As we head into the warm, lazy days of summer, planning or at least dreaming of a vacation or looking forward to a little slower pace for a few weeks, there is a grief – sharp for some, lingering for many – at what we have lost. Whether our loss is personal or just a nagging sense of foreboding at the state of things, most would agree that we live in troubling times and are experiencing some level of grief at the loss of a perceived time of greater peace, stability and community.
To this point, our CCC family seems to have encountered more than our share of grief lately, as many in our congregation are battling serious illnesses, relational challenges, loss of jobs and, most devastatingly, the death of several of our brothers in the Lord. While the days are longer and the sun is high and hot, more than a few of us are struggling to keep our heavy hearts from growing cold with grief.
Whether we are actively grieving or simply battling a general sense of malaise, we shouldn't be surprised. Not only should we not be surprised by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare referred to life's persistent heartaches and shocks, but a moments reflection will remind us that most of us in the modern West are significantly shielded from the wretchedness of daily life experienced by countless millions in the world today and what the majority of people have experienced throughout history. Nonetheless, we still suffer.
In John 16:33, Jesus says, In this world, you will have trouble. The Bible, in general, and Jesus specifically, never sugarcoats or soft peddles the challenges of living in a fallen world – a world suffering the consequences of charting its course in rebellion against a God of love who created and sustains us all. As the prophet Isaiah says, just like our Eden ancestors, We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way, (Is. 53:6). And even if we have repented and found ourselves back in the sheepfold of God's grace through our faith in Christ, the effects of sin in this life are systemic, endemic and inescapable – death being the final and fullest evidence of that fact.
Despair, disease, death and the like are foreign to God's creation. Over and over in Genesis chapter one, as God's creation is unfolding, his refrain as he surveys his work is that it is good. And after fashioning human beings as the pinnacle of his creative efforts, God looks at all he has made and declares that it is very good. It was in the context of God's perfect creation that Adam and Eve chose the deceptively sweet fruit of self-indulgence and self-determination rather than the solid staple of faith in the goodness and provision of God, that sin entered the human race and the power of sin was unleashed on the world. As Paul states clearly in his letter to the Romans, sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned, (Rom. 5:12).
So then, life is hard; Jesus tells us as much, and we all bear some level of responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in. Fortunately, Jesus' words from the passage above don't end there, and we are not lost to our troubles.
After stating frankly that In this World, you will have trouble, Jesus immediately asserts, But take heart! I have overcome the world.
Ironically, Jesus makes the bold declaration that he has overcome the world shortly before he is falsely accused by the Jewish religious leaders and brutally murdered by the Roman authorities. We can imagine the agonizing despair and complete bewilderment of the followers of Jesus in the immediate aftermath of his crucifixion. At that moment, it was blatantly apparent that the world had overcome Jesus.
Thankfully, to use Paul Harvey's famous phrase, we know the “rest of the story.” When Jesus proclaimed, I have overcome the world, we know that he spoke prophetically and proleptically in anticipation of his resurrection. In the first-century context of violent Roman oppression of the Jews and repeated attempts by various Jewish groups to violently overthrow their Roman oppressors, Jesus overcame not just Rome but the power of sin that innervates tyrants and abusers of all kinds and holds all of humanity in its merciless grip by a singular act of self-sacrificing love. In his crucifixion, Jesus absorbed all of the hatred, anger and violence of the powers that be and overcame them and the whole corrupt world system by his resurrected life.
While the power of sin has been undone, we still suffer its effects, personally and corporately; in this world, we still have trouble. But, as we place our hope in the resurrected Christ and look forward to that day when he returns fully and finally to make all things new, (Revelation 21:5), we have confidence that our troubles do not have the last word. Our story is greater than our grief because of our hope that Jesus Christ has indeed overcome the world through his death and resurrection. And in that hope, we can continue to worship and work together for the Glory of God and the Good of Our Neighbors Near and Far, sharing our griefs and our joys and countering the angry rhetoric and violent tendencies of our day by following the way of Jesus – the way of the cross.
—Pastor Scott