The Tears of God

Classical theology has always stressed the impassiveness of God. An immobile God in the axis of Creation, immotus in se permanens. By being eternal and immutable, God would then be vaccinated against human passions, sentiments and emotions. Theologists chuckle at passages from the Old Testament which portrayed a jealous, resentful and angry God. It would appear they were right. At least about the incarnation of the Verb, the Son of God born of the Virgin Mary…

When Jesus Christ visits Bethany, in Hebraic the “afflicted house,” on the fourth day after the death of Lazarus, our conception of God undergoes a remarkable transformation. In the shortest passage found in the entire Gospel (John 11,35), before his friend’s tomb, Jesus cried. The Greek verb used by John the Baptist is not the word normally used to say “to cry,” but should have been more accurately translated as “melted into tears.” And they were the tears of God…

As Marko Ivan Rupnik observed:

These passages regarding Christ’s emotions at the foot of Lazarus’ tomb have on occasion left many priests uneasy. Being influenced by an essentially stoical mentality, they were unable to conciliate an act which they considered to be an expression of weakness with the dignity of the Son of God, and sought some way to circumvent that. Here we are faced with a kind of tangible manifestation, a concrete testimony of the dogmatic truth regarding the incarnation proclaimed in the prologue: ‘And the Verb was made flesh (John 1,14). Not just the substance, but also the means.

It is with open-mouthed looks of astonishment that humanity would discover to what extent He was loved by God: even with the unimaginable descent of God – His kenosis– into the Son who assumes our fragile, fallible and sensitive nature. It is no wonder why so many heresies have been born of the difficulty to perform an act of faith in the realism of the Incarnation. It would have been easier to reduce Jesus Christ’s humanity to simple “appearance.” The fact is that many prefer to regard the Incarnation of the Verb as a pity legend.

On the other hand, how comforting it is to embrace the unexpected revelation that God is affected by us, the im-passive is revealed as com-passive: a God we can relate to! When Jesus incarnated, he wore a body like ours, which is why he feels hunger and thirst, why he tires, sweats and bleeds. He also assumes a psyche equal to ours, which is why he feels longing, shows affection to the little ones; why he angers and saddens, commiserates and… weeps.

Henceforth, everything that is ours interests God: our joys and our sorrows, our dreams and our sins. In the tears of the man-God, we see the reflection of our own tears. Human tears.

Rupnik continues his discourse:

Tears, as our spirituality indicates, are a complex reality. They can be tears of one’s egotism offended, of wounded pride, of sorrow, or tears of impotence in the face of tragedy. But they can also be tears of compassion, of the love that assumes another’s pain and tragedy, of who suffers with the suffering. They may even be tears of the stalagmites, which become tears of forgiveness, of gratefulness for having been forgiven. And they may also be tears of the father who once again embraces the child who was dead, but has returned to life.

After Bethany—before Calvary—we knew that the promise of a “God-with us” had been fulfilled. Since then, whenever life wrangles and grinds our hearts, we may cry without shame or humiliation, for it was God who wept first…