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The following message is brought to you by Preaching Today, a resource of Christianity Today International. We turn to a second sermon on the unusual love that God offers to his creatures. The message is by Bruce Thielman, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it's entitled "Telltale

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Tears," based on the 11th chapter of John's Gospel. The Bible consists of 66 different books. These books are made up of 1,189 chapters, and these chapters are comprised of 31,173 verses. And the shortest of all of these verses, read just a moment ago in your hearing, is this, "Jesus Wept." About 400 years ago, a man

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named Robert Stephens, a Frenchman, sat down and divided the Bible into chapters and verses. And for some reason known only to him, when he came to the 11th chapter of John's Gospel, he divided it in such a way that the 35th verse consists of only two words, "Jesus Wept." Now I am sure that if I had asked the

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question tonight, "What is the shortest verse in the Bible?" some of you would have been able to identify it, and some of you would have been able to cite gospel, chapter, and verse. But I wonder how many of you have thought deeply about the tremendous truths that are to be found in these two words. First of all,

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and most obviously, there is testimony here to Jesus' humanity. Two weeks ago, when I was speaking in New Jersey, a very attractive young high school girl came to me and put this question, "In what way is Jesus relevant to my life today?" Now she did not put the question with any insolence or arrogance. It was a very

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sincere question, and let's face it, a very legitimate question. After all, what relevance to today, our jet age, is a sandal-wearing peasant from an obscure village located about 8,000 miles from here? What does Jesus have to say to this time? He never wrote a book, he never went to college, he never traveled very far

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from his home, he never rode in an automobile, he never saw a computer. What relevance is there between him and us in the midst of our 20th century human predicament? It was a good question. I answered her that Jesus is supremely relevant to our time because he is the model of what humanity is to be. Jesus'

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great mission, you see, was not to be God, for he was God by nature. His mission was to be man, to take upon himself the garb of flesh, and to represent to us in the purest possible way what it really is to be a human being. Jesus demonstrates for us the nobility of life at its very highest, and no matter what time or place

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you live in, if you are seeking for nobility as a man or nobility as a woman, the very highest demonstration of life, the purest representation of the human experience, is to be found in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It's for this reason that the Church has always emphasized the humanity of Jesus. In its creeds and

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in its symbols, it constantly uses words representative of his humanity. In the Apostles' Creed, for example, it says that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, that he was crucified, dead, and buried. These words pertain, you see, not to a ghost or an apparition, not to any phantom. Only a man can suffer. Only a man can be

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crucified. When Jesus heard, he heard as we hear. When Jesus saw, he saw as we see. When he took one hand and hit it against the other hand, the sound was exactly the same as when you and I do it. When he was thirsty, he was thirsty as we are thirsty. When taking up a great weight, he fell, so we in carrying weights that are too

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heavy for us fall. And when he went to the funeral of a friend, he did what we would do in exactly that same place. Jesus wept. He was not a Greek deity floating about on a cloud. He was not a pagan god, utterly disinterested with the affairs of men. He was not some vague Eastern idea, utterly unrelated to the

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human predicament. Instead of that, he was a carpenter who loved flowers and little children, who talked about sowing seed and buying some sparrows for a penny. He was a patriot and a teacher and a whole lot more, but always a man. He entered as a fetus into the womb of his mother and dwelt there for nine months.

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And at the end of his life, he died and was placed into a tomb, and his body began to decay. And were it not for the resurrection, it would have decayed and returned to the inorganic, just as our bodies do. His body was woven, his life was made of exactly that of which our bodies are woven and made. The same blood,

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the same sweat, the same tears. C.S. Lewis describes it in terms of those divers we see down in Mexico, those young brown boys who go up to great heights and leap out and descend in a graceful curve to the water. And they penetrate the green emerald warm water and then go deeper down to the icy darkest waters. And there

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they touch the muddy bottom, and then their lungs reaching out for air, they turn and surge up from the inky blackness to the emerald green waters again, and then surge out of the water, shouting and exalting and splashing. Just so Jesus moved down into life. But he didn't dwell in the icy darkness of

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earthly living only for a moment, but rather was amongst us so for 33 years. But never in that time did he lose the beauty or the excellence which was typical of him. He counted with equality with God, living there in the sunlit heights, not something to be grasped, but laid it aside and took upon himself our

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form. Paul says at one point that he pitched his tent among us. John says the word became flesh. Jesus wept. The humanity of the Master. One of the great treats to me in this last Thanksgiving break was a television concert presented by the Philadelphia Orchestra. It was Eugene Ormandy's 80th birthday, and to

