John 16.17-33

17 Some of the disciples asked each other, “What does he mean when he says, ‘In a little while you won’t see me, but then you will see me,’ and ‘I am going to the Father’? 18 And what does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand.”

19 Jesus realized they wanted to ask him about it, so he said, “Are you asking yourselves what I meant? I said in a little while you won’t see me, but a little while after that you will see me again. 20 I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. 21 It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. 22 So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. 23 At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything. I tell you the truth, you will ask the Father directly, and he will grant your request because you use my name. 24 You haven’t done this before. Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and you will have abundant joy.

25 I have spoken of these matters in figures of speech, but soon I will stop speaking figuratively and will tell you plainly all about the Father. 26 Then you will ask in my name. I’m not saying I will ask the Father on your behalf, 27 for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God. 28 Yes, I came from the Father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the Father.”

29 Then his disciples said, “At last you are speaking plainly and not figuratively.30 Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we trust that you came from God.”

31 Jesus asked, “Do you finally trust? 32 But the time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. 33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Comments

Well, I made it almost all year without missing a day. Made it through finishing my Ph.D., three conferences, a full semester of teaching, and then I spent two days in bed sick and lost it. The sickness was only part of it though. The other factor was the density of these passages. I had a lot to say about the one before this because it was a main part of my dissertation, and that clued me into the depth these waters. I read this passage and felt lightheaded, both from the medication and the statements Jesus makes here.

• You won’t see me. Then you will see me.
• You will weep, mourn, grieve. Then your grief will turn to joy.
• It will be like going through the travail of labor: intense pain, then relief and happiness of having a child.
• You will have joy that cannot be taken away, cannot be stolen.
• You can ask for anything and the Father will give it to you.

That’s a lot. And wow it sounds great. Too good to be true in fact. In his final teaching moment, Jesus goes for the sell, puts on a strong close. It sounds even bolder when we remember he was moments away from being arrested, a fact John has already told us Jesus was well aware of. Faced with his impending death, Jesus sounds really positive. The sorrow and travail he talks about here reminds us of the Gethsemane scene from the other Gospels, but there is no indication he had a personal struggle here. For John, not seeing Jesus goes along with sorrow, trials, and grief. Seeing Jesus goes along with joy and peace. While grief is coming, joy remains where Jesus is.

Commentators debate whether John meant this not-seeing and seeing to refer to Jesus’ death and resurrection only, or to his promised return as well. The first two make sense for those Jesus was talking to, the third makes more sense for John’s readers (including us). Or so the debate goes. But I want to connect this not-seeing to what Jesus said back in v.10, “I go to the Father and you won’t see me anymore.” If the promise of joy and peace are only for the short time between resurrection and ascension and then not again until the end of all things, how does that help us? Why include that in a last exhortation? It’s like saying, “Things are going to stink for a couple thousand years (or more), but it’ll be okay.” What? What sort of overcoming of the world is that?

Remember what I said about v.10. The followers of Jesus not seeing him anymore relates to our promotion to being the ones who bear justice to the world. We are the healers of the sick. We are the ones who give sight to the blind. We are the ones who do life with the marginalized. The world is full of grief and sorrow (v.32), that is its default setting, but the followers of Jesus bring his joy and his peace to the grief-stricken world.

Or at least, we’re supposed to. Too often our concerns are for ourselves, not for justice for others, but for privilege for us. It is in this context of being the hope, joy, and peace of the world that Jesus gives this blank check. We can ask for whatever we want – that is, for whatever helps us do life with those who suffer and mourn – and God will help us do that. But we turn a great resource for justice into an infinite line of credit for perpetuating injustice. Prosperity gospels miss the essential selflessness of this promise and make the opposite of it: empowerment to live emulating Christ becomes a selfish pursuit that is altogether anti-Christ.

We don’t see Jesus in the world when we fail to be Jesus for the world. That should cause us to weep, mourn, and grieve.

We see Jesus in the world when we are Jesus for the world. The justice we work for brings hope, peace, and joy to the world. Our joy cannot be stolen because we give it away freely.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

John 16.5-16

5 “But now I am going away to the one who sent me, and not one of you is asking where I am going. 6 Instead, you grieve because of what I’ve told you. 7 But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin, justice, and judgment; 9 sin because they do not trust me, 10 justice because I go to the Father and you will see me no more, 11 and judgment because the ruler of this world has been judged.

12 There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future. 14 He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine; this is why I said, ‘The Spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me.’

