The Tenth Sunday after Trinity

The Tenth Sunday after Trinity – August 21, 2022

Psalm 55; Jeremiah 7:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

St. Luke 19:41-48

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to understand the seeming contradiction between God’s wrath and His mercy. God’s wrath is the enactment of His rightful justice against evil. God’s mercy is the withholding of His punishment against the same. It is true that the destruction of evil brings glory to God. It is also true that God desires all men to be saved. It is true that Christ died for the sins of every man ever born and that same Christ sentences the unrighteous to eternal torment in hell. God is Love and God is Just.

Thanks be to God that we do not have to reconcile these difficult attributes of God. We must, however, pay attention to them. We must realize the true meaning of God’s wrath so that we might understand the severity of our sins. Knowing the depth of our condition and the totality of God’s wrath against sin, we must cry out for help. We must plead that God would sustain us in the faith so that we would be counted among those who receive His mercy.

On Palm Sunday, as our Lord approaches Jerusalem, he weeps over the city. He weeps over Jerusalem because he loves her. He loves the people of Jerusalem, the people given to dwell with the Lord at his Temple, and yet they have rejected him. They have rejected Christ and perverted his Word. In so doing, they have invoked the wrath of God. As a parent weeps over the rebellious child who has disowned the family, Jesus weeps for Jerusalem.

These tears of our Lord signify four things.[1] First, they bring comfort by proving Christ to be True Man. He shares in the lament and pain that only man can know. Great sadness and frustration wells up within him. “The shedding of tears is a very human trait.”[2] There is no pain known to mankind that our Lord did not take upon himself. Even today, risen in glory, our Lord retains his complete humanity, exalted on high, such that we would know our unity with him.

Secondly, the tears offer satisfaction. They are obviously not the atoning sacrifice of the Cross, but Christ became poor that we would become rich, and he wept that we would have eternal joy. “Christ’s tears have paid [for all Christians] so that God can later wipe away all tears from [your] eyes.”[3]

Thirdly, they are tears of consolation. God desires not the death of the sinner and mourns the sins of man. God’s justice requires punishment for sin and it deeply grieves God to mete out such punishment and yet it is the hardness of man’s heart that rejects the love and mercy of God. Sinful man has chosen his own punishment and in God’s perfect justice, the unrepentant sinner is turned over to the lusts of his own heart. These tears flow from the deep well of Christ’s heart. “When one’s heart is wounded by sorrow, tears flow from one’s eyes just like blood flows from a bodily wound.”[4]

This is also why it is a dangerous error to believe that God has chosen some for condemnation. If God had made an eternal decree that certain individuals would go to hell, why should Christ mourn? Why mourn over that which God himself caused? No. God desires the salvation of all and mourns the loss of even one who would reject this salvation.

Finally, these are tears of exhortation. Christ weeps over sin to call us to repentance. If we have put on Christ in our Baptisms, should not we also weep over our sin? The life of the Christian is a daily battle against the world, the devil, and our own flesh. Daily we must return to the waters of our Holy Baptism, that we would mourn over our sins, and cling ever more tightly to Christ.

With the tears of Christ comes a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. The walls, the Temple, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem were brutally slaughtered by the Romans in 70 AD. This was the first fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy, and yet it was not the Romans alone who enacted judgment against Jerusalem. The Lord delivered a prophecy to Isaiah saying, “I will encamp against you all around, I will lay siege against you with a mound, and I will raise siegeworks against you.”[5] God Himself was judging Jerusalem for her lack of faith; for turning to worship false gods; for crucifying Christ.

The earthly Jerusalem was to be the shining city on the hill; that place where God came to dwell with His people: first in the Temple and then enwrapped in the flesh of the Incarnation. The Jews who dwelt at Jerusalem were given the Word of God to be a light to all nations, being a blessing to all who blessed them.

But this was not the case. Already in the time of Jeremiah, the Jews were worshipping Baal in the morning and Yahweh in the evening. They offered their children on altars fire then sacrificed a bull to Yahweh without seeing the contradiction. By the time of our Lord’s Incarnation, the temples of Baal were gone but they had been replaced by banking and commerce in the Temple. Even worse, those most prepared to receive the Savior rejected Him as dangerous to their way of living.

You, dear Christians, are the most prepared to receive the Savior. You have the Word of God delivered to you in easily available bibles and preached from this pulpit. But much like the Pharisees, such familiarity easily breeds contempt. You confess that the Small Catechism is the right teaching of the Word of God but when was the last time you opened your copy? Or said the Ten Commandments, Apostles’ Creed, and Lord’s Prayer more than once a week? Is reading the bible in the morning and evening a danger to your way of life? We are far more like the Pharisees than any of us wants to admit.

Thanks be to God we have their example. We have the example of those who reject the Savior, seeking to destroy Him with hellfire. We have the example of these wicked men, whose actions foreshadow our own, being slaughtered by the Romans; being judged by God for their lack of faith and infidelity with the gods of their own pleasures.

The example of the Pharisees and the prophecy of destruction are a warning to you. See it for what it is. Prepare yourself for the end of days, when the heavens and the earth with pass away. In that day, will you know the time of your visitation? Will you know that Christ comes not to destroy you but to bring you to Himself? Or will you hide from the Lord?

Do your actions today and every day speak of a preparation for the coming of the Lord in power and might? Do you cry out to God, “King of majesty tremendous, who dost free salvation send us, fount of pity, then befriend us! Think, good Jesus, my salvation caused Thy wondrous incarnation; leave me not to reprobation! Guilty, now I pour my moaning, all my shame with anguish owning: spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning! Worthless are my prayers and sighing; yet, good Lord, in grace complying, rescue me from fires undying. With Thy favored sheep, oh, place me! Nor among the goats abase me, but to Thy right hand upraise me.”[6]

You can be confident in your salvation because Jesus has died for you. You can be confident in your salvation because Jesus has washed you in His blood when you were baptized. You can be confident in your salvation because Jesus Holy Body and Precious Blood are here to strengthen and preserve your body and soul unto life everlasting.

Yet the sin which clings to your flesh can take such confidence and turn it to pride. This is the folly of the Pharisees. They were confident in their salvation because they had kept God’s Law, or as much of it as they thought necessary. They had no need for the teachings of Jesus, nor His forgiveness. Lest you, too, fall into this trap of pride, humble yourself before God and remember always to pray that He would have mercy on you.

In + Jesus’ name. Amen.

_____________________________

[1] This enumeration comes from Johann Gerhard, Postilla: An Explanation of the Sunday and Most Important Festival Gospels of the Whole Year, Volume 2, translated by O Marc Tangner (Malone, TX: Repristination Press, 2007), 109-119.

[2] Gerhard, Postilla, 111.

[3] Gerhard, Postilla, 112.

[4] Gerhard, Postilla, 113.

[5] Isaiah 29:3.

[6] Day of Wrath, O Day of Mourning, stanzas 8-9, 12, 14-15.