✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Luke 19,41-48; Matthew 21,12-17; Mark 11,15-19 4015
10. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 055
Romanus, Martyr at Rome 258.
Hermann Otto Erich Sasse 1976
9. August 2015
1. O God of Jacob, and our God, You bless Your people, You weep with them and You want the peace of Jerusalem. We pray: send forth Your peace across the earth. (VELKD Prayer for 10. Trinitatis § 1). Amen.
2. And when Jesus drew near and saw Jerusalem, He wept over it, 42saying: “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side 44and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” 45And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, 46saying to them: “It is written: »My house shall be a house of prayer,« but you have made it a den of insurrectionists.” 47And He was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy Him, 48but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on His words.
3. Jesus uttered these prophetic words as He was approaching Jerusalem. On His journey He paused and gazed upon her splendor. He lifted up His eyes and beheld Jerusalem seated upon the hills in all her glory and the magnificent temple glittering in golden beauty. Jesus wept with sorrow over the impending judgment upon the city and the nation. By the end of the week He had suffered, died and risen again for His people. Forty years later, His prophetic judgment came to pass on 10. August 70. This is a date that lives in ancient history infamy, for that is the day the Roman General Titus completed his campaign against rebellious Israel when he destroyed the temple in Jerusalem.
4. Two thousand years later, what does Jesus teach us in regards to this pericope? Looking to Christ Himself, we want to:
I. weep with Christ
II. let us be warned through Christ
III. be comforted by Christ (Martens § 3).
I.
5. Christ, the Son of God, wept over Jerusalem. He still weeps over Jerusalem, a city that teems with Jews, Christians and Muslims. Holy sites to all three religions dot the urban map. Israeli atrocities against Christian and Muslim Palestinians abound. Palestinians are removed from their homes and land so Israelis can move in. A wall is built to separate the Palestinians from their land. When they cross the border to worship God, only a few of the many are granted access. The Palestinians are by no means innocent doves. In their struggle for identity, land and a nation, they at times violently resist the Israeli government and military with bombs or rockets that often kill civilians. The Palestinians and the Israelis pay back blood for blood in kind. A violent cycle of fighting, mistrust and anger exists on both sides. Peace is tenuous, and not even mighty nations like the United States have been able to broker a lasting peace in the region for very long.
6. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the temple had become a den of insurrectionists. The religious and political leaders had rejected Jesus as the Son of God and the Messiah, and in doing so they had rebelled against Yahweh. Jesus had come to redeem them, but the Jewish religious and political leaders labeled Him a demon-possessed, law-breaking, rebel-rousing trouble-maker. Such gadflies often face the wrath of the powers in charge. Socrates was sentenced to death in ancient Greece, and Dietrich Bonhöffer was executed by Nazi Germany for being the conscience of their societies. Jesus shared a similar sentence.
7. Jesus wept because rebellious actions have consequences. He Himself quoted the Prophet Jeremiah: »And now, because you have been idolatrous and treated your neighbor wickedly, when I persistently spoke to you but you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I, Yahweh, will do to temple that is called by My Name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh when I withdrew my protection and allowed the ark of the covenant to be captured. I will cast you out of My sight« (Jeremiah 7,13-15).
II.
8. „Yes, Israel is a model with his guilt – a model for us as Christians and as a church. For the words of Jesus to His beloved city – they apply not only to His own people, they should also serve as a warning to us: Is it clear to us that the time that God still grants us is the period of grace and the time He gives us to turn back to Him? Is it clear to us that it is a gracious gift of God when Christ still invites us to encounter Him here in the Divine Service, the Sermon and the Lord’s Supper? Is that clear to us that this time is limited, or do we think we can deal with this subject at some later time when it suits us better if we can find the necessary time for it in our busy lives? Is it clear to us that we receive Christ as the only means for our life and salvation, who alone gives us the peace of fellowship with Him? Or do we think we live our lives without this fellowship with Christ, and could very well exist without His fellowship?“ (Martens § 10).
