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Jesus Wept

  • Mar 1
  • 8 min read

March 1st 2026

Second Sunday of Lent

Sermon Series: Noteworthy Christians - Archbishop Oscar Romero


Today’s first reading, from the prophet Ezekiel, may have sounded a bit harsh. However, sometimes holding people to account is the best form of loving them. We hold people accountable for their actions not in hatred, but in the great hope that they may be transformed and turn to a more balanced and loving way of life in the future. This is the message God is proclaiming through Ezekiel to the shepherds. God didn’t mean the actual shepherds out in the fields, but rather the priests and religious leaders who were tending the souls of all God’s people.


Like many times throughout history, these leaders were not honoring their call, but worse, they were actively harming those they were called to serve. Israel’s shepherds were guilty of tending to themselves rather than their flock. God had asked them to strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, seek the lost and marginalized to bring them back into the fold. Instead, the shepherds ruled over the flock with force and would take what they could from the flock then leave them out to dry. Those who did not fall victim to the shepherds were food for other prey. Therefore, God calls the shepherds to account and declares that God would be the flock’s new shepherd, the one to rescue them, to liberate them from such oppression and exploitation.


We hear this message a lot in reference to Jesus - that he is the Good Shepherd. God incarnated in Christ Jesus is the example of how God has always entrusted us to love and lead one another well. In our gospel passage, we are given the example of Jesus’ love for Lazarus.  As dear friends of Jesus, Mary and Martha sent word that their brother Lazarus was ill and they hoped Jesus might cure him. Instead, Jesus waited too long before heading their way and when he arrived Lazarus had already been buried for four days.


Mary and Martha both exclaimed to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here.. our brother would still be alive!” I can picture their agony, their outrage, their despair. However, Jesus is not offended. Jesus joins them in weeping. Jesus weeps over the loss of Lazarus from his flock. This was a clear example of how Jesus was a different kind of shepherd. Instead of the shepherds of old who could care less about their flock, who in fact used and abused their flock, Jesus led without force. Jesus led with love. We will learn this lesson again when Jesus is crucified. Instead of fighting fire with fire, showing the Romans who really was more powerful by the standards/violence of men.. Jesus shows the world the power of love. Love may seem the weaker choice.. but somewhere deep in our heart of hearts, I think we all know it really is the only choice.. it really is the most powerful force in the universe.. it is us who have misclassified what power and strength really are..


As I thought of these passages and continue my sermon series on noteworthy Christians, I couldn’t help but think of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero was born in 1917 in El Salvador. At the age of 13 he decided he wanted to go to seminary. For the next decade he studied Christianity, even attending school in Rome near the Vatican. He was ordained in 1942 and before he could finish his PhD his Bishop summoned him home. He spent 20 years ministering to his flock in his hometown. After this he was called to higher positions in El Salvador’s capital city, San Salvador. By 1970 he had been made a bishop and in 1977 he was made Archbishop of San Salvador.


Now I don’t know how well you know your world history, but El Salvador has been through some difficult times. The 70s were a decade of severe unrest. The top 2% of society held nearly all the land and, much like the shepherds Ezekiel spoke of, they used and abused the other 98% of people who tended to the land and ensured the 2%’s wealth. Naturally, they were growing tired of their oppression. They sought a new, more just government so that all might be able to live in peace and abundance.

Romero was very close to some of the priests in San Salvador and had watched from a distance all those years as they preached the good news to the people that God was their shepherd and this was not how God wanted them to be treated; this was not how God intended for humans to live together. Romero loved those priests, but stayed quiet and neutral. In fact, this was the very reason Romero was chosen to become Archbishop! The Vatican felt he would be a safe choice to keep the peace between the peasants and the oligarchs. However, just a month after his appointment, his closest friend, Father Grande, was murdered by the National Guard for being ‘a communist’ and filling the masses with the ideas of liberation and change.


After this loss, Romero entered into his own kind of Lenten desert. He had to weep like Jesus, cry out to God like Mary and Martha, and spend time in self-examination in order to grow more closely to who God made him and called him to be. After determining God calling him to incarnate the gospel no matter the cost, he spent nearly all of his time with the people of San Salvador, especially those of Father Grande’s flock. He worked alongside them, he ministered to them, and most importantly, he listened to them. He heard the stories of how they were treated and assaulted by the government’s forces. He heard their stories of family members, friends, and neighbors who had mysteriously disappeared. He heard about and witnessed the murder of countless people and with every instance, he drew closer to God, transformed. He proclaimed, “There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried.”


