As we more and more see the world around us through the eyes of Jesus, we too are often moved to weep. Our tears are not only signs of our humanity, but are signs of our participation in Jesus’ divinity. The tears we shed join his tears in becoming the seeds of new life.
Could we learn to look at the stranger, the sinner, the heretic, the outsider we’ve been conditioned to ignore or worse … could we learn to pay attention to the likes of these just as Jesus and this woman paid attention to each other in spite of everything? I think we can.
John 3:16 didn’t resolve the mystery of God’s redeeming love for Nicodemus. It didn’t settle things instantly like a first-century search engine result. The last words he speaks in the chapter are, “How can this be?” He’s still empty of understanding. But there is reason to believe that the emptying of Nicodemus was a beginning, not an end because he stayed. He stayed with Jesus in spite of his confusion and disbelief.
The temptation is to believe that God is revealed only in the delight and not also in the grief or that God lives in the places of hope or music and not also in the places of anxiety and hurt. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Do not be afraid.