Somewhere around the year 1555 the system of dividing the Bible up into chapter and verse was universally adopted. Before then, if you were looking for a particular saying in the Bible you would have to go through the whole book line by line. Think how awkward it would be at a football game (I presume there will be football games this year, but who knows) if at a football game somebody held up a sheet saying “Look somewhere in the Gospel of John – it’s in the first few pages but not at the very beginning, on the right hand side of the page close to the bottom – look there for a really important saying” instead of the customary sign saying “John 3:16.” There is nothing sacred about chapter and verse, just convenience. However, I can’t help but think that the printer who made the division was onto something when the he made as the shortest verse in the English Bible “Jesus wept.” The brevity of that sentence from the middle of the Lazarus story serves to highlight it. Jesus wept. Jesus was sad. Jesus was unhappy.
If the Son of God could be sad, we can be sad. Jesus was sad because he was grieving the loss of his friend. We all at one time or another shared that emotion but right now it is the pandemic that makes us want to cry. The whole experience of social distancing, of not being able to connect with others, saddens us. There is something powerful about claiming our sadness. It’s okay to feel what we feel. When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way. Let yourself feel the sadness and keep going. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. We should resist the temptation to say, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. Jesus didn’t stop crying because Martha and Mary felt worse than he did. He let himself be sad.
An experienced spiritual director told me once to monitor four feelings: being mad, sad, glad and scared. They easy to remember, she said, because they all rhyme. (If you are from Brooklyn, as Sister Josepha was, they rhyme.) But the reality is that feelings don’t come in a neat package. In my life, all four feelings are present at once. Yes, I’m sad because of this sense of being isolated. But I’m also mad that our government was not better prepared for this widely predicted event. And I’m glad that we live in a time when there are ways to keep in touch electronically that did not exist even twenty years ago. And I’m scared, frightened, at the indeterminacy of all this. When will it be over? During the pandemic, therefore I, we, have to give ourselves permission to feel sadness and fear and anger.
Okay, I get it. Feelings are feelings. What to do with those feelings? The gospel story provides some guidance. The first thing to notice is that everyone reacts to their feelings in their own way. Thomas reacts to his fear with bluster. “Let us also go to die with him.” Martha reacts to her grief by being surrounded with people while Mary, by contrast, stays at home. Even Jesus seems pretty stoical — at first stating matter-of-factly “Lazarus has died” — until he gets to the tomb when he breaks down. That should tell us that there isn’t any right or wrong way of going through the sadness of this time. Everyone will have different reactions to their sadness and it manifests in different ways. Our role is to be compassionate with one another, understanding that we can’t, nor should we, control what another is experiencing. As a side note we should be wary that what we are experiencing is sadness and not clinical depression. When we are sad we feel that the situation is bad. When we are depressed we feel that I am bad, I am not worth much, I have no value. In depression there is a sense of hopelessness and one tends to withdraw. That is a medical condition that needs attention by a professional. Sadness, on the other hand, we can help each other with by living in the present tense. Realize that in the present moment, you’re okay. You have food. The sun rises and the sun sets. Keeping in touch with the blessings of today will help to lessen the sadness that threatens to overtake over us.
The second thing to notice about the story is that Jesus weeps even though he knows that a happy ending is coming. Right after crying he tells Martha “Did I not tell you that I you believe you will see the glory of God?” The blessed assurance did not eliminate the sorrow. We can relate to that from our own experience at funerals. We trust that our beloved has received the promise of eternal life but we are still sad because they have died, they are not here. The feeling is there because things will be different from now on. We won’t be with those we love as we were before. There probably something akin to that at work in us now. The loss of normalcy; it’s hitting us and we’re sad. We know that one day this will end but we can’t see when. Like Jesus, we weep even though we know a new day is coming.
Another thing striking about the story: the tears of Jesus are recognized as a sign of love. When they saw him weeping the bystanders said, “See how he loved him.” Sadness can speak of a love story. We’re sad because we can’t be with people that we love. We’re sad because we can’t gather as a community who love one another. We’re sad because we can’t celebrate the love that God has for us together. In the midst of our tears there is cause for rejoicing. Even sadness expresses our love and that’s a good thing .
