Jeremiah 8:4-12; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; St Luke 19:41-48
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
And when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it. Our dear Lord Jesus weeps at unbelief. He weeps at sin and death. Not His own death. Not at what is soon to come, when He will be hoisted upon the gruesome scaffold and die a most horrific death. He doesn’t weep for Himself. He weeps for Jerusalem. He weeps for you.
For this is the City on a Hill. The Light shining in the darkness. This is the City of Peace at whose center lies the dwelling place of the God of Peace. There, inside the glorious Temple, behind the beautifully embellished curtain, residing atop the awe-inspiring Ark of the Covenant, was the Cavod YHWH, the Glory of the Lord. The all-consuming smoke and fire of the Divine Presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
This is the Fire that consumed Nadab and Abihu when they recklessly brought unauthorized fire and incense into the Holy Place (Leviticus 10). This is the Fire that fell from heaven to utterly devastate Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). The Fire that came down and consumed not only the entire bull, but also the altar, its stones, and licked up the water of the sacrifice of Elijah (1 Kings 18). This is raw, unmediated power of the Glory of the Lord. It makes one think twice before saying, “I just want to go to God on my own.”
But in the Temple this all-consuming Fire is kept at bay through the Word of the Lord, by His grace and mercy, and by the blood of the sacrificial animals that mediates between the holy Law of God and His chosen people. As you prayed in the collect, “O God, You declare You almighty power above all in showing mercy and pity.”
But as it was in the days of Jeremiah, so too now. Jesus comes as the fulfillment of the Prophets, as the culmination of the Temple and its Sacrifices, with mercy for all, but they would not receive Him. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often wold I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Mt 23:37).
It is a warning, beloved. A portend and a prophecy. The Lord’s fierce wrath and righteous anger will not wait forever. He does not overlook sin indefinitely. His patience waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was being prepared, but eventually the Flood came and destroyed the whole world. He sent His prophets to Jerusalem time and again, to His people, calling them to repentance, but eventually He used the Babylonian army to lay siege to the Holy City and utterly decimate the Temple in 587 BC. It was rebuilt, but it happened again. Forty years after Jesus’ prophecy the day came upon them.
The Jewish historian, Josephus, employed by the Roman state, describes the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 in horrific detail: “The homes were filled with women and children thus destroyed, the alleys with corpses of old men. Young men and boys, swelling with hunger, haunted the marketplace like ghosts and fell dead in their tracks. The sick could not bury their relatives and many fell dead while burying others. There was no weeping or wailing as hunger conquered emotion” (Jewish War 5.512-519).
He goes on in sad detail about terrible acts of savagery in fighting for food and a demonic story of infanticide and cannibalism too grotesque to relate. He finishes though, by saying, “I think that if the Romans had delayed their attack on these wicked scoundrels, the earth would have opened and swallowed the city, or a flood would have overwhelmed it or lightening destroyed it, like Sodom. For it produced a far more godless generation than those who suffered there” (Jewish War 5.566).
It is chilling to hear and terrifying to consider the devastating power of God’s fierce anger against the unbelief and rejection by His people. And they will leave not one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. No wonder Jesus weeps!
But He doesn’t stop there. As it was for the weeping widow at Nain or His own tears at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus, Jesus, moved with compassion and love, doesn’t just cry about it. He acts. He acts in righteous anger and divine mercy. He acts on your behalf, not only warning you, calling you to repentance, but also preparing a place for you, making a way.
He entered the Temple and began to drive our those who sold. The true Temple made without hands comes and exorcises the wicked money changers, restoring its rightful purpose of being a house of prayer for men like the tax collector. He comes and cleanses it of thieves in order to make room for the One who will be crucified with thieves. He comes and casts out the money changers for your redemption is purchased not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death. These are the things which make for peace. And this is why He has come.
He comes with the mercy of God, having pity upon the people for what their sin and ignorance have done to them. He comes to His own, beloved people; to those who dwell in the shadow of the Temple and the smell of its sacrifices. To those beat down by the Law and the terror of their own conscience. He comes to folks like us. This is His visitation.
And it is either received now in His mercy and love, with full and free forgiveness for all of your sins, or it is endured on the Last Day under the terror and fear of His raw divine power.
Repentance is needed, beloved. Repentance, but not despair. Weep for yourselves. Mourn and lament your wretched sins. But do not weep for your future or fear the coming visitation of the Lord. For Christ Jesus has fulfilled those blood sacrifices that once stood between God and His Law. He is the once-for-all Sacrifice whose blood covers over the accusations of the Law and is sprinkled upon you in Holy Baptism to cover you with His righteousness.
