Jesus Wept

“Those who do not weep, do not see.”

                     Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

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I have always found it profoundly important

that Jesus wept

that this one who was all love

this one who was stuffed full of sacred

and oozed healing

should weep

but it is clear he did

he wept for Lazarus

he wept over Jerusalem

he wept, perhaps for himself

as he prayed on that rock in Gethsemane, and “sweated blood”

why did he weep

this man of sorrows

this one acquainted with grief?

because he had eyes that saw

the people

all those people who littered his path

the rich and the poor

the righteous and the unsavory

the welcomed and the excluded

the greedy and the generous

he saw them all

and he saw their pain

their anger, hate, and fear

their greed

and he saw how they treated one another

as they lived out of the house of fear

he saw the oppression,

the exclusion

the hoarding

the cruelty

he saw all the miseries of human kind

he saw death

not just physical death

but spiritual death

emotional and relational death

he saw it, and he felt it

and he wept

and he lamented

Oh foolish people

“how often I have longed to gather [you] together,

as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,

but you were unwilling!”  (Matthew 23:37)

Jesus wept because he saw

He felt

He took in

He carried

The pain of the world

He carried that pain all the way to the cross

Ah, that we might have eyes that see

Eyes that can look out

Past our own pain, our own self interest

And see the people around us

Ah that we might see the poor

The rejected

The oppressed and the minimized

Ah that we might see all those made vulnerable

By poverty

Or illness

Or by the color of their skin

Or their creed

Or the sexual orientation with which they were born

Ah that we might see them

And the fear, the loneliness

The depression and desperation

the hopelessness

Ah that we might weep

Weep for all the miseries of human kind

Weep for the wounds

Self-inflicted or imposed

But may we not just weep, but act

But offer ourselves

(in whatever way we can)

As instruments of healing and reconciliation

As our eyes see, and as our ears hear

May our hands be full of bread

Our hearts full of compassion

Our words full of kindness