Why Jesus Wept -- Remembering 9/11

A passenger plane went down in a Pennsylvania field yesterday.  Flight 93.  45 people died. 

Amidst all the horrors of that beautiful September day, this crash broke my heart.  I watched the reports where they searched for wreckage, not survivors, and I cried.  Not so much because of the tragedy itself—scores of people die every day all over the globe, in violent, tragic, sudden ways.  Many more died in two nearby U.S. cities. 

But this crash rocked me.  I wept for their families.  I cried for the teen-agers who will live a lifetime without their moms.  For the congregations who will gather on Sunday without their pastor, priest, or rabbi.  And the children conceived but not yet born who will grow up with only a framed picture of their dad. For the homes that will be quiet and dark this Christmas because someone won’t be there.  For people with no hope of ever seeing the one they love again.  Not in this life.  Not in the next. 

But I also cried because unlike the other two hijacked flights, the people aboard Flight 93 had more time to think . . . more time to process what was happening. 

I cried for their last five minutes—the time it would have taken for them to descend from the clouds to the earth.  Hopelessness must have flooded the cabin.  Their last moment.  For those clinging to their children and to their husbands.  For those who sat terrified, alone.  For those who as God’s children experienced His peace, seeing this patchwork of farmland as heaven’s portal.  And I cried for those who knew only panic because they had not made decisions they knew now they must, but their thoughts raced from one terror to the next—and they were unable to focus and not ready to die. 

I thought of the few (many, I hope) whose last five minutes were the most important of their lives.  Five minutes is plenty of time to say to God, “my life is in Your hands.  I need You now, I’ve always needed You.  I don’t deserve what Jesus has done for me, but if You’re giving grace, I’ll take it.”  Five minutes can put all of life in perspective and include enough moments to decide eternity.  Plummeting toward the earth, their last five minutes gave their life new direction.  And when their bodies hit the surface, they plunged into God’s presence.  It happened that fast.

And this all made me think of Jesus’ last week.  Scripture says He cried twice.  The first was in Bethany when He stood with His close friends Martha and Mary at their brother’s fresh grave. 

Of this occasion, John 11:35 records the simple statement, “Jesus wept.”  It’s easy to wonder why He didn’t rush past the grieving crowd, storm Lazarus’ grave and raise him from death.  Why spend those moments in grief when He knew He would soon restore Lazarus back to life?  Why cry when you could laugh?

Instead, Scripture invites us to stand as silent witnesses to a rare and private moment in Jesus’ life.  The word for weeping here is used only once in the Bible; it’s dakruo, meaning “to shed tears.”  It’s a quiet word describing those private tears that stream down your face when you are lost in grief.  The more common word for weeping is klaio, “any loud expression of grief.” John 11:33 said that Mary wailed like this as she stood there beside Jesus.  But Jesus’ tears held a different emotion.

Jesus also cried the next week as He rode a donkey into Jerusalem—just five days before He faced death.  But this time, He didn’t weep quiet tears.  Luke 19:41 says He wailed.  Did He cry because He knew in five short days He would experience the cross?  I don’t think so.  This reality was no stranger to Jesus.  He had lived each moment in the shadow of His approaching death.  In fact, days earlier He had told His disciples He was going to die in Jerusalem.  Any tears of grief shed for His own death probably had watered the road He walked from Galilee. 

Why did He cry then?  Perhaps Jesus wept because He knew what lay ahead for Jerusalem, the city He loved.  He wept for the people who called it home, whom He loved even more.  Perhaps He cried because He knew their hearts and how they searched for salvation everywhere except where they could find it--right in front of them.  Perhaps He remembered some supernatural knowledge of Jerusalem’s and His people’s coming days and the reality sunk in that moment.

For at the very moment when you’d think He would cry for Himself, Jesus cried for the sheep He had come to save—yet who ran from His rescue.  The thought of it made Him openly sob. 

Luke 19:10 says Jesus’ mission is to seek and to save those who are lost . . . both then and now. 

Some lost passengers on Flight 93 found Him sitting right next to them in those final five minutes.  And a moment after impact, He wiped the tears forever from their eyes.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 1 Corinthians 1:3--7