It is by this self-same Baptism that you, in your flesh, are put to death in Christ, and raised again with Him by the Spirit and are joined to the Temple of His Body as a living member. This Temple, His Body, was destroyed, but raised once more, never to die again. In His Word He bestows upon you this peace. Peace not as the world can give. Peace which surpasses all human understanding. The Peace of the Lord that bespeaks you righteous!
Do you see? You who have received His first visitation and coming to His Temple with joy and gladness, who rejoice now in His present visitation in His Word and Supper, shall likewise rejoice in His final visitation when He comes to judge the living and the dead.
What I mean is this: His first visitation is His Incarnation and Birth. He comes to His Temple as an infant, only 40 days old, as the glory of His people Israel, as the Peace which allows Simeon to depart in peace. By His grace you have received Him; believed in His Name by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word.
You, like the people in the Temple, hang on this life-giving, death defying Word. You hold it sacred, unafraid of the final judgment, for you have the promise of this Word that you who share in the death of Christ by faith also shall share in His resurrection. You have the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. Therefore the final visitation of Christ shall not terrify you; but you receive it with joy for it is your redemption out of this vail of tears and away from the devastation that will be worse than Jerusalem.
For even now, dear ones, Christ Jesus comes to you, His sacramental visitation, as your Shepherd and Bishop, to feed you on His Body and Blood, the Sacrifice of the True Temple, and the precious antidote to the destruction of the Last Day. He who is the True Temple comes to you, His new Jerusalem, His chosen people, in mercy and compassion, and makes your body His Temple by His Holy Spirit in His Supper. For we do not deny the spiritual eating! And as St Paul writes, To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
To you is given the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, together with His Spirit, for the common good of all, for the building up of the household of God, as it is written, As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pt 2:4-5).
Or as you just sang in the penultimate verse:
Through toil and tribulation
And tumult of her war
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest. (LSB 644:4).
Come now to Christ who comes to you. Receive the things that make for and have made peace between you and the Father. Receive the already, but not yet rest of your Lord Jesus Christ who has not only wept for you, but who has acted for you, on your behalf, and has secured your future and hope. He draws near to you, to raise you up from the ground, you and your children, to join you to Himself in mystical union with His Father and the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory now and forever. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
And when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it. Our dear Lord Jesus weeps at unbelief. He weeps at sin and death. Not His own death. Not at what is soon to come, when He will be hoisted upon the gruesome scaffold and die a most horrific death. He doesn’t weep for Himself. He weeps for Jerusalem. He weeps for you.
For this is the City on a Hill. The Light shining in the darkness. This is the City of Peace at whose center lies the dwelling place of the God of Peace. There, inside the glorious Temple, behind the beautifully embellished curtain, residing atop the awe-inspiring Ark of the Covenant, was the Cavod YHWH, the Glory of the Lord. The all-consuming smoke and fire of the Divine Presence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
This is the Fire that consumed Nadab and Abihu when they recklessly brought unauthorized fire and incense into the Holy Place (Leviticus 10). This is the Fire that fell from heaven to utterly devastate Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). The Fire that came down and consumed not only the entire bull, but also the altar, its stones, and licked up the water of the sacrifice of Elijah (1 Kings 18). This is raw, unmediated power of the Glory of the Lord. It makes one think twice before saying, “I just want to go to God on my own.”
But in the Temple this all-consuming Fire is kept at bay through the Word of the Lord, by His grace and mercy, and by the blood of the sacrificial animals that mediates between the holy Law of God and His chosen people. As you prayed in the collect, “O God, You declare You almighty power above all in showing mercy and pity.”
But as it was in the days of Jeremiah, so too now. Jesus comes as the fulfillment of the Prophets, as the culmination of the Temple and its Sacrifices, with mercy for all, but they would not receive Him. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often wold I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! (Mt 23:37).
It is a warning, beloved. A portend and a prophecy. The Lord’s fierce wrath and righteous anger will not wait forever. He does not overlook sin indefinitely. His patience waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was being prepared, but eventually the Flood came and destroyed the whole world. He sent His prophets to Jerusalem time and again, to His people, calling them to repentance, but eventually He used the Babylonian army to lay siege to the Holy City and utterly decimate the Temple in 587 BC. It was rebuilt, but it happened again. Forty years after Jesus’ prophecy the day came upon them.
