John 16:16-22

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

Seven times today’s Gospel refers to “a little while.”  It seems to be unnecessarily repetitive.  But there is always a reason why Scripture is recorded the way it is.  Seven is the number of this creation, hearkening back to the seven days in the beginning.  For a little while all was very good. Then sin corrupted everything, including time itself.  Now good times seem to go by so quickly; bad times, pandemic times, seem to drag on forever.  We have to really focus sometimes just to remember what day of the week it is.  The joys of living in this creation and in the realm of time have been turned upside down, so that now we generally view aging and the passage of time as an enemy.

We like to reminisce about people that were once in our lives or places and experiences we once had.  But good memories, even though they are pleasant, are also often a cause of sadness, of longing, of wishing we had back what we once had.  But of course, there’s no going back, no recreating those moments.  Time just keeps ticking by, and so every joy that we have in this life, every gladness that this earth can give is short-lived, momentary.  The things that we now enjoy won’t last.  Only temporary is the company of the people we love.  The march of time is relentless.

Jesus said, “A little while and you will not see Me, and again a little while and you will see Me.”  Jesus knows about the evil of the passage of time, and there is His answer to it.  Jesus was with the disciples for a little while.  That time must have seemed to go by so quickly as they lived with Him and heard Him preach and teach.  But much more suddenly than they ever expected, the good little while was over, and then came the arrest in the garden, and the suffering and the cross, and He was buried and gone.  And they had sorrow for a little while as the world rejoiced, just as Jesus had said.  That bad little while must have seemed like forever–Friday, Saturday, even most of Sunday–the longest days of their lives.  

But Jesus had also said, “Again a little while and you will see Me.”  And so it is that on the third day He rises from the grave.  See what a short little while their time of mourning and weeping was!  On Easter Sunday evening there stands Jesus Christ the Lord in front of them, bringing them joy that no one can take from them.

In a way you might say that Jesus turned back the clock.  Because when someone is dead, there is nothing you can do.  It is a helpless experience.  But look, the One who was dead now lives!  However, it’s not really that the clock was turned back.  For Jesus didn’t come just to make things the way they used to be, but to make things altogether new and better.  More correctly put then, He turned the clock ahead.  For the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave is a foretaste of the feast to come and of the everlasting salvation to be revealed on the Last Day.  By the forgiveness of sins which He won for us, Jesus has guaranteed to us who believe resurrection from the dead and eternal life in the age to come–an age in which time can no longer devastate us as it now does.

Jesus continued to show Himself to the disciples Sunday after Sunday.  Following Easter, there was another “little while” where Jesus was departed from their sight.  And the next Sunday, there Jesus was again when Thomas was with them.  They knew He would come back because He had already conquered the grave and then vanished again.  They were not sad during the week, because they expected Him to return.  And He did yet again, on the third Sunday.  There they were in the boat fishing; and that Sunday morning, on the shore, there He stood cooking breakfast.  There it was, Easter all over again.

And so they began to expect Him to return every time He vanished out of their sight.  They knew it would only be a little while, and He’d come to them again.  And then came Pentecost on another Sunday, and Christ returned once more.  But this time not in the way He had been returning before, that is, not to their sight, but in the beginning of the ministry of the apostles, in which they began to preach and to administer the Holy Supper in the power of His Holy Spirit.  

Week after week from Pentecost on, Christ kept returning again in the divine service of His words and sacraments, and His people were joyful again.  And so it is right up to this day.  The life of every Christian is lived in the wake of the resurrection of Christ, which is an eternal, timeless thing.  Every single divine service since then, Christ has been returning to His people.  Just as truly as He did on Easter Sunday, when He came back and stood in the midst and gave them His peace, so does He return here and now for you.

This, then, is Jesus’ answer for the “little whiles” of your life.  There will be those times when you can’t seem to see Jesus, when the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, when your life is full of trials and never seems to give you a respite, when you feel completely out of place in this decaying culture, when being a Christian makes you an object of mockery or worse.  But Jesus reminds you here, “It really is only a little while that you must endure.  That pain, that disease, that heartache, that difficult situation, this worldly age is almost over.  Just hang on to Me.  Trust in Me to pull you through it.  It may seem like an eternity, but only three days.  Your Easter is coming.  Weeping may remain for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  

Your life in this world is a series of little whiles–the times when Jesus is vanished from your sight, when there may be weeping for you and rejoicing for the world; and then the times when He comes to you again and you see Him by faith and He restores to you the joy of your salvation, a joy no one can take from you.  Remember the wonderfully consoling thing that Jesus says here, “I will see you again.”  You’re not invisible to Him.  He sees and knows and cares.  And He will see you face to face on the Last Day, when all the little whiles will finally be over, and you will enter the unending while of the new creation, in which there is no night, no counting of days and of time, but only the everlasting light and life of Christ.

So do not be sorrowful about the passage of time, about people and places that you miss and long for.  Do not fear in the face of sickness and violence and evil.  The Lord has conquered it all by His cross and He lives that you may share in His victory forever.  An eternal 8th day is coming for you beyond the 7 little whiles of this life.  Every longing, every fear, every grief among God’s people will be put away; and you know it because Christ has risen from the grave, and a new timeless creation has begun in Him.  It is written in Romans 8, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”   Truly, the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him (Lamentations 3:25).

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

(With thanks to the Rev. Dr. Burnell Eckardt)