10/31/2018 GETTING PERSONALLY INVOLVED
John 11:35 JESUS wept. [King James Translation]
Summary
This scripture is famous for being the shortest verse in the King James Bible and many other translations. This scripture occurs in the narrative that describes the death and later resurrection of Lazarus. The events are as follows: JESUS receives a message from Mary and Martha that their brother, Lazarus, is sick. JESUS loved this family but HE does not go to see Lazarus until two days later. When JESUS arrives in Bethany where Lazarus and his two sisters live, JESUS encounters Martha and later meets a weeping Mary, who falls to HIS feet and says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When JESUS sees her weeping, and the other people who came to console Mary also weeping, the Bible says, JESUS “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” The Bible says, JESUS asked where they had laid Lazarus and was told to “come and see.” Then, JESUS wept.
This short verse illustrates a great number of things. We could probably make a list. We could probably make a list. However, one of the most powerful and significant aspects of this story is not only that JESUS had sympathy for a human situation but that JESUS had empathy for Martha and Mary.
According to the Cambridge-English dictionary, “sympathy” is an expression of or an understanding or care for someone else’s trouble, grief or misfortune. We can often feel sympathy at a distance. We can send a sympathy card and mentally move on or watch something in the news and have pity or sympathy for a fire that occurred or and then switch channels and watch a comedy show and laugh.
Empathy, according to Psychology Today is different from sympathy. Empathy is the experience of understanding another’s thoughts, feelings and condition from their point of view, rather than your own. Empathy is putting yourself in another’s place. Empathy is when you feel what another is going through as if it were happening to you. Empathy really allows you to get personally involved because you are sharing the pain of another. It is as if we are experiencing it ourselves. See, www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/empathy.
John 11:35 illustrates that JESUS not only sees our pain; HE feels our pain. HE sees. HE not only knows, HE really knows and understand and is there “with us” going through our grief and sorry and our human conditions with us. When our spirit groans; HE groans. And, when we pray in times of weakness, having nowhere else to turn and feeling overwhelmed, the HOLY SPIRIT also knows and groans too, interceding and praying with us. See Romans 8:26-27.
This scripture is short but significant.