Who Counts the Tears of God?

At the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, Eustace, Jill and the great lion, Aslan all stand in front of a flowing stream.  In the stream, is the body of King Caspian who has just died.

We are first introduced to Caspian, when he is a boy, in the book Prince Caspian.  We get to know him better as a young man in the following book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  So by the time we meet up with him again as an old man in The Silver Chair, we feel as though we have known him his whole life and the pain of his death is real to any reader.

What unfolds next is something beautiful.

Jill and Eustace weep for Caspian.  But they are not alone in their grief.  They are joined by Aslan.

Lewis writes, “Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond.”

Aslan, the great Lion, he who literally sang Narnia into existence, weeps over the death of one man.  And his tears are so precious they are almost beyond description.

If you have read or know anything about The Chronicles of Narnia, then you know that Aslan is a stand-in of sorts for Jesus in this world. 

Like Jesus, Aslan suffers and dies and comes back from the dead in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  As Jesus sacrifices himself for all our sins, Aslan sacrifices himself for the sin of one boy, Edmund.  There have been many books written on the parallels between Jesus and Aslan.

But today, I want to address another parallel between Aslan and Jesus.

In the scene with the death of King Caspian, we see Aslan cry.  We are told how valuable those tears are.

And likewise, in today’s Gospel reading from Luke 19:41-44, we see Jesus cry as he makes his way into Jerusalem.

Jesus cries twice in the Gospels.  We are probably most familiar with the tears he sheds with Mary and Martha and others over the death of Lazarus.  We are probably less familiar with today’s example from just outside Jerusalem.

Jesus cries twice and we need to treat those tears in the same way C.S. Lewis describes Aslan’s tears—as more precious than a diamond the size of the world.

Why are Jesus’ tears so important?

Let me begin by saying that all tears are important.  Remember again from Psalm 56:8, God counts our tears and puts them in a bottle.

So, if our tears are that important to God, how much more valuable are Jesus’?

What’s important here is the “why.”  Why does Jesus cry?

I argued a few weeks ago that when Jesus cries with Mary over the death of Lazarus that he is not crying because he himself is grieving Lazarus.  He knows he will bring him back to life.  He knows that this is not the end for Lazarus.

Rather, Jesus cries out of empathy with Mary.  He shares her pain.  He takes her pain into himself in that moment.  He shares her pain.  He shares that moment with her.

And again, in today’s reading, when Jesus cries, he is not crying for himself.

Today’s reading is bookended by two very familiar scenes, familiar to us even if we have never read the Bible, but are familiar with Passion plays and the events leading up to Good Friday and Easter.

Immediately prior to today’s reading, Jesus makes his approach to Jerusalem and the people greet him by throwing their cloaks on the road before him.  He is treated like a king.

And immediately after today’s reading, we see Jesus cleansing the temple, knocking over tables, referring to the temple and what it has become as a “den of thieves.”

In between all this, in today’s reading, Jesus pauses and weeps for Jerusalem.  Again, he is not crying for himself, he is crying for us.  He is crying for a people, for a world, for the trials they will face, for their miseries, for their grief.  Jesus knows he is headed to the cross, but he’s not crying for himself, he is crying for the rest of the world, for what is to come.

It is a powerful, powerful moment.

Jesus’ tears are important because they are selfless tears.

When I cry, when you cry, when any of us cry over something as trivial as a stubbed toe, or as painful as the death of a loved one, a parent, a child, a spouse—we cry because we are in pain.  We cry because of our pain, our hurt, our suffering.

When Jesus cries, he too is crying for our pain, our hurt, our suffering.

When Jesus cries, it has nothing to do with him.

Oh, how valuable are those tears.

Almost as valuable as his blood.

In The Silver Chair, after Aslan weeps, he makes, what at first seems is an odd request of Eustace.  He asks Eustace to drive a massive thorn through his paw.  Eustace does so and watches as a drop of blood forms and then falls into the stream over Caspian.

Lewis writes, “And the dead King began to be changed.  His white beard turned to gray, and from gray to yellow, and got shorter and vanished altogether; and his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them—a very young man, or a boy.”

The tears of Jesus—the tears of God—acknowledge our suffering.

The blood of Jesus takes that suffering away.

Amen.