"Weeping with Jesus" John 11:17-37

What is the shortest verse in the Bible? The answer: John 11:35. The verse says simply, "Jesus wept." It's actually a problematic verse. If he knew he was going to raise his good friend Lazarus, why is he crying? And why did he let them suffer like that? Part of this I could write off as John being a good story-teller, sharing it with us in such a way as to raise the tension and interest for what is about to happen. But the hurt and grief in both verses 21 & 32 is one I have heard over and over throughout my ministry.

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Particularly in tragic deaths of the young, people will ask, "Where was God in all this?" When I do a teenage or young adult funeral I always feel that God and the gospel are on trial. In every one of those experiences, the only resurrection I could offer was life beyond the grave, what Mary said in verse 24.

But this is not the only time that Jesus wept. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and its resistance to his message. There is strong evidence that Jesus wept at the cross including the fourth word from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He, too, experienced the apparent absence of God. Yes, he was quoting Psalm 22:1, but that doesn't make it any less intense. In the first case, Christ weeps because people will not respond to his initiative of love and they will suffer deeply because they do not (in just a generation,the Romans invaded Jerusalem leaving a horrible path of death and destruction). He is unable to control people's responses. In the second case, he experiences a sense of abandonment and endures extreme pain that actually kills him earlier than the other crucified ones.

Some preachers have said that Jesus wept at Lazarus' grave because of the lack of faith of the people. I don't buy it. What if he is identifying with their grief and pain just like he identified with the sinfulness of people and their helplessness to change themselves at his baptism? The weeping Jesus is for me an important image. Then when we question or feel abandoned, we know that he has been there. I still think that Jesus weeps with us. In Isaiah 53, the suffering servant (in whom Christians see an amazing picture of what Jesus went through) is a "man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." In Hebrews 4:14-16, Jesus is the high priest who goes into heaven still able to sympathize with our weaknesses and our griefs.

Sometimes I think our empty crosses in Protestant churches are a problem. They allow us to jump too quickly to victory and ignore the suffering Christ. Then we have no one to suffer with. We never weep alone. We weep with Jesus.