'… Ye shall seek Me.'—JOHN xiii. 33.
In the former sermon on this verse I pointed out that it, in its
fullness, applies only to the brief period between the crucifixion and
the resurrection, but that, partly by contrast and partly by analogy,
it suggests permanent relations between Christ and His disciples. These
relations were mainly—as I pointed out then—two: there was that one
expressed by the subsequent words of the verse, 'Whither I go, ye
cannot come'—a brief 'cannot,' soon to be changed into a permanent
'can'; and there was a second, a brief, sad, and vain seeking, soon to
be changed into a seeking which finds. It is to the latter that I wish
to turn now.
'Ye shall seek Me' fell, like the clods on a coffin-lid, with a hollow
sound on the hearts of the Apostles. It comes to us as a permission and
a command and a promise. I do not dwell on that sad seeking, which was
so brief but so bitter. We all know what it is to put out an empty hand
into the darkness and the void, and to grope for a touch which we know,
whilst we grope, that we shall not find. And these poor, helpless
disciples, by their forlorn sense of separation, by their yearning that
brought no satisfaction, by their very listless despair, were saying,
during these hours of agony into which an eternity of pain was
condensed, 'Oh! that He were beside us again!'
That sad seeking ended when He came to them, and 'then were the
disciples glad when they saw the Lord.' But another kind of seeking
began, when 'the cloud received Him out of their sight'; as joyful as
the other was laden with sorrow, as sure to find the object of its
quest as the other was certain to be disappointed. What He said in the
darkness to them, He says in the light to us: What 'I say unto you I
say unto all,' _Seek!_ So now we have to deal with that joyful search
which is sure of finding its object, and is only a little, if at all,
less blessed than the finding itself.