When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. [John 11:33-35]
[1] Jesus Wept, by Daniel Bonnell, contemporary. [2] The Raising of Lazarus, Jean-Baptiste Jouvenet, 1706.[3] The Raising of Lazarus, by Caravaggio, 1608-09.
“Is God capable of emotions?” is not a question that can be answered lightly.
On the one hand, if God is subject to emotions, he may change or be changed and that seems to mess up our image of an eternal, unchanging God. Does this God not come dangerously close to humans and risk being contaminated by his creatures and even be subject to emotional manipulation? At any rate, an affirmative answer to the opening question would appear to put a dent to the Greek vision of a primordial Unmoved Mover, at least in the department of reactions and feelings.
On the other hand, what kind of a God do we have who is not capable of emotions, and is hopelessly distant and untouchable? Is such a God even capable of caring? A negative answer to the opening question would suggest a God who is away and above the vicissitudes of human history, wholly unconcerned about human affairs and unmoved by human suffering.
What does the Bible say about God in terms of emotions?
The impression we have about the Evangelists is that St John seemed to have been able to get into the mind of Jesus more than the other apostles. The Gospel named after him is a rich text for the study of this topic. In particular, chapter 11 on the death and resurrection of Lazarus offers a good starting point for a first look at some implications. While the entire chapter provides the context, verses 33-35 take us to the heart of the matter.
- In sum, while Jesus was in the Jordan, Mary and Martha sent words to him that their brother Lazarus was very ill. Jesus tarried and left for Bethany two days later. By the time he arrived, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Jesus saw that Mary and the Jews who accompanied her were crying. Jesus felt very upset. He was deeply troubled. He went to Lazarus’ tomb, and he wept.
We need to be silent, to be able to begin to feel and to take in some of the deep implications of the Word in St John’s Gospel:
- The Lord was upset.
- He was troubled.
- He wept.
Despite some exegetical difficulties relating to the particular Greek word used to describe Jesus’ emotions, all agree that in this narrative, Jesus was deeply emotional. His weeping here reminds us of a later occasion where he will again weep. Standing on the Mount of Olives during his final approach to the Holy City, Jesus looks across the Kidron Valley at Jerusalem and he weeps. The Lord weeps for Jerusalem, the city of “salem” that knows no peace, for it refuses to welcome the Prince of Peace. Our Lord weeps over human sin.
Here in Bethany, apart from the straightforward portrayal of Jesus weeping, John’s Gospel employs two Greek words to accentuate Jesus’ inner emotions:
- enebrimesato – meaning he was deeply moved, which ties in with words following that mean “in his spirit”; and
- etarasen – meaning he was troubled.
While differences of opinion emerge in the interpretation of the term enebrimesato – a term that has proven itself to be very difficult to translate – they nevertheless all point to a strong display of emotions.
- This Greek word for “deeply moved” is a powerful but complex one. It speaks not only of a deep emotion, but of the physical expression of that emotion as well. From Greek grammatical tools, we learn that as it is properly used to describe horses snorting, it is here used in reference to persons “snorting with suppressed rage or indignation”. Thus, in this story, it is employed to describe Jesus who “let out a groan of indignation from the innermost being.”
- Accepting the element of anger, this verse in German Bibles commonly reads “Jesus became angry in spirit and troubled.”
- This “anger” has been variously explained by commentators, including the suggestion that Jesus was angry and troubled over the ravages caused by the great enemy of the human race, namely, death. He groaned in the spirit and was troubled because the violent tyranny of death stood starring him in the face.
- A deeply moved Jesus came to the tomb. On that, all agree. However, not every scholar agrees to take the line of anger. To begin with, even though Jesus wept, the word used to describe his weeping in verse 35 is different from the word used to describe the weeping of Mary and the Jews in verse 33 which indicated loud wailing and cries of lament. This word simply means “to shed tears” and has more the idea of quiet grief. The difference in word-choice, while pointing to immense grief on the part of both Mary and Jesus, suggests a controlled, inner grief experienced by Jesus. While Jesus let out a groan from his innermost being, therefore, it wasn’t a display of emotion that was out of control.
- Then, we find ourselves gravitating towards such interpretations as William Barclay has given. Barclay suggests that Jesus “was deeply moved in spirit so that an involuntary groan burst from him, and he trembled with deep emotion.” Yet, he does not agree with any translation that implies anger in all these emotions. He even sees the RSV’s translation of “Jesus was deeply moved in spirit” as being “too colourless” for that unusual Greek word enebrimesato. He proposes a closer translation to indicate “such deep emotion seized Jesus than an involuntary groan was wrung from his heart.”
The point immediately germane to our reflection here is that, instead of the Greek vision of God having apatheia, that is a total inability to feel any emotion at all, as his primary characteristic, John’s gospel turns on the theme that “in Jesus we see the mind of God.”
The raising of Lazarus episode then raises the question: “What kind of God do we have?”
