Jeremiah 8:4-12/Romans 9:30-10:4/St Luke 19:41-48
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is a rare picture of our Lord in the Gospels. Venting His spleen. Seething in righteous anger. It would seem more fitting in the Old Testament. Fall right in place next to the holy destruction commanded to Joshua or the gladiatorial conquests of Samson. But Jesus? Meek and mild, babe of Bethlehem, now the Man of Nazareth, angrily bull-rushing the marketplace of the Temple? We must admit He is certainly consumed with zeal. But what does it mean?
Firstly, when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” These two events must go together, they are inseparable - Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem and His cleansing of the Temple - they are of a pair, tied to His visitation, His episkopes. It sounds like the word episcopal. Visitor. Bishop. St Peter borrows from the prophet Isaiah and applies it to Jesus, You were once straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and [episkopon], Bishop of your souls (1 Pt 2:25).
Jesus comes as Shepherd and Bishop, with the sympathy of the suffering Prophet. He comes in the way of Moses, even in anger, interceding for Israel. He comes in the way of Jeremiah and Isaiah, weeping over the stubborn unbelief of the people of God and the imminent destruction of the Holy Temple. He comes in the way of Hosea, knowing the deep longing for an unrequited love, and people’s rejection. He comes as the last and final Prophet to a city that stoned the prophets and killed those sent to her. Jesus has all the rage, anguish, frustration, and sorrow of the God of Israel for His chosen beloved. For He came unto His own but His own did not receive Him.
It is the saddest story. The story of unrequited love. Like an artist cutting off his ear for the woman he loves, but she refuses him. Worse than that, she has sold herself to another. Prostituted her soul to the Baals and Molechs that promised instant pleasure.
The Temple was supposed to be the place of the Lord’s Word, of His sweet song of forgiveness and love for His dear people. But at the time of Jeremiah and the destruction of the First Temple it had become a stage for man’s words. You heard it two Sundays ago: Do not listen to the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. Jeremiah came to call them back to God the Father. Return to the Lord with repentance and mourning.
But they would not listen. They limped between God and mammon, serving the flesh while attempting to offer right worship to God. Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle. Pleasure became the ultimate idol. The Temple was turned into convenience store to buy what you needed for the moment.
Is it any different in the Church today? We have the Baals of nationalism and fierce glory. We sacrifice our children to our own Molochs for the sake of expediency. The Church has become entirely individualistic. Focusing on self, rather than the Sacrifice. Jesus weeps. He weeps at the abomination of His Holy House and the stubborn ignorance of His dear people who would not have Him. Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, His chosen abode, saw its day. In A+D 70 the city, the Temple, over 600,000 of it inhabitants, were razed to the ground by the pagan General Titus. Survivors resorted to eating leather, dung, human excrement, even cannibalism. If this is what God does to His beloved city and His holy people, what do we suppose will happen to us?
Therefore Jesus weeps. And on His way to the Cross He instructs the daughters of Jerusalem, He instructs His Holy Church, who would weep for Him, who would wail over His sacrifice, Do not weep for Me, but weep for yourself and for your children (23:28).
Repentance is needed. Repentance and faith. Now and at all times. For even though He is rejected, even though the shouts of Hosanna quickly turned to cries of Crucify, Jesus comes in the way of peace, bringing the very things that make for peace. Peace between God and man. Peace between the Lord and His beloved. He is the Festal Sacrifice, who binds Himself with the cords of your sin and rejection, idolatry and denial upon to the horns of His cruciform Altar.
But first He must cleanse the Temple. He must cast out the money changers and those who bought and sold superficial salvation. You have it on your bulletin cover. A great image. One not usually depicted in stained glass, but fitting nonetheless for the Church and her right worship. For the Lord must drive out all that is at odds with His truth. He must cleanse His Holy House and make room for His right teaching.
