Growing up I spent a lot of time listening to Marlo Thomas’ Free to Be You and Me. From teaching me about defying gender norms to embracing acceptance, Free to Be You and Me offered simple but important lessons about being human. It reminded me that there is more than one way to be in the world, and that our feelings, our questions, and our differences are not something to hide.
To this day I still listen to the 1972 album on days when I need the simple reminder that it’s okay to be fully human: to feel what we feel, to tell the truth about what’s going on inside us, and to let ourselves be seen as we are. One song that has stayed with me over the years is “It’s Alright to Cry”. Over time I’ve sung it to the children I babysat, to myself and friends in moments of profound sadness. I’ve sung it to my wife, when life has seemed to get too hard and now, I sing it to my nephew as he navigates his own intense seven-year-old emotions. Just as the title suggests, the song reminds us that crying is part of how we move through sadness, loss, and love.
Like many of the lessons in Free to Be You and Me, I think the reminder that it is alright “to feel things, though the feelings may be sad” is countercultural to what many of us are taught, or even what we experience. In our personal lives and in communities like the church, we often feel pressure to move quickly from grief and sadness to hope, healing, and resurrection. Tears are welcomed for an hour during a funeral, a Blue Christmas service, or on Good Friday, but then it can feel like it’s time to put those tears away.
I have often wondered what it would look like if we allowed ourselves to sit in the grief, the heartache, and the mixed emotions of being sinners called saints just a little longer. Would it give us permission to cry a little more, or to feel a little deeper? I think going deeper in our faith sometimes means allowing ourselves to fully feel (what I like to call) “all the feels,” and to sit in our contradictory and messy emotions a little longer.
Our scripture for today from John surprisingly gives us that permission. Upon seeing Mary weeping over the death of Lazareth, Jesus is “greatly disturbed in spirit” and begins to weep over the loss of his friend. Jesus knows the resurrection is coming. He knows that Lazarus, like all of us, will live again. And yet, Jesus still weeps. It is a moment that shows us that our God does not bypass grief and that tears are not a sign of a lack of faith, because if Jesus can weep openly at the loss of his friend, then maybe our tears are holy too.
As individuals, and the church, we are often deeply moved by the Spirit and causing us to weep over many things in our lives and our communities. We grieve broken relationships, the injustices of this world, the suffering of people we love, and so much more. We try to bury our grief and our tears, but unexpressed grief and pain has a way of binding us: spiritually, emotionally, and even physically.
Weeping, like Jesus did over the death of his friend, can be a way of telling our truth about love and loss. It is in our tears, or even the tears we hold back, that Jesus meets us and weeps alongside us or for us. God does not just meet us in the joyful moments of the resurrection, but in the tear-filled sorrow that lasts beyond three days.
As Free to Be You and Me reminds us, it really is alright to cry. For our tears don’t just carry our sadness, but they can also open us to something holy: profound love. And, in our tears, we may find that Christ is already here with us, weeping alongside us, gently unbinding us from what holds us captive, so that we can sink more deeply into God’s presence, letting love and grace move through us.