16 In a little while you won’t see me anymore. But a little while after that, you will see me again.”

Comments

Today’s reading includes one of the more enigmatic passages in the Gospels (v.8-11). So, I devoted about one-fourth of my dissertation to a careful reading of those verses. This means a couple of things. One, I have made heavy modifications to the NLT’s translation of this passage. Their version adds a lot of extra words to “help” with the meaning, but I am convinced the interpretation that led to their translation is deeply flawed, so I have given you as close as English will allow to a word-for-word translation from the Greek. In case you didn’t know already, take a moment to let this fact sink in: every single translation of Scripture (including the venerable KJV and ‘literal’ ones like the NASB) has an embedded theology – an interpretation that sends the translation in a certain direction, even when that direction might be contrary to the meaning (either the original meaning or other possible meanings) of the text. To give one of several examples here, the word I translated as “justice” is dikaiosune. Paul uses this same word in Rom. 1.18 (and elsewhere, Paul liked this word) and Martin Luther built his entire theology on a stylized reading of that verse, leading to what people familiar with Christian lingo call “righteousness,” specifically the “righteousness of God.” I’m not going to argue about the validity of Luther’s reading today (it is somewhat suspect). I only want to point out that the NLT imports Luther’s reading of Paul into this sentence (16.8-11 is all one sentence) in John. This is the only time John uses the word, Luther’s notion is not in line with John’s themes, and the word for God (“theos”) does not appear here at all. So this is not “God’s righteousness” as the NLT has it. Bad translation based on theological commitment, not what the text says. And this is not a rare case. It happens all the time. If you are reading a translation, you are reading someone else’s interpretation. Which is one reason for learning Greek and Hebrew – and also one reason for not building doctrines or moral positions on literal readings of English versions.

So these verses were the basis of my Ph.D. dissertation. The second thing that means (as you can already see) is that I can go on about this passage for a long time. A long time. Like 10,000 words without breaking a sweat. But I don’t want to do that and I know you don’t want me to do that. So I am going to try to sum up as succinctly as possible what I take v. 8-11 to be saying. I am going to leave out all the supporting arguments and most of the ramifications and just give it to you straight. I think this will be good for both of us, you get the ideas and I get to practice brevity. So here goes:

Jesus again brings up this promise to send the Paraclete. Paracletes served as supporting counsel in legal matters of the day, they were always supporters and defenders, never prosecutors. But here Jesus says this supporting lawyer will “convict” – a word that has a range of meanings from persuade to prosecute. Given the decided positive nature of paraceletes, “convince” is probably our best English word. This is a persuasive action, a strong one, but also a positive one.

So Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to convince – the whole world. The “world” has been an important word in John (e.g., for God so loved the world). Throughout John, we have seen that God loves the world, that the world is hostile to God, but that God’s love for the world prevails because Jesus comes to demonstrate God’s love for the world. If the action here is convicting, it is a loving convicting.

The Paraclete/Spirit comes to convince this world about three things: sin, justice, and judgment. Sin relates to them not trusting Jesus. Justice relates to the disciples not seeing Jesus anymore. And judgment relates to the fact that the ruler of the world has been condemned (note that only the ruler has been condemned, not the world). The world is the object of all the Paraclete’s convincing action, but that action either takes three forms or has three motivations, non-disciples not trusting Jesus, disciples not seeing Jesus, the ruler of the world being condemned.

But here we have to note that back toward the beginning of this speech (14.17), Jesus said that the world could not accept or even hear the Paraclete, only the disciples could. How can the Paraclete convince people who cannot hear his message? Put simply, the Paraclete communicates this convincing through the community the Paraclete forms of people who do trust in Jesus. This sentence comes within the context of Jesus explaining the nature of the church he and the Spirit are forming. A key part of that nature is that the church will be the conduit of the Spirit’s mission of convincing the world.

Convincing the world of what? Sin, justice, and judgment. Convincing the world how? Through the agency of the church. In short, people who do not trust Jesus become convinced that they can by seeing people who do trust Jesus and who trust each other. The church lives as a community of trust, where unity trumps doctrinal differences.

People who do not know justice become convinced justice is possible by seeing people who live out the justice that Jesus practiced, hoping for and enacting the good for each other, showing preference for each other (especially the outcast), showing the world that justice was not limited to when Jesus was on earth, but continues among his followers who, even though they do not have his moral example in front of them carry on because the Paraclete/Spirit is reminding them of all Jesus did and taught and empowering them to do the same, so that they still set people free from spiritual and physical bondage, free to pursue life in Jesus.

People who are used to the world’s modes of power – hierarchical, domineering, dehumanizing, destructive – become convinced that these modes of power have been condemned by seeing people who relate to each other in altogether different terms. Authority among Jesus’ followers is demonstrated by washing people’s feet. Power is not something held, wielded, or consolidated, it is always and only given away. Worldly power is inverted and subverted; the least are greatest, the last are first, the disenfranchised are empowered. And to be clear, this is no benign dictatorship (as some churches pervert it to be), all consolidations of power, all maintenance and manipulation of others stands condemned. In other words, instead of controlling people, we love them because only in love does the focus and power shift from the one performing the action to the recipient of that action. In love, the lover empowers the beloved. Love creates agency.

The church convinces the world of the sin of not trusting Jesus by being a community of trust expressed in radical unity. Unity shows we trust each other and God.

The church convinces the world of the justice of the Jesus we do not see by being a community of hope expressed in radical freedom. Freedom shows we hope for the good for each other.

The church convinces the world of all its modes of power have been condemned by being a community of love expressed in radical equality. Equality shows we love each other and God.

There you have it. My entire dissertation in less than 1500 words. Not bad, eh?

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale HousePublishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.