Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 + Luke 19:41-48
Palm Sunday saw much celebration as Jesus rode that famous donkey into Jerusalem. But it wasn’t all celebration. While the crowds met Jesus with joy, the leaders of Jerusalem met Jesus with hostility. While the crowds sang praises to Him who came in the name of the Lord, some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”
As always, wherever Jesus was, some believed, but many disbelieved. Jesus knew that. He knew that some in Jerusalem would believe and be saved, but He also knew that the city as a whole would never believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.
So, on that otherwise joyful Palm Sunday, Jesus wept over the Jerusalem. 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. The rest of the world could be excused for not recognizing Jesus as the promised Savior from sin. But Israel was the nation that God had nurtured like a mother nurtures and raises her children from infancy. Jerusalem was the capital city that God Himself chose for Himself and graced with His presence, where He placed His temple and His altar, where He listened to prayer, where He accepted sacrifice. You, even you, Jerusalem, God’s daughter, do not recognize your God, do not want to recognize Jesus as your God. You, even you, will crucify your God at the time of His visitation.
And yet, that’s not why Jesus wept over Jerusalem. All of that, even crucifying the Son of God, could have been forgiven, would have been forgiven. But even after His resurrection, after His ascension, when Jesus sent Peter and the other apostles to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Jerusalem, holding out Holy Baptism to them as a gift, as a means of salvation, they still would not repent and believe. They still would not be baptized. Jerusalem would play its awful part in the crucifixion of the Son of God, and then, rather than trust in the atoning sacrifice made by Christ, they would leave God standing there with His arms open, like a Husband whose wife left Him for another man, like a Father whose daughter would rather live as a prostitute than live in the same house with Him.
Jesus knew all that. You, even you, who persecuted the prophets of old, will again resist the Holy Spirit and persecute those who are sent to you and thus bring on yourself the just punishment for your sins: the bitter siege of Jerusalem that the Romans would bring against the city, and its total annihilation by the Romans some 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
In 70 A.D., God abandoned Jerusalem for good. Notice that He never sent His Christian people against Jerusalem to wipe out the Jews, even though the Jews were responsible for the slaughter of Christ and of Christians. No, God sent the pagan Romans against Jerusalem and Judea, who had their own evil reasons for what they did. God never calls upon His Christians to use violence against those who reject Christ. Instead, He places the sword of the Word of God into our mouths, to warn the Jews—and the Muslims and all unbelievers—of their impending destruction, and to call them to repentance and faith in Christ. That’s the role of the Church.
The destruction of Jerusalem was just. But understand this: the Jews were not condemned by God and Jerusalem was not destroyed by the Romans because the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. The Romans were responsible for that, too, as we confess in the Creed, “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” No, those Jews were condemned and slaughtered and eternally damned because of all their sins, which all men have in common with them. You don’t have to call for Jesus’ death or pound the nails into His hands in order to earn God’s condemnation. You just have to be born, born of a sinful man and a sinful woman. You just have to break one of the Ten Commandments in your thoughts, words, or actions. And you’ve done that, too. The sins of the Jews, the sins of all men, have already earned God’s condemnation. He delays it, giving men time to hear the Gospel and repent. He delays it, so that His Holy Spirit might work through the Gospel to bring sinners to faith in Christ, which is the only divinely provided way of escape from punishment. But most of Jerusalem, most of the Jews resisted the Holy Spirit. They refused to believe.
Now Jerusalem’s destruction stands for all time as a harbinger of the destruction that awaits all those who stubbornly refuse to repent of their sin and trust in Christ Jesus for salvation. Neither Jews nor Gentiles will escape. And as for you who have been made to see the light of Christ, to repent and be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of your sins, remember Jerusalem, God’s chosen city. Remember Jerusalem and its destruction and know that, there but by the grace of God go we. Remember how she fell, how she became so good and upright in her own eyes that she no longer cared about her sins, no longer looked for a righteousness from above, no longer looked to her Lord for forgiveness, life and salvation. What happened to Jerusalem can happen to Christians, too, if we are not vigilant.
So remember Jerusalem. But more than that, remember the Lord who wept over her—over her who was about to put Him to death. Still with no bitterness. Still with no grudge. Still wanting to take her back as His bride and forgive her her sins, even after she crucified Him, if only she would take the help from the hand stretched out to her by her God. See Jesus weeping and know that He doesn’t delight in anyone’s destruction, but yearns for every sinner to repent and be saved.
Remember the Lord who wept over Jerusalem and turn to Him in faith.
And then remember Him driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple with their wares. This is the side of Jesus that modern “Christianity” would rather forget. It’s not “nice” enough. It’s not mild-mannered and mushy-gushy enough. But it’s real.
Now, why was He so upset with the buyers and sellers in the Temple—upset enough to overturn their tables and drive them out of God’s house? It wasn’t only because of how it dishonored God’s name. It was mainly because the proclamation of God’s name was the only thing that would rescue those who would be rescued from the coming destruction. Zeal for His neighbor drove Jesus to do something about this buying and selling in the temple. How could anyone think with all that commerce taking place all around them? How could anyone pray? How could they know the true God and hear His Word when, apparently, even the priests and religious leaders were perfectly fine with the Temple being turned into a marketplace? How could anyone focus on their sin and on the atoning sacrifices for sin? And how could anyone hear the words that Jesus would so urgently teach over the next few days of that Holy Week? So Jesus cleansed the Temple and cleared a place for the crowds to come and listen to God’s Word one last time before He, the Lamb of God, would be offered up for the sins of the world.
Then, after the Temple was quiet again, He sat down and taught them—large crowds who still were willing to listen. And in spite of all the opposition, in spite of all the hatred of the Jewish leadership toward Jesus, He sat down in their midst and taught for the sake of the elect, for the sake of those who would still hear and believe the Gospel.
Such is the role of the Church still today. To remember Jerusalem, in humility and in fear, so that we never become proud or complacent toward God and His Word. To weep and lament over the lost, as Jesus did, but not only that. To drive out of the Church all the worldly things that would hinder the truth of the Gospel from being proclaimed and heard, and then to teach those who will listen, because there will always be some who listen, some who repent, some who believe, even as there will always be many who rage against Christ and His Church.
The Church, the communion of saints, will be just fine. The tears Jesus shed were not shed over how terrible things will be for His Church or how hopeless the situation will be for His believers. His believers are not the ones who will be punished by God. His Christians are not the ones who will be destroyed on the Day of Wrath, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Remember Jerusalem and take comfort in the Lord’s mourning. He mourns over those who will punished for their unbelief. But He continues to rejoice over His holy people who have been cleansed from their sins by faith in His blood. And the Day of Wrath that is coming on the wicked will be a day of salvation for those who put their hope in Christ Jesus. Amen.
