Tenth Sunday after Trinity - August 16, 2009

The Church Season of Trinity
The Tenth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (August 16, 2009)

“ON HIS WORDS”

Readings:
Psalm 92
Jeremiah 8:4-12
Romans 9:30 – 10:4
Luke 19:41-48

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father

and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen

The text for today is as recorded in the New Testament Lesson from 19th chapter of St. Luke, especially the following verse:

Luke 19:41-48 (NIV)

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” 45 Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” 47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Jesus came into Jerusalem, He “saw the city, He wept over it.”(v. 41) Then Jesus prophesied exactly how that city of Jerusalem would fall nearly 40 years later. It has been noted that it was the custom of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod for over 70 years, that on this very Sunday, the account of the fall of Jerusalem would be read in all its wicked and gruesome detail. In fact, the whole account of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem the destruction of the temple, and the murder of 900,000 Jews, was printed right out in the hymnal. Yet for us who sit here today we think to ourselves, “Well, I’ve never heard that story of how Jerusalem was conquered in my entire life and it’s certainly hasn’t been in any hymnal I’ve ever seen.” And if you’re thinking those thoughts, you would be right. For in fact this tradition was literally lost in the translation. When our Lutheran hymnals were translated from German into English the account no longer appeared. And the important thought here is not an appeal to tradition, but that we have lost an insight as to why Jesus went into the Jerusalem Temple and overturned the tables and drove out the sellers. The point is that some of the people heard Jesus words prophesying of their coming destruction and death, and others refused to listen to...

“HIS WORDS”

Today’s Scripture tells us that the people who “hung on His words”(v. 48) were the ones who would live, and the ones who did not listen were the ones who were to be hung by His words. There is an old proverb which says this, “You can not help the person who refused to accept advice.” If a person is wicked, and you say to him, “My dear friend, if you’ll just listen, all your sins will be forgiven,” but [if he is wicked] he not only refuses to listen, but blasphemes and knocks out the teeth of the one who is admonishing him to change his ways, what help is there for such a person?” And so it was for the two groups of people gathering around before Jesus in God’s Temple in Jerusalem. There the self proclaimed, “chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill Him.”(v. 47) At then there was also, all the other people who hung on Jesus’ words of salvation.

A few years later those leaders would be among those 900,000 people who were brutally murdered in Jerusalem. They were clinging to their old laws, they were clinging to their old tradition. They did not want to hear the words from this upstart of a man Jesus who was new in town. Quite frankly Jesus must have sounded very silly to them. Just think of it from the perspective of these people of stature, of long held office, who knew all the tradition in excrutiating detail. They thought they knew everything that there was to know. They were probably laughing in the backrooms of the Temple, throwing quips and barbs and asking who is this guy? He comes into Jerusalem and tries to change everything, when we like it just the way it is. And the irony is that they very well could have spoken the sum of their deisres in Latin words which we still understand to this very day, for what theses leaders wanted was the status quo. And what does status quo mean? Well a few years ago, someone said, "Status quo, you know, that is Latin for the mess we're in."(Ronald Reagan) The so called leader’s had not only failed, but they refused, to hear the Word of God in Jesus’ prophesy.

And so failing to hear God’s Word and going about with their old laws and traditions, Jerusalem did indeed fall, just as Jesus said it would. Jesus warned that Jerusalem would be, “hemmed in on every side.”(v. 43) About forty years later, Romans soldiers “hemmed in” the 1,000,000 people in Jerusalem and with great effort and at great expense the Romans conquered wall after wall. Then they went after the Temple and it was burned to the ground on August 10, 70 A.D. Thus the most beautiful city of the east was destroyed just as our Lord had repeatedly foretold it. He Himself wept over the city because of its unbelief and rejection of God, His Son, and the Covenant. Sin caused Christ to be “hidden from their eyes.”(v. 42) Sin causes Christ to be hidden from our own eyes.

Repent, for our sin is indeed the cause of any mess in which we find ourselves. We build walls around ourselves made with the bricks of status quo. We know more of our own laws and tradition than we know of God’s Word. We spend more time taking down our fellow man and talking up ourselves, than we do taking down our Bibles and talking up the Word of God. And as Jeremiah asked, “12 Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished, says the Lord.”(Jer. 8:12) Ultimately that is the fate that would awaits us for that kind of thinking. And the punishment is no less brutal than it was for those 900,000 who died in in the fall of Jerusalem. For St. Paul tells us we have, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”(Rom. 3:23) We have heard in the Psalms that, “10 The length of our days is seventy years— or eighty, if we have the strength; yet [our] span is but trouble and sorrow, for [we]quickly pass, and we fly away.”(Ps 90:10) One day, just like all those who fell in Jerusalem, we too will die.

But thanks be to God that we have a Savior who is Jesus Christ. Jesus is our Prophet, Priest and King, who came to destroy death and the status quo of the Law. In fact scripture reminds us that, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”(Rom. 10:4) and that, “the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.”(Gal 3:24) Prophesy tells us that Jesus Christ was given to us by God. In taking Himself down from heaven He came to speak to us the very Word of God. Into Jerusalem Jesus came and He wept for a people turned inward on themselves, and on their own rules, thoughts, and deeds. But Jesus came into to Jerusalem just the same, proclaiming salvation not by the action or opinions of men, but rather from the love of a most gracious God who sent Him here for us. Jesus was grieved for His people so much that He allowed Himself to be taken up a cross, to taken down into Hell, so that He would conquer death to rise again. And Jesus did all this so that in hearing of Him you may freely receive the grace which He won for you and that you and I may be taken up into heaven with Him. In Christ we are no longer hemmed in by the Law which reveals the mess of our own sin. In Christ, the status quo, has been conquered for all time. Rejoice for in your Baptism the victory over all that was, is now freely given to you. In Baptism, in the water combined with God’s Word, the sin of your old Adam has been put to death. Christ Himself has encircled you and given Himself to you from all sides. In Holy Communion you are given Christ’s true body and blood, and there you are given a foretaste of the heavenly Jerusalem.

In that heavenly Jerusalem there is no more weeping, for there, “He will wipe every tear from [your]eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”(Rev. 21:4) In Christ, the old order of the things, all the rules, and deeds of all sinful people in every generation will pass away. In the deeds of Christ and by hearing of His words, He gives us all the promise of the perfection of a heavenly Jerusalem. And so Jesus Christ proclaims the last word, and it is an eternal, Amen.

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