On the night of His betrayal and arrest, the evening before His execution, Jesus prepared His disciples for what was shortly to occur. He told them that they would experience both sorrow and joy - sorrow, because He would be taken from them, crucified, then buried; but also joy, because on the third day He would rise from the dead and come and show Himself to them again as their victorious Lord. For a little while they would experience loss, separation, abandonment, and grief, along with the disillusion that would result from having their hopes and dreams about Jesus crushed. But then they would experience a happy reunion with their Lord after His work was finished, and their grief and sadness would be turned into cheerfulness and rejoicing. Just as the labor pains of a mother are soon forgotten and replaced by the joy she feels over her newborn child, so the sorrow of the disciples would soon be forgotten and replaced by the joy they would feel at having their resurrected Lord with them again, never to die again, never to leave or forsake them, present with them always, even to the end of the age.
And we His disciples here today have entered into that joy with them, as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and His presence with us always, even to the end of the age. And yet, sometimes we too experience sorrow. Sometimes we feel like the disciples felt when Jesus was taken away from them. It feels like Jesus isn’t around, and we feel a sense of loss, separation, and sorrow, especially when bad things happen in our lives. It’s at those times when we feel like we’re all alone, and either Jesus can’t help us or He won’t. We pray to Him, but He doesn’t seem answer us. We read the Bible, but it doesn’t seem to help us either. We don’t remember the Lord’s words. They don’t seem to give us the comfort and help we need. They don’t seem to do what the Lord sent them out to do. We look at our lives and we don’t see any improvement. We experience frustration and irritation at our walk with the Lord as we continually fall to the same sins over and over again. We’re constantly attacked by the devil. We’re stressed, we’re depressed, we’re afraid and dismayed. We’re just like the Lord’s disciples, who at His arrest ran away and hid together in a room behind locked doors for fear that the same thing was going to happen to them. With no Jesus to protect them, there was no hope, no comfort, no joy, just sorrow and despair.
Now, I’m not saying that we experience these kinds of feelings all the time. Certainly, when the Lord was with His disciples, they felt like they could took take on the world. They were full of courage and boldness. They rejoiced that even the demons were subject to them and that they were able to heal the sick. James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven upon the Samaritans who rejected Jesus; Peter fearlessly stated that he would never abandon Jesus, but that he would willingly die with Him; and all of them were ready to take up swords in order to defend Jesus prior to His arrest. As long as Jesus was around they could do anything. Most of the time you might feel pretty fearless yourself. Most days you may be filled with joy in the knowledge that your Savior is risen from the dead and is with you always, just as He promises to be, answering your prayers, and granting you help and comfort in your times of need. But then there are those days when it feels like Jesus just isn’t around, and you feel the same sorrow and grief that the disciples did when Jesus was taken from them. It’s almost as if Jesus were still dead. And as a result your joy is gone, you feel helpless, hopeless, afraid, abandoned, and alone.
Why does the Lord allow this to happen to us? The better question might be, Why do we go there? We certainly don’t have to. The Lord told His disciples at least three different times that He would not only be crucified, but that He would also be raised again from the dead. And yet they still thought the crucifixion was the end of Him. They were just as surprised to hear that Jesus had risen from the dead as the women were, who went to the tomb looking for the Lord’s body and found instead an angel there, who reminded them that Jesus had told them that He would rise again from the dead. The two disciples who were on their way to the town of Emmaus that day were all depressed at the death of Jesus, because they had hoped that He was the one who was going to restore the kingdom to Israel. And here it was the third day, but Jesus hadn’t shown up yet, even though the women had told them that they had seen Him. It took Jesus to remind them of what the Scriptures had said of Him, that it was necessary for Him to suffer these things and then to enter into His glory. If His disciples had just held onto these promises, if they had just clung to their Lord’s words, they wouldn’t have experienced the kind of sorrow they did, a despairing kind of sorrow that believes that all is lost.
You and I, too, could avoid this kind of sorrow, if we just held onto our Lord’s words like we should. Easier said than done! But that’s why Jesus continues to proclaim His words of joy to us, so that we might rejoice always and not be sad. Jesus wants to take away your sorrow. Though there are many things in this world that cause sorrow, He doesn’t want you to despair because of them, but to cling to His promises of forgiveness, the resurrection of your body, and the life everlasting, promises that are sealed by our Lord’s own death and resurrection and delivered to you in your Baptism. If Jesus had not given His life as the sacrifice for your sins and had not been raised from the dead, if He had not washed you in His blood and placed His Name upon you, claiming you as His own, then, yes, there would reason for sorrow and sadness. Life would be hopeless and would end in despair. But since Jesus has done all of these things for you, you can now have joy even in the midst of your sorrows, because you know that they are only temporary, that they cannot separate you from God’s love for you in Christ, and that God is even causing them all to work together for your good. Though it may sometimes feel like Jesus is still dead or that He’s abandoned you, His resurrection assures you that He’s alive. And because He lives He’s able to keep His promises, including the promise that He will never leave you or forsake you. Though you cannot see Him now, you will see Him on the Last Day, when He comes to take you home. In the meantime, He comes to you in His Word. He comes to you in His holy Supper. He comes to you in your Baptism, in order to bless and give joy to you who hope in His Word.
The devil would like to steal this joy away from you. He tries to take it from you by getting your eyes off of the Lord’s Word and onto your problems. He tries to do it by getting you to doubt the Lord’s promises. He tries to do it by throwing your sins back up in your face, making you feel guilty, and reminding you that you don’t deserve this joy. He also tries to do it by enticing you with the temporal joys of this world, so that you might forget about the eternal joys that are found in the Lord. But the Apostle Paul writes, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Like the Apostle Peter, who when he began to walk towards Jesus on the water started to sink because he got his eyes off of the Lord and onto the wind and waves, we too will drown in sorrow and despair unless we do what Paul says and get our eyes off of the temporal things of this world and onto “the things that are above.”
What are these “things that are above”? They are Christ’s Word, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. These are where the crucified and risen Lord has located Himself for you. They are where the joy that He gives can be found. They are where the Holy Spirit is guiding you into all truth, where He speaks what He hears from Jesus, where He glorifies Jesus, takes what is His, and declares it to you. The joy of God’s salvation is given you as the Holy Spirit delivers Jesus to you through His Word and Sacraments. The more your eyes on are these things, the more your sorrows will disappear. The more you are hearing your sins forgiven, the more you remember what the Lord is doing and has done for you in your Baptism, the more you eat and drink of His body and blood in His holy Supper, the more He will work the joy in you that He wants you to have, a joy that no one can take away from you. Then, when affliction does come, you can say with the Apostle Paul, “We do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
Have joy again today, then, of your crucified and resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. His resurrection is the sign and seal that His blood shed at Calvary cleanses you from all your sins, that the eating of His flesh and the drinking of His blood gives you eternal life, that He is with you always even until the end of the age, that nothing can snatch you out of His hand, and that He will raise you up from the dead on the Last Day. Even though you may have sorrow for a little while now, in a little while Jesus will come to you, you will see Him with your own eyes, and your sorrow will be turned into joy. It begins here at His Table, where our eyes see the salvation that God has prepared before the face of all people; it will be fulfilled when Jesus comes again to take you to live with Him in His Father’s house forever. Amen.