12 August 2012 at Salem Lutheran Church, Gretna, LA
Text: Luke 19:41-48 (Jer 8:4-12, Rom 9:30-10:4)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Our Lord Jesus weeps over
Jerusalem as He draws near. He knows
that He will enter the Holy City welcomed as a King, and He will be driven out
of Jerusalem reviled as a criminal. And
yet His tears are not for Himself, but for Jerusalem. As in the case of Lazarus in the tomb – which
also brought the Lord to tears – Jesus laments the results of sin. “For the wages of sin is death.”
Jerusalem was dying. The city whose name literally means City of
Peace was going to be destroyed in an act of war by the Romans exactly 40 years
after the Lord moistened the ground with His tears and with His blood on a Roman
cross. The temple – where God Himself
would make peace with man through priestly sacrifices – was also to be leveled in
the process. But unlike the temple of
the Lord’s body that was to rise on the third day, the Jerusalem temple was
never to rise again.
The Lord weeps because
Jerusalem was so corrupted by sin that she refused even to receive the gift of
peace from the Prince of Peace Himself in the priestly sacrifice of His own
body and blood at the cross. She refused
the gift of forgiveness that makes peace between God and man won for man by the
Man who is also God.
“Would that you, even you,
had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes…. And they will not leave one stone upon
another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
Their lives were occupied by
other things. Their minds were filled
with other priorities. Their worship was
reserved to other gods. Their attention
was drawn to other words. And when the
Word Made Flesh came and dwelt among them, when the Prince of Peace came into
the City of Peace to make peace, when God Himself consented to be both Priest
and Sacrifice – in order to make for a final and lasting peace, an end to sin,
and the death of death itself – Jerusalem didn’t care.
Her spiritual life was more
concerned with buying and selling in the temple than worshiping God, than
having their sins atoned for and forgiven by the sacrifice of the Lamb, than by
seeking peace with the God who made them, loved them, brooded over them,
suffered for them, and brought them the “peace of God that passes all
understanding.”
Instead, they used the temple
as a business opportunity. Instead they
allowed themselves to be manipulated by their leaders. Instead, they wanted to free a
terrorist. Instead, they wanted His
blood on them and on their descendants.
“And He entered the temple
and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, ‘It is written, “My
house shall be a house of prayer,” but you have made it a den of robbers.’”
The Lord cleansed the temple. The Lord cleansed Jerusalem. The Lord cleansed the world.
In the terror of the cross
and in the pain of the passion, in the loneliness of rejection, and in the
agony of betrayal and denial – our Lord carries out His mission of love, of
mercy, of atonement, of peace.
For just outside the walls of
the City of Peace, the Prince of Peace made peace: true peace, eternal peace,
the peace that passes all understanding.
This was all part of our
Lord’s plan to save us, dear brothers and sisters. For was “laying in Zion a stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in Him will not be put to
shame.”
“Whoever believes in Him…”
The Lord weeps over
Jerusalem, they who “have healed the wound of My people lightly, saying ‘peace,
peace,’ when there is no peace.” The
Lord weeps for all who refuse to receive the free gift, the most precious gift
in the universe, the most costly gift in the cosmos – yet a free gift nonetheless
–a peace offering from the God against whom we poor, miserable sinners have
declared war. But more importantly, the
Lord dies “for the sins of the world, paying the price for all of the sins of
the cosmos, and then extending this “peace that passes all understanding” to
everyone, offered with His own blood-drenched hands, sealed by the blood and
water that flowed from His side, poured out upon us in Holy Baptism and dispensed
to us in Holy Communion.
Dear friends, our Lord offers
us peace, true peace, eternal peace, cosmic peace – the kind of peace that
overcomes sin, conquers death, and restores “everyone who believes” to a state
of perfect innocence, forgiveness, health, and salvation. It is fitting that this congregation is
called “Salem,” peace, the second half of the word “Jerusalem” – a congregation
of the people of God who have been baptized, forgiven, and united with Jesus in
His body and blood. We have come here to
partake of the Lord’s cross and to receive the Lord’s gift. We have come here to affirm the Word of life
presented to us at baptism and to claim the peace the Lord offers us in the
foretaste of the eternal banquet at the Eucharistic feast.
Let us wage peace, dear
friends! Let us be instruments of the
Lord’s peace to our friends and neighbors who know nothing but trouble and
strife. Let us live in the joy of the
Lord’s peace in what we say and do, in how we worship and work, in our conduct
of life among our friends and our foes.
Let us not be like the
sellers in the temple, ever distracted by the world’s obsession with money and
trinkets, with things that ultimately don’t matter. Let us rejoice that the Lord cleansed the
temple and that He has come to chase away the sin in our own lives, cleansing
us with baptismal water, and making war on the evil one in order to win the
peace for us sinners.
Let us come to this temple of
peace to receive the Lord’s peace as He draws near to us anew, to renew our
lives of peace, to receive the gift of peace.
For our King is also the Prince of Peace. The one who weeps for Lazarus raises Lazarus
from the dead. The one who weeps for
Jerusalem dies and rises again, redeeming the world and rolling back the curse
of the wages of sin. For “the free gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The peace of God which passes
all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Amen.
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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