Where Sorrow Yields Joy

Jesus says, "You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy."

[This sermon was prepared to be shared with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2025.]

John 16:12-22
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus tells us: “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” (John 16:20)

Jesus speaks these words to His disciples on the first Maundy Thursday, on the day before His crucifixion. In them, Jesus seeks to prepare His disciples for what’s to come. And what’s to come isn’t just His rejection and execution, which will bring sorrow and grief, and His resurrection, bringing joy and hope. For as long as the disciples lived (and as long as you and I, Jesus’ disciples today, live) on this earth there will be sorrows and joys. That’s what life is like for disciples of Jesus in a sin-riddled cosmos. And sometimes we may suffer sorrow precisely because we belong to Jesus, experiencing the sorrow of persecution and even death as many Christians in other parts of the world do today.

But Jesus knows that, in the moment He first speaks these words, He’s going to get nowhere with the Twelve. He admits it, saying: ”I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (John 16:12)

This may seem odd to us. That’s because if anybody can be called the Great Communicator, it’s Jesus. Jesus is “the Word made flesh,” truly human, although a sinless human, and truly God. Jesus is the Word Who spoke into the chaos in Genesis 1–”Let there be light…Let dry land appear…Let the earth sprout vegetation…” and the entire cosmos came into being. Jesus is the One Who spoke and stilled a stormy sea, healed lepers, restored the paralyzed, called Lazarus from the tomb. Jesus is the Word Whose Word has power forgive sinners, give life to the dead, grant peace to the devastated. So, what prevents the disciples from hearing Jesus’ words of comfort and promise on the first Maundy Thursday?

The first reason is that Jesus hasn’t yet sent them the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is “the Spirit of truth,” the One Who gives people like us Jesus’ Word in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments and in the Word preached, taught, shared, and sung. Jesus tells the disciples: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13)

A few chapters earlier in John’s gospel, Jesus told the apostles that after He sent His Spirit, the Spirit would “teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you,” enabling these twelve men to give us the testimony about Christ that remains the normative message of the Church and still saves from sin, death, and condemnation all those who receive it with repentance and faith. (John 14:26)

It’s the Holy Spirit Who gives the gift of saving faith in Jesus. The Bible tells us: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Unlike the apostles as they listen to Jesus in our lesson, you and I are blessed to have already received the Holy Spirit. It happened in our baptisms. And if you’re anything like me, a person who wandered away from God and refused to believe for more than a decade of my life, you know how the Holy Spirit lovingly hounds His rebellious baptized children. Over that decade of my rebellion against God, God kept giving me friendships with people who believed in Christ. Almost all my friends were Christians, even the woman with whom I fell in love and married. Every one of them were sent by the Holy Spirit from the God Who refused to give up on me. God doesn’t give up on the Baptized!

But on the first Maundy Thursday, the disciples can’t bear to hear Jesus’ promises because they have yet to receive the Holy Spirit on the first Christian Pentecost, fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection.

The second reason the disciples can’t yet hear Jesus’ promises is that they haven’t yet experienced the place where joy meets sorrow. As Jesus speaks with them about His death, they face a reality of life in this world: We don’t have ultimate control over life and death. Because of our inborn separation from God, the sin that has condemned every generation of human beings since Adam and Eve condemns us to sorrows as well. None of us is smart enough, tough enough, good enough, or righteous enough to evade the sorrows of this life, including the sorrow of death itself. Even Jesus, sinless God, had to endure the sorrow of being human before He could win forgiveness, life, and eternity for sinners like you and me. The disciples had hoped that Jesus could help them skip sorrow to get to joy. They were planning on spending long years in comfort, ruling Jesus’ kingdom by His side, and here He was telling them He was going to Golgotha to die and, only after death, rise to give His people an eternity far beyond the puny hopes of worldly comfort for which they seemed ready to sell their souls.

But Jesus says that, just as a woman knows both sorrow and joy at childbirth–sorrow for the pain, joy for the gift–there is such a place for all who would follow Him. That place is the cross, where He died an agonizing death for us, and triumphed by being the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

The cross is the place where our sorrows end and where Jesus opens eternal life with God to all who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, believe in Him.

It’s the place at which a sorrowing humanity dies to sin and rises to live with Jesus forever.

And throughout our lives in this world, there will be times when we as believers will come to the cross where sorrow and joy meet.

We will grieve loved ones and rejoice that they trusted in Jesus.

We will grieve over our frailties and rejoice that we belong to Jesus even when we’re broken.

We’ll grieve over having to turn away from favorite sins and rejoice that Jesus comforts us in all our sorrows.

We’ll regret and confess our sin, knowing that the wages of sin is death, and we’ll rejoice in knowing our Savior Jesus has taken our condemnation onto Himself so that we can, eternally, look into the face of God without shame.

I’m grateful for all your prayers for me and for Ann when I was hospitalized in France last November. Not long before the ambulance took me to the hospital, I knew I was dying. My kidneys and other organs had shut down. I was severely dehydrated. My defibrillator had engaged and shocked my heart back into functioning. I vaguely remember Ann cradling me in her arms and saying, “Don’t leave me, Mark.” All I could say to her was, “I don’t want to.”

Yet, I had another thought: “I want to stay with Ann and our family. But if I go now, I’ll be with Jesus. If I stay, I can tell others about Jesus. It’s a win-win for me.” I was at the intersection of sorrow and joy. I was at the cross and Jesus was there!

The good news is that because of Jesus, as we face sorrow, including facing the sorrow of knowing that we are sinners who have failed to love God or love neighbor, who have failed to honor God as God or honor our parents and others in authority, failed to keep God’s name holy, failed to cherish the lives of all people–including those we can’t stand, failed to honor the property of others, failed to speak well of those hated by others–when we face these and all our other sorrows with repentance and faith in Jesus, God will always meet us with joy.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, hear this good news: Soon, whether at history’s end or at the end of your life on this earth, you will see Jesus! And, if by the power of the Holy Spirit, you believe in Him, leaning on Him with repentant faith, I can assure you, your hearts will rejoice. And even now, because He tells you that in Him, all your sins are forgiven and that you are His for all eternity, you can have His joy in the midst of your sorrow.

You can live today and every day knowing that, as He promises us today, “no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:22)

You can live in the certainty of Jesus’ promise to you: “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.” (John 16:20)

Friends, live in that joy: The joy of knowing that your sins are forgiven, that you belong to Jesus forever, and one day, Jesus will welcome you to His Father’s house, where sorrows end and joy is eternal. Amen