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celebrate it he led the orchestra in the second symphony of Sergei Rachmaninoff. Rachmaninoff had been a personal friend of Ormandy's, and before the concert in an interview Ormandy told how when he had first received the work from Rachmaninoff's hand, he proposed certain cuts or abbreviations to be made in it,

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eight in number. Rachmaninoff reviewed the proposed cuts, accepted seven of them, but said that the eighth cut could not be made. He said if you take that part out, the whole composition will no longer make sense. Following the directions of the composer, Ormandy so performed the work and has performed it many times

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since, and it is a masterwork, sublime and beautiful, and the performance was magnificent in every way. But as I listened to it, what kept coming back to me was this. As you look at the symphony of the human experience, you discover all kinds of discord and dissonance, much sound and fury, kettle drums and cymbals,

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but often it seems to signify nothing. And that's the reason so many when they listen to the symphony of life opt out, either by suicide or by losing themselves in an orgy of self-indulgence, which is a suicide of its own kind. But Jesus, you see, is the one part of the music that absolutely must not be cut

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out if the symphony is to make sense. When he is inserted into the music, when one understands him as the model of what humanity is to be, then suddenly we learn that the whole symphony is to be done in C major, in Christ major, and then the song becomes beautiful, and then the order and the

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harmony are there to be heard and to enjoy. Jesus is the master man and shows us what living is to be. God does not weep, for a spirit cannot shed tears, and an animal does not weep, incapable of such emotion. Only a man can weep. And Jesus wept, and in his manhood showed us how we are to live. But notice this too.

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Part of what he showed us about the human experience was this, the importance of openness and vulnerability. He wept right out where people could see him. It's recorded in Scripture twice that Jesus did this, once at the tomb of his friend and once over the capital city of the nation that he loved. Now please

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understand that Jesus was not a weepy sentimentalist. His enemies, for example, described him not as one who reigned on parties, but rather as one who liked to go to too many of them. He was seen by them as one who gave himself over to the pleasurable too often. His friends spoke of him in the most positive terms. Little

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children were ready to scramble up into his lap. A prostitute responded to his directions immediately. A top tax collector came scrambling down out of a tree at his invitation. He had the kind of personality that attracted all kinds of people. His words to describe himself were very upbeat words. He

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described himself as a bridegroom or as a buried treasure or as a pearl of great price. And you yourself, if you are a Christian, know how you can reach across the years and experience him and when you do experience him there is a warmth and a power and a glow about it. Not that which is cold, but that which is

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uplifting and enthusing and dynamic. Jesus was not a weepy individual, but he was always a vulnerable individual. He never masked himself. There was no duplicity in him. When his heart hurt, he let it show. "Good men weep easily," the Greek poet wrote, and scripture testifies to this. It says that David wept and

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Jonathan wept and Job wept and Ezra wept. The scriptures say that in heaven God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, which it seems to me means that in life there are some things we ought to be crying about and openly. But of course some people will never do that. They look upon weeping as a sign of weakness.

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Weakness? Do you remember Gail Sayers and Brian Piccolo, the star backs for the Chicago Bears? One was a black man, one was a white man. They created quite a sensation back in the days that they were best known because they were the first two black and white men to room together in professional football.

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Reporters used to ask them about that all the time and they would always tease one another in their answers. A reporter would say, "Do you mind living with him?" and Piccolo would answer, "Not if he doesn't use the bathroom." Or a reporter would say, "What do you two fellas talk about?" and Sayers would respond, "Oh, just

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the usual racist talk." They had a lot of kidding remarks they made toward one another but there was a deep, deep affection between them. And then Brian Piccolo was cut down with cancer and began to spend more time in the hospital than he did on the football field. The two men had planned to go together with their

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wives to New York City to the Professional Football Writers Association banquet where Gail Sayers was to be presented the George S. Hallas Award as the most courageous professional football player in that year. But at the last minute Piccolo, because of the oncoming advance of the disease,

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was unable to go. When the moment came for Gail Sayers to receive the award, this star running back stepped to the microphone and with the tears unashamedly rolling down his cheeks said, "You flatter me by giving me this award but I tell you here and now that I accept it for Brian Piccolo. Brian Piccolo

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is the man of courage who should receive the George S. Hallas Award. I love Brian Piccolo and I'd like you to love him too. And tonight when you hit your knees please ask God to love him." A strong man saying of another strong man, "I love Brian." And weeping as he said it. But is that weakness? I read this last summer

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the latest biography of Abraham Lincoln and was struck by the fact that he repeatedly both in public and in private wept. Do you think of Abraham Lincoln as a weak man? And what of Jesus, this carpenter who was a carpenter in the days when the carpenter went out, chopped down the trees, hauled them to where they

