I’m not a Muslim because of two words. I have friends who follow the teachings of Mohammed regarding Allah, and I love them, but could never take their path.
These two words safeguard me from turning to agnosticism or atheism. I can’t fall away from the faith because of the way these two words are put together. I can admire some of the kinder gentler tenets and proverbs of various eastern religions but would rue the day before entrusting my eternal destiny to them.
Here they are, in all their glory. Sit before them and be amazed:
Jesus wept.
Call me an old softie, but I quite like a deity who feels what I feel. Isaiah promised a Messiah who “suffers when we suffer” (Isa 63:9). Paul didn’t say God merely pities us, he said the Father spills over with mercy and embraces us with smothering comfort (2 Cor 1:3).
Jesus is no remote deity, watching suffering from a safe distance. He is the God who inhabits our suffering.– Rebecca McLaughlin
John, specifically, zeros in on the “I AM” episodes of Jesus in his gospel. When you see “I AM” in scripture your mind probably goes to burning bushes and almightiness, shoes-off zone, time’s-up for oppressive regimes, and the like. You envision an all-caps “LORD” not the lower case kind.
John’s gospel shows us the I AM-ness of the Almighty also allows space for himself to weep. Anger from deity we get, but sorrow? Tears?
Jesus is called “Man of Sorrows” in Isaiah and our Lord is not the least bit embarrassed by that designation. The powerful “I AM” is moved to tears and that moves me. As the Holy Spirit moved John along to pen the words to his gospel, he let the aged apostle know he wanted this most vulnerable part of Christ’s earthly ministry published for all the see.
“Jesus wept.”
First he snorted like a Roman warhorse, then he sniffled and sobbed. A lot of folk prefer their Messiah to be all thunder and lightning and calling down of fire. Others can only stomach a gentle and lowly Savior.
With Jesus you get both, but mostly the Jesus you get in the gospels is the One who enters into our pain.
There are two times in the gospels we find Jesus weeping. Here, and in Luke.
Jesus doesn’t just “feel your pain.” He also hates it. He hates what it does to you. He sees the long game, that every eye will be dried one day and there will be no more pain, but he also meets us in our most painful moments with mercy and justice in the here and now.
In “The Lion King” when Simba returns after a long time away and sees what Scar has done to the kingdom, plunging it into death and despair, there is an alarming look of righteous anger that clouds his countenance.
That’s what’s going on just before the dam inside Jesus of Nazareth breaks.
Weeping Jesus sees the enemy of this world wreaking havoc on his creation, disturbing the order. The same emotion Jesus felt when he saw the court of the Gentiles being barred and barricaded by hucksters, charlatans and snake oil salesmen, preventing the people from gathering to worship, is the emotion of this anger he felt outside Bethany. If he had had a whip in his hands he would’ve been swinging it at the enemy.
I’ll follow a God like that anywhere and all the way into eternity.
Selah, beloved.
