In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!
And still he continues. Jesus' farewell address continues with more talk about love, plain talk, and courage. Jesus tells his disciples that the Father loves them because they loved Jesus. He says that he will no longer talk in figures of speech, but in plain talk. He says that they’ll be persecuted, but they need to be joyful and take courage. I must admit that I rarely find John’s Gospel to contain anything remotely close to plain talk. Part of that, I suspect, is because the author is such an intuitive creative that virtually every retelling in John is figurative and poetic. The same is true for the other book written by the same author, Revelation, which I understand is beautiful poetry, and have yet to fully appreciate.
In any case, by the end of today’s reading, the disciples understand Jesus’ talk and believe him no longer to be talking in figures of speech, as they say, “Yes, now you are speaking plainly.” I’m not sure what’s changed from the beginning of Jesus’ farewell address to that point, but apparently the disciples understood something anew.
It’s strange, though. The reading today concludes with Jesus telling them he’s conquered the world, and yet he says this mere hours before he’s about to be tortured and executed. If he knows he’s conquered the world at this point in his human existence, he must know something about the next 3 days. Maybe not the details of the gruesome weekend, but maybe the glory of his rising?
He’s trying to bolster his disciples that despite the weekend, despite their future persecution and trials and death, he’s with them, and he’s already beaten the world. He’s told them that despite all of that, they should take courage.
The trouble with this, from the perspective of the disciples, or me now, is that his victory over the ‘world’, doesn’t diminish or eliminate or protect me from the persecution, hurt, heartache of this ‘world’. The disciples vacillated then, as I do now, between absolute trust in God’s ultimate victory, and absolute trust in God’s failure because of the persecution, heartache, hurt, illness, death, in this world.
Today, I’m thinking about how to stay on the ‘take courage’ side of that dichotomy. How to not run away, and abandon Jesus on the cross in the darkness of his pain, or the prospect of mine. I fully believe love and goodness win, in the end. And sometimes it’s a crappy road to get there.
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