The Jesus Wept Principle

This week I was thinking about the big story of God.  I was considering how important it is to keep my understanding of Scripture within the Grand Story of God and God’s interactions with humans and creation.  Scripture means very little when it is isolated, and quite often isolating a Scripture robs it of its true meaning and if not its true meaning, it is robbed of its full meaning when isolated. 

Let’s call this the Jesus Wept Principle.  For instance, if I say to you, “Jesus wept,” (John 11:35) and then I ask you to explain this to me, I think you would find it difficult to really tell me a lot about this verse.  We could say, Jesus was sad.  He cried like we cry. That’s about all we can really come up with from that isolated verse. 

But when we put it into the Grand Story of God (the Bible), we can immediately tell you more about the verse.  For instance, God is a loving and compassionate God who wants to know us intimately and wants us to understand the deep love that Father, Son and Holy Spirit have for all creation, especially humanity.  Therefore, when Jesus wept, there is likely a tie to humanity and to the relationship between Jesus and humanity.  There is something lacking in that relationship that Jesus wants to see restored.  After all  . . . that is the plan of God – to restore all creation back to God’s love.

Then when we look at the context surrounding that particular verse, we see that this verse is centered in the story of Lazarus and happens shortly before Lazarus is resurrected from the dead by Jesus.  We see that people are indeed involved and that Jesus’ interactions with those people are the catalyst for his weeping.  Now, why he actually wept is something to be explored in greater detail  . . . but not today.  Please feel free to share thoughts about why Jesus wept that day.