September 21, 2025

God’s Tears

Pastor Rok Lee

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

18 My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick. 19 Listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from far and wide in the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?” (“Why have they provoked me to anger with their images, with their foreign idols?”) 20 “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” 21 For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken, I mourn, and horror has seized me. 22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? 1 O that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

Over the past few years, there have been many heartbreaking events in Korean society. From the Sewol Ferry tragedy, to the Itaewon, and even the recent accident at Muan Airport—so many precious lives were lost. I remember when I was in middle school, a friend ran into the classroom shouting that a war had begun. It was September 11, 2001, when an unimaginable and shocking event struck the heart of New York. More recently more than 65,000 people have died in the Gaza Strip because of the war between Israel and Hamas, just in past two years.

But we don’t have to look far away to see tragedy. A healthy family member suddenly receives a cancer diagnosis. Someone who lived kindly and faithfully loses a child in an unexpected accident. We cannot understand why grief and tragedy come into our lives. And so, in moments like these, people ask the same question: “Where is God?”

The Jewish writer Elie Wiesel, in his autobiographical novel Night, describes the horrors of the Holocaust. One day in Auschwitz, three people were executed by hanging. Two of them were grown who died instantly. But the third was a young boy with the face of an angel. Because of his light weight, he struggled for a long time, gasping for breath. His angelic face became twisted in agony as he kicked and suffered. In that moment, people whispered, “Where is God?” Wiesel writes that in his heart he heard a voice respond: “I am there, hanging on the gallows with that suffering boy.”

Today’s Scripture speaks of this God who suffers with us. As God watches His people in pain, He confesses: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me” (Jer. 8:21). Again, God says, “Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep day and night” (Jer. 9:1). Sometimes we think of God as distant—without tears, untouched by suffering. But today’s passage tells us that the great God we worship sheds tears with us in our pain.

This means that God deeply empathizes with our wounds. God does not remain unmoved, but embraces His people’s pain as His own. Just as Jeremiah groaned, “My grief is beyond healing, my heart is sick within me,” God too laments when He sees His beloved children wandering toward destruction. We often call Jeremiah the “weeping prophet” because he cried so much for Israel that his eyes were raw. But in truth, those tears were not Jeremiah’s alone—they were God’s own heart flowing through Jeremiah.

So when we cry out, “Where is God in our suffering?” the answer is clear: God is right there with us in the very midst of it. He does not abandon us like orphans. Even if we cannot hear God’s voice in the storm of our pain, even if we cannot feel His presence in our grief, He is not absent. He is there, sharing in our sorrow, aching with our wounds.

And God’s empathy extends into the community. The pain of one person becomes the pain of the whole church. Throughout history, whenever wars or disasters struck, the church has been presented to share in suffering. In response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, the Methodist Church has given about $500,000 to provide food, water, and clothing to refugees. In 2024 alone, our denomination contributed nearly $33 million to disaster relief, helping over 400,000 people worldwide.

Your pain is the church’s pain. The church, bearing the heart of God, is called to weep with those who weep. A true church is where the hurt of a neighbor becomes my own hurt. This is what we see in today’s text as Jeremiah looks upon the coming destruction of Israel. At that time, he was not yet living in the middle of war. God had revealed to him the future—that Babylon would destroy Jerusalem. In fact, there was still time to escape if he wanted to. But Jeremiah chose not to protect only himself. He chose instead to share in his people’s pain, because their suffering was his suffering.

That is the heart we are called to have—the heart of God. The church is not a place for selfish gain, but for bearing one another’s burdens. It is where we are bound together so deeply that someone else’s pain becomes my own.

But God’s tears do not end in sorrow. In Jeremiah 31:16–17, God promises: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears… your children shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord.” God is the One who wipes away our tears and gives us new hope. Even in the midst of suffering, despair is not the final word. God offers us the promise of restoration and life. The Bible clearly shows us that God will one day wipe away every tear (Rev. 21:4). Even when we walk through valleys of grief, God is preparing a hope-filled future.

This is our true strength. God is not careless, offering only empty comfort. God is the One who transforms our sorrow into joy, our wounds into healing, our despair into songs of praise. God’s tears lead not only to empathy but also to hope.

And that hope calls us to mission. It calls us to action. When Jeremiah wept over Israel’s sin, God eventually gave him a promise of restoration. In the same way, as we weep with God, we are also called to join God’s work. The church cannot stop at tears alone. We must pray, act, and extend the hand of the gospel. We must be one church that weeps with God and rises with the hope of Christ’s cross.

God shows Jeremiah—and us—that our God is the God of tears. But those tears do not end in despair; they lead to hope and restoration. Dear church, so, what shall we do? First, let us repent of our sins and join in God’s heart. Let us not turn away from the pain of our neighbors, but weep with them and pray for them. And then, let us act. The Bible says, “Weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). As a church, let us serve those in need, share the gospel, and expand God’s kingdom. Let us move forward with the mission of hope, trusting the promise that “weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).

God still weeps today with His broken people. Yet at the same time, God has prepared resurrection joy that surpasses all sorrow. So, let us weep with God’s heart, but also cling to hope and to the mission He gives us. When we find strength in our tears and live out the gospel, God will turn our mourning into dancing, our sorrow into joy.

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