“You will have pain, but y our pain will turn into joy.” That brings back memories of the doctor’s office and that giant needle moving ever closer. “This will hurt a little bit.” A little bit! When you are a year old, it hurts a lot, and there is no joy in it. No, I do not remember being one year old. But I do remember going with my one-year-old granddaughter to get her shots. I said to her what is always said: “This will hurt a little bit, but it will all be over soon.” I didn’t believe it when I said it, and neither did my squalling granddaughter.
“You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” What on earth can Jesus mean by this? And can it be true? We’ve all experienced pain of one sort or another. Can we honestly say that our pain turned into joy?
As a teenage boy one day I tried to climb a tall chain link fence to take a short cut to where I had parked my bicycle. There was a jagged row of barbed wire along the top. Wouldn’t you know it? My jeans snagged that stuff. Before the fall was finished, I had torn my jeans up past the knee, I had taken a big piece of flesh out of my leg, and I had landed on my bicycle and bent its front wheel. I remember that pain, and not just the pain of the wound. I remember the pain of reporting a torn pair of jeans to a father whose finances did not allow for extra clothes. I remember the pain of admitting to my mother that the blood spattered all over the bathroom was mine. I remember the pain of having to tell my boss at the pharmacy that his delivery boy could not work until his leg healed and his bike wheel got straightened out. And, oh yes, I remember too the pain of not getting paid; let me tell you, 55 cents an hour, that mounts up! I remember all that pain; I do not really remember that it turned into joy.
“You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” We’ve all experienced pain of one sort or another. Can we honestly say that our pain turned into joy? What can Jesus mean by that?
What about the pain of disappointment? You worked for that job, you deserved that promotion; you expected that new assignment. But it went to somebody else, and did you feel joy? No, you felt devalued and depreciated. Where was the joy in that?
What about the pain of disillusionment? Someone you trusted betrayed you. Someone close to you turned out not to be your friend. Someone went against all your values and did something so egregiously awful that to this day it pains you. It hurts even to call that person’s name. The pain of disillusionment – where was the joy in that?
And what about the pain of separation? Is there any pain worse than the pain of separation from those you love? My wife and her family left England in 1952 to come to the United States. Margaret’s father had been offered a professorship at the Baptist Seminary in Louisville. Now those were the days before transatlantic flights that you could just step on whenever you felt like it, and well before the days of affordable travel. So to move a family from England to America in the ‘50’s meant that they were leaving everyone behind, with little chance for reunion. As the train left the platform to take them all to Southampton for sailing, Margaret looked back to see her grandfather waving farewell, and saw that the old man’s eyes were full of tears. He later wrote them to say that he knew that never again would he see his grandchildren. I can tell you, as a grandfather, that would be truly, deeply painful. The pain of separation: and I ask, again, where is the joy in that? How will that pain be turned into joy?
And that is to say nothing of the ultimate separation, when that old enemy, death, sneaks in and snatches those we love. I have officiated at something over two hundred funerals in my time, and I have yet to have anybody say very much about feeling joy. Sometimes they express acceptance, but hardly joy. That ultimate separation, that deepest pain – can even that be turned into joy?
“You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” Is this so much pious prattle? Is this one of those empty phrases we toss about, sort of like whistling in the dark? Is this real? Or is this standard mythology, something we all say but do not believe and do not experience? “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” I want to demand, “Prove it, Jesus! Prove what You say.”
I
This Easter morning we are here to witness that Jesus does prove it. Jesus does prove that our pain will turn into joy. Jesus will show us that if we want joy, we must first learn that joy comes out of pain. Joy is made of the stuff of pain. Jesus teaches us that if we expect to have joy, real and deep and lasting, such a joy must come out of our pain. For joy is not contradictory to pain; it is the result of pain.
Athletes tell us, “No pain, no gain.” And Jesus tells us that too. He speaks of a woman in labor, experiencing tremendous pain, but when it’s all past, there is a child. The joy is enough to justify the pain. For some the pain of childbirth may be slight, for others it is huge; but pain there is, nonetheless. Yet the memory of that pain evaporates when a mother holds her child and knows that a new life has been brought into the world.
That’s always the way it is. Joy is always made from pain. Joy comes because we have struggled with something and have emerged victorious. Joy comes because we have wrestled with those things that disappoint or disillusion us or shame us, and we have gained strength from them. Joy is made from pain, and not out of thin air. Joy is not something you get just because your life is carefree and without bumps in the road. That might be fun, it might be exciting, it might seem desirable. But it is not joy. Joy is made from pain, and comes only to those who have paid for it in blood, sweat, and tears.
Anything else is rather like the medieval sorcerers who tried to work alchemy. They thought they could find some way to turn a base metal into gold. But of course that’s not possible; you cannot make gold just by wishing it to be true. Nor can you make your heart glad or your spirit sing just by wishing it to be so, nor by living your life in a bubble, free from constraints and disappointments.
“You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” Joy and pain are at their core two sides of the same coin. The challenges, disillusionments, and losses that come to us are necessary; they are the sources of a glad heart. If you live in denial or plaster pain over with pretty, pious words, pain will remain painful. But there is a way for pain to be turned into joy. Jesus promises it, and Jesus will prove it.
II
Now notice, next, that Jesus shows us how pain turns into joy if we give it time to develop. We will have to wait for it; we will have to nurture the process. Joy is not instantaneous. But it will be complete.
Let me say that again: real joy, true and lasting joy, is not instantaneous. But it will be complete. So says Jesus. “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.” All right. So Jesus is playing hide-and-seek or peek-a-boo? What is this all about? And then some more, “You have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
A little while. I don’t know about you, but I am an impatient person. When I see something I want, I want it now. When I am sick, I want to cure it now. When I feel a conflict, I want to resolve it now. I do not wait very well. But waiting a little while is a key element of turning pain into joy. If we learn how to wait, our joy will be complete. Not instantaneous, but complete.
