A God Who Weeps
Dear Friend,
There’s this story in John’s gospel about Jesus’s dear friend, Lazarus, who was severely sick. When Jesus found out he was dying, instead of hightailing it to his bedside, Jesus twiddled his thumbs and took care of other non-pressing matters. And when Lazarus died, Jesus then made his way to his friend’s home. He was met with questions like, “If you had only been here sooner, he wouldn’t have died.”
How real is that question right now? Right now there is pain and sorrow. Right now mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers ask Jesus, “Why didn’t you come sooner? Why did he have to die? Why are you letting them attack us? You could have rescued us, so why didn’t you?”
Because Jesus is the resurrection—he knows all things with heavenly joy and what’s to come—Jesus could have met the unbearable grief of the moment with trite phrases like, “everything happens for a reason” or “why are you still crying, he’s in a better place” or “heaven needed another angel” or “God will never give you more than you can handle” or even, “God’s still in control.”
But he didn’t. Because Jesus isn’t just the resurrection. Jesus is the life. He is the now and the not yet. Instead Jesus felt the entirety of emotional grief. He allowed himself to feel what they felt. Even with fully knowing all things, he felt the fullness of sadness.
Jesus wept.
I wonder about Jesus weeping. How much had he carried for so long? I wonder if Jesus needed a good cry? I wonder if Jesus had been holding the pain of the world, the hatred of people towards themselves and each other and the reality of death for so long that when his friend died, he lost it. He needed a good cry. His body needed to weep. When you feel the pain of the world and the calling to meet that pain with love, and guidance and direction, sometimes you just need a good cry. To release. To let go. To feel it all.
Jesus wept over their pain and his pain. Jesus wept because things weren’t right in the world even though he was in it. He wept because suffering and death existed and it never should have. He wept because he loved. He wept because he was present. He wept because he felt what they were feeling.
Jesus looked at the people he loved and asked them to take him to where Lazarus was buried.
He wept and said, “Take me to where it hurts the most.”
Take me to where hope seems bleak.
Take me to where the pain and grief and sadness and anger and rage and death reside.
It’s like Jesus is looking at those suffering in hospital beds and those burying their children and those insisting that black lives matter and those fleeing their homes and country and those hoping for resurrection and hoping for all things to be made right and hungering for justice and righteousness to flow down like an everlasting stream and says to them, take me to where it hurts most.
Where is Jesus now? He’s where it hurts most.
He’s standing by the bombed areas. His Spirit is whispering comfort and truth over those hurting and separated from their families. Jesus is present to that pain and weeps alongside the justice seekers and mourners and those being arrested for protesting their country.
Where is Jesus now? He’s where it hurts most. He follows you to that spot in your marriage. He’s listening to the pain of your addicted child. He is lead by you to that area of loneliness and abandonment and loss and temptation. He abides with you to every wound you’ve ever felt as you take him to where it hurts most.
Because Christ is with you in life and in resurrection. Christ’s constant presence holds you in hard times, brings comfort and healing in difficult situations, and provides a new way of seeing hope—a new perspective of who God is.
The God who weeps.
My friend, where does it hurt most right now? Can you invite Jesus into that tender and raw spot? Perhaps when you do, you’ll find the same power and might that raised Lazarus from the dead can gently bring new life and healing where it hurts most.
With (love),
Bethany