Tears

Do you remember Mel Gibson’s movie the Passion of the Christ?  It came out maybe 15 years ago was a film about Jesus last days.  Toward the end of the movie there is a particularly poignant scene.  Jesus is dying --- and  camera in on his face during the moment of his death. One eye is red and swollen shut from the beating he has received but the other is wide open and  you can see clearly and just before his head drops you see his pupil dilate and he breaths his last.  The scene is then transported to the clouds and you now have a birds eye view or God’s eye view.  You see everything above--- the three crosses soldiers scurrying about-- the mourner’s huddled together—as you see this…the scene begins to fall away as a  single water droplet falls from heaven and strikes the earth.  

The water droplet  symbolizes God’s tears and deep sadness over the death of his son, Jesus. 

Today we are confronted with a story  another of deep sadness,  Jesus friend Lazarus has died.   When he gets news of Lazarus death, when he is confronted with a screaming crying Mary relaying to him the unthinkable news—John says that Jesus is greatly disturbed and deeply moved.   A few lines later—John says that Jesus overwhelmed by moment  weeps as profound sadness pours out of him . 

This story and that scene in the passion of the Christ-reminds me that Jesus and God weep over the tragedies and sadness of the world and that they weep with us too and that  our tears and our sadness  and the things that go on here  disturb  Jesus  and they disturb God.

It’s powerful to the think that the creator of heaven and  earth desires to move with us into that pain—that God doesn’t just stand outside the fray, looking down from a throne in heaven… but the author of revelation is that God’s home is among mortals---- isn’t that what we call incarnation—pastor Eugène Peterson says that in the incarnation God moved into the neighborhood- 

This passage reminds me that moves in and move into  the pain with us in the pain-  the pain, the sadness that we bear become God’s sadness- and that thing that has deeply scarred us—deeply disturbs and moves God. 

Last Thursday, the church celebrated the feast of all the Saints.  All Saint Day.    On that day We celebrate the capital “s” saints—saints that churches are named after like Dunstan or Matthew .  Saints who have done great things.  But being protestant  we also celebrate  the lowercase ‘s’ saints people like you and me… who try to live good lives—who try to bring God’s love to our little corners of the world—who sometimes succeed at it but who often fail and yet the church  on All Saints reminds us that we too stand in the great pantheon of all saints –

Like many churches in celebration of All Saints we will read the names of lowercase “s” saints who have gone on before us during this last year.  People with great foibles and failures, but also those who have tried to live good and faithful lives—people near and dear to our hearts .   I learned this past week that there is a tradition in Latin American Churches that on all Saints people will say the name of a loved who has died and the congregation will respond with “presente” – Spanish for present –a stark reminder that  the dead they are present with us. A reminder  folks that those who we’ve loved and lost are still pretty close by.   

We are going to do that in a few moments during the prayers.

Death and loss might be the most terrible thing in the human experience, but today the readings reminds that Jesus and God weeps with us, but not only that—that Jesus and God transform that situation a bit

When Lazarus died—death did not have the last word— out of his tears Jesus spoke words into tomb—Lazarus come out and from  pain ----from that sadness blossomed a flower of new life, a flower of new possibility.    

But the God who goes with us down into the tears and sadness who weeps when we weep also calls into our tombs and calls  new life and new possibility into our lives. 

AMEN