“Jesus wept” John 11:35

The shortest verse in the entire Bible. One that is easy to remember and recite back. One could see why this would be a boys favorite verse growing up. Most of my peers would recite 1tim 4:12 “do not let anyone look down on you because of your age”. I mean we were in middle school so this verse seemed to hit a cord with a lot of my peers. Another memorized verse is John 3:16. Even if someone did not go to church regularly there is a good chance most people would at least know the basics of this verse. “God so loved the world that he gave us his only son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but receive eternal life”. I could go on and on with memory verses but “Jesus wept” has and always will be my favorite.

As I have grown up this verse has meant so much more to me than “an easy verse to remember”. For instance, let us start with who is this verse talking about? Jesus. YES! that was easy! the first word of the verse gives it away. That would have been a bit more difficult if the verse started with “He”. But thankfully we do not need to go back and read further in who “He” is. The first word tells us the person we are talking about is Jesus.  Seems pretty straightforward. But how about we dig deeper a little bit. What do we KNOW about Jesus? First for those who are followers of His will profess that He is God (not a place for the debate “He never claimed to be God”. Because He did, a cursory reading of Daniel in regard to the phrase “man of God” will prove He did call Himself God). What are some attributes we know about God and therefore Jesus? God lives in Heaven and He knows all things and is able to do all thing! For the purpose here those three are very important to understand.

Second and just as easy of a question as the first, what is Jesus doing? Here we see that He is crying. Again no reason to read further than these 2 words to find our answer. So we see in this moment of time the one who is God in the flesh who knows everything and has lived in Heaven since before the beginning of time is crying!

To help speed this along because I do not want this to become a bible study. We can read that Jesus is crying over the fact that his friend Lazarus has died or that he is crying out of sympathy when he approaches Lazarus’ sisters.  What is amazing to me is that a few verses earlier Jesus was approached to go see Lazarus earlier so that He could save him. But Jesus refuses to go. He actually says before John 11:35 that Lazarus’s sickness would not end in death but stayed where he was for another 2 days before going to see his friend.

Pay attention now do not miss this point. Jesus KNEW what was going to happen to Lazarus! Jesus knew Lazarus would not stay dead. Jesus approaches the tomb where Lazarus was laid and instead of rebuking everyone there for their unbelief (which He had done before) He joins in their sorrow. The God of all creation in this one moment meets Mary and Martha in their sorrow and weeps with them! Yes He knew what He was going to do, yes He knew Lazarus was with His father at this moment, and yes He knew He would be the one to raise Lazarus from the dead. But NONE of that mattered. The God we serve proves He is not distant and He proves He enters into the situation with us. Mary and Martha are not alone here the very man who breathed life into their lungs is standing there with them crying over the loss of Lazarus. We do not serve a distant God, we do not serve a God who does not care, and we do not serve an incapable God! Jesus is able to relate to us in a way no one else can. Because He was the one who created us AND He is the one who lives our life with us. No one understands what you might be going through more than He does.

What else do we see here? Jesus is 33 years old at this time. He is 1 week away from becoming our eternal sacrificial lamb. We know in the coming week He will be beaten, spat upon, mocked, stripped naked, humiliated, and that His own father would turn His eyes away from His own son for the first time in all eternity. His own followers would abandon Him (except John) and He would be sold as a common thief. Why? so that way we could never have to know what it would mean to live without the love of God. So I ask in today’s culture what do we consider “manly”? Is it the one who stands up for those that can not? Is it the man who fights against injustice? How strong is that man if when the pressure gets to be too much they quit? As a society, we praise and honor those people who do not retreat when things get tough. We hear news stories about those who come to the aid and service of the less fortunate. And we do it all without shedding one tear. Crying is a sign of weakness. Or is it?

Crying shows empathy, it shows that not only am I helping you but I also care about what happens to you. Someone who does not cry has hardened their hearts to hurt them. Usually, the people with the hard hearts without emotion are portrayed as the villain in most movies and TV shows. But here Jesus IS crying. Giving us an example of what it means to be a man! So what if Jesus wept? It means so much more to me that He did cry than if He met Mary and Martha and exclaimed: “I got this”.