Jubilate – Sunday 21 April A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 66:1–2; 3, 5, 8–9;111:9a, St. Luke 24:46b, 26b
✠ Lection: Isaiah 40:25–31;1 Peter 2:11–20;St. John 16:16–22
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jubilate; make a joyful noise unto God, have jubilation unto God, rejoice! Advent and Lent aren’t the sole benefactors of Sundays dedicated to jubilation and rejoicing in the Lord. This one most definitely and appropriately falls here right about halfway through the Easter season, but we shall leave the pink paraments and vestments stored and unite with high delight in the gold befitting our King.
Yet, even in joyful Eastertide, none of us could, none of us should come in here faking it as if there aren’t things in this life that bring about sorrow. He makes specific use of it in us and this is good. The Christian life is the one rooted in reality, not floating around in deceptive denial of it. God deals with reality in many ways, including through suffering and sorrow. This reality is woven throughout the Scriptures and we encounter it in God’s service in His house as we gather in every Divine Service. Not once has our Lord ever asked us to come to Him here and act unhuman, as if there is no sorrow in this fading place that we rightfully call a valley of sorrows. Even on Easter Day, our Gospel ended with the words, “And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid”? The next week we heard, “the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews,” and last week, “a hireling…sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.” Such details are written not so you may cast a haughty eye upon those who have walked in sorrow as if your religiosity shields you even from the afflictions that God has in store for you, but they are written so that you may see that God is true and addresses life as it truly is. He is the one Who sees all things and works them for your good from now until He graciously takes you out of this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven. These things are written so that you may believe and walk in the truth about this life, and trust the One Who commands and controls all things, yes, even the sorrow. There is inevitable sorrow in this life. There is inevitable joy in this life and the next because Christ has gone to the Father and promises to see us again. Thus, the call for jubilation is a true, attainable one for you that takes place not in a fake, built-up-by-man, unobtainable utopia here, but in the real here, where real people experiencing real sorrow draw near to a real God Who is in the business of turning it into real joy.
In John chapter 16, Jesus is in the upper room with His disciples just hours before His betrayal, suffering, crucifixion and burial. In the midst of this looming sorrow, He tells a room full of men that they’re going to be like a bunch of pregnant women. This is neither to demean them nor pregnant women, but to teach us all in this veil of tears by metaphor. A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come. Because of the fall into sin, even the blessings of life now come veiled in sorrow, for in pain shall woman bring forth children. Likewise, being that we are all under the curse of sin, original and our own, this sorrow, this pain blankets all our lives, for there is a breath yet to be taken by anyone that is out from underneath it. The more that we come to terms with the reality of a fallen life lived in a fallen world, the less we give ourselves false hope of what all this is supposed to be like. Couldn’t all this be better?! Maybe. That’s not up to us to decide though. There’s only one God. Christians do not deny that we have sorrow when our hour comes, but take it for what it is by trusting what God has to say and do, if anything, about our sorrow. None of it is out of His control. Therefore, when every hour, every instance of sorrow comes upon us, either afresh or renewed, we are to be even more certain that God Himself is greater than sorrow can ever threaten to be.
We know that our Good Shepherd sympathizes with our weaknesses, that He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Do not deny the real sorrows among us, for the Lord does not demand that we act like they aren’t there, but that we look to how He will deliver us through them; and He will, every single one of them as He sees is good for us. We know true sorrows: sorrow over remembering what we’ve done in our younger years; sorrow in our younger years in discovering just how much we’re capable of messing up by our sin; sorrow over our failing bodies, the aches, the pains, the disease, diminishing eyesight, and hearing; sorrow over the failing bodies of those we love; sorrow over it flat out being hard to be good, to do good, and to live a godly life; sorrow over a world that is given so much, yet despises and curses the One Who gives; sorrow over having to fight against unfathomably increasing immorality that is made sure to be crammed down the throats of those who believe in what is right amidst a world boiling in its own pot of wrong; sorrow over it just being so hard. Yet, here we are, in the midst of all that and more. This isn’t out of God’s control. Only by His promise has He not flooded us again. The waves of sorrow don’t wash over us without God’s knowledge. Sorrow doesn’t even come without God’s allowance. The longer we fuss and fight with Him over what He allows to come upon us, the longer we keep our eyes from seeing what He shall do with us through it; yes, through every single sorrow. There’s going to be sorrow in resisting sin and its effects, because in a fallen world, that is the direction everything and everyone wants to go. The flush current is strong as it circles the bowl. “Why should it have to be this way” is a thought not given to the Christian mind to ponder because such a mind tries to imagine, yea, even live, in a reality that does not exist.
That’s the truth, and yet still remember that this is Easter. Christians live in a perpetual Easter, even in sorrowtide, for Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia! Remember that you live a life that has been redeemed in the One Who entered into the sorrow of death for you and laid it to rest by rising again on the third day. Remember that there is always inevitable joy for the Christian, not only for jubilation in the uncreated Light illuminating the life to come, but now through the sorrow that God brings that leads to joy that He brings. As soon as [the woman] has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that human being has been born into the world. The sorrow, the anguish doesn’t fail to exist, but it is used, it becomes a part of the journey that God has in store to bring about worthy joy, not the fake stuff that you’re repeatedly assured by all the noise to cling to in this world. Yes, God in Christ uses sorrow as part of His divine, providential, Fatherly grace of bringing about good through all that a fallen world tries to work for our bad. Sorrows exist in a reality over which the risen Lord Jesus reigns as King and Lord and there is no other above Him. This means that not only are you not left alone to deal with your sorrows, but that Christ the King sees to it that by them you are brought again and again to places of substantial joy in Him. This is the godly reality in which we live. It is the reality in which He calls us to live. Sorrows, yes, but joy, greater, now and forevermore. This is what He ever so persistently, ever so kindly, draws you to see and believe, especially in the midst of the inevitable sorrow.
Day after day, your hour comes, as for the woman when she is in labor. Sorrows are those hours, those moments in which you are tempted to see your sorrow as all powerful, unnecessary, and endless. But in sorrows that come about for those in Christ, there is inevitable joy awaiting beyond them all because that beyond rests in Him. Christ preached this metaphor to show that sorrow is for a season, but joy lasting; that death is a translation unto life; and to show the great profit in your pangs. We do not deny that we all have them, nor do we act like it is unfair that we receive the ones that God gives to us. The Redeemer of your souls lets no sorrow come without benefit as you look to Him now and to His return. He says, “Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” So, no, don’t burden yourself with faking it, acting like there are no sorrows. Instead, seek out your Savior all the more in them, in spite of them, especially when seeking Him out brings sorrow to that wretched flesh of yours. Be confident in His bodily resurrection and His bodily return in glory on the Last Day to see you up out of the grave in a resurrection like His. Then, there shall be no more sorrow, counting all the ones of this age as worthy of the joyful, everlasting prize to be gained. Trust Him, His Word, and His ordering of your life, for by sorrow He shall bring about true joy that gives everlasting reason to make a joyful noise unto God.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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