Why Are You Crying?

I sure hope you find this message well and still basking in the glow of a glorious Easter! This past Sunday we completed our Questions GOD Asks Us message series as we pondered Jesus’ question to Mary Magdalene on Resurrection morning: “Why are you crying?” Mary had gone to the tomb to care for Jesus’ body, but when she arrived at the garden tomb, he was gone. She ran back to tell the disciples, and after Peter and John assessed the scene, she again found herself alone. When she looked in the tomb, two angels asked her why she was crying. Then, turning around, she saw Jesus – mistaking him for a gardener – and heard him ask her why she was crying. You can read the entire account in John 20.1-18.

If you were not able to attend Easter worship at Cokes Chapel this Easter, or would like to watch the message again, you can view it by clicking here. All of the messages from our Questions GOD Asks Us series are available on the website, too.

Crying is a gift from GOD. Like the gift of language, crying is something that is exclusive to humans. We produce three kinds of tears – those that lubricate our eyelids, reflexive tears caused by irritants, and emotional tears. Something that is interesting is that the different kinds of tears have different chemical compositions – the first two are mainly water, but the third kind has proteins and hormones containing the stress hormone, cortisol. Our shedding of emotional tears helps us literally flush stress from us, which is one reason we can feel so much better after a good cry.

Something we have to bear in mind, though, is we are best served by understanding why it is we are crying. Sometimes it is obvious, but there are also times when we break into tears and might not be able to immediately recall why. This is likely because we have suppressed negative thoughts and feelings that we did not want to deal with at the time. Problems eventually arise, because while these feeling might get covered up, they never go away. Pressure builds within us and eventually will burst forth, causing tears to flow as a result of years of trying to manage the emotional baggage caused by grief, anger, and disappointment. So when Jesus was asking Mary why she was crying, he very well might have been asking Mary to get in touch with the feelings deep down that were causing her to weep…feelings of loss, disappointment, loneliness, despair, et cetera.

Jesus revealed himself to Mary by simply calling her name. When he did, she latched on to him to make the connection she longed for with her Lord, and before he told her not to hold on to him, I imagine he gave her a quick pat on the back with his nail-pierced hand. Then he told her to go to the other disciples and pass along the message that his God and their God…his father and their father…was waiting for them. Embedded in those words was forgiveness and acceptance. Moving beyond their betrayal and cowardice from Thursday night and Friday morning, Jesus was telling his disciples that they were still included in God’s plan and their mission had not changed; in fact, it was just beginning!

There is one more little nugget from this passage that I want to explore. We see in John 20:15 that Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener. It might very well be that he was doing some gardening work there where his garden tomb was located. Maybe he was smoothing out the soil, pulling some weeds, and planting some seeds…we don’t know exactly. But thinking back to how our Questions GOD Asks Us series began, we saw the first exchange in a garden as the Lord was walking through Eden looking for Adam and Eve after the Fall. It was Adam and Eve’s disobedience that brought sin into the world, marring the landscape of creation with the proverbial weeds of sin. So maybe, just maybe, as Jesus was working in the garden, he was pulling the weeds of sin, smoothing out the soil, and planting the seeds of Easter hope to repair the damage done by Adam and Eve at the Fall. And in the midst of Mary’s personal darkness and grief, he was there for her to let her know that she was not alone and a brand new hope was available to her and all of us!

Thanks to Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, we all can embrace the hope that Mary received as she encountered the Risen Lord. We can hear the message that says in spite of our previous failures, we are still included in God’s family and given a mission for sharing it with others.

So in this week after Easter, allow the nail-pierced hands of our Lord Jesus to pull the weeds of sin in your life. Allow him to smooth out the broken soil and plant the seeds of hope that come as a result of God’s love and resurrection power. And if necessary, allow his nail-pierced hands to embrace you and let you know you are not alone.

“What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.” (1 Peter 1.3-5, MSG)

Happy Easter!