During these eighteen months as your interim pastor, I have waded into several problems, only to discover that if I had just stayed quiet, the problems would have worked themselves out. My impatience had gone to work. That’s my issue; when I get an itch, I want to scratch it now. And yet I have found that if I wait “a little while” and simply trust God for an answer, resolution will come and joy will emerge. But when I jump in with both feet, I find myself in quicksand. Impatience kills my joy.
Are you like that too? When your life is conflicted, do you want it resolved now? You’re not very good at this “a little while” business? You don’t want to wait for painful relationships to be healed? You don’t want to wait for that spiking insecurity to settle down? You don’t want to linger with that nagging uncertainty? Is that your story too? “A little while”. Jesus cautions us to wait “a little while” and says that He will be with us then.
And if sometimes that little while seems protracted … if sometimes that little while drags on for years … if sometimes that little while is not marked by progress, then it is time to learn all over again to trust God. Simply trust Him.
If the stuff that is going on in our relationships, in our work, in our hearts, doesn’t get fixed right away, we panic. Our fears get the better of us, and we are tempted to make a huge mess of everything. “A little while” isn’t easy; but Jesus is going to prove to us that not only does pain turn into joy because pain and joy are made of the same stuff; He is also going to prove to us that ultimately, in God’s own time, in “a little while” our pain will turn into complete joy. Not instantaneous, but complete. Wait for it. Trust Him. And now the proof. Now the proof.
III
Those days had been days of enormous pain. The pain of watching Judas betray Jesus; the pain of seeing Him arrested. Immense pain. The pain of listening to sham trials, the pain and the shame of His carrying a cross through the city streets. And then – what language shall I borrow to describe it? – the pain of Calvary. Criminals writhing on crosses, spectators feeling the white heat of anger at Rome’s idea of justice. And on that one cross, that center cross, the very dying form of one who suffered there in lonely agony. The darkness that fell, the tremors that shook the earth, the strange rending of the Temple veil – it was as if the universe itself was in labor pains, struggling to bring a new thing to life. Words fail me, my heart recoils, trying to describe that scene. I only know that nails in hands and feet and spears in sides cannot be anything but painful, and that the jeering words of those who came to see were more painful than we can imagine. Words fail, the heart recoils, but hear this, the cry of the abandoned soul, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Earth knows no pain greater than this – to be utterly alone: no help, no comfort, no solace, utterly abandoned. Jesus knew that pain. The Bible says that there is no trial known to us that He did not suffer. Pain, incredible pain.
But He said, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” How, in the name of all that’s holy, will this be true here at Calvary? There He died. His cries turned into silence. His blood dried upon the ground. It was all over; He Himself said it, “It is finished.” Finished. And where is the joy?
Those in whom pain still lingered went to His tomb a little while later. They took their pain with them. But what greeted their eyes when they arrived? What did they see, what did they hear? The message still rings through the centuries with a fresh appeal and a profound joy, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen.” He is risen from the dead.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus proves that it is true, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” You will have pain; and be thankful for it, for out of disappointment and disillusionment and separation and even death itself, Christ has risen, the victor over all those things. At that empty tomb in Joseph’s garden, see the witness to the things for which we yearn the most – that our lives might have meaning, that our frustrations find fulfillment, that our struggle be vindicated.
Do you see it? Can you grasp it? Christ rose from the dead. That means that our struggles are taken into the very heart of God, who is able to use them to bring us fulfillment and joy, in a little while, in His own time. Christ rose from the dead; it means that our brokenness is the very stuff out of which God will give us the thrill of victory and will cancel the agony of defeat. Because He lives, our most bitter enemy, that old adversary called death, does not have the last word. Out of everything we call painful, the Christ who overcame that old tyrant gives us joy. Complete joy. In a little while.
Are you today among the disappointed? Your life has not panned out as you thought it would, and there is a pain in your heart? The risen Christ can take that pain and turn it into the beginning of a whole new direction. I have seen it happen; the risen Christ can do it. Trust Him for it.
Are you today among the disillusioned? Friends and family write you off. Somebody has played fast and loose with your affections. Look to the empty tomb, and discover that Jesus Christ can fill the painful emptiness in your heart. Trust Him. And joy will come. I have seen it happen; the risen Christ can do it.
Are you today among those dealing with separation – the loss of a relationship, the death of a loved one, perhaps even the suspicion that your own death may not be very far away? There is nothing more pain-filled than facing the end of our years on this earth; but, I tell you, there is nothing more reassuring, nothing more triumphant, nothing more joy-filled than the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the pioneer and perfecter of the way home. He has defeated death itself, and because He lives, we too may live. Because He lives, all fear is gone. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow. Because He lives, joy, full joy, complete joy.
Remember that story about my climbing that fence? Remember that business about a wounded leg and torn jeans, about shame and guilt and lost wages? It all seems like nothing now. It has faded into obscurity. Because the little wound on my leg is nothing next to the wounded feet and hands of Christ. The tear on my jeans is nothing next to the burial clothes where they laid Him. The loss of my wages is nothing when I find that Jesus paid it all. The bloody mess in the bathroom is nothing when I see that sin had left a crimson stain, but He washed it white as snow. And best of all, the shame I felt and the guilt I carried for so foolish a thing as trying to climb too high – even that He took away. And He will; He will take away all of our foolish striving, all of our climbing too high. He rose to give us life, He rose to give us freedom, He rose to give us hope. “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” Because He lives.
