Homily 79 — John 16, verses 16 to 33

“A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me, because I am going to the Father. Then some of his disciples said among themselves, ‘What is this that he is saying?’” And the rest of the passage. [a]

Nothing casts down a soul in anguish, gripped by deep dejection, so much as dwelling continually on words that cause pain. Why, then, did Christ, after saying, “I am going,” and, “From now on I will not speak with you,” keep dwelling on the same subject, saying, “A little while, and you will not see me, because I am going to him who sent me”? He had just revived them with what he said about the Spirit, and now he casts their courage down again. Why does he do this? He is testing their feelings and making them more proven. By letting them hear sad things, he is training them to bear his separation from them like men. For once they had practiced bearing it when it was only spoken of in words, they were likely to bear it easily afterward in fact as well.

And if you look closely, this very saying, “I am going to the Father,” is itself a comfort. It is the language of one who declares that he will not perish, and that his end is only a kind of passing over. He adds another comfort too. He does not say only, “A little while, and you will not see me,” but also, “A little while, and you will see me,” showing that he will come back to them, that their separation will last only a little while, and that his presence with them will be continual.

This, however, they did not understand. So one may well wonder how, after hearing these things so often, they are in doubt, as though they had heard nothing. How is it, then, that they did not understand? It was either through grief, as I suppose, since grief drove what was said out of their minds, or through the obscurity of the words. For he seemed to them to be setting out two contrary things, which were not contrary. “If,” says one of them, “we are going to see you, where are you going? And if you are going, how will we see you?” That is why they say, “We do not know what he is saying.” They knew that he was about to go away; what they did not know was that he would soon come back to them. That is why he rebukes them, because they did not understand his saying. And since he wanted to fix the teaching about his death firmly in them, what does he say?

Verse 20: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament” — this belonged to his death and the cross — “but the world will rejoice.”

Because they did not want him to die, they had quickly run into believing that he would not die. Then, when they heard that he would die, they were at a loss, not knowing what that “little while” meant. So he says, “You will mourn and lament.” “But your sorrow will be turned into joy.”

Then, having shown that joy comes after grief, that grief gives birth to joy, and that grief is short while the pleasure has no end, he moves on to an everyday example. And what does he say?

Verse 21: “A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow.”

He has used a comparison that the prophets also use constantly, likening times of dejection to the extreme pains of childbirth. What he says is something like this: “Labor pains will take hold of you, but the pang of childbirth is the cause of joy.” In this way he both confirms what he had said about the resurrection and shows that departing from here is like passing out of the womb into the light of day. It is as though he had said: “Do not be amazed that I bring you to what is good for you through such sorrow, since even a mother, to become a mother, goes through pain in the same way.”

Here he also hints at something with a hidden, sacred meaning: that he has loosened the birth pangs of death and caused a new man to be born from them. And he did not say only that the pain passes away, but that “she does not even remember it,” so great is the joy that follows. So it will be with the saints too. And yet the woman does not rejoice because “a man has come into the world,” but because a son has been born to her. If that were the reason, nothing would stop a barren woman from rejoicing over another woman who gives birth. Why, then, did he speak this way? Because he brought in this example for this purpose only: to show that sorrow lasts for a season but joy endures; to show that death is a passing over into life; and to show the great profit of their pangs. He did not say, “A child has been born,” but, “A man.” For to my mind he is hinting here at his own resurrection, and that he would be born, not into that death which bore the birth pang, but into the kingdom. That is why he did not say, “A child has been born to her,” but, “A man has been born into the world.”

Verses 22 and 23: “And you now, therefore, have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your sorrow will be turned into joy.” Then, to show that he will die no more, he says, “And no one takes it from you. And in that day you will ask me nothing.”

Again, by these words he proves nothing other than that he is from God. “For then, from that time on, you will know all things.” But what does “You will not ask me” mean? “You will need no one to plead for you. It will be enough for you to call on my name, and so gain everything.”

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask my Father in my name.”

He shows the power of his name: without being seen or called upon, but only named, he even makes us approved by the Father. But where has this happened? Where they say, “Lord, look at their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with boldness” (Acts 4, verses 29 and 31), “and to work miracles in your name.” “And the place where they were was shaken.”

Verse 24: “Until now you have asked nothing.”

