Tributaries: The Tears of Jesus and The Power Of The Church
Last week, I broke on a Zoom call. It wasn’t the incessant blue light from my screen or the ache for actual human interaction. I was listening to my friend and mentor, Michael Carrion, describe the pain of the people that he formerly served as pastor in the South Bronx. Carrion, who recently transitioned the church he founded into the capable hands of leaders that he help train, now works for Redeemer City To City. We were on a call of church planters and pastors and each of us was describing a little bit of our situation within the circumstances of the pandemic. Michael spoke of the 13,—slow down and read it again. Thirteen women and men.— 13 beautiful souls just their church, Promised Land Covenant Church, had lost to the virus. He detailed the painful realities of how people in the neighborhood where his church gathers, the South Bronx, which pandemic or no pandemic suffers an unjust amount of trauma and pain. He described how his people have been treated by the healthcare system, how the shelter in place laws have not simply been a minor inconvenience to his people confined to well-stocked and spacious homes.
And it just crushed me. I could have turned the video off, I could have hid behind the black box of my name but that didn’t seem right. So I just sat there, with my face in my small green-dot window to the world, weeping.
American Christians—and really Americans on whole—are not well-versed in lament. Everything within our culture trains us in a lifelong propaganda campaign to deny death and minimize suffering. But when a friend is on a Zoom call, bringing the reality that this virus is inflicting right through the walls of your comfortable shelter in place, it causes you ask anew the question, “God where are you?”
John 11
Martha
In John chapter 11, Jesus arrives at a funeral that’s already been going on for several days. Jesus’ friends, Martha and Mary, are foremost among the mourners as they are heartbroken over the loss of their dear brother, Lazarus. As Jesus approaches their house in the village of Bethany, Martha hears of his arrival and goes out to meet him. She says to him, with a mixture of faith and disappointment, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died. Or stated another way, “Jesus, where were you?”
Martha is trying to reason her way through this tragedy, she is looking on the bright side. Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha responds in perfect orthodoxy, “Yes, I know at the resurrection on the last day, Lazarus will live.” But she’s missing Jesus’ point. Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.” I am, the same name that was spoken to Moses when he asked the voice in the burning bush, the name that defies boundaries, is now speaking to Martha. This word has taken on flesh in the person of Jesus, the resurrection is not a fixed point in time but is very presence of the incarnate son.
Now I must press pause on the story because it’s quite likely that you have read this story before. Earlier on when Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick, but still alive, John 11 tells us that “though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (v. 6). All of this can feel a little robotic, as if Jesus is just going through the motions, “knowing the outcome.” I understand the impulse to view God’s sovereignty in the sense that he knows everything will happen. People often respond to moments of tragedy with cliches like “God wasn’t surprised” or “God has a plan.” And all of that is completely true. But, and don’t miss this, that is not the point that the biblical authors are trying to illustrate. As we go on in the story, can I invite you, to get in step with the cadence of the story? There is high drama here, This is not a foregone conclusion and Jesus will not speed the story along.
Mary
As we re-immerse ourselves in John 11. Jesus’ interaction with Martha has held the question in the background, what about Mary? Martha heard Jesus was coming and she ran to him, trying to make sense of the situation. Martha expresses her disappointment to Jesus, “Lord, if you would have been here…” but she is still able to face him. Mary, on the other hand, cannot even look at Jesus. Disappointment in God may sound like a lack of faithfulness but it truly is borne out of a profound sense of what God has done and who he has shown himself to be. Habakkuk prays as he watches his city crumble all around him, “Lord, we have heard of your great deeds, in our time do it again” (Habbakuk 3v2). Disappointment raises the question, “God we know you’re able, where are you?” And Jesus faces this deep disappointment from both Martha and Mary,
Jesus sends Martha to tell Mary that Jesus wants to see her. There is a beautiful gentleness in all of this. If you’ve ever had the sense that you have hurt someone, your impulse may be to want to rush in and fix it, but Jesus is allowing for the possibility that Mary does not want to see Jesus. So he sends Martha to invite her. Mary goes to Jesus and she falls at his feet (v. 32) and she expresses this same disappointment: “Lord if you would have been here my brother would not have died.” Remember how Jesus answered Martha? Martha was able to go and see Jesus, she still held some semblance of hope in Jesus (“even now”), even if that hope needed expanding.
But Mary. Mary is broken. Jesus doesn’t respond to her the same way. Jesus doesn’t try to fill the great chasm of her pain with any words at all. V. 33 says: “When Jesus saw her weeping…he was greatly disturbed in spirt and deeply moved.”
