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Reading: John 11:35
Over two millennia ago, in a small town called Bethlehem, a baby boy was born, named Jesus. He wasn’t given the honor of a decent birth, just a feeding trough filled with hay and the company of a rather bizarre band composed of an unwed couple, a handful of dirty shepherds, and some noisy animals. Only alive a short while, Jesus wept.
Not too long after this, strange men came bearing bizarre gifts that were probably none too exciting for a newborn visit the parents. The bearded strangers bent down close to the boy, one-by-one, and the presence of unfamiliar faces alarm him. Jesus wept.
The strange men warned his parents that danger was on the horizon, and so they left the comforts of the only home he knew. He found it hard to understand, and harder to cope. It was hot and stuffy and sandy and, quite frankly, dangerous territory for a new mother and a baby boy, even with Daddy there to watch out for them. Jesus wept.
Jesus grew up, like all children do. He made friends, but children can be very cruel. Whether it was his hair or his eyes or the way he walked, Mary suddenly found Jesus running into her arms, and through the tears he told her everything they’d said. She tried to tell him that everything would be alright, but it’s hard to reason with a small child. Jesus wept.
A few more years have passed. The boy Jesus and his parents have made their usual trip to the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus got lost in the crowd and his parents went looking for him in a mad rush. This is not the last time it happened, but it will be a few years before he is found in His Father’s House with the teachers. For now, he’s still quite young. He was lost and alone. Jesus wept.
A young man, Jesus thought back on his life before he went off into the world to do his works among the people. It was a time full of many stories and important moments. They were private things, and he would not be who he was without them. He felt joy well up in him. Jesus wept.
Jesus was baptized by John, in the River Jordan, when a glorious sign appeared in the form of a dove. He heard his Father’s voice for what may very well have been the first time, loud and clear. He couldn’t believe it was really happening. His purpose was recognized in the most humbling way possible. Jesus wept.
Jesus ministered for some time when the news came. A close friend of his had died. Lazarus, practically his own brother, gone. Mary showed him the place, and he lost it, if only for a second. Jesus wept.
Jesus raged at the money-changers in the Temple. He flipped tables and whipped at them with a rope. His energy spent, he collapsed on the steps outside the Temple and cradled his head in his hands. What was the point? Was he doing anything? Jesus wept.
During the start of that last week, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a humble animal. He knew what was to come, and to see the people cheering him on only caused him more pain. If only they could see it, he thought, they would be somewhere else, looking up at the sky, deep in thought. He bore the ironic sadness alone. Jesus wept.
On Gethsemane, our Lord and Savior made one last desperate plea with the Almighty. He begged for his life, pleaded, feeling he had no business with this cup. And when he needed them most, his friends fell asleep on the job. It is just too much to take, everyone deserting him when he needed them most – even God. Jesus wept.
Even during his final moments, Jesus experienced doubt. It is the hardest, most painful thing he has ever had to endure, and he can’t fathom why it had to go this way. He cried out to God, unable to bear the emotional weight of it, “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus wept.
Mary went to the tomb, only to find it very much empty. She mistakes the very man she is there to see for a gardener. He called her by name, and she replied in kind. He visited others, mistaken and doubted, but unable to deny the eventual effect he had on them. He could finally see the seeds that he’d planted beginning to grow. He gave charges and commands to his followers, and watched as they went about their work. Jesus wept.
We gathered here today to say goodbye to someone who had no right to leave so early. Jonathan Wright was young, far too young, and far too promising. I knew him as well as I knew anyone else in this church. But after today, the picture is so much clearer. That’s part of the point, I suppose. When someone leaves, we don’t want to merely meet and think deep thoughts about the meaning of life. We want to tell stories. That is what we do, at the end of the day. For all our philosophy and theology and psychology and sociology, we are ultimately story-tellers. It is the oldest art of all, and the dearest to our hearts.
That is why the Bible can be so important to us at times like this. It tells us as much about ourselves as it does about God – and this is perfectly ingrained in the stories of Jesus. Some of the stories I just told are found nowhere in its pages, and others were embellished. But they fit, because Jesus was a man, and yet he was God.
There are many images out there of different “kinds” of Jesus. My old pastor used to have this painting of a Jesus laughing brightly, as though he had just thought of something so beautifully wonderful he couldn’t help but laugh. Every culture has some interpretation of Jesus to help them better relate to our Savior – African Jesus, Korean Jesus, Young Jesus, “Hip” Jesus. Today, we greet another image into our midst, the Jesus who weeps.
It is at times like these that we wonder where God was. It is a constant refrain, and one that does not necessarily have an easy answer. I wish I could say otherwise. In my seven years of higher education, I was involved in the mourning of at least ten people, almost all of them just as hard as this one, just as… stupid. Where was God, we would ask. Why couldn’t he stop that drunk, or that bus, or that icy road patch, or that bullet?
But I want us to look at things a bit differently. It’s not even that we’re asking the wrong question. It’s absolutely okay to wonder where God was. It’s even right to look for a miracle. We’ve been doing it since Genesis.
And there was a miracle! John also tells us “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” God became us. And opened up the possibility to experience everything life had to offer. And as we all know, life hit God hard. In and through Jesus, God experienced all the heartache, loss, and pain, that each and every one of us knows firsthand.
That is what can be so powerful about the image of Jesus weeping. Because that’s God weeping too. That is the miracle – the solidarity of the Creator. The knowledge that the same one who formed you once underwent to the ultimate sacrifice to understand the Creation.
There will be days of sorrow to come. There will also be days of joy. Days of nothing at all and days of far too much. Treasure them all equally. Treasure the laughter, and also the tears. You have each other, and you have your stories. Treasure them too. But most of all, treasure the knowledge that you are not alone. There is nothing new under the sun, not even for God. Because even Jesus wept.
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