Weekly Sermon of
Dave Johnson

Episcopal Church of the Resurrection
“The God Who Weeps with Those Who Weep” (Jeremiah 15:20-21)
September 3, 2023
Dave Johnson

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is the God who weeps with those who weep.

Today’s Old Testament passage was written by the prophet Jeremiah, whose ministry in Judah was six centuries before Christ. God called him to be a prophet when everything in Judah fell apart. In 587 BC the Babylonians razed Jerusalem and burned down the temple built by Solomon. Jeremiah watched the Babylonian soldiers wreak havoc and destruction on the Holy City and witnessed the violence committed against those unable to defend themselves. Jeremiah watched as the remnants of survivors were led out of Jerusalem to captivity in Babylon. Jeremiah heard the cries and wails and chaos—and ultimately the awful silence as Jerusalem fell. He recorded this in the Book of Lamentations, which opens:

How lonely sits the city that was once full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lives now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the festivals; all her gates are desolate, her priests groan; her young girls grieve, and her lot is bitter (Lamentations 1:1-4).

No wonder Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. And yet…God weeps with those who weep. This was true for Jeremiah, and it is true for you. God is with you when you weep. God is with you when your world falls apart. God is with you when the person to whom you gave your heart shatters it. God is with you when the property you spent years developing is wiped out by a hurricane. God is with you when you the company you founded votes you out. God is with you when your health fails. God is with you when it seems no one else on the planet is.

Whether you are a weeping prophet or a weeping sinner, God is with you when you weep, even when you have no more tears to weep are simply numb. We see this clearly in today’s passage when the same Jeremaiah who wrote the above heartbreaking passage in Lamentations wrote this: “I am with you to save you and deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless” (Jeremiah 15:20-21). Through the weeping prophet God not only promises those who like Judah have seen everything fall apart, “I am with you”, but also that he is with them for a specific reason—“I am with you to save you and deliver you…I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.” God is with those who weep in order to save those who weep, and deliver those who weep, and redeem those who weep.

This is good news because no matter how strong or healthy or brave or hardworking or handsome or beautiful or smart or clever you may be, as the great preacher T. D. Jakes once put it, “If you live long enough, life will shut your mouth.” Sometimes things in your life fall apart and you weep. No one is immune. Along these lines on their 1992 album Automatic for the People R.EM. has a gorgeous song called “Everybody Hurts” that gets right to the point:

When your day is long
And the night, the night is yours alone
When you’re sure you’ve had enough of this life, well hang on
Don’t let yourself go, ‘Cause everybody cries
Everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it’s time to sing along
When your day is night alone, hold on
If you feel like letting go, hold on
If you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on

Everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends
Everybody cries, and everybody hurts sometimes
So, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

“I am with you to save you and deliver you,” says the Lord. “I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless”—God always keeps his promises and ultimately God kept this promise not just for Judah but for the world, including you, by personally becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ to be with you to save you and deliver you and redeem you, for that is who Jesus Christ is, Your Savior, Your Deliverer, Your Redeemer.
In the greatest sermon ever preached, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (there is no close second) Jesus proclaimed, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). And later Jesus Christ, the God who weeps with those who weep, himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35) and still later revealed himself as another Weeping Prophet just like Jeremaih had six centuries earlier Jesus too wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).
Jesus Christ is the God who weeps with those who weep.

In today’s sobering gospel passage Peter—who had just gotten the right answer to Jesus’ question, “But who do you say that I am?” when he answered, “You the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”—overplayed his hand. Matthew tells us:

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Matthew 16:21-23).

I feel bad for Peter in this passage because I can think of times where just like Peter in this passage, I somehow had it exactly wrong and somehow had my mind on human things and not divine things. And as you know, later at the Last Supper, Peter, perhaps trying to make up for this, promised that even if all the other disciples denied Jesus, he would not…but he did, not once but three times. And when the cock crowed the third time Peter’s world fell apart, and he “went out and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75). But that was not how things ended with Peter because Jesus Christ is the God who weeps with those who weep—and Jesus Christ later fully forgave and fully restored Peter (John 21:12-19).

On the evening before Good Friday everything Jesus had told his disciples in today’s gospel passage began to come to pass as he indeed began to endure “great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes.” And in his passion and death everything Jeremiah prophesied in today’s passage was fulfilled, “I am with you to save you and deliver you, says the Lord. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.” Jesus delivered you “out of the hand of the wicked” by allowing himself to suffer at “the hand of the wicked”, and Jesus redeemed you “from the grasp of the ruthless” by allowing himself to suffer within “the grasp of the ruthless.”

In his suffering and death Jesus Christ revealed himself as the God who weeps with those who weep. Jesus wept as he prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing”, and he wept as his muscles would not stop cramping up and no one offered any relief, and he wept as his lacerated back rubbed against the cross as he labored for every breath, and he wept as he felt his earthly life slowly slip away, and he wept because he was fully human and being fully human means everybody hurts and everybody cries sometimes, and on the cross Jesus hurt and Jesus cried.
And in his death Jesus Christ, the God who weeps with those who weep, revealed himself as Your Savior and Your Deliverer and Your Redeemer, the One who fully kept the promise he spoke through Jeremiah six centuries before.
And Jesus was raised on the third day, and the same Risen Jesus fully forgave and fully restored Peter—and the good news of the gospel is that he also fully forgives and fully restores you.

And not matter how often you weep in your life the Risen Jesus remains the God who weeps with those who weep. And scripture assures you that not even death itself can separate you from the love of God (Romans 8:38), and that in heaven the Risen Jesus Your Savior and Your Deliverer and Your Redeemer, still bearing the scars from Good Friday will personally wipe every tear from your eyes (Revelation 21:3-4).

Amen.