From this he shows that it is good for him to go away, since until now they had asked nothing, and then they would receive whatever they asked. “Do not suppose, because I will no longer be with you, that you are abandoned. My name will give you greater boldness.” Since the words he had used had been veiled, he says: [f]

Verse 25: “I have spoken these things to you in figures of speech; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech.” “There will come a time when you will know all things clearly.” He is speaking of the time of the resurrection. “Then,” he says, “I will tell you plainly about the Father.” (For he was with them and talked with them for forty days, gathering with them and speaking about the things concerning the kingdom of God; Acts 1, verses 3 and 4.) “Because now you are afraid, you pay no attention to my words. But then, when you see me risen again and talk with me, you will be able to learn everything plainly, for the Father himself will love you, once your faith in me has been made firm.”

Verse 26: “And I will not ask the Father.” “Your love for me is enough to plead for you.”

Verses 27 and 28: “Because you have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came out from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”

His talk about the resurrection, and together with it the hearing that “I came out from God, and I am going back there,” gave them no ordinary comfort. That is why he keeps coming back to these things. He gave them a pledge, first, that they were right to believe in him, and second, that they would be safe. So when he said, “A little while, and you will not see me; and again a little while, and you will see me” (verse 17), they had good reason not to understand him. But now it is no longer so. What, then, does “You will not ask me” mean? “You will not say, ‘Show us the Father,’ and, ‘Where are you going?’ For you will know everything there is to know, and the Father will be disposed toward you just as I am.” It was this above all that let them breathe again: learning that they would be the Father’s friends. That is why they say:

Verse 30: “Now we know that you know all things.”

Do you see that he answered what they were secretly turning over in their minds? “And you do not need anyone to ask you.” That is: “Before you hear us, you know the things that made us stumble, and you have given us rest, since you have said, ‘The Father loves you, because you have loved me.’”

After so many great things, they say, “Now we know.” Do you see how far from maturity they still were? Then, when they say, “Now we know,” as though they were doing him a favor, he replies: “You still need many other things before you reach maturity; nothing has been accomplished by you yet. You will soon betray me to my enemies, and such fear will seize you that you will not even be able to withdraw together. Yet I will suffer nothing terrible from it.” Do you see again how he stoops down to meet them in what he says? In fact, he makes it a charge against them that they constantly needed him to stoop down to them. For when they say, “Look, now you are speaking plainly and not using any figure of speech” (verse 29), “and so we believe you,” he shows them that even now, when they believe, they do not yet believe, and he does not accept their words. He says this, pointing them to another time.

But again, he has put in the words “The Father is with me” (verse 32) for their sake, since this was what they wanted to learn everywhere. Then, to show that by saying this he was not giving them complete knowledge, but was speaking so that their reasoning would not rebel (for they were likely to form some merely human notions and to think that they would have no help from him), he says:

Verse 33: “I have spoken these things to you, so that in me you may have peace.”

That is: “So that you do not cast me out of your thoughts, but receive me.” So let no one drag these words into a point of doctrine; they are spoken for our comfort and out of love. “For not even when you have suffered such things as I have mentioned will your troubles stop there. As long as you are in the world you will have sorrow, not only now when I am betrayed, but afterward too. But lift up your minds, for you will suffer nothing terrible. When the teacher has gotten the better of his enemies, the disciples must not lose heart.” “And how,” tell me, “have you conquered the world?” “I have told you already that I have cast down its ruler. But you will know it later, when all things yield and give way to you.”

But we too may conquer, if we look to the Author of our faith and walk on the road that he cut for us. Then death will not get the mastery over us either. “What, then? Will we not die?” someone says. Why, this very thing makes it clear that death will not master us. A champion is glorious, not when he has never come to grips with his opponent, but when he has come to grips with him and is not held down by him. So we are not mortal because we struggle with death; we are immortal because we win. We would have been mortal only if we had stayed in death’s grip forever. I would not call the longest-lived animals immortal, although they stay free of death for a long time. In the same way I would not call the one who will rise after death mortal simply because death dissolves him. Tell me: if a man blushes a little, would we say he was always ruddy? No, for a passing act is not a settled state. If someone turns pale, would we call him jaundiced? No, for the condition is only temporary. So you would not call someone mortal who has been in death’s hands for only a short time. Otherwise we could say the same of those who are asleep, since they are, so to speak, dead and inactive. But does death corrupt our bodies? What of it? That is not so that they will stay in corruption, but so that they will be made better. [k]

So let us conquer the world. Let us run toward immortality, let us follow our King, let us too set up a trophy, let us look down on the pleasures of the world. We need no hard labor to do it. Let us move our souls over to heaven, and the whole world is conquered. If you do not desire it, it is conquered; if you laugh at it, it is beaten.

