You may have noticed that our lessons for today from Revelation and from the Gospel of John both involve tears. In one passage Jesus weeps. In the other, God wipes away tears from His children’s eyes.
All of us can relate to the idea of crying. We’ve all done it at some time in our lives. Of course some people cry easier than others and people cry for different reasons.
“You don’t love me anymore,” said one poor guy’s wife as she turned on the waterworks. “When you see me crying, you never ask why.”
“I am sorry, darling,” he said, “but that sort of question has already cost me an awful lot of money.”
I like something that comedienne Pam Stone once said. She said, “Men and women have always had problems relating. As children, men were told, ‘Be a man. Don’t cry!’ and women were told, ‘Let it out. Cry, you’ll feel better!’”
Then Pam Stone adds this interesting thought, “And that’s why as adults, women become very emotional and men become snipers.” (1)
A wise observation. Crying is often a healthy reaction to a stressful situation.
Dr. Steve Stephens tells about a man named Pete. Pete, says Dr. Stephens, was a man’s man. Nothing ever got him down. When his marriage failed, he scoffed, “You win some and you lose some.” When he lost his job of ten years because of “corporate downsizing,” he bragged that he’d finally found his freedom. But when his mother passed away of cancer, Pete’s tough facade crumbled. He cried like a baby, feeling vulnerable and abandoned.
As they talked about this experience, Pete told Dr. Stephens that his mother never once told Pete she loved him and that he could not remember one time she’d hugged him. He admitted that the wall of control he built around himself was just a way of protecting the ten‑year‑old little boy of his childhood who’d cried himself to sleep each night. However, as Pete finally faced the reality of his mother’s death, he admitted his wounds. And at that moment, says Dr. Steve Stephens, Pete became real. (2)
There is healing in tears. People cry for different reasons.
John’s Gospel contains the shortest verse in the Bible. It consists of only two words, but those two words are most memorable. I’m referring, of course, to John 11:35, which reads simply, “Jesus wept.”
You know the story. A man named Lazarus was sick. He was the brother of Mary and Martha. They lived in the village of Bethany. They were friends of Jesus. So when these two sisters realized that Lazarus was near death, they sent word to the Master. They wanted him to intervene, to save their brother.
For some reason, Jesus and his disciples did not immediately heed their summons. They stayed two more days where they were and then they returned to Judea, which was a two-day journey. This is important. We are told that there was an ancient belief that the life force of a dead person’s body stayed in close proximity for 3 days, then there was no hope of life. John tells us in two places (Verses 17 and 39) that Lazarus had been in the tomb for 4 days. This gives added emphasis to the expectation that, before Jesus intervened, Lazarus was beyond any possible hope of being revived. (3)
When Jesus arrives at Bethany, it is Mary who reaches him first. She falls at his feet and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Then we come to that most touching scene. When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
And here’s where we read, “Jesus wept.”
Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
Jesus did love Lazarus. And he loved Mary and Martha.
Jesus is always moved when someone he loves is in distress. Jesus wasn’t crying because Lazarus had died. Jesus knew that death was nothing to be afraid of. Death is part of God’s plan. It is important for us to realize that Jesus did not raise Lazarus from the dead in order to give Lazarus a few more years on this earth. He raised Lazarus in order to glorify his Father.
Mary was right. If Jesus had been there, he could have kept Lazarus from dying, and he knew he could bring Lazarus back. Jesus wasn’t crying because Lazarus had died. He cried in response to the hurt in Mary’s heart. She hurt and therefore he hurt.
We do not live in an impersonal universe. It may seem that way at times. To the person with no faith the universe is simply a cold, impersonal piece of machinery that is governed by certain unchangeable laws. But those who trust Christ know that we are not alone in this universe. There is one who sees and sympathizes with our distress. Or as we read in Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses . . .” Jesus understands our pain.
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked a Ryder rental truck filled with explosives in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The resulting explosion killed 168 people and destroyed the entire north face of the building.
Across the street from the bombed out Federal Building there stands a memorial of that terrible day. On a corner adjacent to the memorial is a nine foot sculpture of Jesus. But this statue is not one of a stony Jesus with arms out wide like you may have seen in the Ozarks or in Brazil. No, this is a nine foot statue of Jesus with his face in his hands, turned slightly away from where this act of terror took place. The plaque reads, “And Jesus Wept.” (4)
Jesus does weep. There are actually three places where we read of Jesus weeping. One is beside the tomb of Lazarus. A second is on Palm Sunday as Jesus approached Jerusalem. Jesus wept over the city because of the unbelief of its citizens (Luke 19:41). The third time was in Gethsemane. The writer of Hebrews describing Christ’ passion, says that Jesus “offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death” (Heb. 5:7). Ironically, Jesus might have avoided crucifixion if he had not raised Lazarus. For some of the Jerusalem crowd, restoring Lazarus to life was the final straw that convinced the religious elite that Jesus was too dangerous to continuing living. Jesus always weeps when someone he loves is in distress.
