FRIDAY, September 10 (Alexander Crummell)

John 11:30-44. Jesus began to weep.

When Jesus heard of the death of his friend Lazarus, he did not speak of the world to come or tell a parable about the kingdom. He cried.

A colleague died of AIDS acquired from a patient. The patient was a child with hemophilia who had received multiple transfusions. Unknown to any of us, that transfused blood harbored the virus. The child began bleeding profusely one night and went into cardiac arrest. My colleague and friend was the first one on the scene. He resuscitated the child and was covered with the child’s blood. It was his death sentence.

I was asked by my friend’s family to speak at his funeral. I spoke of this verse: Jesus began to weep. Lazarus will rise from the dead, but Jesus weeps. Loss and pain are etched upon Jesus’ heart and in his tears. Jesus knows our losses because he has experienced them. He will defeat death by walking through it, not around it, and not before he has tasted all its bitterness and anguish. He weeps for Lazarus, as I wept for my friend, and you wept for your mother, your father, your child. He has known our sorrow fully, intimately, painfully. He will deliver us from it, but he knows well from what he delivers us. (1999)

PRAY for the Diocese of Gwagwalada (Province of Abuja, Nigeria)

Ps 40, 54 * 51; Job 29:1; 31:24-40; Acts 15:12-21

View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.

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