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THE GOD WHO CRIES
AT FUNERALS #1
TWENTY-DOLLAR TEARS
Maybe you remember a classic old episode of The Mary
Tyler Moore Show, where veteran actress Betty White played the obnoxious,
pompous, insensitive Sue Ann Nivens. This Nivens character, if you recall,
was basically despised by the rest of the team at WJM Television there
in Minneapolis, and finally one of them actually got up their courage
and cut her down to size, gave her a real tongue-lashing.
The scene happened during a black-tie dinner where Betty White's character
was supposed to receive some media award for her Happy Homemaker show.
But now she was in tears. "How can I go up there on the platform
like this?" she wailed. "I'm a mess; I'm a wreck." There
was no way she could go on. Of course, with TV's impeccable timing, the
emcee chose that exact moment to announce: "And the winner: Sue Ann
Nivens."
And this forlorn, weeping woman slowly makes her way among the tables
to the front of the ballroom, with Mary and Lou Grant and Murray and Ted
all watching anxiously from the sidelines. What have they done? How can
she cry and deliver her thank you speech simultaneously? And the kicker
to the episode happens when she gets to the microphone. Because all at
once — voila! — a thousand rays of sunshine light her up. "I'd like
to thank my millions of fans, and all of Minneapolis, and my beloved friends
at WJM." And it's as though the tears had never happened. She could
turn them on, and she could turn them off.
And this week, friend, we want to talk about tears. Specifically the tears
of God. Are they real? When Jesus cries, are His tears genuine? What does
He have to cry about?
One of the most unforgettable sermons some of us here at The Voice of
Prophecy have ever heard came from the lips of the incomparable veteran
preacher, Charles Bradford. It was at one of our great, global Adventist
gatherings, and believe me, he's a keynoter of keynoters. This was back
a few years, when Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner had brought the word "bionic"
into our American vocabulary. And Charles Bradford, speaking so eloquently
about the heart of Jesus, the sympathy of our Savior, rose to a crescendo
with this observation:
"I'm glad my JESUS wasn't a bionic man,"
he said. "A man with eyes of glass. No, Jesus had eyes that could
weep!"
And really, that is tremendous news. The Bible shares
several accounts of times where Jesus cried, shed tears. But why did He?
Were they real tears?
The story most believers think of immediately happens in the gospel of
John, chapter 11. And of course, trivia lovers know that the shortest
verse in all of Scripture happens right here. It's just two words long
in the King James, and it goes right to the heart of this week's Bible
study.
"Jesus . . . wept."
That's it. "Jesus wept." If you're pressed
to have in your mind a memory verse in order to get a gold star at Sunday
School this week, you can learn that one rather quickly. "Jesus wept."
In a sense, it's appropriate to call into question the genuineness of
these tears, because it was common in that Oriental culture for relatives
to actually HIRE professional mourners. That's right. The family would
have PAID experts, a whole gallery section of "Sue Ann Nivens"-types
who could turn on the tears and give you a Niagara Falls of pseudo-grief.
In fact, if you check out the original Greek language, verse 33 talks
about Mary weeping and these hired mourners weeping, and the word klai
is used, indicating this kind of demonstrative wailing — which might be
genuine or it might be for five shekels an hour. However, here in verse
35, the shortest verse in all of Scripture, where Jesus Himself weeps,
we find in contrast the word dakru . And that very clearly means "to
shed tears." Friend, Jesus wasn't a gifted politician who just scrunched
up His face for a television camera. Here in this pain-filled story, Jesus
was actually crying; He was crying for real.
And yet we have to wonder something. Jesus is at a funeral and He cries.
Well and good. But He's just a few minutes away, and only nine verses
away in this story, from one of the great resurrection sagas of all time.
Probably the second most dramatic ever, after His own. And He knows that.
He knows he's going to bring His friend back to life. In fact, the very
casualness of His rescue trip to Bethany, almost dawdling, hanging around
where He was for two whole days after getting the telegram before starting
out, shows that He's being very intentional about allowing the scene to
play out this way. So are these tears at the funeral just a show?
