“So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. On that day you will ask nothing of me. Very truly, I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” (John 16:22-23)
This is one of those verses where part of it gets taken out of context and thrown around as a way of manipulating others and God. I am guilty of it in this case. “If you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” I used that against God in a mighty way when my dorm mom, Miz, died during my senior year of high school. I remember so clearly when she was sick, praying that God would prove to me that this “ask anything” was really true–that I really could ask anything. I remember talking about how this verse doesn’t say “ask anything, and if it’s in my God’s will he will give it to you,” or “ask anything, and if your heart is right and you really need it he will give it to you.” And I was so devastated when Miz died, within hours of specifically praying that she would live. I was devastated because I had mustered all my faith and was trying so hard to believe that God heard me, and I was asking for something Jesus had done lots of times in the Bible, and I was asking in Jesus’ name the best I knew how.
But today as I read it, I realized I missed the larger context. Jesus is talking about leaving. He’s talking about believing the connection between Jesus and the Father–“I in him…he in me…he sent me…when you see me you see him”…all that stuff. Immediately in this section he’s talking about how a woman in labor cries out in pain, but then after the baby is born she can’t remember how painful labor was because the joy of the new baby is so complete. Similarly, disciples (and we?) will experience pain in the absence of Jesus. But then one day we will see him again, and the pain of the “labor” will seem insignificant. ON THAT DAY–in the joy of being in Christ’s presence again–we will realize we don’t need anything from God. Then, IN LIGHT OF THAT REALITY, when we ask something in Jesus’ name we will get it. Jesus is not guaranteeing to be a vending machine or a genie–granting wishes at our command. Instead, Jesus is saying there will be a time when the pain of labor is a fuzzy memory and the joy of new life is an overwhelming reality. When that happens, we will be in such a relationship with God that we won’t need to ask for anything. But if we do, in light of that reality and relationship, whatever we ask will be something God will give us.
That’s a very different way of thinking about it. Crying out to God out of our pain now, saying, “don’t let Miz die!”, is like a woman in labor screaming, “GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!” It is a reaction to our pain–not really what we want or even need. We’re living in the labor pain of death, grief, illness and sadness. And that’s all we can feel. We don’t have any way of really grasping the new life that will come from this, and so our reaction is to cry out that the pain will stop…that the grief will end…that the death will be avoided. Similarly, a loving husband can do nothing to eliminate his wife’s pain while she’s in labor. He sits by her, cries out in solidarity when she squeezes his hand so hard it hurts, reminds her that he loves her–even when she’s screaming about how he did this to her–and helps her breathe through the contractions.
What a powerful image of God in relationship with us in this time before we see Jesus again. What a powerful way of looking at the current pain and discontent I feel. And what a powerful way of re-framing prayer requesting and supplicating.