ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς (Jesus wept)
So how would you feel? Put yourself in my shoes.
They were my tears. Mine. Shed for me. Not that I got to see them: but I was told that he cried, he wept, he clutched at his robe and he wailed. Perhaps you imagine him more of a single silent tear, trickling gently and artistically down the cheek and into the beard sort of man? Oh, no: apparently he made a real spectacle of himself, howling until the snot came out of his nose, until the breath came raggedly through his sobs.
For me. For me.
So when I heard – oh, so many years later – that someone was claiming to have captured those tears, and that one touch of this miraculous saline could cure all ills – I was furious. He didn’t cry so that your stubbed toe could be healed, or your leprous skin made clean! He cried because he loved me! Because I was the one who was sick, and I was the one who had died.
He was so normal, you see. Nowadays I’ve heard him discussed so many times, and honestly from the way people talk you would think that he walked on water. Ahem – I mean, that he floated six inches off the ground. But he was a human being, like you and me. He sweated when he was hot. His feet stank, after a long day on the dusty roads. He laughed uproariously, throwing his head back and guffawing – especially when he’d had a glass of wine – or else caught your eye, mostly when someone was being overly pious, and winked in your direction as he smiled that generous smile of his. He got tired too, and a little bit grumpy to be honest – especially when my sister fussed over him a little too much. He snored loudly, and muttered in his sleep.
So crying, after the death of a friend – well, of course, he would; but there hadn’t been another death, so the tears were just for me. Oh, there had been John, his cousin – horrible death, that. I imagine Jesus was more shocked than anything else, on hearing that his childhood playmate’s head had been hacked from his shoulders, on the whim of some crazy dancing girl. Yet there didn’t seem to be a small phial of magic tears circulating after that event – these were all mine.
I’m not saying he wouldn’t have cried for someone else, if they had died instead. For John, his disciple, certainly. For Peter or Andrew or James, probably. For his mother – well, we all do that, and he was a good son, for all his wandering. For my sisters? – probably yes for Mary, the soulful one; but if Martha had gone before us I think Jesus would have winked at me and said something about getting the tomb clean and tidy enough, or she’d be back to tell us what’s what. But as things were, it was me that got there first, me that…you know…died.
To be perfectly honest I was a little surprised when I heard about the depths of grief displayed by Jesus, standing before my tomb. It even put the professional mourners to shame by all accounts. I just hadn’t realised we were so close! I mean, we were friends, all right; I’d met him lots of times, over the last couple of years. I wasn’t what you might call one of his earliest followers; and for a long time I didn’t even think of myself of a follower. He was just someone that my sisters invited to stay from time to time. One of his travelling disciples would race ahead and give us an hour or so’s warning; and that would be the signal for Martha to go into a frenzy of cooking and cleaning, barking orders at Mary and me to tidy this, chop that, run and buy the other. Most often his inner circle would stay too, and we would have a wonderful evening of eating and drinking, sharing news and listening to his stories; before trying to settle everyone on makeshift beds, top to toe with hardly a gap to step between them. But in the morning it would be Mary that I’d see sat at his feet in the early light, drinking in every last word; or gazing silently and slightly sadly in his direction. I don’t know how he stood it to be honest – my sister’s level of intensity has always been a bit too freaky for me. Then we would say our goodbyes – an embrace for Mary, an arm around the shoulders and a smiling reminder to take it easy for Martha, and a swift back-slapping hug for me – and they’d be off, already retreating into their tightknit camaraderie as they began their long walk away from Bethany. I loved our time together, and I looked forward to the next; but I didn’t shed a tear. There was always tomorrow.
Perhaps…well, it’s possible …those tears weren’t all about me. I mean, it could have happened to any of his friends. Perhaps he was thinking, this could be Mary, or John, or Peter. How would I feel then? What would I do without them? And it all got too much: the constant trekking around a land that didn’t always tidy up and kill the fatted calf on his arrival – he had to sleep on the roadside more often than not, by all accounts. The naysayers, the religious authorities, all the while judging him, judging him, judging him. The stupid questions we all asked – oh, I asked a few myself, and he would look sad, disappointed perhaps, that he still couldn’t make us understand. And perhaps he thought, too, about where it was all leading – the slow, creeping, inevitability of it all, gathering speed now, gaining momentum, leading him on the road to Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, over and over like his own heartbeat, like a runaway chariot, blood thrumming in his ears, the bitter taste in his mouth of fear –
Because it was his own death, up ahead, the final roadblock, the hill to be climbed. His own death.
And that deserved some tears.
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