No longer content to stand on the sidelines, no longer capable of staying silent, he would preach and preside over communion at the Cathedral in San Salvador each week. He would faithfully read aloud the names of those who had disappeared, been murdered or tortured. This was also broadcast throughout El Salvador via the radio and a Catholic newsletter he edited. At the time, there was no internet, so Romero’s report and his gospel message where nearly the only thing that kept the El Salvadorans connected, informed, and hopeful.. until one Sunday in March of 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot dead while presiding over communion at the altar.


Romero was a Good Shepherd holding the bad shepherds to account for their actions, yet he was murdered right in the middle of worship. Like Mary and Martha, I imagine many cried out, “Lord, if only you had been here, so many need not have died! Monsignor Romero need not have died!!”


Some may say that God is on the side of the victors, that the side which wins is the side God takes. However, God in Christ Jesus shows the world this is simply not true. Jesus did not take the side of Rome any more than he took the side of his disciples. God’s love is for all and God will die to prove it. This is what I love about Romero, too. At the conference of bishops, many chose sides; some with the oligarchs and some with the peasants. Romero refused. While some said there are two different churches, the church of the rich and the church of the poor, Romero declared there is only ONE church. He remained, until his death, neutral – never demonizing either side, yet always calling both sides back to their mutual ground, that we are ALL human beings and all made for a more balanced and just life.


However, we cannot mistake his neutrality as complicity. As I mentioned, he did not remain silent about the injustices he witnessed. He, like Ezekiel, spoke out harshly against the deadly forces of the government, demanded they be held accountable, and prayed always for their transformation. Romero was clear about the need for the rich’s conversion of heart in order that they might collaborate for a more just government order.


Romero preached that “the church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being the voice of the voiceless, a defender of the rights of the poor, a promoter of every aspiration for liberation, a guide, an empowerer, a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society! This,” he said, “demands of the Church a greater presence among the poor. It ought to be in solidarity with them, running the risks they run, enduring the persecution that is their fate.”


Romero taught that love was the strongest force on earth and the only way to pursue change. He preached “the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which,” he said, “has turned everything upside down.” There were constant threats on his life throughout this time, but he proclaimed, “I will not tired of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression… All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.”


While he always argued for non-violence, the murder of Archbishop Romero sparked the El Salvadoran Civil War, which raged from 1980 – 1992. While he was alive, Romero was an exemplar of liberation theology. He was a direct extension of God taking over, to shepherd justly over God’s flock. Just like Jesus before him, he did not take up arms, he did not fight back with the same powers that threatened his life. He simply continued to love. It did not save his life any more than love spared Jesus the cross. Love doesn’t work that way. We might want it to, but it simply doesn’t. We may be left crying out, “God if you had only been here!!! God why weren’t you here, why didn’t you DO something!!??” Because we want God to act, to interfere, to fight fire with fire.. but God knows better. God chooses to act in love, sacrificial love, transformational love, love that even in death promises new, everlasting life.


While it looks from the outside as though the oligarchs ‘won’ El Salvador.. we know that Jesus does not rejoice. Rather, like at the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus weeps. Jesus joins in the cries of the El Salvadoran peoples and all oppressed and impoverished people throughout the world.. because that’s what love does.. It does not ‘fix,’ it does not force, it does not ‘power over,’ rather love enters in.. shares the weight of the burden/of the cross, comes alongside and empowers, strengthens, heals, transforms.


This is the way God chooses to be incarnated in the world. It may not be the answer that we want, but it is the answer that will transform the world in the long run as humans brave the desert and transform their souls. God does not change things for us, but always only changes things WITH us. God’s superpower is that of life-changing love. May it overcome the world. Amen.


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Learn more:

About El Salvador's Civil War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War estimated 75,000 people died and 8,000 more 'disappeared' and over 5 million people were displaced. The US funded, trained, and supplied the El Salvadoran government and their death squads under the guise of 'rooting out communism.' For my fellow history nerds, you may also be interested in reading:


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