Sharing Life and Christ

Jesus wept. John 11:35 John regularly portrays the people in his biography of Jesus as missing the point of Jesus’ actions or words.  Nicodemus thinks Jesus tells him to crawl back into the womb in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven.  The woman at the well thinks that Jesus has some sort of water purifying device that can give her drinking water forever like the Culligan man.  The disciples think Jesus is chastising them about forgetting lunch when he says that he is the bread of life.  So it’s little wonder that people misunderstand Jesus’s tears after Lazarus died.  Though certainly Christ loved his dear friend, his tears stretch far beyond the mere loss of a beloved companion.  Jesus wept because death isn’t the way things are supposed to be.  Death is the result of sin, which, to borrow Plantinga’s book title, is “not the way it’s supposed to be” either.  The One through whom and for whom all things were made sheds tears of sorrow, beca...