✠ Psalmody: Psalm 55:17b, 18b, 19b, 22a; 1; Psalm 17:8, 2; Psalm 88:1-2; Psalm 25:1–3a; Psalm 51:19
✠ Lection: Jeremiah 7:1–11; 1 Corinthians 12:2–11; Luke 19:41–48
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes… because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Jesus weeps over those who did not, who do not know the time of their visitation. For those who do know the time, this is a marvelous glimpse into the reality of Who it is that has redeemed us; Who it is that we worship. It is marvelous in our eyes and in our ears, for in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We rejoice because He again reminds us that the Almighty has indeed taken on our flesh. Not only that, but that He has a pure heart, pure from all eternity, now dwelling in an earthly made tent of a body, so that those who dwell in body here may forever dwell with Him there. That is what we see in God’s tears. He weeps over Jerusalem, not because He was called a foul name, not because dust was in His eye, not because He was to die for the sins of many, many, many others, nor because of the odor of the donkey upon which He rode. He wept because those He came to redeem were rejecting Him; not to His peril, but to theirs.
Yes, this is our lowly Lord, humble, mounted upon a donkey making His way into Jerusalem in Luke 19 in what is considered the Triumphal Entry by all who believe. The blessed physician and evangelist, St. Luke, is the only one to give us these details about Jesus’ tears and words. The four Gospels as a whole tell us of Christ approaching Jerusalem by way of Jericho; of Him sending ahead two disciples as they reached the Mount of Olives that they may find a donkey tied and to bring it to Him that He may make His entry into the Holy City as the Son of Peace, fulfilling what was seen in Solomon, the Son of David, many centuries prior. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, had come to make known the things that make for peace in Him our Lord.
It was at the Mount of Olives where the stubborn ass was brought to Jesus, so that in that bearing the easy yoke and light burden of the King of Glory, the obstinate animal might have its will conformed to the One Who made it and rules over it. Yes, we are asses who are right to heed the Lord’s words and give Him thanks that He cares to subdue our stubborn hearts!
It was from that vantage point that St. Luke gives us the details that none of the others do; that as Jesus saw the city He wept over it. Consider what He was seeing and understand better why He wept. He beheld Jerusalem, the City of David, the Holy City, the city, quite literally by name, of peace, yet knowing it not. It was the city of inheritance, nestled as God’s fortress, His holy Zion, in the hills of a land promised to father Abraham and delivered to his countless descendants when they passed through the waters of the Jordan with Joshua leading the way. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were God’s people, chosen and set apart by Him to bear His holy name in lives led by worship of only Him and in joyful obedience of His divine commands. But we know their history. We know our history. We know the heart of man, so destitute that even after thousands of years of faithfulness on the part of the Lord, as He kept His promise given in the Garden, the very chosen people of God, the Jews, hardened their hearts like their much-despised Pharaoh, and did not know the time of their visitation as that same Mighty One Who delivered them of old, came among them in the flesh to bring about everlasting deliverance and peace. God’s people were rejecting God in their doubt of Christ, in their false accusations against Christ, in their rejection and murder of Christ. What do we make of Him? Their words, their actions caused great lamentation in the heart of Jesus, not for Himself, but in anguish over them. To reject Christ is to embrace judgment and condemnation.
As the dear Lord Jesus continues to bestow upon us the things that make for our peace, let us consider the stewardship in which we act justly or unjustly. We are part of a nation, though one growing harder to define with each passing day, month, and year. Our physical borders appear to remain steady, though quite permeable. They define us in the world, especially in contrast to where our land ends and our neighboring countries begin. What has also come to define us as Americans is a love of mammon and a hardness of heart toward God. Our Sundays reflect this. How many sleep in, tend to temporal fancies, or prepare to faithfully gather at the temples of our sports gods either in person or by dedicated home altar while the altar of Christ the King grows less and less attended? We do not know the time of our visitation. These heart conditions are common among us in our nation, not in totality, for there are still many faithful are gathered around Christ this morning in great joy and with glad hosannas. Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord!
We live in a place that has come to take for granted its Declaration of Independence and Constitution. We take them for granted because freedom has become an idol when it, too, should always have been put into service of godliness and divine worship. But we have come to love freedom even above God. We love to be free to do whatever we want. We believe it to be our greatest possession, considering our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion as license to do as each of us please in those regards. “I have freedom of speech, so I am free to speak as filthy as I please. I have freedom of religion, so I am free to worship a tree, a cat, a star, myself, or some elephant or mouse god that I picked up at a garage sale.” How unfortunate is our abuse of freedom! True freedom isn’t just being able to do what each of us wants to do according to our desire, but it is being able to do what God wants us to do without fear of persecution or punishment. Being free means being free to do what is good in God’s eyes, not in our fallen ones. True tyranny strikes where godly living is prohibited. Freedom must be fought or died for in that scenario. Praise God we have yet to encounter such tyranny in these United States, but that does not negate what is objectively good in terms of even religion. It is good to have freedom of religion so that Christianity may be freely practiced, for all society benefits where the people live according to God’s will. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. There is blessedness where the one true religion is observed by lives dedicated to living by God’s Holy Word.