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were to be used and then hewed them into shape. This one who grasped the mast of a ship in the midst of a storm and stand up and argue with the wind. This one who would face down a hostile crowd and walk courageously through the very middle of the desert. This one who wrestled with evil in the desert and wrestled with God in a

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garden. This one who was with a whip and the sharpness of his tongue able to clear a temple of money changers. This one who drew to him in bonds of firm loyalty tough men, fishermen and tax collectors. This one who drew women not only by his winsomeness but also by his manliness. This one who could be beaten

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and crowned with thorns and spat upon and still when he was brought before a Roman governor could draw from the lips of that governor these words, "Behold the man." Is this weakness? I'll tell you what weakness is. I think tonight of a young college senior, tall, good-looking, came from a fine financial background, very

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bright, had four different invitations to attend four different elite graduate schools. In the middle of his senior year he fell in love with a girl and began sleeping with her regularly. This girl was not only interested in him but also interested in his best friend and she began sleeping with both of the men. Told

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them both this and they were all aware of it. A doctor friend of this young man asked him how he could tolerate such a thing and the young man looked at him very questioningly and said, "I am mature enough and urbane enough to be able to understand this. I have a sophisticated enough view of the things of sex to be

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able to tolerate this without difficulty." Never showed that inside he was because of all of this a veritable mass of anger and frustration. But always you see the stiff upper lip, no tears where anyone could see. And then one night he borrowed her car, drove to a nearby parking lot, put a pistol in his mouth and blew his

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brains out. And everyone who commented after it, including the doctor who wrote of it, said, "He never let us know what he was really feeling. There is weakness." Charles Dickens put into the lips of Mr. Bumble and Oliver Twist these words, "Crying opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes and

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softens the temper. So cry on." To that we might also add, "It frees the emotion. It cleanses the spirit." If you've ever held anyone in your arms who was weeping, a boy whose mother just died, a girl whose fellow had just turned and walked away, a child that was lost or afraid or hurt, you know how tears can communicate

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feelings and how in the communication of feelings there is the deepest contact. We can only touch each other on three levels. There's the factual level. Dave and I went out for lunch yesterday. We had steak subs. There's the opinion level. While Dave and I were out for lunch, well, he expressed an opinion on this

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question. I disagree with it. And then there's the feeling level. When I go out for lunch with Dave, I feel so lifted up, my spirit so soars, I am so freed of all of my burdens for that moment, but I wouldn't miss it. Now which one of those says the most about where we really are? It is the expression of our feelings. It

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is only when we make ourselves known and know that the other truly knows us, it is only then that when they say they love us, we can be assured that it is the truth. Golda Meir perhaps summed it best when she wrote, "I've always felt sorry for people afraid of feeling, of sentimentality, who are unable to weep

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with their whole hearts. Because these do not do this, because they do not know how to weep, they do not know how to laugh either." Jesus wept. And just one last thing. These two words speak to us magnificently of our Lord's compassion. When he got there to Bethany, a typical funeral of the day was in process. The

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mourners, the sackcloth, the ashes, the loud crying, the playing of the instrument. And Jesus on seeing this, wept. He did not weep for Lazarus. He knew that Lazarus already had one foot in heaven and that he could call Lazarus back at will. The passage is very specific. It says, "When Jesus saw them weeping, when Jesus heard

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their cries of lamentation, he was troubled and he wept." In other words, Jesus wept because of the sorrow and the brokenness and the lostness, the gone wrongness that he saw in that human experience. He reached out and put his arms about him in compassion and tenderness. I read recently of a teaching

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hospital that found one of its young resident students had a marvelous effect on children. They responded to him with delight. They would do things for him and yield to his ministrations in a way that they wouldn't do for any other person on the staff. And they assigned a nurse to discover what the secret of this young

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resident was. It wasn't until the second week when she was on night turn that she found out the secret. It was simply this. Every night on his last round, he would kiss and hug and tuck in every one of the children. It was in that act of compassion, you see, in that act of sympathy, that he made his contact. And

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it's this, this sympathy, this compassion that belongs to Jesus that reaches out to us. It's this about him that charms us more than anything else about him. He is the great tempter of the ages, you know. We think of the devil as the great tempter. Jesus tempts far more. Oh, some are tempted to be Alexander or Napoleon

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or Rockefeller to have power. But Jesus tempts us with his words, simple words, "Follow me." And although we say no because we're afraid to risk as he risked and to love as he loved, still always there is nibbling away down at the center of our heart something that says, "Oh, if only we could be really like

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him." I had a mission friend, a doctor in Egypt, who once performed a relatively simple operation on a woman and her sight was restored. She came to him before she left the hospital and said, "Thank you, Jesus." He said, "I'm not Jesus. I'm just Jesus' servant." But no matter how much he protested, she kept saying in

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bowing low, "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus." And he admitted to me that he was awed and thrilled by this to think that he had done something in his life that someone else looked at and thought when they looked at him of Jesus. We all have that desire in us, but still we resist his invitation to serve. We're like Peter.