Jesus Wept.
And then, v. 35 tells us: Jesus began to weep. Jesus doesn’t fast-forward to the ending, he doesn’t assure Mary oh it’s all ok, it’s all part of some impersonal plan, he enters into her pain, he embraces his own pain (Lazarus was Jesus’ dear friend and is described in this chapter as the one he loves). Richard Hays remarks, “At Bethany, the incarnate word stood wordless.”
As Jesus weeps, the one who gave the vast oceans of saltwater their form now forms an ocean of love, the one who brings the rain to fall on the earth now waters the soil of Bethany with his sorrow, a microcosm of the endless heart of the Father confined to a few drops of salty tears. Makoto Fujimura remarks that all the mystery and beauty of the Gospel is found in that soggy dirt as Mary’s tears merge with Jesus’ to spring rivers of life.
And then Jesus asks his own version of the question—where?— “Where have you laid him?” Echoing the call of God in the garden to his wayward children, “Where are you?” He stands before the tomb, again “deeply moved.” Martha protests any opening of the tomb, “Lord he has been dead a long time”—or stated another way, “even this is too much for you.” But Jesus responds, “Martha, did I not tell you if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
And friends this is where this story meets ours today. Nicholas Wolterstorff in his lament for his dear son says, “It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought that meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor…Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.” We have to enter into the story, to feel the weight and the grief of this moment. NT Wright says that if Jesus was carrying the sorrows of the world on the cross then it is our call as Christians, the Church, “to express and embody the sorrow of God.”
It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought that meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor…Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son
Lament As The Way Forward
I get the impulse people have to rewind to the old normal or to fast-forward the forging of the new normal, to embrace the missional possibilities of this moment, to distract ourselves away from the hard realities that this pandemic has revealed and accelerated. But Jesus reveals to us that the Church’s vocation is to be a people of lament. A people who enter in to the grief of our world, who weep on behalf of the loss all around us. This is not because we need be endlessly sorrowful about the world, or pessimistic, or fatalistic, or hopeless. But rather, because as the tears of Jesus show us, there is power, beauty, and life in the tears of God.
Through tear-blurred eyes, Jesus asks the question “where have you laid him.” Out of , not in spite of, Jesus’ deep anguish comes a new possibility. Many of our most brilliant and cherished artists have been people who have been intimately familiar with suffering. Vincent Van Gogh, for instance, painted Starry Night with its darkened church lights and bright night sky from the confines of an insane asylum. Artists feel the weight of the world’s existence and transfigure it into beauty, their glory from their sorrow. The power of Jesus’ lament is that it is a light that shines in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome. The sorrow of Jesus is endowed with the love of God, the love that can, in the imagery of David Bentley Hart, harmonize any dissonance in the melody of creation or in the words of St. Paul, the love that “no height, no depth, not angels, demons, not life, nor death can ever separate us from…” (Romans 8).
Jesus is the ultimate artist, creating beauty out of sorrow, joy from weeping, resurrection from death. But he shows us that the way to newness is not in denial, not in hurry, it is not and end-run around the anguish and disappointment of the world, moving from mountaintop to mountaintop—rather, his way, the way of the cross and the tomb, is the path forged through the valley of the shadow of death.
Tributaries
I have cried many tears these past few weeks. I cry every Sunday morning, just sad that we cannot gather, sing, hug, share communion, and prayer. I cry when I think about our friends in places like Haiti. I cry when I hear the stories of my NYC pastor friends and the pain they are dealing with. I cry when I look to the future and consider all that we may be losing in this season. My tears feel so inadequate, so powerless. Maybe I’m like Martha and Mary, I just wish God would have been here and would have done something about it. But perhaps, like Martha and Mary also, I kneel in the shadow of one who loves this world, who loves my family and friends, who loves me more than I could ever love. Perhaps my tears are not the source but are merely the tributaries of the sorrow of God. Perhaps out of this sorrow new life will come forth.
Perhaps my tears are not the source but are merely the tributaries of the sorrow of God. Perhaps out of this sorrow new life will come forth.
The beauty of Lazarus raised to life is borne out of the sorrow of Jesus. Jesus can stand at the tomb of Lazarus and call out his name because he feels the weight of the tragedy and is not overwhelmed by it. We all want the latter, to stand firm and confident in the face of crisis, pain, and loss, but I think we often miss that the gateway to hope and joy, to resurrection and life is do be deeply moved by the pain of our world. The church will create new beauty and hope out of the depths of this pandemic, but only to the extent to which we are willing to enter into the pain of this moment.
Jesus wept. We should too.