March 25, 2025
When Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:41ff)
I am writing in the third week of Lent – this season of self-reflection and penitence in preparation for the suffering of Holy Week and God’s ultimate defeat of dying and death-dealing ways. God’s resounding YES to the wholeness and goodness of life as God intends.
And yet, it seems to me in this third week of Lent 2025, that Jesus is still weeping. I hear his sobs in the cries of starving people in Africa for whom life-saving USAID has been ended. I see his tears in the anxious faces of federal workers whose livelihoods have been abruptly and arbitrarily ended. I hear his cries in the fear of transpeople whose self-identity has been denied and in the “DEI” communities whose history and stories are literally (and figuratively) being erased. I hear his cries in the groaning of the earth itself when our relationship with the earth is summarized as “drill, baby, drill.”
Archbishop Oscar Romero whose assassination in El Salvador in 1980 we commemorate this week, once said that there are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried. Jesus’ eyes have cried. Have yours?
So my question to us in this penitential season of self-reflection is this: what makes you cry? Jesus wept for a people who could not embrace the things that make for peace – justice, dignity, respect, sufficiency, kindness, a full embrace of all God’s children and a deep care for a creation God made and pronounced very good. He wept at suffering.
What makes you cry? What moves your heart to tears? And what are you doing to alleviate the suffering that brings forth those compassionate tears?
Steve Hayner, president of Columbia Theological Presbyterian Seminary until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2015, used to tell us that he made his prayer every morning: “Lord, open my eyes to see just a little bit more of what you see. Lord, let my heart be broken by the things that break your heart. And, Lord, when the Spirit nudges, don’t let me duck.”
As ever in prayer,
Sue