in a little while, you will see me.” We will see Christ, our Lord and Savior, in his full glory where the weeping and the mourning and the sorrow will be a thing of the past, where there will only be complete joy.
But I still want to talk about the third kind of goodbye, the goodbye that also contains a blessing. We do not find this kind of goodbye in our gospel here, but we do find it many places in the New Testament. We find it, for example, in sixteen of the epistles. At the end of these epistles, the writers say goodbye with a blessing. Here is the one we most familiar with and hear almost every Sunday. 2 Corinthians 13:13. The apostle is saying goodbye but with a very real and comforting and strengthening blessing: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
But there is another place in the New Testament where a goodbye is combined with a blessing. On the same night in which he was betrayed, Jesus said to his disciples, “I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15) He was having a goodbye meal with them. But notice what is attached to this goodbye meal: “He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, gave it to them, and said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he also took the cup after supper and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’” (Luke 22:19-20).
Here is a goodbye from Jesus that contains an incomprehensible blessing. “I am leaving, but leaving you believers with the ultimate blessing. I am placing myself, my very body and blood, that is paying for all your sins, right here in this meal, for you to receive and benefit from, as you weep, mourn, and sorrow over your sins; as you face the sinful world that presses on you harder and harder; as you are confronted by Satan and his demons. None of these can stand against this blessing. Nothing will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in me.”
“Goodbye, I am leaving, but I will see you again. Goodbye, I am leaving, but I am leaving with you a blessing of grace and peace in Word and Sacrament. These will sustain and strengthen you until I see you face to face, when I return to take you to be with me, where you will have the best and perfect joy, and no one will take that joy from you.”
Amen.
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