And When He Was Come Near, He Beheld the City, and Wept Over It

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it. There are only two instances in the Gospels that describe Jesus as weeping. Most everybody knows one, the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept”; that’s from John 11:35. But in today’s Gospel from St. Luke, we have the only other record of our Lord’s tears in the Gospels. This is, as you can probably guess from the context, right after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, so that places it, of course, at the beginning of Holy Week. It’s interesting that of all the events transpiring over the course of those seven days, it’s only our Lord’s beholding of Jerusalem, and specifically the Temple, that is explicitly described as bringing forth his tears. It’s hard to imagine that many of the other things—his agony in the Garden, his betrayal by Judas, his scourging and passion on the cross—were endured stoically and without emotion. In fact, that’s not what the Church or the Bible teach: he was a real man with real human emotions, and he suffered real pain, both physically and emotionally. So there’s no reason to believe that he did not weep at other times. But still, for whatever reason, these are the two instances where it is recorded. But let’s go back to that other, more famous occasion of our Lord’s tears. Everybody remembers “Jesus wept”; but how many of us remember why Jesus wept? I’ll give you a hint: it was over someone else’s death. Anybody remember whose death caused Jesus to weep? Lazarus. And, of course, after Jesus wept over Lazarus, what did he do? He raised him from the dead. So Lazarus’ raising, his small-r resurrection, was preceded by the tears of the very One who would raise him. [This is a side note: when Lazarus was 2 raised, that wasn’t the same as his resurrection to immortality; rather it was simply a raising to the same state that he had had before. He then went on to live out his earthly life and again went through a normal, physical death to await the final Resurrection we will all experience at the end of time.] So although the raising of Lazarus is not of the same order as our Lord’s Resurrection or our own Resurrection when he returns, it does foreshadow it, it points forward to it, it does reveal in some lesser way the power and the majesty of God, even though it is preceded by tears. So let’s see how these two weepings compare. The raising of Lazarus occurs very soon before Holy Week, so in many ways it is the culmination of our Lord’s healing ministry before he, as it were, turns his sights more to saving our souls. So the whole story of Lazarus sort of encapsulates the whole Christian experience. Lazarus is deathly sick (like we are, spiritually at least), and his sisters Martha and Mary (yes, the same Martha and Mary of Bethany) send word to our Lord for him to come and do something. “Thy Kingdom come.” That’s one of the themes all the way throughout the Old Testament: “Lord, come and do something about the sorry condition mankind finds itself in.” But Christ delays, he doesn’t immediately jump up once he receives word to rush off to Bethany. For some reason that we cannot understand, he waits before he responds. He explains to his disciples that it is so they might believe, but still it is one of those times where he seems heartless to us (not to say that he is in fact heartless, but rather that from our limited perspective he seems so). How many of us have had that experience of having to wait on God’s response; but we have to trust in God’s goodness and his providence, that though in our time we may feel as if he doesn’t care or is not concerned, 3 in his own good time he is doing for us better things than we can desire or pray for. “Thy will be done”, we pray with Martha. And when our Lord finally does arrive, it is, by worldly standards, too late: Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days. Still, in spite of the seeming rebuff, his sister Martha holds firm in her faith, and declares to our Lord, “I know whatever you ask of God, God will give it to you.” He then comforts her, “Your brother shall rise again,” to which Martha responds, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus then comes forth with those words that we as Anglicans associate so closely with the burial of the dead (and just in case you were wondering, it is the Prayer Book quoting Jesus, not Jesus quoting the Prayer Book): “I” he says, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” That’s the Christian message: hope for life in the midst of death. And when he encounters the more contemplative, perhaps more sensitive, sister, Mary, and he sees the mourning of Lazarus’ friends, that is when Jesus weeps. Though he knows what he is going to do (remember that he indicated as much to his disciples, that his delay was that they might believe), that does not negate the real, human grief he participates in. What a God we serve, one that doesn’t just accept in the abstract the fact of human sorrow and suffering, or condescend to pat us on the head with “there, there”, or even simply appear to partake in it through some sort of divine smoke and mirror trick, but really and truly, just as each one of us, he weeps, he suffers, he feels as a man. And his tears over Jerusalem are no mere appearance either. They are the genuine tears of any parent whose child is headed for destruction and eventual death, probably the 4 truest, most natural tears of human nature, those of a parent for a child. They are just like the tears of St. Monica over her son, Augustine of Hippo (whose feast day is today, and on whom I am not going to preach—I’m going to preach the sermon I’ve already started). And to add to his grief, these are the children who have begged and begged for help, and when God finally comes in his good time to offer the solution, they will reject it. He is offering them what they have pleaded for throughout the entire Old Testament, and they won’t receive it. Wouldn’t that make you cry too, at least out of frustration? But just as with Lazarus, with Jerusalem there is a flipside. He weeps, but at the same time, he knows that the story ends in glory. He, through his own death, will bring new life. The earthly Jerusalem is fulfilled and completed by the heavenly Jerusalem. The New Israel, the Church, brings life and salvation to all men, not just one small tribe. About forty years after our Lord spoke these words, in the year 70 A.D., exactly what he said would come to pass, came to pass. The Roman army cast a trench about Jerusalem, destroyed much of the city, and completely obliterated the Temple, leaving not one stone upon another. But the Church, the Body of Christ, the new Israel, because of the warnings of her Lord, because of his tears over the city, was able to escape the carnage, and not a single Christian perished in the destruction of Jerusalem. For the new life of the Church was what God brought forth out of the demise of Judah. And God continues to do that today: in our griefs and in our sorrows, he weeps with us, but at the same time, he brings us new life. Just as with Lazarus and Jerusalem, he has a plan for us, though we may not know what that is. In his Church today, there is much weeping and wailing, real sorrow and grief on all sides, but our prayer is for Christ, in his 5 time and according to his plan, to grant new life to his Church in the midst of her travail. But like Martha and Mary, in the meantime we must be waiting on him, trusting in his love and seeing his goodness through our tears. This is one of those many paradoxes in Christianity, that he who is Omnipotent was made weak, he who is beyond the frailty of mere human emotions felt every single thing we do. For in Jesus Christ, we have both the pain and the power. As man, he weeps for Lazarus, but as God, he raises him from the dead. As man, he laments over the destruction of Jerusalem, but as God, he is the only hope for her peace. And above all, as man, he himself suffers the most agonizing death man has devised, but as God, he turns that death into man’s life. .

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