jesus wept

Go get your Bible right now.

Ok, now turn to John 11 and read it. Go ahead. It'll just take you a few minutes.

Did you see that? It was amazing, and I think you missed it. I missed it for the first 21 years of my life.

What did I miss? I missed Jesus' passionate love for Lazarus and the compassion and sorrow and grief he felt for Mary and Martha. But I must be an idiot right? How could I miss that? That's the point of the story, right? Jesus raised Lazarus from the grave to show His love for Lazarus. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I've been missing the most beautiful part of this story for more than 21 years

I will explain because perhaps you are as bewildered as I was. I've been reading the book of John very slowly while I've been in England allowing each chapter to really sink in over several days of reading. I had read John 11 twice before anything revolutionary hit me. And then came then.

We start at the beginning. Lazarus is sick, and Jesus is sent for. Jesus' response to this news? "This sickness will not end in death, but for the glory of God." Note this. Jesus apparently has a firm grip on the future, and as readers we interpret this as meaning that Jesus knows that He will raise Lazarus. I think this is a correct reading, and this is confirmed in verse 11 when Jesus says, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep." This is clear enough. Jesus knows exactly what is going to happen. He is going to go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from the dead.

So we have all this build up. Being thousands of years in the future, we are hurrying to the part where Lazarus walks out of the tomb bound hand and foot. Jesus has been saying the whole time that He is going to raise Lazarus. He tells Mary and Martha that their brother will live again. Go to verse 34. Jesus asks to be taken to the tomb. What does he do there? Verse 35: "Jesus wept."

Wait...

What?

Jesus wept?

I've known this verse my entire churched life. It's one of those great jokes in Sunday School. Q: "What's the shortest verse in the Bible?" A: "John 11:35 'Jesus wept.'" I know Jesus weeps. I've even heard lessons and lectures and sermons about it. "Jesus weeps, therefore we know He was human." "Jesus experienced the full realm of human emotion." Blah blah blah. We've heard all this before. But what does this mean?

Jesus wept.

We've established that Jesus knows that Lazarus is coming back, so why does He start crying just before the big show? I do not cry when someone goes away if I know that they will be back in just a few minutes. Here is Jesus -- one with God, all powerful and all knowing -- weeping because His friend has died and He knows that He'll be able to talk to His friend in just a couple of minutes. Can you see what is amazing about this story? This is what I've missed for 21 years. None of this seems to make any sense. Here is where the revolution is for me. Jesus was so moved by grief and death that he wept even when He knew he was going to end it.

I think there were two reasons for Jesus' tears both of which profoundly influence my daily life.

First, death is the ultimate perversion of the created order. We were made to live forever in communion with God, but we screwed it up. We aren't in the garden anymore. Death is the punishment for our sin, and death did not exist in the original and perfect world. Death is the great curse on the earth. It is the thing that most clearly and finally reminds us of our sin. Jesus weeps because He understands that. Even though He knows that Lazarus is going to be walking and talking in the very near future, He weeps because of the great perverseness of death. He weeps because all of us have to face it, even though for some of us it will result in our reunification with God. He weeps because He Himself will have to face death, and He will face not only physical death but spiritual death as well to take the punishment for our sins (Eloi, Eloi. Lama Sabachthai?)

Second, Jesus understands grief. Grieving is something that we as modern people do not understand. It is especially something that modern Christians do not understand. Consider this. (I will speak from my own experience but I will use the pronoun "we" because I suspect you have experienced the same thing.) Christians like to make everything very smooth, or at least keep the appearance of smoothness. We do not like the up-and-down path which most of our spiritual lives follow, and we work hard to cover up such fluctuations. Furthermore, most of us interpret these as lack of faith. If someone we are close to dies or is sick or moves away, we have to be "strong" about it. We have to be sure everyone can see how strong our faith is. "I trust God so much that this doesn't bother me." When we are confronted with great evil, we won't get upset because "God is in control" and "works all things together for good." We have all the answers down pat. We crossed our Christian lives with action movies and came out unfeeling.

We think our faith must be weak if we are upset by the evil of the world. This is a lie. Only through faith are our eyes opened to the horrors of the world. This macho facade we put on does not show that we are strong. It shows that we are dispassionate about living. It shows that we are numb. We have lost sight of God, Christ, our Savior. Our lives have become a study in monotony instead of a great epic of love and battle and rescue and romance. I like that my walls are solid colors, but paintings are far more exciting. We are walking around dead inside, and we call it great faith. When did we relate this stoic exterior with spiritual fullness? These two do not belong together.

Christ was passionate. Everything He did was filled with passion. He loved, ate, spoke, died with passion. We have lost it. I know I have. Grief is a symptom of a passionate life. If we cared about things, if we were actually moved by the evil in the world, then we would grieve. Weep over evil. Mourn and cry out to God about the great perversions which we see everyday. If you cannot see that evil, pray that God will give you discernment--that He would unclose your eyes and make you feel again. I need this. My life depends on it.

Pray for and with each other. Read the Gospel and be reminded of Christ's passion. As we begin to understand how much God loves us, our response will be a more passionate life. Burn and burn and burn and burn.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." ~Theodore Roosevelt

"Therefore, prepare you minds for action, be self-controlled, fix your hope fully on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." ~1 Peter 1:13