We are strangers and sojourners, so let us not grieve at any of its painful things. Suppose you came from a famous country and from illustrious ancestors, and had gone into some distant land where no one knew you, with neither servants nor wealth, and then someone insulted you. You would not grieve as though you had suffered this at home. Knowing clearly that you were in a strange and foreign land would persuade you to bear everything easily, and to think nothing of hunger and thirst and any suffering at all. Consider this now as well: you are a stranger and a sojourner, so let nothing disturb you in this foreign land. For you have a city whose architect and maker is God, and your stay here lasts only a short little while.

Let anyone who likes strike us, insult us, abuse us: we are in a foreign land and live humbly. The terrible thing would be to suffer this in our own country, before our fellow citizens; that is where the greatest disgrace and loss lie. For when a man is somewhere that no one knows him, he bears everything easily, since what makes an insult hard to bear is the intention of those who give it. For instance, if someone insults the governor knowing that he is the governor, the insult stings. But if he insults him supposing him to be a private citizen, he cannot even touch the man who receives the insult.

Let us reason this way too. For those who abuse us do not know what we are: that we are citizens of heaven, enrolled in the homeland above, fellow singers in the choir of the cherubim. So let us not grieve, or count their insult an insult; if they had known, they would not have insulted us. Do they take us for poor and lowly? Let us not count this an insult either. For tell me: suppose a traveler had gone on ahead of his servants and was sitting in the inn for a little while, waiting for them, and then the innkeeper or some other travelers behaved rudely to him and abused him. Would he not laugh at their ignorance? Would their mistake not rather give him pleasure? Would he not feel a certain satisfaction, as though it were someone else and not he who was being insulted? Let us behave like this too. We also are sitting in an inn, waiting for our friends who travel the same road. When we are all gathered together, then they will know whom they are insulting. Then these men will hang their heads; then they will say, “This is the one whom we fools held in derision” (Wisdom 5, verse 3).

So let us comfort ourselves with these two things: that we are not really insulted, since they do not know who we are; and that, if we want satisfaction, they will later pay us a most bitter penalty. But far be it from anyone to have a soul so cruel and inhuman. “What, then, if we are insulted by our own relatives? That is the heavy thing.” No, this is the light thing. “Why, may I ask?” Because we do not bear insults from those we love in the same way as from those we do not know. For instance, when we console those who have been wronged, we often say, “It is a brother who has wronged you; bear it nobly. It is a father; it is an uncle.” But if the name of “father” and “brother” makes you ashamed, how much more if I name a relationship closer than these! For we are not only brothers to one another, but also members, and one body. Now if the name of brother makes you ashamed, much more should the name of member. [m]

Have you not heard that pagan proverb which says, “One must keep one’s friends, faults and all”? Have you not heard Paul say, “Bear one another’s burdens”? Do you not see lovers? I am forced to take my argument onto that ground, since I cannot draw an example from you. Paul does the same when he says, “Besides this, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence” (Hebrews 12, verse 9). Or rather, what he says to the Romans fits better: “Just as you yielded your members as servants to uncleanness and to lawlessness, leading to lawlessness, so now yield your members as servants to righteousness.” So let us hold on to the illustration with confidence.

Do you not observe lovers, and the miseries they suffer when they are inflamed with desire for prostitutes? They are slapped, beaten, and laughed at. They put up with a prostitute who turns away from them and insults them in ten thousand ways. Yet if they see even once something sweet or gentle from her, all is well with them; everything past is gone; everything goes on with a fair wind, whether it is poverty, or sickness, or anything else besides. For they count their own life miserable or blessed according to how the woman they love is disposed toward them. They know nothing of human honor or disgrace. Even if someone insults them, they bear it all easily because of the great pleasure and delight they get from her; and though she abuses them, though she spits in their face, they think while they endure it that they are being pelted with roses. And what wonder, if they feel this way about her person? They think her very house more splendid than any other, though it is only of mud, though it is falling down. But why do I speak of walls? When they so much as see the places they frequent in the evening, they are stirred.

