Does God cry too?

Sermon by Pr. Michelle Sevig on the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, June 21, 2026

Does God cry too? That’s the question a young girl asked her dad many years ago. My wife Julie shared a childhood memory with me when we were discussing this morning’s readings. She was four or five years old,  playing with dolls, when a thump at the window drew her attention. Outside, a small bird lay still and feathers drifted in the air. She ran to her father — who was also her pastor — and through tears they buried the bird in the backyard. Between sobs she asked him, “Do you think God is crying?” 

From a child’s perspective that question is simple and honest: Does God care about even the smallest things? Does God cry too?

Jesus answers that question in his own gentle, yet startling way. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” he asks. Sparrows were ordinary, plentiful — the kind of creature most people barely notice. Yet Jesus says, “Not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.” Even the lowliest life is held in God’s concern. 

And if God notices a sparrow, how much more does God notice you — your pain, your loneliness, your joys?

That image of sparrows is woven into a larger reality: Jesus sends his followers out into a hard world — one that will sometimes recoil or resist, a world where dangers and losses are real. The disciples were warned, ‘you will face hatred and persecution, possibly even from trusted family members.’

The prophet Jeremiah knew this kind of suffering too. He cried out over a broken world and wondered whether God was present in the ruins. 

Many of us know that cry too. We grieve mass-violence that shatters communities. We are concerned about the growing homelessness and immigrant crises that leave families displaced. We watch wildfires, historic floods, and climate-driven crop failures destroy livelihoods. We carry the strain of rising inflation and unaffordable healthcare, job loss, divorce, or infertility — personal earthquakes that remake our lives. We sit beside sick loved ones, hold hands in ICU rooms, navigate long-term care decisions, and wonder, quietly: Does God care? Is God with me in this?

The gospel gives us the answer, not in slogans but in presence. Jesus wept over Jerusalem; he wept at Lazarus’s grave; he received a woman’s tears as an offering of repentance and love. On the cross Jesus experienced abandonment and agony. Jesus knows grief. He enters it. He weeps with us and for us. God is not distant from our sorrow; God is present in it.

And God’s presence is rooted in love and grace. The sparrow and the counted hairs on your head are the language of a God who notices particulars — the fragile, the messy, the intimate details of our lives. 

“Fear not,” Jesus says. That is not a promise that nothing will hurt or that danger will vanish. But it is a promise that in the midst of hurt you are not alone. Grace meets us where we are — broken, bewildered, afraid — and steadies us with a love that refuses to leave.

Baptism anchors this truth. As we read from Romans this morning. In baptism we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection; we are buried with him and raised to new life. Baptism is not a private magic trick to make suffering go away. It is God’s binding word: you belong to me; you are forgiven; you are commissioned. Baptized into Christ, we receive a paradoxical call: to live boldly in a broken world precisely because we have been claimed by a loving God. 

So when Jesus tells his followers that he has not come to bring peace, but a truth that divides, he is not reveling in conflict. He is naming the cost of discipleship: following him reshapes loyalties and sometimes puts us at odds with the forces of this world. Yet even here the underlying message is grace. To lose one’s life for the sake of the gospel is to discover a deeper life in God. To risk for love’s sake is to be held by the One who counts even the hairs on your head.

This is gospel courage, rooted in compassion. God cries with us and rejoices with us. God’s tears over a sparrow and over a city tell us that nothing we bring is too small for God’s attention. And God’s grace — poured out in baptism, embodied in Christ, present in the Spirit — equips us to go into the world and care for others: to bury the small bird lovingly, to sit vigil at a loved one’s bedside, to stand for justice, to forgive, to proclaim mercy.

So when you face loss, injustice, or fear, remember two things: God sees you, and God goes with you. Fear not. You are loved beyond measure, held in a grief that understands and in a grace that transforms.