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We say, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinner." We say, "I can't rise to that level of living. You're on a scale that's utterly beyond me." Jesus disturbs us, doesn't he? We read his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and we applaud them, but if there's honesty in us, we know that when we read them we

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feel like spiritual morons. If that is not true of you, then I would submit to you that you've never really read the words. We look at Jesus as our example, and when we stand beside him, it is sickness standing beside health. It is weakness standing beside strength. It is the ugly standing beside the beautiful.

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We see him gird himself with a towel and minister to others, and we hear him invite us to do the same thing, and our hearts hush within us, and then we cry out, "O thou crystal Christ, I'd like to be like that, but I'm not like that." And we try to turn away and forget it. Lloyd Douglas in The Robe tells about when

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Jesus met Zacchaeus, you know the tax collector that came out of the tree and they had lunch together? That tax collector was a thief, but halfway through lunch he goes out on the porch and he speaks to the crowd assembled there and he says, "I will give back four times over everything that I stole." The law

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required you only return a double, but he said four times over, and then he said, "I will give one half of everything that I possess to the poor." And then he turned around and went back into the house, and Douglas pictures Jesus as saying to him, "Zacchaeus, what led you to do that?" And Zacchaeus answered, "Master, when I looked

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into your eyes, I saw there mirrored the Zacchaeus I was intended to be." And you see, at one and the same time, that's what fascinates us and frightens us in Jesus. We look at him and something in us says, "Yes, that's what I'm supposed to be, that's what I want to be." And then we look at ourselves and we say, "No, I can

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never be that." And that's the reason these words Jesus wept are so important. They are expressions of his compassion, his sympathy, and that compassion and sympathy is extended to us. The good news is that Jesus isn't just our example and isn't just our teacher, but more than these things is our Savior. The keynote

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is compassion, not the compassion he calls us to, but the compassion he extends to us and then invites us to grow in. Tchaikovsky says somewhere in one of his letters that he owed to Mozart the fact that he had devoted his whole life to music. You catch in that sentence two tones. First, the tone of

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humility. He looks to Mozart as the very paragon of musical genius. But also there's the note of enthusiasm. Mozart had been to him not only the one who humbled him, but also the one who called out of him the dedication of his whole life to being everything in music that he could be. Well, Christ is far beyond

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Mozart and Tchaikovsky is far beyond us, but the illustration is still apt. For what it says to us is this, that Jesus can be the one who loves us, accepts us, forgives us, cleanses us, and at the same moment so flows into us that we are enabled to live more like him than we ever previously believed. I suppose most

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of you haven't reached the place in life yet where you feel the way I do about things, but quite frankly I'm sick to death of ideals. I don't need any more ideals for me. I don't need any more ideals for the world. I have so many ideals and I've been so frustrated by them I really don't care for any more.

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What I'm looking for is a Savior. Not someone who will just tell me what I ought to be, but someone who will forgive me for what I am and then with his very love will enable me to be more than I ever believed I could be. And it's exactly that that Jesus does. When Bishop Booth, the Episcopal Bishop up in Vermont

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died, he was a young man but he led a beautiful Christian life, when he died the nurse said, "I know where the bishop is tonight. His soul is in hell." And a woman who heard those remarks was absolutely stunned into silence. She stood there quiet and the nurse went on. "That's the only place," she said, "that the bishop

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would be happy, where there were so many people who needed help." The bishop was Jesus' man. For Jesus sought hell and Jesus still hungers for sinners. I believe with all my heart that in his spirit he is moving up and down the very aisles of this room as I speak. And he is saying, "Those that are whole have no need of a

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physician, but those who are sick do. I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." And the one who says that, keen to live with us as a man, so knows exactly what we're feeling. And the one who said that and says it tonight was open and vulnerable, always speaking to us the truth. And the one who

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said that and who says that tonight is the one who on seeing the hurt, lonely, sinful, brokenness of people like us was so moved that he wept. Jesus wept. And that says to me that he's the pioneer of the future. And that puts into my heart unconquerable hope.

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