Episodes
Sunday Mar 30, 2014
Life Essentials: Weep
Sunday Mar 30, 2014
Sunday Mar 30, 2014
Rev. Dean Snyder
Psalm 55:5-8; John 11:32-36
Scientists tell us there are three kinds of tears. There are the tears that are always in our eyes unless we have a medical condition … basal tears that keep our eyes moist and allow our eyelids to work.
The second kind of tears are reflexive tears … tears that are a reflexive response to some external stimulation. These are the tears we get while peeling onions or walking in a heavy wind.
The third kind of tears are emotional tears that come when we are feeling intense emotions whether sad or joyful or in between or mixed up together.
Scientists have discovered that the chemical composition of emotional tears is actually different from basal and reflexive tears. Emotional tears include chemicals that the others don’t … some that are stress reducers, others that are natural sedatives and pain reducers.
Scientists are not fully sure but it may even be that different emotions bring tears with different chemical make-ups.
We are talking during Lent this year about ordinary everyday aspects of life that are sacramental … they are signs of grace and vehicles of God’s grace coming into our lives.
As we prepare for Holy Week and Good Friday we want to say a word about tears as a sign and means of grace.
I know that crying is a very personal thing. Not all of us cry. I’ve known persons, usually men, who told me they just do not cry and that’s okay. I’ve known people for whom persistent, unrelieved crying was a sign that medical treatment was required.
There are no hard and fast rules. All I want to suggest this morning is that our tears can be an expression and means of God’s grace.
Jesus wept. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus wept. John 11:35 “Jesus began to weep.”
I have never quite understood the reason for Jesus’ tears.
Jesus had three very close friends in whose home he often stayed: two sisters, Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus.
News comes to Jesus while he is out teaching and preaching that Lazarus is fatally ill. The disciples say Jesus has to go to Lazarus immediately. Jesus continues teaching a few more days. By the time Jesus gets there Lazarus has died.
Lazarus’ sister Mary guilt-trips Jesus. She says to Jesus: “If you had been here he would not have died.” She weeps.
Jesus weeps and then Jesus raises Lazarus form the dead.
So why did Jesus weep? If he knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead and there would be a happy ending, why did Jesus weep?
Scholars speculate. Some believe that Lazarus’ death and Jesus’ tears are the kernel of the story to which the resurrection of Lazarus was later added … that in Jesus’ tears at the grave of a friend we see the human Jesus before the church’s Christology was written into the story.
Other scholars suggest that Jesus’ tears were tears of frustration and disappointment that even his dear friend Mary did not understand who he was and that he was stronger than death. Jesus wept because of our disbelief in him.
Still other scholars believe that Jesus wept because he was anticipating his own death on the cross.
The truth is that no one really knows.
For years and years I struggled with this because I want every story in the Bible to make sense.
This week as I struggled with this text again, it occurred to me that maybe it is not supposed to make sense … because tears are not about making sense.
Tears are about when we do not have adequate words or adequate understanding. Tears are about when we are not competent to manage, when we do not know what to do, when we are not in control.
Tears are our body’s response to something inside if us … grief, joy, fear, anger, love … that we cannot think our way through. We can only let our body respond with the medicine of tears.
Tears are a means of grace because they heal. They are a sign of the spiritual healing that happens inside us all of the time, every day.
God is always medicating our souls. “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” the prophet Jeremiah asks. (Jer. 8:22) The Spiritual answers: There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.
God is always healing us beyond our understanding.
I’ve been thinking about a couple of people this week. One is a friend who I was in a small group with for a number of years. After the meetings he would sometimes talk to me about his daughter who was struggling with addiction. He talked about his frustration of nothing seeming to help. About all the therapies and rehabs and programs they had tried and nothing seemed to help. Craig’s 219-year-old daughter died of an overdose this week.
There are no words, no ways to understand, and no way to be competent, nothing to do but to surrender to the tears and allow the grace of God to put medicine on our soul.
The other people I’ve been thinking about are a couple who were planning their wedding. They had been together for a number of years from the time before it was possible for them to be legally married.
They sent out their invitations not knowing what the response of their families would be. These are two exceedingly competent, in charge, in control persons who do not cry.
But, they said, as they got RSVPs back from family member after family member who were coming their wedding, they could not hold back their tears. I believe it was medicine for all of the years of being gay in an homophobic culture.
Psalm 56 includes a prayer. The Psalmist prays: “You have kept count of my tossing; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?” Psalm 56:8)
When we cry, God collects our tears.
Which is the Psalmist’s way of saying our tears are holy. They bring us into the presence of God and the Spirit of God enters into us through them.
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