“DRINK DEEP THE TEARS OF THE PRINCE OF PEACE”
Saint Luke 19: 41-48
10th Sunday after Trinity: 25 August Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
“Give ear to (our) prayer, O God; and hide not Thyself from (our) supplication.”
Today’s Introit is also your own daily groan of need for Christ’s presence. But what kind of presence? Do you desire to receive He Who “(came) near…beheld the city, and wept over it” or do you demand He who “went into the temple…to cast out them…?” To be sure, absolutely sure, BOTH are needed and given by God—Law and Gospel.
But far too often, daily, you crave pay-back and comeuppance upon your enemies, adversaries, and troublers. But Christ shows that those in that category are in fact, all men, they are you. He weeps over you because you are the ones “selling” in the temple; you are the ones making His house of prayer a den of thieves.
We, all of us, deserve nothing. We are unprofitable servants, defective things, and have earned nothing. We don’t deserve health, much less, good health. We don’t deserve the green pastures of His Church—we don’t deserve Augsburg. We don’t deserve our families, friends and jobs. We don’t deserve second chances, much less third chances and fourth…and seven times seventy. We don’t deserve forgiveness.
We should get what we’ve got coming: still-births, diseases, deadly accidents, firings, failures, shames, embarrassments, chronic pains, death…and final death. While it’s true that Christians do in fact experience all of these results of the fall, just like everyone else, there is an eternal difference. Our suffering is but brief and temporary. Our crosses in fact unite us to The Christ of The Cross.
But we don’t like that. Our “old Adams and old Eve’s” don’t want to suffer and endure. We don’t want to fast and discipline ourselves, and forgive. We seek far too often to be busy, bustling, controlling, and grasping temple merchants rather than listening disciples, guardians and martyrs of The Word, and servants of our neighbor.
Rather than turning us over to our own fallen natures; rather than letting Satan take us to his infernal temple of hell to be scourged with brimstone cords and whips, Jesus “come(s) near…” all the way into our hearts. He marches in by The Holy Ghost, The Lord and Giver of Life (Jesus), and overturns the foul sin of our merchant/mammon tables of theft and deceit. He whips down and beats down the old evil foe—the “old Adam” too. What Christ did in the temple, foreshadowed what He would do at Calvary. There, the Law came to fruition when He Himself was crucified not on wooden tables but on a wooden tree. He became your sin when He was scourged and beaten bloody with whips by sinners such as us.
The Law does overturn us and smashes us down into the dust. The Law makes our stone-cold hard rock-like hearts available to Him.
Not The God of Sinai now, but the God who comes near His City, His People, His Jerusalem, His Saints of Church & Parish…with tears. “O God, Who declarest Thine almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity.”
Not fire and brimstone but wet and salty tears. Not miracles and healings, but with the moisture of mercy flowing from His eyes down His cheeks into His beard. This baptizing Water and The Word is your deliverance. “As for me, I will call upon God, and He shall hear my voice; He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me.”
Earthly rocks are hard. But steady rain erodes even mountains. Physical boulders are mighty. But ever-flowing river currents smooth down and shape the largest of them. Grace trumps granite. Your hard flint-stone hearts are melted by the tears of Jesus. He weeps for you as He once wept for His Zion. He cries for you as He once did for His friends, dead Lazarus and his sisters. He weeps for you this morning…for all your pains…for all your sadnesses, and for all your stubborn resistances of being what and who He has made you. He weeps from The Cross, and bleeds blood and water from His pierced heart into this font, this pulpit, and this Holy Communion.
Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee. Jesus the Rock of Ages, before all ages, is the rock that produced living water for the Hebrews in the desert by Moses’ rod. The deluge of water from Christ’s Godly eyes, “eyes” that have seen you and known you by name from before the world began, dissolves your fallen nature and re-births you with a new nature…a nature where you are placed into Him, into The Rock of Righteousness, by The Water of Life. The cleft of the rock is the interior of His heart. “And in Its narrow chamber keep, my body safe in peaceful sleep…” But a peace now that passes understanding even before earthly death!
Be in His cave which is in fact a heavenly ante-chamber. Even as the mighty waterfall carves out a redoubt, a secure cave at its base, recessed into a safe haven. You too have been led through the noisy, frightening, pounding water, into the cooling and refreshing tears from God’s eyes; into that security of the carved-out life and heart of Jesus.
Look at your neighbor now, your enemy, your “thorn,” through that cascading and liberating + water. Jesus weeps for you, then, now, and always.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194