The Complexity of Our Tears

One day I was teaching on Capitol Hill and at the end of the afternoon one of my colleagues asked me if I knew a particular woman. I said that I did and he told me that she had been found murdered in her apartment that morning, just a few blocks from where I was standing. I fell back against the wall, screaming inside, NO!

Over the next few days, I found myself rethinking everything that mattered most to me. I still loved my wife, but I thought about her differently—that she was alive and very tender to me. I still loved my children, but I thought about them differently—I wanted to protect them from a murderous world, and was sure that in the end I couldn’t.

I still loved my work, but I thought about it differently—would I be able to teach my students to honestly step into the sordidness of the city and world, knowing that they too might suffer? What I wasn’t sure about was God. Those were dark days for me, as it seemed that I had now seen enough to know that what I had believed about faith and hope and love was not sustainable.

This was one too many stories of horrible sorrow. How could it all still be true in the face of a friend being stabbed to death? And I began to wonder, Is there something that is more true than what I have believed? Is there an account of the universe that makes more sense of griefs like this? We gathered together to mourn our friend’s death, and we cried and cried. While the days are a blur in some ways, I still remember wondering about God and the world, perplexed as to what could be honestly believed…

As the days passed after my friend’s murder, I entered again into the tears of God. It mattered, supremely, that Jesus wept, tearful about our sorrows, weeping with those who wept, and that he groaned severely, being angry at the distortion of life that death is. Years have come and gone since those weeks of great sadness and there have been other days of tragedy, as there will be in the days to come. But I am sure now that I need John 11 to be in the Bible. I need for God to have tears, even, and especially, complex tears, because some days I do too.