When Jesus Wept
Seeing God in the Tears of Jesus
I remember walking down long hospital corridors with the wife and daughter. I had entered many unexpected situations as I served as a student chaplain at a hospital on the edge of Chicago, and this was no different. I walked with them from the reception area to the lower levels of the building where few ever went. Shadows crept along the walls, a visual accompaniment to our echoing footfalls and the silence each person carried.
A staff member met us at the end of the hallway, stiff and clinical, and opened the door to the hospital morgue where their beloved husband and father lay. As the wife and daughter entered, there was no background music to ease the awkward silence of death. Unsure what to do, I placed a hand on the wife’s shoulder. Looking back, I wonder whether I did that as much to comfort her as to brace myself before the blank, bare, and disconcerting look at pallid death. I read a psalm and prayed, not knowing what else to do in order to hold space before God with these mourning women. As I did that, the women’s gasping tears continued to roll down.
What makes you weep? Sometimes our tears mark our grief, like in the situation just mentioned, while other times we weep for joy at stabs of beauty and goodness that grip us with unexpected strength. There are other moments where hot tears break forth in frustration over some deep wrong or injustice we cannot seem to escape. These and so many more wide-ranging emotions beckon forth tears.
But what makes God weep? It may be a strange question, especially when we think of God as some sort of immovable being far away from our lives. The “unmoved mover” of certain philosophic traditions, however, is a far cry from the Christian God. In fact, there is a surprising range of emotional expression assigned to God when we read page after page of the Bible. Of special note is the ways in which God is moved deeply by our lives. The biblical commentator Alec Motyer writes that God shows “an astonishing sympathy and empathy, compassion and identification with human suffering.”[1]
Even more, when we consider Jesus as “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), it is worth paying attention to the moments recorded in Scripture when Jesus weeps. Each time Jesus weeps we encounter a different angle on the being of the Christian God.
Jesus Weeps at Lazarus’ Tomb (John 11:1-43)
We may be familiar with the fact that the shortest verse in our English New Testament is John 11:35, which reads, “Jesus wept.” This brief verse arises in the story of Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, who dies of unknown causes, but is eventually raised by Jesus. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus weeps. It is clear from the text that Jesus weeps simultaneously in grief over his friend’s death and also in anger over the impact of sin upon a fallen humanity and world. Jesus’ tears in this instance are of two types: tears of compassion over loss for His dear friends Mary and Martha and tears of frustration over death not being the way it is supposed to be.
Jesus Weeps Outside of Jerusalem (Luke 19:28-41; Matthew 23:37-39)
Traveling toward Jerusalem near the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus sends His disciples to gather a donkey for Him that He might ride into Jerusalem upon it. As Jesus draws near the Mount of Olives, there is a tense encounter where the crowd acclaims Him as Messiah, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38), even as the religious leaders urge Jesus to rebuke His followers from any form of blasphemy. Shortly after this exchange, we are told: “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it” (19:41). Jesus’ tears here seem to convey His longing for the people to be brought back to God; these are the tears of mercy. But we also find here the tears of anger in relation to the religious leaders who miss the point of who He is and seek to control everything; these are the tears of anger.
Jesus Weeps in the Garden of Gethsemane (Hebrews 5:7; Luke 22:39-46; Matthew 26:36-44)
In Hebrews 5:7, we read: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” The clearest connection to this description in the Gospel accounts is Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before His arrest and crucifixion. There, Jesus says to His closest friends: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). We are told that Jesus prayed with a force that manifested as “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Jesus’ tears here are marked by the intensity of the cosmic struggle between good and evil, between human fallenness and God’s divine purposes, between a human will bent toward itself and a divine will aiming at blessing for others. In this event we see two types of tears: first, tears of anguish over the intensity of the struggle and, second, tears of trust in which Jesus commends Himself and His situation into the Father’s hands.
Seeing God in Jesus’ Tears
If we want to know who God is and what God is like, we should look at who Jesus is and what Jesus is like. Through Jesus’ tears we encounter a vision of God. We see a God who is moved by compassion over human loss and grief. We see God’s frustration over the impact of sin and death on human experience that was made for more. We see our God moved by mercy over the plight of a world that needs God but often will not turn to God. We see God angered by the ways in which religion at times adds more barriers to those whom God seeks. We see God as One who mysteriously enters into the anguish of human experience through Jesus’ incarnation. And we see God showing the pathway of true humanity through humble trust in Jesus’ prayer before His trial and crucifixion.
As I stood with those weeping women in the hospital morgue so many years ago, perhaps it was not that I needed to bring God into that space through prayer and psalms, but that God was already there weeping with us. Perhaps it is true that even now Jesus, ascended to the right hand of the Father, not only intercedes boldly but also intercedes with tears over the world He loves more than we can understand.
[1] Alec Motyer quoted in David T. Lamb, The Emotions of God: Making Sense of a God Who Hates, Weeps, and Loves (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022), 95.