He Doesn't Weep for You

Tenth Sunday after Trinity

July 31, 2016

Luke 19:41-42

He Doesn't Weep for You

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Jesus wept. It is not surprising that He cried, for He is true man, but when He wept. Earlier He had wept as He approached the tomb of His friend Lazarus (John 11). We understand weeping on the death of a friend.

But today's weeping was in the middle of the Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem. He was on the donkey, people were shouting His praises, and the whole world was at His feet. Perhaps the Devil's offer to give Him control of great cities of the world returned to His mind, but He still refused. He still chose the suffering of the cross, instead of glory and painless pomp, because He agreed with His Father, “Thy will be done.”

So in the middle of this spectacle, He begin to sob. He has heard and seen the destruction of this great city before it happens. Indeed the pace of the terrible news today is quickening. Death and destruction are daily in the news. And when the news and the sounds and the images reach our eyes and ears, we are moved to sadness. We may even weep for strangers we do not know and for the places we've never been.

Jesus is both timeless God and a Man in time. He knows the news of Jerusalem's destruction before it happens. He knew that in forty years the Roman army would set up siege works and surround the city, in response to a war of independence started by the Jews.

Their war didn't go well. Their city was destroyed, the massive amounts of people were killed, women and children, too, and the Temple was demolished, save for the western wall. Imagine if the British had won and decided to show us who was in charge by burning Philadelphia and Boston and New York. We would weep.

Jesus wept for this city, that so often had rejected His preachers. In the past He had sent men like Jeremiah the prophet to warn them of the destruction that was coming, if they did not repent and return to His promises. He told Jeremiah:

⁴“Say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says: “‘When men fall down, do they not get up? When a man turns away, does he not return? ⁵Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return. ⁶I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. No one repents of his wickedness, saying, “What have I done?” Each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. ⁷Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:4-7)

And the majority of those who heard Jeremiah rejected his call to repent and trust in God's requirements. What are these requirements? Keeping the commandments and save yourself through following God's rules. No. Christ fulfilled the rules for you. He loves God with all His heart and soul and mind and He gives us this love to His own people.

We trust in our received righteousness that Jesus gives us, even though we are continually stubborn and hard-hearted. We are very much like the Jews of Jeremiah and Jesus' time. We go our own way like a charging war horse in battle. Instead of listening to the Master on our saddle, we go our own way. Do our minds wander at church? Do we feel that we are doing God a favor by even coming? Were you forced or bribed to come to church? Do I even bother to think about the sermon or prayers or the hymns I hear on Sunday morning? Do I find time to binge Netflix, but can't set aside five minutes for reading a few stories about Jesus' life?

So yes, we are more stupid than storks and other birds. Let us weep for ourselves; let us be ashamed of our sin.

But Jesus doesn't cry for you. He weeps not for you because you will never die. And if you die, for His sake you will live forever. He cries for the Jerusalems and the Bostons and the Rios and the Nices of this world, those living in all these cities who go their way and blind themselves to Jesus. So He weeps and so may we over these lost souls.

But rejoice! He doesn't cry for you!

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Alleluia! Amen!