Jesus must drive out the thieves in order to make room for the One who will be crucified with thieves. He must send out the ram, for He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He must drive out the ox, for He is the Once-for-All-Sacrifice for the cleansing of consciences. He must remove the coins and temple currency, for He will redeem you not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death. Even the doves are scattered, for now it is Jesus who bestows the Holy Spirit and the peace that surpasses all understanding.
He sets up the New Temple when He mounts the throne of His Cross as rightful King of the Jews. And now He draws to Himself not only Israel, but all nations by His Word. He is your Peace Offering. He had reconciled you to His Father in love and gives you communion with Him in His own Body by His Spirit. He brings you to His Holy House, His Church, not to give you the words of the world and its false wisdom, but to speak the Word of His Father to you, cleansing you of all your sin and bestowing the gift of His Holy Spirit.
Here is a mystery: He who prophesied the destruction of the Temple has raised up a new and better Temple in His own Body and Blood, and even now, gives you His Word, so that by His Spirit, He makes your own body His Temple. As it is written, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Cor 6:19-20).
Thus does our Lord Jesus continue to come to you. He has wept for you. For your sins. His tears are the holy water of your Baptism, where you were crucified with Him; made a new creation by water and the Word. Living in your baptismal birth, He daily comes and would cleanse you of your sins, drive out all that is contrary to His Word and work, and establish His home with you. He longs for you. Hang on His every Word, as you heard in the Gospel, for by His Word does He visit and dwell with you.
The righteous anger of Jesus seen here ought not appear completely out of place to us. It is His work. Only, it is His alien, that is, foreign work. The work of His Law that tears us down to the ground, which must be accomplished so that He can do His proper work, His joyful work, of His Gospel with raises you up in the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins.
He has made you His beloved people, His chosen, His Israel, the Church. From heaven He came and sought you, to be His holy Bride, His royal priesthood called out of darkness into His marvelous light. Come forward, then, and receive your priestly portion, the Body and Blood of the Lamb, once given in Sacrifice for you and for all. He is your Bishop who visits you in love and mercy, with tenderness and care. At His final visitation, you shall stand together with all the saints to receive the promised inheritance and be joined forever with Him in the New Jerusalem.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
It is a rare picture of our Lord in the Gospels. Venting His spleen. Seething in righteous anger. It would seem more fitting in the Old Testament. Fall right in place next to the holy destruction commanded to Joshua or the gladiatorial conquests of Samson. But Jesus? Meek and mild, babe of Bethlehem, now the Man of Nazareth, angrily bull-rushing the marketplace of the Temple? We must admit He is certainly consumed with zeal. But what does it mean?
Firstly, when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” These two events must go together, they are inseparable - Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem and His cleansing of the Temple - they are of a pair, tied to His visitation, His episkopes. It sounds like the word episcopal. Visitor. Bishop. St Peter borrows from the prophet Isaiah and applies it to Jesus, You were once straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and [episkopon], Bishop of your souls (1 Pt 2:25).
Jesus comes as Shepherd and Bishop, with the sympathy of the suffering Prophet. He comes in the way of Moses, even in anger, interceding for Israel. He comes in the way of Jeremiah and Isaiah, weeping over the stubborn unbelief of the people of God and the imminent destruction of the Holy Temple. He comes in the way of Hosea, knowing the deep longing for an unrequited love, and people’s rejection. He comes as the last and final Prophet to a city that stoned the prophets and killed those sent to her. Jesus has all the rage, anguish, frustration, and sorrow of the God of Israel for His chosen beloved. For He came unto His own but His own did not receive Him.
It is the saddest story. The story of unrequited love. Like an artist cutting off his ear for the woman he loves, but she refuses him. Worse than that, she has sold herself to another. Prostituted her soul to the Baals and Molechs that promised instant pleasure.
The Temple was supposed to be the place of the Lord’s Word, of His sweet song of forgiveness and love for His dear people. But at the time of Jeremiah and the destruction of the First Temple it had become a stage for man’s words. You heard it two Sundays ago: Do not listen to the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. Jeremiah came to call them back to God the Father. Return to the Lord with repentance and mourning.
