Rachel’s Tears

“Thus says the LORD: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.’” ~Jeremiah 31:15

Monday, March 27th will go down as yet another watershed moment in the lives of our nation, the State of Tennessee, and six Nashville families. Upon these homes, the shadow of a great sadness has descended, and while this life lasts, it will never go entirely away. It will dog their best days and their worst; they will never laugh with all their hearts again. 

Jesus weeps, and so should we.

As a pastor and a father, the bewildering grief of the Scruggs family strikes particularly close to home. On Monday morning, Chad and Jada lost their only daughter, Hallie. As the saying goes, “A son is a son ‘til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.” I suspect there is at least some truth to the statement, and the Scruggs family have just lost all of it. A thousand hoped-for joys have been ripped from the horizon of their future: watching Hallie graduate high school and perhaps even college, walking her down the aisle to meet her future husband, hearing she is carrying their first grandchild, and then holding that little bundle of joy in their arms. At the other end of life, in their winter years, they will find themselves equally bereft of a daughter’s gentle kindness when they need it most. Of course, they will never know what would have happened with their little girl’s life, but that’s what gives this tragedy such a peculiarly vicious, serrated edge: They. Will. Never. Know. Their future life on earth together has all been stolen.

At a human level, as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, we try to imagine ourselves into this family’s shoes. But it’s frankly beyond overwhelming. A moment’s reflection is all the stoutest of us can bear. At an even deeper level, as fellow Christians we are one with this family in Christ. We are part of the same body; we have the same Head. Like wires carrying electricity from one home to another, the Holy Spirit carries echoes of the Church’s pain to all its members.  In a mysterious but true sense, the Scruggs’ pain is our pain. The body suffers and we suffer with it. 

As we reflect on this dynamic, it is vital that we remember this pain also travels vertically: it reaches Christ. He is touched with the feeling of their infirmities and ours. Jesus may be above us in the glory, but He is not beyond the reach of our agonies (Hebrews 4:15). 

When it comes to translating this text, the King James Version’s quaint double negative comes into its own: “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Even now, in His human nature, Jesus is touched and He is moved by torments of His people down below. We weep, but so does Jesus.

We see a wonderful illustration of this in the death of Stephen. The martyr sees Jesus standing–not in His usual seated position, but standing at the right hand of the Majesty on High. Standing, I think, in outrage, as if to say: “Look how they are treating My brother!” Standing also, I think, to welcome His embattled brother home. But the last thing Jesus does is sit unmoved. He is moved to stand, and Jesus, I tell you, remains the same yesterday, today, and forever. Time writes no furrows on His brow, nor has it hardened His tender heart. He who wept at the tomb of Lazarus and who wept outside Jerusalem surely weeps today at the freshly dug tombs of these children, their teachers, and the custodian who died trying to save their lives.

Unlike the tears of Rachel in our text, the tears of Christ are not the tears of a helpless victim. At the tomb of Lazarus, Death was Christ’s victim, but still He wept. He wept as a King able and willing to pull Lazarus back from the belly of death. He wept knowing the Father’s plan that Lazarus had to die. And He wept trusting the Father’s purpose that Lazarus would live again. Yet Jesus also wept because He does not–indeed cannot willingly–afflict the sons of men.

“For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” Lamentations 3:31–33

I love these verses in Lamentations. I find myself going back to them again and again. Notice what the prophet says. God causes grief because He knows this grief has a necessary part in His great plan of redemption. But even though He knows all that, when He causes grief, He does not do so from His heart. Thus, a weeping Savior.

Many Christians are too black and white. They either want a God who is only sovereign and happy, or they want a God who looks on weeping, forlorn as the free will of humans wrecks the world. But the God of Scripture is more delightfully nuanced than that. Christ’s hand is absolutely sovereign—He is the Lord of every event of human history. From the vibrations of an atom to the rise and fall of nations, He is the Lord Christ who does according to His will in heaven and on earth, and in the seas and all deeps. None can stay His hand or say to Him, “What is this that you have done?” But, without denying any of that, I believe His eye absolutely still weeps. If not, are to be believe, in His human nature, the Son of God is somehow less compassionate now in the glory than He was at the tomb of His friend Lazarus?

We see the same nuance in the biblical certainty of election. God knows those who are His. The number of the elect can neither increase nor decrease over time. It is set by the irresistible will of God. Yet, this same God is not willing that any perish but that all come to repentance. As a result, God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. As we watch Jesus weep outside Jerusalem, we see echoes of the Father’s heart (John 14:9).

There is no contradiction here. Listen to the great John Murray wrestle with these truths:

God himself expresses an ardent desire for the fulfillment of certain things which he has not decreed in his inscrutable counsel to come to pass. This means that there is a will to the realization of what he has not decretively willed, a pleasure towards that which he has not been pleased to decree.

So as we process the awful events of Monday morning in Nashville, we see a God who never planned a Tuesday, 28th March for the lives of these six souls here on earth. In His book were written all the days that He ordained for them while as yet there was none of them (Psalm 139:16). For reasons known only to His inscrutable, Fatherly heart, God sent this affliction into the lives of these families (Genesis 45:7). He allowed that deranged madwomen to snuff out their lives and all the hopes and dreams they contained. But He did not put His heart into the grief; He didn’t take pleasure in their pain. In a way far beyond my capacity to explain, it grieved Him. His good plan demanded that it happen, but His good heart lamented the grief as it happened.

And so, standing with these families over their loved ones’ tombs, we weep, but so does Jesus. He does not willingly afflict the children of men.  And in this, I think, there is much comfort for the thoughtful but embattled Christian.