Even more importantly, Jesus has the power to confront and to defeat death. After Jesus wept, the people who were present said, “See how he loved him!” Then Jesus went to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus voiced a prayer. Then he called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” At this command Lazarus came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” And Jesus demonstrated once and forever his power over death and the grave.
Rev. Shannon J. Kershner, a Presbyterian pastor, tells of a parishioner who was battling the demon of deep depression. Some of you know what that is like. You feel like you are sitting at the bottom of a deep hole. It is dark and big and you feel so small.
Kershner’s parishioner was sitting there in the pit, feeling betrayed and angry with herself and with God. Kershner was fairly fresh out of seminary and had become well acquainted with the Lament Psalms those psalms in the Bible that let it all hang out in regards to anger and frustration with God. She pulled a few of them out and began to read them with this woman. She said, “See? What you feel is right here in Scripture. It is faithful to feel this way. These psalms help remind us that God is in the pit with us. Even when you feel God’s absence, God’s presence still covers you.”
Kershner said she was trying to speak faithfully and truthfully to this woman. But the woman looked up at her and said through her tears, “Shannon, I don’t want a God who will sit with me in the pit. I want a God who will pull me out of it.” (5)
And we can appreciate her lament. There are times we want more than comfort. We want action. We want someone who can call us to come out of the tomb of our affliction and unbind us and set us free.
The Mayo Brothers, Doctors Will and Charles, were founders of the world-famed Mayo Clinics. Said Dr.Will: “I have seen patients that were dead by all standards. We knew they could not live. But I have seen a minister come to the bedside and do something for [a patient] that I could not do, although I have done everything in my professional power. But something touched some immortal spark in him and in defiance of medical knowledge and materialistic common sense, that patient LIVED!” (6)
It doesn’t happen often, such literal healing. And why should it? Even Lazarus wasn’t resurrected in the same way Jesus was. He wasn’t given that new perfect spiritual body that we all one day will be given. Lazarus was simply restored to this life temporarily. Eventually his body would wear out and he would die again. But Christ demonstrated his compassion for all who suffer, and he demonstrated his power to restore life even in the most hopeless of situations.
The raising of Lazarus is a reminder that there will come a time when there will be no more pain or sorrow; there will come a time when there will be no more tears. Why? Because at the heart of the universe is a God who loves us.
That is the testimony of John in the Revelation. He writes, “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Two images ought to stick in our minds forever. Jesus standing beside a friend’s tomb weeping. And even more striking, the eternal God of all creation wiping the tears from His children’s eyes. Cold, impersonal universe? I don’t think so.
Let me close with an interesting story. A woman named Ella Wilcox once witnessed a woman sitting quietly by herself sobbing very noticeably in the middle of a train car. At first, Ella was a little bothered by the persistent weeping, but then she noticed another passenger in the car an older gentlemen who was sitting near the rear of the car. He was telling funny stories to the passengers sitting around him. Everybody smiled and chuckled along with the old man. After a while, some of the other passengers in the car started moving. They were getting up from their seats in the front, near the crying woman, and gravitating toward the back near the man telling the funny stories. Out of this experience, Ella Wilcox wrote these well-known words: “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone.” (7)
When you are weeping, you may feel alone, terribly alone, but you are not. There is One who weeps with you. There is One who will one day wipe away every tear from your eyes. This One has power over life and death. This One is Jesus Christ and he has the power to call you forth from your tomb of tears and give you life once again.
1. Judy Brown, Squeaky Clean Comedy (Andrews McMeel, 2005).
2. The Wounded Warrior (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 2006), p. 33.
3. Bruce J. Malina, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).
4. Dr. Mickey Anders First Christian Church. Cited by Dean Kennedy, http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/real-men-do-eat-quiche-dean-kennedy-sermon-on-compassion-52697.asp.
5. www.woodhavenpres.org/Sermons/03‑13‑05.pdf
6. Ken Winter, http://www.auburnpresbyterian.org/pdf/sermons/Healing_Sermon_20070119.pdf.
7. Scott Bayles, http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/jesus-wept-scott-bayles-sermon-on-anxiety-135182.asp.