10th Sunday after Trinity + Luke 19;41-48 + August 5, 2018

Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The first part of this Sunday’s Gospel lesson takes place on Palm Sunday as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. Surrounded by shouts of ‘Hosanna,’ Jesus looks upon the city of David and weeps. He weeps because He desires the Jew’s salvation but knows they will reject it. He says, “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. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Christ’s coming to Jerusalem is the gracious visitation of God Himself. But they will crucify Him and for the next forty years, reject His apostles sent to them. For this rejection, the city will be leveled to the ground, along with everyone inside it. All this because they did not know the day of their visitation.

The Jews reject the “things that make for their peace.” This is not earthly peace that Jesus brings, for He says in Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword.” World peace isn’t what Christ is about. The peace of Jesus is the peace of God which passes all human understanding. The peace of Jesus is the peace of conscience that comes through faith that Christ’s death has atoned for your sins. The peace of Jesus is the peace of heart which knows that there is no condemnation, no wrath, for those who are in Christ Jesus. By nature we are “children of wrath” St. Paul says in Ephesians 2:3. Apart from faith in Christ we are enemies of God because we are descendant from Adam, bearing His sin and sinning our own sins daily. By nature we don’t have peace with God because He condemns sin and sinner alike. But God graciously visits mankind in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t come to judge the sins of the world. He comes to be “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world,” as the Apostle writes in 1 John 2:2. The same apostle writes in John 3:17-18, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Whoever believes in Christ is not condemned. Whoever trusts His death to atone for their sins has the forgiveness of all of their sins. But the one who does not believe is condemned already, “because he has not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

Right there is why Jesus’ weeps. His first advent was a gracious visitation to earn peace with God for sinful humanity. But not all will believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. Men loved darkness rather than light, their sins more than righteousness, and their pride more than eternal life. Christ weeps because He sees what Jerusalem will do to Him and to His apostles over the next forty years. He weeps because He knows they will continually reject Him and grow recalcitrant and unyielding in their unbelief. Because they refuse to believe the Gospel they stand condemned. This isn’t because it is the Lord’s will. God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,” St. Paul says (1 Timothy 2:4-5). St. Peter says the Triune God “is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). The tears of Jesus show us His heart. He earnestly desires the salvation of every person, otherwise He would not weep for those whom He knows will reject Him and suffer the just condemnation.

The second part of today’s gospel lesson also happens on Palm Sunday and it ties directly to the first part. Having arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus goes to the Temple, the house of the Lord. There He “began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, ‘It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.’” Christ forcibly drives out the merchants and moneychangers because they were distracting people hearing God’s Word. He doesn’t clear them out simply because they don’t belong there. He clears them out because with all the noise and racket of business, the Temple was no longer quiet to be a place of prayer. It was no longer a place where there was quiet for the teaching of God’s Word so that men could be saved by coming to the knowledge of the truth. Even though the Jews despised Him and would reject Him, He clears out the temple and teaches there daily during the last week of His earthly ministry because it is precisely through teaching the Word of God to people that they come to faith, for St. Paul says in Romans 10:17 that “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” In spite of the fact that the Jews would reject Him and choose condemnation rather than forgiveness and life, there were still those who would believe. So Christ teaches for the sake of their salvation.

In these two parts we see a Christ who is very zealous for us. He is zealous for our salvation, so much so that He weeps over those who reject Him and judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life. He is zealous for our repentance and faith in Him, the one mediator between God and man, that He clears out His Father’s house so that He might teach His gracious visitation and the things that make for peace with God. This shows us His zeal for the salvation of sinners even to this day. He still clears a place for His teaching and preaching of repentance and faith. He has graciously given us this house, consecrated to His name and His holy Word. This house has but one purpose: it is the place where His people gather to hear how God graciously visits them in His Word and Sacraments. Here He teaches us continually to repent of our sins lest they lead us into complacency and eventually unbelief. Here He absolves all of your sins so that they are removed from you as far as the east is from the west. Here He rebirths sinners through Holy Baptism and feeds us with His true body and blood, forgiving our sins and giving us a sign of His grace and favor.

We also see in the two parts of the gospel lesson the zeal which Christ enflames in His Christians. Like your Lord, you know people who do not recognize that today is the day of salvation. Many of us, if not all of us, have family who do not know the things that make for their peace with God but reject the promise of the Gospel. We weep for them because we know their end as long as they refuse to repent and trust the only mediator between God and man. We pray fervently for their conversation to faith, even with tears at times, and commend them to the Lord. But you are also to be zealous for the Lord’s house, this place, not so much for the building itself, for buildings come and go, but for what happens in this place, the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments. This is the house of prayer He has given us, where men come to hear the Gospel and believe so that they might be saved. May we, by God’s grace, weep for those who do not yet believe, even as we rejoice in the things that make for our peace with God given to us here. Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.