Good Friday II

Part II She bathed his feet in her tears

A God who weeps will hear us weeping too. 

Why did she weep that night, and why did she use her tears to bathe Jesus tired feet?

A woman in the city we are told. A woman who was a sinner.   A woman with no name, stands at Jesus feet and weeps. She was pouring out her soul that evening, to the source of all being, and light of the world, to the one who had given her a new life.

Her tears sprang up from within her, and in washing Jesus, she washes not only herself but the rest of humanity.

In gratitude for beginning again, she humbled herself, and washed Jesus feet in this most costly water. Water so costly that each drop was priceless.  Each drop of that water, like a shimmering pearl, could not be bought with money, but only with love.

And Jesus knew how costly her tears were,  because his tears always mingled with those of his creation.  And remember Jesus wept.

God is not distant from suffering but embodied in it, and God in Christ, knew the place from where her tears came.

To know that place fully, God would send his only son into the world to die upon the cross. For God always hears the voice of our weeping, he can interpret it’s meaning; and the soft fall of a tear given in prayer to God, though unable to move the stony hearted, can shake the foundations of heaven. 

Remember Peter’s tears in the garden?  After he had betrayed Jesus three times, he wept bitterly, and God heard his tears as well.

Peter’s tears were also costly,  and welled- up from the depths of a truly sorrowful soul. God can interpret this language of tears, the language that Peter and the woman with the alabaster jar chose to use.

For God knows that the language of human tears is the language of a soul suffused with sincerity, the consolation of the oppressed, the country of the homeless, the comfort of the weary. 

God knows this language speaks, of the sorrow for sins, the sign of regret, the hope of redemption. 

It is the washing of the heart, the healing of the soul, the language of the spirit, compassion for the world, the longing for heaven, the waiting for death.

Although our tears may drop to the ground and seem worthless, God gathers them in his phial, put thou my tears into thy bottle, the psalmist cries….God collects our tears as he would search for a lost sheep,  And through our tears God brings us home.