Fifth Sunday of Lent A. March 28, 2004. Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 9:30. Ezekiel 37: 12-14. Romans 8: 8-11. John 11: 1-45.

A young father drove his eight year old daughter to school everyday. The girl was at the age when she was fascinated by everything about her father – in fact she was very secretly and very obviously in love with him. As they settled into the car each morning the little girl asked her dad to tell her a story about when he was a child. One day the father was feeling very sad and a little angry, but he didn’t know why. For a reason he couldn’t explain he decided to tell his daughter the story about the time his parents had promised to come to his football game and then never came. He looked for them everywhere after the game, thinking that he had just missed seeing them. But they were not there. He was left standing on an empty football field all by himself. He finished the story just as they pulled up in front of the school. As he opened the car door to let his little daughter out, the little girl threw her arms around him and said, “Daddy, you never leave me alone. You are always there when I need you. I love you Daddy.” The little girl had understood the story better than the father did. After he had gotten back into the car the father sat and cried for a long time. It was the first time that he had let himself realize how abandoned and alone he had felt in his own home as a child. His tears were honest and true. The embrace of his daughter and the gift of tears were like a spiritual rebirth that let him into the depths of his soul.

“When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he was very moved and deeply troubled in spirit. He said, ‘Where have you placed him?’ They said, ‘Come and see.’ And Jesus wept.” Yes, Jesus the Lord of the universe, the miracle worker and conqueror of sin and death wept. “And the Jews remarked, ‘Look at how much he loved him’.”

One of the hardest things for me, and I think for most men, is to enter a room of crying women. Most men are not very comfortable with tears, although I find myself being moved to tears more often now that I am older and a bit freer. A few years ago I was listening to a retreat talk at a men’s retreat. The speaker was talking about his efforts to get some sign of affection and acceptance from his very busy father. He said that for his whole life he had tried to please his father, but that his father had never said that he loved him, not even once. I was suddenly distracted by the muffled sounds of crying all around me. It would appear that the men around me thought that being strong meant shutting down their feelings, or at least hiding them. To some extent it also meant shutting down their souls. Perhaps tears were the first stage of opening the tomb, unbinding the dead man hid deep within and letting him go free. Tears can be the door way to the soul.

Jesus was a real human being. Jesus was a real man. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He wept over the pain and suffering that would befall Jerusalem, the city he loved so much. Jesus wept over the failure of the people he loved and would gladly die for to grasp his God-given mission. Jesus wept over the cruel power that death had over his friend Lazarus and over the Jewish folks, his friends, who had come to mourn Lazarus’ death. For Jesus tears were not a sign of weakness. Tears opened up the soul of Jesus to respond to pain and suffering. From the depths of his tear-filled heart Jesus cried, “Lazarus, come out!” The love of the divine heart of Jesus triumphed over the stench and power of the tomb.

Strangely enough, abused people often can not feel deeply and can not cry. Something so traumatic has happened to them that they can’t allow themselves to feel out of fear that if they experienced their feelings they would come apart. One of the characteristics that verbal, emotional and sexual abuse have in common is that victims of abuse are often entombed in their own souls and unable to respond to life in deep and feelings ways. They have been shocked or conditioned to wall off their feelings. The tragedy of the abused child is that survival often means learning to feel nothing. The return of tears is often a sign of the return of feelings and the beginning of freedom.

Original sin, our own personal sins, and the harsh realities of life have hardened the walls abound each of us, perhaps even entombed us. On this Fifth Sunday of Lent Jesus stands at the doorway to our souls and shouts, “Come out.” Come out into the light of a new spring time. Come out to the eternal life of God’s grace. Come out to a new and richer life as a companion and follower of Jesus Christ. The tears of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus are also for you and for me. Our own tears my herald the opening of our souls to the grace of God. The tears of Jesus have the power to heal us and set up free. For resurrection from the tomb in our own lives now, and the fullness of resurrection yet to come, we give God thanks and praise.