The Jewish historian, Josephus, employed by the Roman state, describes the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 in horrific detail: “The homes were filled with women and children thus destroyed, the alleys with corpses of old men. Young men and boys, swelling with hunger, haunted the marketplace like ghosts and fell dead in their tracks. The sick could not bury their relatives and many fell dead while burying others. There was no weeping or wailing as hunger conquered emotion” (Jewish War 5.512-519).
He goes on in sad detail about terrible acts of savagery in fighting for food and a demonic story of infanticide and cannibalism too grotesque to relate. He finishes though, by saying, “I think that if the Romans had delayed their attack on these wicked scoundrels, the earth would have opened and swallowed the city, or a flood would have overwhelmed it or lightening destroyed it, like Sodom. For it produced a far more godless generation than those who suffered there” (Jewish War 5.566).
It is chilling to hear and terrifying to consider the devastating power of God’s fierce anger against the unbelief and rejection by His people. And they will leave not one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. No wonder Jesus weeps!
But He doesn’t stop there. As it was for the weeping widow at Nain or His own tears at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus, Jesus, moved with compassion and love, doesn’t just cry about it. He acts. He acts in righteous anger and divine mercy. He acts on your behalf, not only warning you, calling you to repentance, but also preparing a place for you, making a way.
He entered the Temple and began to drive our those who sold. The true Temple made without hands comes and exorcises the wicked money changers, restoring its rightful purpose of being a house of prayer for men like the tax collector. He comes and cleanses it of thieves in order to make room for the One who will be crucified with thieves. He comes and casts out the money changers for your redemption is purchased not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and innocent suffering and death. These are the things which make for peace. And this is why He has come.
He comes with the mercy of God, having pity upon the people for what their sin and ignorance have done to them. He comes to His own, beloved people; to those who dwell in the shadow of the Temple and the smell of its sacrifices. To those beat down by the Law and the terror of their own conscience. He comes to folks like us. This is His visitation.
And it is either received now in His mercy and love, with full and free forgiveness for all of your sins, or it is endured on the Last Day under the terror and fear of His raw divine power.
Repentance is needed, beloved. Repentance, but not despair. Weep for yourselves. Mourn and lament your wretched sins. But do not weep for your future or fear the coming visitation of the Lord. For Christ Jesus has fulfilled those blood sacrifices that once stood between God and His Law. He is the once-for-all Sacrifice whose blood covers over the accusations of the Law and is sprinkled upon you in Holy Baptism to cover you with His righteousness.
It is by this self-same Baptism that you, in your flesh, are put to death in Christ, and raised again with Him by the Spirit and are joined to the Temple of His Body as a living member. This Temple, His Body, was destroyed, but raised once more, never to die again. In His Word He bestows upon you this peace. Peace not as the world can give. Peace which surpasses all human understanding. The Peace of the Lord that bespeaks you righteous!
Do you see? You who have received His first visitation and coming to His Temple with joy and gladness, who rejoice now in His present visitation in His Word and Supper, shall likewise rejoice in His final visitation when He comes to judge the living and the dead.
What I mean is this: His first visitation is His Incarnation and Birth. He comes to His Temple as an infant, only 40 days old, as the glory of His people Israel, as the Peace which allows Simeon to depart in peace. By His grace you have received Him; believed in His Name by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word.
You, like the people in the Temple, hang on this life-giving, death defying Word. You hold it sacred, unafraid of the final judgment, for you have the promise of this Word that you who share in the death of Christ by faith also shall share in His resurrection. You have the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. Therefore the final visitation of Christ shall not terrify you; but you receive it with joy for it is your redemption out of this vail of tears and away from the devastation that will be worse than Jerusalem.
For even now, dear ones, Christ Jesus comes to you, His sacramental visitation, as your Shepherd and Bishop, to feed you on His Body and Blood, the Sacrifice of the True Temple, and the precious antidote to the destruction of the Last Day. He who is the True Temple comes to you, His new Jerusalem, His chosen people, in mercy and compassion, and makes your body His Temple by His Holy Spirit in His Supper. For we do not deny the spiritual eating! And as St Paul writes, To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
To you is given the Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, together with His Spirit, for the common good of all, for the building up of the household of God, as it is written, As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pt 2:4-5).
Or as you just sang in the penultimate verse:
Through toil and tribulation
And tumult of her war
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore
Till with the vision glorious
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest. (LSB 644:4).
Come now to Christ who comes to you. Receive the things that make for and have made peace between you and the Father. Receive the already, but not yet rest of your Lord Jesus Christ who has not only wept for you, but who has acted for you, on your behalf, and has secured your future and hope. He draws near to you, to raise you up from the ground, you and your children, to join you to Himself in mystical union with His Father and the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory now and forever. Amen.
RSS Feed