The eye of Christ penetrates down to the soul of every person in our nation, and for us, He weeps. He weeps because our grandeur does not fool Him. Our enlightenment and lofty reason do not impress Him. Our vast cities, self-storage facilities packed with too much stuff with which to bother, our luxuries, our American grandiose only bring a tear to His piercing eye, for He sees the hearts that clamor for all these fleeting, vain things, as we know not the time of our visitation or the things that make for our peace in our great America. His eye sees the current condition and He knows where it leads. He knows the outcome, just as He saw what was to come upon the Jerusalem full of hardened hearts on the day of their visitation. His tears confirm His humanity, His foresight into the city’s destruction, His divinity.
Jesus had earlier said, “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.” Those who do not gather with Christ are scattered in divine judgment, just as the Lord in His omnipotence used Assyria and Babylon to judge Jerusalem in OT times, seeking that the people turn from their wicked ways. Jesus foretold a similar judgment, one even more severe and gruesome than the prior ones, that would come to pass nearly 40 years after these words. He saw what the hardness of hearts would lead to. Truly, when Christ weeps, there is something over which to weep.
The Church has had a long-standing tradition for this Sunday in the Church Year: The reading in the Divine Service of the account of what happened to Jerusalem in AD 70 as recorded by Jewish historian Josephus. It was such a significant tradition, this reading, that the first president of the LCMS, C.F.W. Walther, included Josephus’ in our synod’s first hymnal. This is a summary of what the historian said:
The Jews always proved to be the most rebellious people in the Roman Empire. During the days of the apostles, they were warned never again to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem or to fortify their city. But during the 60’s of the first century, while Rome experienced internal troubles, the Jews rebuilt their walls and fortified the city. In the year 66 the Emperor Nero sent Gessius Florus and his legions to subdue the city. The Jews killed him and 5000 of his men. This angered Rome very much. They sent Flavius Vespasian with his legions to deal with the city. But Vespasian was recalled to Rome because he was elected Emperor. Titus, his son, took over as commander of Vespasian’s men. At the time of the Passover in the year 70 about 1,000,000 Jews gathered in Jerusalem. During the next five months Jerusalem was totally overcome and destroyed. They destroyed themselves. There were three parties in the city who were jealous of each other and did not trust each other. They destroyed each other’s food supplies and homes. Thus, the Jews were their own worst enemies. Jerusalem was circled by three strong walls. With great effort and at great expense the Romans conquered wall after wall. Then they went after the Temple. It was burned to the ground August 10, A.D 70. Then 900,000 Jews were killed, starved or sold as slaves. So desperate did they become that they killed and ate their own babies. Others ate their own excrement or cow dung. Some were found dead with hay in their mouths. After the city was conquered a soldier detected a Jew extracting gold coins from his own excrement. This gave birth to the rumor that the starving Jews had swallowed their gold. Thousands of Jews were cut open alive for the gold.[1]
Thus, the most beautiful city of the east was destroyed just as our Lord had repeatedly foretold. He Himself wept over the city because of its unbelief and rejection of God, His Son, and the Covenant. The destruction of Jerusalem is the severest of judgments of God upon man. We should heed Jesus’ warning.
The warning stands for our nation, yet it is even more poignant for the Church, for after Jesus had wept and then moved on in Triumphal Entry into the great city, St. Luke tells us that He went into the temple. There, He was without tears, indignant that His house of prayer was being turned into a den of thieves. The warning is unquestionable for us in the Church, for we cannot claim ignorance about Jesus like many around us. We have been enlightened by Christ, have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit. So when the Church is sunk in selfishness and greed right alongside the unbelievers, Christ will not weep. He will drive out sin, and by His actions in the Temple, we can trust that His judgment will begin at the house of God.
Beloved in the Lord, now is the time of our visitation. We come to the Lord’s house in refuge from the evil of the world, but also from the wrath of God. Jesus’ Blood marks our door, it marks our altar, it marks our hearts. In Christ, the divine judgment of God passes over us who come to the Lord’s house not only out of obedience (and willing, glad obedience at that, if we believe that He is our dear Father), but we come out of great desire to hear and receive from Him the things that make for our peace. Let us forsake them not, but rest confidently in the ark of Christ, knowing Him, knowing His peace, knowing the time of our visitation.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
[1] Taken from https://www.projectwittenberg.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/bul/trin-10.html
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