When He Saw Her Weeping, He Burst into Tears

JESUS OF NAZARETH WAS A HUMAN BEING. So, whenever we assert his divinity, we need to remember his humanity. The orthodox formula, for the last 1,700 years or so, has insisted Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human. The Bible also shows us both, although the fully human sometimes can be harder to see.

Take the Gospel of John, for example. This gospel is widely known and especially valued for its portrait of Christ as the divine Son of God. Yet, it also gives us one of the most profound images of an unmistakably human Jesus. Ironically, it shows us the humanity of Jesus in the middle of the gospel’s most dramatic miracle story.

Accounts of miraculous signs performed by Jesus form the core of the first half of John’s gospel story, what scholars call the “Book of Signs.” The first account has Jesus turning water into wine during the wedding at Cana (Jn 2:1-11). The final sign reported in John shows Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead at Bethany (Jn 11). After that final sign and because of it, according to the evangelist, the chief priests and Pharisees “planned to put [Jesus] to death” (11:47-53).

Oddly enough, however, the story John tells to bring us to the raising of Lazarus is mostly about the encounters Jesus has with each of the two sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary of Bethany. The encounter with Martha, when Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25) is entirely in keeping with the gospel’s portrait of Jesus as divine.

The encounter with Mary is something entirely different. Jesus, who has stopped outside the village, sends Martha to bring her sister out to see him. When Mary and the Judeans mourning with her arrive, she kneels and says (as did Martha in her encounter), “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 32, cf. v. 21). Seeing Mary and the others weeping (and perhaps recognizing the truth of her statement), Jesus became angry and agitated (v. 33), then burst into tears (v. 35).

Here, I need to share a piece of detailed interpretation (exegesis) to help you understand the point I’m making. The NRSV translation of verse 33 says Jesus “was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.” The Greek behind the translation, however, is more direct and forceful. That’s why I’ve paraphrased the Greek by saying Jesus was “angry and agitated.” In verse 35, the NRSV says Jesus “began to weep,” suggesting his crying was the same as the weeping of Mary and the mourners. The Greek text, however, uses a different, much more powerful verb to describe the action of Jesus. So, I use “Jesus burst into tears” to capture a sense of the strong emotion in the moment.

It’s the emotion of the moment that’s the key to understanding the importance of the encounter between Mary and Jesus. When Jesus sees the grief and sorrow in Mary and the others, caused by the death of Lazarus “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (v. 4), Jesus not only feels their anguish, but also is carried away in a powerful emotion. In other words, Jesus empathizes with them, deeply. The scene suggests Jesus is disturbed to see how much suffering others have to experience in the process of glorifying God and the Son.

In these emotions, in these tears, in this empathy we see a profoundly human Jesus.

For a more thorough study of the interactions between Mary, Martha and Jesus in the story of the raising of Lazarus, see Chapter 3 of my book, Moonlight Shines in the Darkness, which is available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.