But they would not listen. They limped between God and mammon, serving the flesh while attempting to offer right worship to God. Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle. Pleasure became the ultimate idol. The Temple was turned into convenience store to buy what you needed for the moment.
Is it any different in the Church today? We have the Baals of nationalism and fierce glory. We sacrifice our children to our own Molochs for the sake of expediency. The Church has become entirely individualistic. Focusing on self, rather than the Sacrifice. Jesus weeps. He weeps at the abomination of His Holy House and the stubborn ignorance of His dear people who would not have Him. Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, His chosen abode, saw its day. In A+D 70 the city, the Temple, over 600,000 of it inhabitants, were razed to the ground by the pagan General Titus. Survivors resorted to eating leather, dung, human excrement, even cannibalism. If this is what God does to His beloved city and His holy people, what do we suppose will happen to us?
Therefore Jesus weeps. And on His way to the Cross He instructs the daughters of Jerusalem, He instructs His Holy Church, who would weep for Him, who would wail over His sacrifice, Do not weep for Me, but weep for yourself and for your children (23:28).
Repentance is needed. Repentance and faith. Now and at all times. For even though He is rejected, even though the shouts of Hosanna quickly turned to cries of Crucify, Jesus comes in the way of peace, bringing the very things that make for peace. Peace between God and man. Peace between the Lord and His beloved. He is the Festal Sacrifice, who binds Himself with the cords of your sin and rejection, idolatry and denial upon to the horns of His cruciform Altar.
But first He must cleanse the Temple. He must cast out the money changers and those who bought and sold superficial salvation. You have it on your bulletin cover. A great image. One not usually depicted in stained glass, but fitting nonetheless for the Church and her right worship. For the Lord must drive out all that is at odds with His truth. He must cleanse His Holy House and make room for His right teaching.
Jesus must drive out the thieves in order to make room for the One who will be crucified with thieves. He must send out the ram, for He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He must drive out the ox, for He is the Once-for-All-Sacrifice for the cleansing of consciences. He must remove the coins and temple currency, for He will redeem you not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death. Even the doves are scattered, for now it is Jesus who bestows the Holy Spirit and the peace that surpasses all understanding.
He sets up the New Temple when He mounts the throne of His Cross as rightful King of the Jews. And now He draws to Himself not only Israel, but all nations by His Word. He is your Peace Offering. He had reconciled you to His Father in love and gives you communion with Him in His own Body by His Spirit. He brings you to His Holy House, His Church, not to give you the words of the world and its false wisdom, but to speak the Word of His Father to you, cleansing you of all your sin and bestowing the gift of His Holy Spirit.
Here is a mystery: He who prophesied the destruction of the Temple has raised up a new and better Temple in His own Body and Blood, and even now, gives you His Word, so that by His Spirit, He makes your own body His Temple. As it is written, Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Cor 6:19-20).
Thus does our Lord Jesus continue to come to you. He has wept for you. For your sins. His tears are the holy water of your Baptism, where you were crucified with Him; made a new creation by water and the Word. Living in your baptismal birth, He daily comes and would cleanse you of your sins, drive out all that is contrary to His Word and work, and establish His home with you. He longs for you. Hang on His every Word, as you heard in the Gospel, for by His Word does He visit and dwell with you.
The righteous anger of Jesus seen here ought not appear completely out of place to us. It is His work. Only, it is His alien, that is, foreign work. The work of His Law that tears us down to the ground, which must be accomplished so that He can do His proper work, His joyful work, of His Gospel with raises you up in the full and free forgiveness of all of your sins.
He has made you His beloved people, His chosen, His Israel, the Church. From heaven He came and sought you, to be His holy Bride, His royal priesthood called out of darkness into His marvelous light. Come forward, then, and receive your priestly portion, the Body and Blood of the Lamb, once given in Sacrifice for you and for all. He is your Bishop who visits you in love and mercy, with tenderness and care. At His final visitation, you shall stand together with all the saints to receive the promised inheritance and be joined forever with Him in the New Jerusalem.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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