Jesus wept. 

One of the shortest and most powerful verses in the Bible. 

This verse gives us a picture of Jesus’s humanity. He weeps upon finding out that his friend Lazarus has died. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever cried in front of people, but I do it all the time. Like pretty much daily. I honestly wish I could just shut it off, but I haven’t figured that one out yet. The only time a Google search has failed me. 

It’s a vulnerable place to be, crying in front of others. Most of the time I think people don’t really know what to do with me, and that’s really fair because I don’t really know what to do with myself. 

I cry when I am sad, when I am angry, when I am happy, when I am grateful when I feel moved by the Holy Spirit or the power of the Gospel, sometimes when I don’t even know why I am crying, and pretty much everything else in between. 

I used to not cry at all. I went through part of my life not crying ever, at anything. But in recent years, I have worked hard to become a person who is open, honest, and vulnerable at all times, sometimes at the cost of relationships and jobs and comfortability. I think all of that honesty and vulnerability has come with tears – a physical expression of a feeling deep in our hearts. Or, apparently if you’re me, not so deep, just waiting on the surface for any type of emotion ever.

The Bible doesn’t give us the real reason that Jesus wept. His being 100% divine, we could assume that he already knew that Lazarus was dead before arriving. My thought has always been that he was so moved by the heaviness of death as a result of sin in the world that he wept. In front of his friends. A moment of true, vulnerable humanity. 

Perhaps, I am not normal. Perhaps I am too emotional. But for now, I have come to terms with my tears. I feel immensely more vulnerable every time I cry in front of someone, but my prayer is that my vulnerability will not scare them away, but draw them closer to their heart and what God might be doing in it. 

I pray that each of you has moments of humanity like Jesus, full of vulnerability and compassion for the world around you. I pray that the power of Christ moves you to tears that you may feel him working deep in the innermost parts of your heart. 

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home… Now Jesus had not yet entered the village but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” — John 11:17-20, 30-37