Trinity 10
Luke 19:41-48; Jeremiah 8:4-12
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
For all of its flaws, one of the good things about the series, “The Chosen,” is that it focused on the real humanity of our Lord Jesus and the real emotions He experienced. Too often we wrongly think that God the Son is pretty much above all that. But in today’s Gospel, we see Him experiencing the full range of emotion, from physical anger over how the temple was being abused and desecrated, to the deepest sorrow over Jerusalem and the judgment that would come upon her for her unrepentance and unbelief. As true God who was also a real man, Jesus is a passionate Lord, passionate in His judgment, passionate in His mercy, with a heart that aches for His people who have turned away from Him.
Though our Lord is indeed almighty and all-powerful, He is not cold and stoic toward us. The Collect for today, rather, captures the beautiful truth of how He is: “O God, You make known Your almighty power above all in showing mercy and pity.”
We need to remember that it’s not good news merely to hear that our Lord is almighty, omnipotent, all-powerful. For what if He wishes to use His power against us? What if He were to use His mightiness to condemn us sinners? The fact that our Lord is the most powerful is not consoling of itself. What is consoling is that He exercises His power most especially in showing mercy. He is almighty, but He is full of compassion and uses his might sacrificially, for our good.
In this our Lord reveals what it means to be a real man–to use one’s strength not to dominate but to protect and to give. He is full of compassion and uses his power sacrificially, for our good. Jesus is the Lord of all, and yet He weeps over His people who reject His love and self-giving. Jesus weeps with great strength. For His tears show the power and depth of His mercy and pity.
You can hear God’s hurt in today’s Old Testament reading. As God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah, He laments the “perpetual backsliding” of His chosen people. “They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return,” God says. He has given Himself to them, but they returned the favor by ignoring Him. Like the heartbroken parent of a rebellious but still beloved child, God says, “Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle.” As a strong and beautiful horse is cut down in the fighting, so our Lord sorrows over the destruction that will come upon His beloved people who turn away from His words of life. Not only do they ignore His holy Commandments, but they even close their ears to His gift of mercy and forgiveness. His tears flow because His own people don’t care to listen. They’re bored with the truth.
And our Lord weeps not just for His people who pay little attention to His words; He also weeps for those He calls to proclaim His words. Jeremiah says, “From the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from the prophet to the priest, everyone deals falsely.” Our Lord is grieved when His pastors and preachers heal “the wound of [His] people slightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” You see, there is no genuine peace when sins go unconfessed for the utter rebellion against God that they are, when tears of repentance refuse to flow. There is no real peace when God’s people, both in the pew and in the pulpit, don’t cling to His gracious promises in faith.
Peace comes only through Him who is the Prince of Peace, the almighty God-in-the-flesh, who weeps for His people. There is some tragic irony in the Gospel; for the Hebrew word for peace is in the very name of Jerusalem–salem, shalom. “When [Jesus] drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you had known, even you, especially in this your day the things that make for peace!’” You can hear how He wants His people to be reconciled to Him and live under His blessing, how He longs to shower them with His mercy and pity! But their rejection of Him, their lack of repentance, their unbelief all forecast a self-chosen doom. For Jerusalem that meant an invading army surrounding the city and tearing it down to the ground. Just 40 years later in 70 A.D. the Romans would lay siege to Jerusalem and then utterly destroy the people within her in fiery, bloody terror. All of this is described by historians in horrific detail. God would allow the destruction of His own “holy city.” Why? “Because [they] did not know the time of [their] visitation [by God].” God came to visit them in mercy and bring them peace in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But in rejecting Him, they invited God to come to visit them in horrible judgment.
The people back in Jeremiah’s day refused to return to the God who loved them; they were defeated and captured by the Babylonians. The people in Jesus’ day refused to receive Him as their peace with God; they found war with the Romans and were utterly destroyed. What about us as the church and Christians today, particularly in this country, who have the precious treasure of the Gospel and God’s Word? Do we turn away from God in a perpetual backsliding? Is it always our greatest desire to keep God’s commands? Do we love our neighbor and use things? Or do we love things and use our neighbor? Are we passionate about serving God? Or would we rather simply serve our own passions and desires? What would Jesus take a whip to in churches today? Has the church often become more interested in numbers and being accepted by the world than in faithfulness to Christ? Why else is it that more and more churches today resemble theaters and coffee houses than holy and sacred places for worshiping the Lord of all? In a very real way it is for our good that Christianity is more and more under attack in our culture. We are at the point where we can no longer pretend to be Christians just because it brings us gain or makes us look good or feel good. We are entering a time of great sifting meant to humble us and draw us back to God, and to make clear who it is that serves Him and who does not.
Jesus comes to visit us also today with His mercy and to bring us His peace. But if we spurn that and ignore that, He will surely come in judgment on the Last Day against those who engage in such unbelief and apathy and ingratitude. So pay attention to the visitation of God. Remember that just as God came humbly and without fanfare in the person of Jesus, so today He comes not in flashes of power and might, but in the simple means of preaching and the Sacraments. Don’t forget God’s gracious visitation by taking God’s Word for granted and not giving attention to it, or sleepwalking your way through the liturgy and the hymns. Don’t come to the Lord’s Table merely out of habit; come hungering for our Lord to show His mercy and pity to you. God’s visitation for us today is right here in divine service. The world may mock what is happening here and what we believe, but this is where Jesus is at for us in His grace.
Repent then and return to the Lord. For He is truly gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He gladly and freely welcomes you back to Himself, no matter who you are or what you have done or left undone. His utmost desire is to shower you with His heavenly treasures, to have you with Himself, enjoying His life now and for all eternity.
His weeping shows you His true heart, a heart of almighty, powerful mercy and love. It’s the same love and mercy that led Him to weep, you recall, at the grave of Lazarus. In the shortest verse in the Bible it is written, “Jesus wept” (Jn. 11:35). He wept because of death’s suffocating tyranny–not just over Lazarus, but also over us and all people. He longed to free Lazarus and all people–including you–from the sorrows of sin and death! And Jesus would do just that as He hung nailed to the cross. Jesus took the bloody destruction we deserved in His own flesh. He set you free from judgment by swallowing it all up in His own crucified body. In Him, then, you are at peace with God–forgiven. Perhaps Jesus spoke with tears in His eyes when He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk. 23:34). Our Lord of almighty power would transform that cross of bitter rejection into His greatest tool for showing you mercy and pity!
And now that Jesus has burst forth victorious from the grave, it is written in Revelation 21, “Then I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. . . And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’” That is our sure hope, that we will leave this world of death behind for a new creation, and in the resurrection on the Last Day, Jesus will transform our sorrow into tears of joy.
So, let the weeping of Jesus in today’s Gospel be your source of strength and comfort. For it reveals the passionate love that Christ has for His Church, for each one of you. He comes yet again in His almighty power to visit you and show you His gentle mercy. Just as He entered the Temple in the flesh to cleanse it, so also He cleanses you from sin and death with His real Body and Blood. Just as “all the people were hanging on his words,” you also are given to hang on His words, holding on to these words with rapt attention: “Given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.” Here are the things that make for your peace. Here is the visitation of God for you. Receive Him who comes to you in faith. Now is your time.
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