9. If we take such questions lightly, then Jesus weeps over us. We are no better than the Jewish rebels of His day. If we lift up idols alongside of Jesus, then we are ungrateful idolaters. If we wish, or do, evil to our neighbor, either by causing them harm and distress or by failing to help them in their time of need, then we are wicked, selfish people. The law does not excuse any one of us from such sins. The law calls us to repent, to worship only the Triune God and to befriend our neighbors. This church, like every church, is established by the Holy Spirit to be a house of prayer, a sanctuary of worship and a holy place where forgiveness of sins is given out to those who are distressed or burdened by their sinfulness. Woe to us if we ever forget that as a church or a Lutheran synod! The law’s condemning sentence looms over all who are wicked and unrepentant, yes, even us.
III.
10. Be now comforted by Christ. I proclaim to you the gospel: Jesus came to rescue you from the law’s condemnation and your sins. In Luke 19 Jesus was traveling up to Jerusalem to do just that, and He accomplished your salvation and absolution on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Jesus has paid for our idolatry and wickedness. Jesus has ransomed us from the error of not rejoicing in this place as His sanctuary of grace. Jesus has paid the price in full and declares us not guilty. You are saved and redeemed by Jesus, the very One who was rejected by His own Jewish leaders.
11. Though we may forsake Christ, He does not forsake us; He does not forsake you. Jesus stays true to His word and stands by what He has promised you in your Holy Baptism. Jesus stands by His Father as they wait for their prodigal children to return home. Jesus is rich in grace and abundant in mercy, for He joyfully welcomes home sinners who have returned once again to their baptismal faith that trusts only in Him.
12. When God destroys, He always leaves a remnant from which He rebuilds. Noah and His family repopulated the earth after the Flood. Babylonian Jews began to return from exile in 538 bc to rebuild after the first temple had been destroyed by God’s judgment. Today the Palestinian Christians live in Jerusalem and the surrounding lands. They are descendants from the first Christians who trace their lineage all the way back to Jesus and His apostles. O these Palestinian Christians are a minority in the land, but they are Jesus’ remnant in the holy city and they are gadflies to the Israelis and the Muslim Arabs in the land. They are a constant reminder that no matter how fiercely the world persecutes Jesus’ Christians, they are His people and they still remain. They are stones in the Lord’s new testament temple who offer prayers and worship to the One True God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (1. Peter 2,4-5). Jesus is the True Temple, for Jesus does what the temple as a building on Mt. Zion did. Jesus is the Source of the forgiveness of sins, and the Object of our Divine Service (Gottesdienst) and prayers. All Christians are stones in Christ the Temple.
13. „Together, we live by God’s grace, by His forgiveness, even by the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ, who never ceases to advocate for His people, so that we all recognize that which make for peace“ (Martens § 14). We pray for our Christian brothers and sisters who are persecuted for the Name of Jesus in Palestine, Egypt and the Muslim lands. We pray for an outpouring of the gospel among the Jews and Muslims so that the few Christians in those cultures will be joined by many more converts to the Christian faith. We pray for our church and our Lutheran synod so that the Holy Spirit would abundantly bless us temporally and spiritually. Our church is a house of prayer. We pray for peace. We pray for grace. We pray to the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Peace of God and the Grace of God who creates peace from warfare and salvation from rebellion. Amen.
14. Let us pray. O Yahweh, You are our God and we are the people of Your pasture and the sheep of Your hand; be with us and bless us so that we may preach and administer the gospel to those in our midst and to the borough which surrounds us. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © 2013 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
Martens, Gottfried. A sermon preached on 16. August 2009 (10. Trinitatis) in Berlin-Zehlendorf, Germany on Luke 19,41-48. Copyright © 2009 St. Mary Church in Berlin-Zehlendorf (SELK). All rights reserved. The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind, Tr. © 2011.
VELKD. Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. www.velkd.de. Copyright © 2013 Vereinigte Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands.
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