Tears

Many times over the years as I’ve knelt before the Lord with tears, I’ve felt His comfort.  This blog is about four ladies in the Bible who also felt the comfort of our Lord.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).  John 20:10-16.

This is one of my favorite passages.  Here we have Mary Magdalene, the first one to discover the empty tomb (John 20:1-2), weeping.  After she and the disciples had raced to verify the tomb was empty, the disciples left.  Mary stayed.  Weeping.  She was confused, broken, and probably scared.  Her heart couldn’t take the pain welling up inside and it burst forth from her eyes.

           

Then Jesus came onto the scene.  “Why are you crying?  Who are you looking for?”

Listen to the tenderness in his questions.  He didn’t ignore her nor was he uncomfortable because of her strong emotions.  His tender words reflect the heart of someone who wants to ease her pain.

You know sometimes, we just want someone to shoulder the load.  We want someone to help carry the burden that is tearing our heart into pieces.  We need someone to ask, “Why are you crying?” and then listen as we pour out our pain.

The Bible tells us that Jesus is this someone.  He is the burden lifter.  He is the one who will shoulder the load we carry (I Pet. 5:7, Mt. 11:28-30).

           

The next two stories give us another glimpse into Jesus’ heart.

As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her.  When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”

Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.  (Luke 7:12-15).

When Mary (by the way this is a different Mary than the above verse) 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.  (John 11:32-35).

In both of these stories a woman is weeping because of the loss of a loved one. And how does our Lord respond?  Not with a “buck up and move on” speech, not with empty words, but with his own broken heart.  In fact, he hurt so badly for the loss he saw in Mary’s tears that he himself wept.   

Jesus cares when we lose a loved one.  He hurts with us.  The grieving process of a loved one may be a time filled with unanswered questions, confusion, and anger, but hold onto the example Jesus demonstrated for us in these two stories.  You are never alone in your ache; your Savior’s heart is also aching. 

This brings us to our last interaction between Jesus and a woman’s tears.

When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.  A woman in that town who lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, so she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.  As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them…Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”(Luke 7:36-38,48).

There she was, this woman of the night, standing at the feet of Jesus surrounded by men who knew her sins and condemned her for them. As she looked at Jesus tears flowed from her eyes.  At first they were probably tears of shame and self-disgust.  Tears given life by the sin weighing heavily on her heart.  Oh, what she wouldn’t do to erase her past, and erase the memories, and erase the shame.  The longer she cried the deeper the guilt and the conviction pierced her heart.  Pain she had long ago buried just in order to survive. Sinful decisions she had chosen to forget because it racketed her very core.

What else could she do but take down her hair and begin drying his feet, pouring on him the perfume she had brought?

As the tears continued to flow and the murmuring from the judgmental men turned into a verbal conversation about her, the ache began to change.  Jesus was standing up for…her.  Jesus was defending…her.  When was the last time that had occurred?

Then it happened, Jesus turned to her and said, “Your sins are forgiven.”  As she looked into his eyes, tears of inexpressible freedom, joy, and worth poured from her eyes.  Gone was the shame.  Gone was the guilt.  Gone were the shackles weighing down her heart.

Jesus healed these broken women.  Never once did he express annoyance or an attitude of condemnation.  Our tears do not scare Him, and when we come to Him a broken mess whether it be from fear, confusion, loss, or conviction, He reaches into the shadows of our heart and redeems all the brokenness.

I know this blog may be a little sad, but I felt so awed at the tenderness Jesus extends to these weeping women, that I had to share it. 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.   2 Cor. 1:3-5

These verses are true and perfectly demonstrated by God’s Son.