March 17, 2024: Jesus Wept

Old Testament Reading: Ezekiel 37: 1-14
The Gospel:  John 11: 17-45             

I have never seen my father cry. He was raised in a culture that said, “Men don’t cry” presumably because crying showed weakness. Men were supposed to buck up and keep going, no matter what. Even women, in order to be stronger, to move up the corporate ladder, are encouraged not to show emotion or not as much. I think that is very sad.  Crying shows compassion and it is also a release, a cleansing of sorts. If you think about it, crying is breath work. A good cry involves having to catch one’s breath, to breathe more deeply - a kind of automatic reset - a calming mechanism almost like yoga breathing. 

One wonders where society got this idea that crying was bad when even Jesus cried not once but twice in the Bible. The first recorded time was the story that we read today about the death and resurrection of Lazarus. And one has to wonder, why did Jesus cry when he knew he was about to resurrect Lazarus? He had even already told Martha that. Jesus cried because he was experiencing empathy. He could feel the pain of Mary, Martha and all the others who loved Lazarus and were mourning him as well as his own pain at his loss. The scripture says when Jesus saw Mary and the Jews who came with her weeping, “he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved”. After asking where Lazarus was entombed, he began to weep. He joined all of Lazarus’ family and friends in their sorrow even as he knew he was going to end that sorrow by resurrecting Lazarus.

To me, this shows Jesus’ full humanity more than almost anything else. 
Theologian and Catholic Priest Richard Rohr says, “In Jesus, God reveals to us that God is not different from humanity. Thus, Jesus’ most common and almost exclusive self-name is “The Human One” or “Son of Humanity.” He uses the term dozens of times in the four Gospels. Jesus’ reality, his cross, is to say a free “yes” to what his humanity daily asks of him.”

After Lazarus’ death, being fully human for Jesus meant being there for and with his friends and family - feeling with them, which is what empathy is.

This, however, is not the only time that Jesus weeps. He also weeps as he reaches Jerusalem riding in on a colt in Luke 19 just before he reaches the Temple and drives out those who were selling things there saying in verse 46 “It is written “My house shall be a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers.” In this scripture he foreshadows the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. In verses 41-44 it says, “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. “
Here Jesus is not crying with empathy but with frustration and sympathy. He cannot connect to them empathetically because they have not listened, they have not recognized what Jesus has been teaching. And what was he teaching, what do they need to recognize? “The things that make for peace.”

Jesus always cares, always loves: feeling with us when we let him in and feeling sympathy for us when we don’t. 
Father Richard continues, “ It seems we Christians have been worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing his journey. The worshiping feels very religious; the latter just feels human and ordinary. We are not human beings on a journey toward Spirit; we are already spiritual beings on a journey toward becoming fully human, which for some reason seems harder—precisely because it is so ordinary.”

Jesus showed us both what it means to be fully human and to be fully divine. While we are not divine, we can live into Jesus’ model of being fully human. We can do that journey. 

Joyce Rupp in her daily meditation book, Fragments of Your Ancient Name, gives 365 names for God, the one for March 12 is “One Who Weeps” partially inspired by the passage from John that we read today as well as the Luke passage. Hear her reflection:
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Scripture tells twice of your weeping. But undoubtedly there were other times besides your tears for a friend entombed and a heartless city swept up in selfishness. Surely your tender tears continue to emerge as you look upon this hurting planet today. Tears for children who are brutally betrayed and every person’s wrenching desolation, Tears for the world’s greed and plunder and the careless way we treat one another. 

I don’t know about you, but it is not uncommon for me to start crying at the news. Watching the continued war in Ukraine and the attacks on Gaza, my heart breaks with concern and worry for everyone involved: the Ukranians, Russians, Palestinians and Israelis. Seeing the continued acts of prejudice, violence, hatred, and cruelty in our country and world, I am saddened and frustrated like Jesus was with Jerusalem. I want there to be peace but I sometimes feel like those useless, dry bones thinking what can I do? I feel lost in the wilderness of my own challenges, let alone the world’s and I am not sure of the way out. 

But then I pause, take a deep breath and sit with God. I sit with my questions. What can I do for x situation and y situation? I sit and breathe, pray and listen. And a lot of the time I don’t get an answer and I learn to sit with that too. I learn to live with the questions and the mystery. With enough prayer and meditation, it gets a little bit easier to not have the answers but to trust in the possibility - to remember that in all of my feelings, I am not alone. If I let God in, I can be reassured by the empathy - the shared feelings of sadness, frustration, even anger and I can remember that I am not alone on this journey but walking through the wilderness with God. 

And sometimes, I can feel God breathing new life into me, inspiring me to do something, to change something. But I can only feel God’s breath of energy, God’s guidance, when I make the room for it, when I quiet my mind and heart to listen, to feel, to see God’s outstretched hand, to see the tears that God is crying with us and for us. 

And it is then that I remember that we cry for a lot of reasons. We cry in frustration, sadness and anger, but we also cry tears of joy and love and amazement as I am sure that Mary, Martha and all those mourning Lazarus did when Jesus resurrected him. Isn’t it strange that the very thing we do in our negative emotions, we also do in our most positive ones? Maybe but maybe not. Instead, might tears of joy be a resurrection of sorts? A washing away of the worry, sorrow and all the negatives?

Now that I think about it, I do remember hearing that my father cried at least once, but they were tears of joy. My maid of honor bet my father $5 that he would choke up at my wedding. Dad confidently took that bet but as we all processed out at the end of the ceremony, he was caught on video handing Joanne a $5 bill, while wiping his eyes. 

​Pastor Michelle Fountain

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