Dutch Dominican Edward Schillebeeckx describes Jesus as “the human face of God”. “To have seen me is to have seen the Father,” our Lord said to Philip [John 14:9]. And right here in Bethany, so deeply did Jesus enter into human sorrows that his heart was wrung with anguish. Through him, we have a glimpse of our God, the Father of Jesus Christ, as a God who is not a distant, passionless and compassionless God of the Greeks. Rather, He is a God who draws near to his people through the incarnation of his Son whose heart feels pain and sorrow for the pain and sorrow of his people. In Jesus of Bethany, then, we see a God who cares deeply.
Why then does John mention that Jesus wept? Why does the evangelist show us a weeping Jesus? Why does John record this fact about Jesus when he admits that there isn’t room enough to record all the events of Jesus’ life [John 21:25]?
John alone has given us the familiar and yet mysterious language of the Word made flesh [John 1:14], that Word which in the beginning was with God, and was God [John 1:1-2]. He deems it necessary, despite space-limitation, to tell us that the Word who made the universe stands and weeps at the grave of a friend. John breaks the Word open just a crack, so to speak, that we might see a glimpse of the character and nature of God. At Bethany, this God stands at the grave of a man and weeps. He is an emotional God. That emotion is displayed not only in the privacy of one’s own room, but in public, with the community, in the company of those who suffer. And we know too why he wept only when he got to the tomb, the place they had asked him to “come and see” where his friend was buried, for the tomb is the place of human sorrow, where love and hope are buried against our wishes, where humanity mourns its dead and laments its excruciating loss. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus paints a powerful picture of deep solidarity with those who lament and mourn.
There is another difficulty in the text we need to resolve. Why did Jesus weep at all? After all, he is the resurrection and the life (11:25) and, on hearing of Lazarus’ death he was glad that that he was not there, so that he could raise Lazarus up and the glory of God might be seen and people would believe. While, therefore, we might say that Jesus was in sympathy with Mary and Martha when he wept with them, that is inadequate an explanation since Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus up anyway. How then are we to understand Jesus’ seemingly “unnecessary” weeping?
To answer that, we need to turn then to two very important linkages John wants us to make:
- First, we are to link this passage with Isaiah 53:4 – “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” In that familiar Biblical passage read on every Good Friday, we find the connection between Lazarus’ illness and death and Jesus’ own suffering and death where the glory of God would be made manifest. Like Lazarus’ death, Jesus’ own death would produce faith. There is a connection between Lazarus’ death and Jesus’ death that John wants us to see. So from the next chapter in John’s gospel, John 12 onwards, Jesus’ own death would be rapidly approaching. And there, Jesus is again troubled when he speaks of his own death. So the descriptions of weeping and troubled emotions point from Lazarus’ death to Jesus’ own death, from Bethany to Calvary.
- Second, we are to link John 11:34 to John 20:13. What we witness in Bethany is a subtle foreshadowing between Lazarus’ death and Jesus’ death. To see Lazarus’ death, Mary answered “come and see” – the very same invitation to the journey of discovery Jesus gave to the first enquirers of faith in 1:39. And that takes the readers right to the core of the gospel message: don’t just take anybody’s word for it, come and see for yourself. John shows us what he saw, that is, both the humanity of Jesus and the deity of Jesus. After discovering the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene had to invite the apostles Peter and John to see the truth for themselves [20:1-2]. Refusing to believe the testimony of the other apostles, even Thomas, the absentee-apostle at the first post-Resurrection at the Upper-Room, must see for himself to be convinced that the crucified Jesus has indeed risen to become the resurrected Lord and Christ (20:24-29). In showing us Jesus’ humanity and divinity, John is telling us that Jesus did not merely cure sorrows but shared in them, and he shared grief with those weeping before Lazarus’ tomb while looking ahead to his own time in the grave. This is the rich fabric John is painting for us as he tells us “Jesus wept.” Paul wrote in First Corinthians that love does not rejoice in what is wrong. If God loves us beyond human love, then he grieves and shares our pain more powerfully than any human grief or sympathy. And so we are told quite simply, “Jesus wept”.
And so the question “Is God capable of emotions?” is by no means a question for mere philosophical and theological entertainment. Over time, we ourselves have come to realize that we are truly blessed by the display of the Lord’s emotions in the Gospels. To know he was tired, hungry, and thirsty is reassuring, but then those are only bodily needs. To know that he grew angry, was frustrated, felt troubled and sorrowful, and even wept, somehow offers us a great deal of courage and comfort. Even if we do not always use those emotions righteously, it is good to know that Jesus had them. Bethany takes us to the very belly of Christ, and we treasure the power of the moment where Jesus was indignant with the power of death and grievously sorrowful over the death of a friend. We now know it’s quite alright to behave the same way. We shall not have to feel guilty over the fact that at funerals we often feel so mad at the inevitability of death, or feel so heart-broken for those who have lost their loved ones so definitively. Jesus who loves us hates death as well. Our Savior has been here, He has felt pain, suffered grief, and experienced anger. In him, we have the eternal consolation that death is no longer the last word.
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh. May 2012. All rights reserved.
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