Allow me now, for what follows, to borrow the apostle’s words. As he says, “Just as you yielded your members as servants to uncleanness, so yield your members as servants to righteousness,” so in the same way I now say: as we have loved these women, let us love one another, and we will not think we are suffering anything terrible. And why do I say “one another”? Let us love God in this way. Do you shudder when you hear me ask for as much love toward God as we have shown toward a prostitute? But I shudder that we do not show even that much.

If you will, let us go on with the argument, though what is said is very painful. The woman they love promises her lovers nothing good, only dishonor, shame, and insult. For this is what waiting on a prostitute makes of a man: ridiculous, shameful, dishonored. But God promises us heaven and the good things in heaven. He has made us sons, and brothers of the only Son. He has given you ten thousand things while you live, and when you die, resurrection. He promises to give us good things so great that we cannot even imagine them, and he makes us honored and revered. Again, that woman compels her lovers to spend everything they have on the pit and on destruction; but God bids us sow in heaven, and gives us a hundredfold, and eternal life. Again, she treats her lover like a slave, giving orders more harshly than any tyrant; but God says, “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (John 15, verse 15).

Have you seen how great the evils are on the one side, and the blessings on the other? What comes next? For this woman’s sake many lie awake at night and readily obey whatever she commands. They give up house and father and mother and friends and money and patrons, and leave everything that belongs to them in want and ruin. But for God’s sake, or rather for our own sake, we often do not choose to spend even a third of what we have. We look at the hungry man and look past him; we run past the naked and do not even give him a word. But lovers, if they see even a little servant girl of their mistress, and a foreigner at that, stand in the middle of the marketplace and talk with her as if they were proud and glad to do it, spinning out an endless string of words. For her sake they count all they have as nothing and think rulers and ruling nothing — all who have had experience of this disease know it — and they are more grateful to her when she gives orders than others are when they are served. [p]

Is it not with good reason that there is a hell? Is it not with good reason that there are ten thousand punishments? So let us come to our senses. Let us put into the service of God as much as others supply to a prostitute — or half, or even a third. Perhaps you shudder again; so do I. But I would not have you shudder at words only, but at the deeds. As it is, here our hearts are brought into order, but we go out and throw it all away. What, then, is the gain? For there, if money must be spent, no one complains of his poverty; he even borrows to give it, sometimes after being beaten besides. But here, if we so much as mention almsgiving, they plead children and wife and house and patrons and ten thousand excuses. “But,” someone says, “the pleasure there is great.” This is what I lament and mourn. What if I show that the pleasure here is greater? There, shame and insult and expense cut away no small part of the pleasure, and after these come the quarrels and hostility; but here there is nothing of the kind. Tell me, what pleasure equals this: to sit waiting for heaven and the kingdom there, and the glory of the saints, and the life that has no end? “But these things,” someone says, “are only hoped for; the others are experienced.” What kind of experience? Do you want me to tell you the pleasures that are here too, by experience? Think what freedom you enjoy, and how you fear and tremble before no one when you live in the company of virtue: not an enemy, not a schemer, not an informer, not a rival for honor or in love, not an envious man, not poverty, not sickness, nor any other human thing. But there, even if ten thousand things go as you want, even if riches flow in as from a fountain, the war with rivals, the plots and the ambushes, will make the life of the man who wallows with those women more miserable than anyone’s. For when that detestable woman is haughty and insolent, you have no choice but to stir up quarrels to flatter her. This is more painful than ten thousand deaths, more unbearable than any punishment.

But here there is nothing of the kind. For “the fruit of the Spirit,” it says, “is love, joy, peace” (Galatians 5, verse 22). Here there is no quarreling, no untimely spending of money, no disgrace with expense on top of it. If you give only a penny, or a loaf, or a cup of cold water, he will count himself greatly in your debt. He does nothing to pain or grieve you, but everything to make you glorious and to free you from all shame. What defense, then, will we have, what pardon will we find, if we leave these things and give ourselves up to their opposite, and throw ourselves of our own free will into the furnace that burns with fire?

So I urge those who are sick with this disease to recover themselves and return to health, and not to let themselves fall into despair. That son, too, was in a far worse state than this; yet when he returned to his father’s house, he came back to his former honor, and appeared more glorious than the one who had always pleased him. Let us imitate him too. Let us return to our Father, even if it is late; let us leave that captivity and move over into freedom, so that we may enjoy the kingdom of heaven, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be glory forever and ever. Amen.