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THE GOD WHO CRIES AT FUNERALS #4

ENOUGH TO MAKE A GROWN MAN CRY

One of the most amazing mission accounts I've ever read is found in the book, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants, co-written by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey. For many tumultuous and exciting years, Dr. Brand worked among the poorest of the poor in hot, sticky India as a medical missionary. He worked with the lepers, people who were shunned by others, cast out of their homes and families and societies.

And he relates one story from his India days that gives us something to think about as we continue thinking about the tears of God. Here's the story:

"A few months after we opened the [physiotherapy] unit," he writes, "I was examining the hands of a bright young man, trying to explain to him in my broken Tamil that we could halt the progress of the disease, and perhaps restore some movement to his hand, but we could do little about his facial deformities. I joked a bit, laying my hand on his shoulder. "Your face is not so bad,' I said with a wink, ‘and it shouldn't get any worse if you take the medication.'" And Dr. Brand went on with a bit more humor, trying to relax this man. "‘After all,'" he told him, "‘we men don't have to worry so much about faces. It's the women who fret over every bump and wrinkle.' I expected him to smile in response, but instead he began to shake with muffled sobs. ‘Have I said something wrong?' I asked my assistant in English. ‘Did he misunderstand me?' She quizzed him in a spurt of Tamil and reported, ‘No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until he came here no one had touched him for many years.'"

Now here was a man, a doctor, who, in terms of caste, was way, way above this patient. Brand was a Caucasian, a distinguished, educated foreigner. This leper was from the lowest segment of society. Brand was rich; the patient was probably penniless. And yet that hand on the shoulder, the touch of friendship and understanding, meant so much to this man that he literally burst into tears.

What does this word compassion actually mean? Not surprisingly, the book by Dr. Brand goes out of its way to give us a definition. In Latin, we have com and pati, meaning "to suffer WITH." And if you dig up some Greek, the word sympathy derives from syn and pathos, also meaning "to feel or suffer WITH."

But friend, is Jesus with us in suffering? Does He really relate to our problems? It's been pointed out that if you read the great Old Testament statement by God Himself, found in Exodus chapter 34, it goes like this:

"And He passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord, the COMPASSIONATE and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness."

Interesting, and wonderful, isn't it, that this characteristic of "compassionate" is the FIRST thing God tells us about Himself in His divine resumé. He feels with us; He suffers with us. And perhaps it's significant that we find this self-describing word included here at precisely the moment when Moses takes a new set of two stone tablets up to the mountain to replace the ones broken in Israel's earlier rebellion. Friend, does God have compassion even for our sinful state? Does He understand the hard times we have with the devil, the temptations, the moral challenges? Does He understand when a frail person living in the White House, or living in YOUR house, has a hard time telling the truth, finds it difficult to remain pure in his or her thoughts and deeds?

I hope you have underlined in your own Bible a marvelous promise about this very truth. It's found over in Hebrews, the fourth chapter, and we find here that Jesus, our Savior, is sympathetic even with the moral failings we experience and struggle with. Notice:

"For we do NOT have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin."

Isn't that a marvelous promise? I like the Clear Word expanded paraphrase for that same verse. Here it is:

"We don't have a High Priest who doesn't understand us or who's incapable of feeling our pain. He was tempted MORE POWERFULLY than any of us will EVER be tempted, yet He never sinned or lost His hold on God."

Maybe you've had the experience of actually WEEPING over your faults and failures. Satan has just hit you and hit you and hit you until you were hysterical, almost. Well, Jesus has never wept over His failures, because He never failed, but He absolutely HAS had the experience of having the devil come after Him over and over and over. Matthew chapter four tells how Lucifer attacked his Enemy three times in a row, in succession — AND when Jesus was at His weakest moment: starving and weak and frail. Does Jesus know harassment? Yes! Does He know relentless temptation? Yes! Does He know what it means to feel beat down, weighed down, until you almost fall down on the ground in discouragement? Yes, He does. It happened to Him in Gethsemane exactly like that. So when you and I cry out, "God, this is hard!", Jesus can relate to it. He can have compassion. Your tears mingle with His.

And really, in every area of life, you and I can know that this Friend named Jesus is truly that: a Friend who understands. In his own book, The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancey relates his own India story, borrowing from his co-author relationship with Dr. Brand again.

"I too have dined with leprosy patients," he writes, "and I can tell you that two thousand years of medical progress have done little to lessen the social stigma of the disease. One refined, educated man in India told me of the day he sat weeping in a car outside a church as his daughter got married within. He dared not show his disfigured face, lest all the guests leave. Nor could he host the traditional wedding banquet, for who would enter the home of a leper?"

But then Yancey goes on to point out that Jesus flouted the strict "stigma laws" of His day; He walked right by the signs that said: "Leper area; keep out."

"Jesus ignored those rules," he observes, "and reclined at the table of a man who wore that stigma as part of his name."

Over and over, we find that Jesus describes Himself as the Friend of sinners. He was the "(quote) sinless Friend of sinners," as Yancey puts it in another place.

But here's what all this means. It's good to know that Jesus sympathizes, that He cries when we cry, but it's even BETTER to discover that He has the power to make His compassion work in our behalf! You know, Jesus cried there at Lazarus' tomb, but man, aren't you glad that crying wasn't ALL He did! Back just a couple chapters in Hebrews, now in chapter two, let's find some more good news.

"For surely it is not ANGELS He helps, but Abraham's descendants." Including two named Melashenko and Richards, by the way. "For this reason," the author of Hebrews writes, "He [Jesus] had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a MERCIFUL and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people." And now notice: "Because He Himself suffered when HE was tempted, He is able to HELP those who are being tempted."

Back in Dr. Brand's book, he observes that the great Indian hero, Gandhi, was a compassionate leader. He especially loved the Untouchable caste, and Brand informs us that Gandhi renamed them the Harijan, meaning "children of God." But did Gandhi love the Untouchables from a safe distance, shedding sterile tears in front of a CNN camera crew? No, he entered the gutters with them; he took on their menial tasks of cleaning toilets. He made his suffering practical and helpful; his compassion was of a kind that made a difference. He not only felt pain of others, but he also worked to alleviate it. And friend, this is the kind of good crying we find coming from our Friend Jesus.

Do you remember that great old hymn, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus"? Sure you do. Joseph M. Scriven, in the year 1855. And here's the line for today: "Jesus knows our every weakness." He does, doesn't He? He knows; He understands. He gets it. BUT . . . He doesn't just know our weakness from a distance. Because what's the next line? "TAKE IT to the Lord in prayer." Let's rejoice that we can take our burdens to a Friend who's not just crying; He's intervening.

Back now AGAIN to Hebrews four, where we read that Jesus was our High Priest, our ally who knows what it is to be tempted in this mean, hurtful world. That's verse 15. But what does the writer triumphantly challenge us to do in the very next verse?

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence." "BOLDLY," says the King James. "Come boldly." "So that we may receive mercy and find grace to HELP us in our time of need."

You've heard that old cliché about a "strong man crying"? I'm glad that's the perfect picture of Jesus.