Jesus Sits Shiva

Jesus Sits Shiva--October 29, 2018

[Jesus] said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep." [John 11:34-35]

Jesus weeps.  

He trembles. He cries.  His voice cracks.  And he has no teaching or parable to explain away the pain of this moment.  For this moment--between the death of his friend Lazarus and the moment when Jesus summons him back to life--Jesus sits shiva and only laments the loss of his friend's life cut short.  And for this moment, there are no words.  Just tears.

We who have heard the story of Lazarus before know that there will come a moment, very soon, in the story, when Jesus will raise Lazarus from the dead, and that everyone will be all smiles again before the scene ends.  But this moment--this moment of utter helplessness, of total vulnerability, of sheer lament--this moment is a hard one for us to bear.  

We like our saviors to be active heroes, casting out demons and curing lepers in the blink of an eye, rather than weeping uncontrollably and drawing everyone's attention while doing it.  But there is Jesus, melting into a million tears because his friend died too soon.

We like our saviors to be idealized generic supermen, descending from on high (whether from heaven or the planet Krypton) but keeping their distance. But Jesus shows up as an olive-skinned Jewish rabbi from the Middle East grieving the death of another olive-skinned Jew from the Middle East, as completely human as you and me.

We like our saviors to point fingers at an obvious easy target for an enemy to hate, someone we can pin all the blame for when things go wrong. But then there is Jesus, who doesn't vilify anyone here, nor make anyone out to be the bad guy--he is simply grieving the reality of death.

And honestly, all of that is hard for us.  It is a challenge for us to allow Jesus to weep--it makes him seem somehow out of control, somehow too much like us for our comfort.  We want to jump ahead to the miraculous moment of resuscitation when Lazarus comes out of the grave, just like we want to skip Good Friday and Holy Saturday right to the pastels and major-key anthems of Easter Sunday.  But today the challenge of Jesus is to bear the moments when our only task is grieving, and where the only right words are lament.  Today, our challenge is to sit shiva with Jesus, to be vulnerable with Jesus, to grieve with Jesus, and to hold our tongues before blurting out some faux-religious justification for the terrors that happen in this world or lobbing out some half-baked tough-sounding "solution" to prevent terrible things from happening.

Today, in other words, the challenge of Jesus is to weep with him, among others for the lives that were taken out of utter cowardice and petty hatred at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  The challenge of Jesus today is to weep with him for these kinfolk of his, and to hold at the center of our minds that Jesus was not simply an abstract generic human, but a Jewish man from the Middle East, and not the lily-white near-Scandinavian complexion we have seen in so many sentimental religious paintings over the years, knocking at doors while his blow-dried light-brown hair falls in perfect cascades down his head.  The challenge of Jesus is to recognize the presence of God there among the ones being shot at during Shabbat service, just as God was there in the ovens and gas chambers, just as God was there in exile in Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace.  The challenge of Jesus, too, is to see God's presence at the lynching trees of the American South while Confederate flags wave in the background, decades after the Civil War was over... and to see God there tortured, tied to a fence, and left to die... and to see God forced to flee from violence and disaster and taking up shelter among moving bands of refuge-seekers.  

We do not want to do this, but Jesus challenges us to weep with him, where he is, even though he keeps insisting on bringing the presence of God into all the places we do not think a respectable, strong, "winner" deity to be found.  

So let us grieve today--with no trying to explain away the horror, or to minimize the evil, or to pretend that more weapons will keep us "safe" next time, or to skip past what feels like weakness and vulnerability.  Let us sit shiva with our Jesus, who wept for Lazarus, and who weeps today for his kin in Pittsburgh, too.

Lord Jesus, grant us to share your pain and to weep with you, rather than to avoid or ignore or to skip the necessary lament of this day.