JOHN 16:16-22 GRIEF TURNED TO JOY

16 “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”

17 Some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?” 18 They kept asking, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what he is saying.”

19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’? 20 I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 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. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.

The truth of Jesus’ words is seen in the early Church’s attitude toward the location of his tomb. After Jesus was crucified, his followers carefully prepared his body for burial and then placed it in a well known location. Later, when the Sabbath was over, the women knew just where to go in order to finish the final care of his corpse. Yet, after Jesus appeared to the disciples, they no longer cared where the tomb was located. As the guide at the “Garden Tomb” in Jerusalem told the tourist who asked why we have no record of the actual tomb of Jesus, “They didn’t care. He wasn’t there!”

We visit tombs to remember the dead, not to experience the living. Such visits are part of the mourning process, but they are also a way of staying connected to a loved one who is no longer a dynamic physical presence in our lives. Although we rejoice in the good memories, a visit to a grave is always experienced in the context of how things used to be and how they could have been. It is a reminder that things are no longer the same and that we too will face the same fate.

But Easter morning changes all that. Jesus is risen! The tomb is discarded and with it the mourning is turned into joy. It becomes a place of birth rather than death. When is the last time you have heard of someone returning regularly to the delivery room where their baby was born? There is an excitement about new life and a future of promise that even a Caesarean section cannot remove.

We can experience the risen Christ, and not just remember what wonderful things he did in another time and another place. In addition, when faced with Easter, we no longer are forced to contemplate our mortality, but rather we can rejoice in the promise of eternal life with God through our own resurrection. So instead of living by the graveside until we die, we can die to the grave, the things of death in this life, so that we can truly experience life.

Lord God, help me to live as a person of hope, not despairing in my own mortality but rejoicing in your resurrection and the promise of my own. May I this day joyfully follow you by living my life in self-sacrificial service of others, and therefore come into a fuller experience of your Spirit acting in and through my life. Amen