Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2956
“Jesus said to her, Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” John 20:15.
IN the Garden of Eden, immediately after the Fall, the sentence of sorrow and of sorrow multiplied, fell upon the woman. In the garden where Christ had been buried, after His Resurrection, the news of comfort—comfort rich and Divine—came to a woman through the woman’s promised Seed, the Lord Jesus Christ. If the sentence must fall heavily upon the woman, so must the comfort come most sweetly to her. I will not say that the Resurrection reversed the curse of the Fall, but, at any rate, it took the sting out of it, lifted it up and sanctified it! There was reason enough for the woman to weep after the sentence had been pronounced upon her, but there is no reason for her to weep now that Jesus Christ has fulfilled the promise which followed upon man’s disobedience, namely, that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.
Observe the wise method followed by the Divine Consoler. In order to comfort Mary Magdalene, our Lord put a question to her. It is often the wisest way to relieve minds that are swollen through grief to allow them to find the natural end of their sorrow by asking them why they are weeping. We have to do this with ourselves sometimes. We enquire, “Why are you cast down, O my Soul? And why are you disquieted within me?” The soul begins to ask for the reason of its grief and often finds that it is insufficient to justify so bitter a sorrow and, perhaps, it even discovers that the sources of its sorrow have been misunderstood and that, if they had been rightly comprehended, they would have been sources of joy instead! He who would be wise in dealing with the daughters of grief, must let them tell their own story and, almost without a single sentence from you, their own story will be blessed by God to the relieving of their grief.
Moreover, it is always wise, before we attempt to comfort anyone, to know what is the peculiar form and fashion which grief has taken. The physician who without investigation should at once proceed to apply a remedy to his patient, might be giving the wrong medicine for the disease. He has to make his diagnosis of the malady, to see whence it came, what are its symptoms, and how it works—and then the physician adapts his medicine to the case. Sit down with your sorrow, my Friend, and let us hear what ails you. What causes you to fret? What causes your soul to travail? Possibly the sorrowing ones will themselves direct you to the right remedy for their malady and so you shall be able to speak a word in season and, “a word spoken in due season, how good it is!” You are at present like a man groping in the dark and you will be as one pouring vinegar upon niter if you sing songs to a heavy heart! And you will make matters worse which you had hoped to make better unless you find out the cause of the mourner’s tears.
My one objective at this time is to take this question of our Lord to Mary and apply it to all who are sorrowing here. And although I shall keep to the text and repeat the question, “Woman, why are you weeping?” I shall hope that other sorrowers besides the women here will find comfort from the words which the Holy Spirit will teach me to speak. I shall ask, first, is it natural sorrow? And secondly, is it spiritual sorrow?
I. We will first enquire about that which is common to us all without exception, IS IT NATURAL SORROW? Is it sorrow which springs from our human nature and is common to all who are born of woman, to whom sorrow comes as a portion of our heritage?
Well, my Friend, what is the cause of your grief? What ails you? Is it because you are bereaved? Have you lost someone who was very dear to you? Then your grief is not unusual and your weeping is not unpardonable, for Jesus wept as He stood at the grave of His friend Lazarus. But let not your weeping go beyond due bounds. Your tears are right
enough so far, but they may be wrong if they go any further. There is a weeping of regret and of a lacerated spirit, upon which God looks with pity, but there may come a weeping of rebelliousness upon which even our Heavenly Father may feel that He must look with anger. “Why are you weeping?” Will you look into your heart, Beloved, and see whether the cause of your grief is such as does fully justify it, or see whether you have already carried it too far? You have lost a child—a lovely child, but, my Sister, you have not really lost your child. Do you count that lost which is in Christ’s keeping? Do you count that baby lost which is up among the angels? If your child had been taken to be a prince in a palace, you would not have said that he was lost! Inasmuch as he has been caught away to be with Jesus, say not that he is lost. You are the mother of one who can see the face of God and thus says the Lord unto you, “Refrain your eyes from weeping, for your children shall come again from the land of their captivity.”