Mary comes to Jesus weeping, accompanied by mourners who are also weeping. John describes Jesus as deeply moved and then gives the Gospel's famously brief statement: 'Jesus wept.'
The tears occur with the tomb and the grieving community immediately before him.
Ancient Jewish mourning openly expressed grief through tears, lamentation, and communal presence. John's vocabulary distinguishes Mary's and the mourners' loud weeping from the verb used for Jesus' tears, but both belong to the same scene of real bereavement. The Gospel also uses unusually strong language for Jesus being deeply moved, whose precise emotional nuance is debated and can include indignation as well as distress.
Nothing in the text suggests that foreknowledge of the resurrection makes grief unreal.
The mourning context prevents 'Jesus wept' from becoming merely a sentimental aside. He enters the human sorrow produced by death even while knowing what he is about to do.
John therefore holds power and compassion together: the one who declares himself the resurrection and the life also stands at a friend's tomb and sheds tears.