Well, friend, I think we know our Savior better than that. It says in
verse 33:
"When Jesus saw her [Mary] weeping, and
the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, He was deeply moved
in spirit and troubled."
Have you had that experience at a funeral, where perhaps
you didn't really know the deceased? But when you saw the pain of others,
you cried too, didn't you? And what a beautiful thing to see it happen
here! Jesus saw the tears of His precious friend, Mary. He knew that her
sisterly heart was breaking. He was able to distinguish the false tears
from the real ones, and to commiserate with her. And all at once He finds
Himself crying too. With the resurrection just minutes away, with a party
about to begin, Jesus still weeps at this moment.
There's a book I love which paints such meaningful word pictures of some
of these Bible events. It's entitled The Desire of Ages, by the 19th-century
author, Ellen White. Here's her "take" on the tears of Jesus:
"Though He was the Son of God, yet He had
taken human nature upon Him, and He was moved by human sorrow. His tender,
pitying heart is ever awakened to sympathy by suffering. He weeps with
those that weep, and rejoices with those that rejoice."
Isn't that a marvelous promise? You've probably heard
that old Christian song: "You'll Never Walk Alone." Well, friend,
here's another one: you'll never WEEP alone either. When we cry at funerals,
Jesus cries too. Our loss is keenly felt by heaven as well.
But you know, there's a second emotion hiding in here — or, I should say,
a deeper level to the tears, the sorrow, of Jesus. The King James says
in verses 33 and 38 that Christ was "groaning in the spirit,"
that He was troubled. The NIV: "deeply moved." But notice how
The Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson describes the scene:
"When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep
ANGER welled up within Him." The Living Bible paraphrase says "indignation."
"He said, ‘Where did you put him?' ‘Master, come and see,' they said.
Now Jesus wept. The Jews said, ‘Look how deeply He loved him.' Others
among them said, ‘Well, if He loved him so much, why didn't He do something
to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.'
Then Jesus, the ANGER again welling up within Him, arrived at the tomb."
So we have to ask: Why is Jesus angry? Well, I'm sure
He spotted the hypocrisy in the crowd, the fake tears of some. After all,
some of these same people weeping and wailing would be plotting His own
crucifixion, actually taking part in Calvary in just a few days. And of
course, He heard the cutting words of some on the sidelines: "It's
all Jesus' fault; if He hadn't been so slow, this wouldn't have happened."
Plus, of course, the senselessness of this death, the passing of His good
friend Lazarus.
But you know, friend, I believe Jesus was angry for a bigger reason. He
didn't hate those phony mourners; they were just doing their job. But
maybe somehow that funeral for a friend, that one graveside moment, was
to Jesus a summing-up, a piling-up of all the funerals, all the needless,
senseless, Omaha Beach deaths over 6000 years. "Lord, if You had
been here, my brother would not have died." And maybe Jesus, with
tears streaming down His own face, wanted to say in return: "Listen,
if this planet hadn't lurched off course and gone down the wrong path
of sin, NOBODY would have ever died! NOBODY! Not a single death! Every
single funeral on this planet is the most wretched, needless, wasted,
unnecessary, tragic, USELESS experience there is! In My Father's Kingdom,
there should be none of this!"
In that same book I mentioned a moment ago, The Desire of Ages, Ellen
White takes that same view. Here's what she writes:
"It was not only because of the scene before
Him that Christ wept. The weight of the grief of AGES was upon Him."
Then she adds this second thought: "He saw the terrible effects of
the transgression of God's law. He saw that in the history of the world,
beginning with the death of ABEL, the conflict between good and evil had
been unceasing. Looking down the years to come, He saw the suffering and
sorrow, tears and death, that were to be the lot of men. His heart was
pierced with the pain of the human family of ALL ages and in all lands.
The woes of the sinful race were heavy upon His soul, and the fountain
of His tears was broken up as He longed to relieve all their distress."
What's the last funeral you were at? I believe Jesus,
there in Bethany, sensed THAT funeral too. It made Him righteously angry
. . . and He shed tears, friend, for you too. He cried for all of it that
day, and for all of us.
REAL tears. REAL anger. REAL love. Because Jesus is
a REAL Friend.
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