What causes you to cry? What is it that strikes a cord of emotion in your heart and makes tears well up in your eyes? We cry in a great many different situations. When death invades our life, tears flow. When life’s troubles overwhelm us, and we believe we are without hope, we begin to sob. When a babe is born, when the long-awaited lab report comes back negative, when someone is baptized into Christ, tears of joy well up. When the majesty of God is displayed in the rainbow, when the words of the hymn resonate in our heart, when the Spirit convicts our inner self through the power of the word, our eyes moisten as we are humbled before God.
Except for sin, Jesus was like us in every way. He experienced hunger, thirst and weariness. He wondered at people and was angry with them. He felt the powerful, dark pull of temptation. He knew joy and sorrow. And he cried. It shouldn’t be such a surprise to us that He did cry since He was fully human, but some of the reasons might catch us off guard. In one instance Jesus was about to enter Jerusalem for the last time. Luke records: “When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it.”
Jesus wept because the hearts of His people were so hardened and deluded that they did not know “the things which make for peace!” Their hearts were blinded as they continued to seek God through ritualistic worship (mere church going) and law-keeping (following rules). Such self-righteous pathways never lead to God.
Jesus wept because He was there among them as their God, Messiah, and Savior, but He speaks through tears to the city that “did not recognize the time of your visitation.” Jesus wept because He knew what was going to happen to the city itself. It would be leveled to the ground. The people would be ravaged by their enemies.
Jesus weeps today when hearts are hard and people wander away from Him in barren pathways. He knows their end and what they will miss. They are tears of love. Do you weep with Him?
><>Jeff