The Things That Make For Peace

Luke 19:41-48

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

            Luke 19:41-42 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.

            Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  Our Gospel reading this morning takes us to the days just prior to Christ’s Passion, the time just before His final entrance into Jerusalem where He would suffer, die, and pay for the sins of the world.  The atmosphere in the reading was tense with excitement.  Jesus and His disciples had journeyed steadily to Jerusalem, the holy city, the place of the temple and its sacrifices.  And as He made His way to Jerusalem, Jesus predicted His coming Passion – His impending suffering and death. 

Just a few days earlier, He had said to His disciples: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written of the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourge him and kill him and on the third day he will rise.” Then Luke adds that the disciples “understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said” (Lk 18:31-33).

As they were approaching Jerusalem, Jesus sent His disciples into a nearby village to bring Him a donkey.  And so it was that Israel’s King would come into His royal city, “righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey,” in fulfillment of Zechariah’s ancient prophecy (Zech 9:9).  You remember how the crowds welcomed Him, chanting those now infamous words: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Lk 19:38)

But note the dramatic turn in the opening verse of today’s Holy Gospel: “Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it.”  Jesus did not weep for Himself, although who would have blamed Him for doing so as He anticipated the torment He was about to face.  But no, Jesus wept for the city, He wept for Jerusalem.  He wept for the holy city, the apple of God’s eye, the dwelling place of God’s glory, the location of His presence; He wept for His own people.  In the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, we are told that the Son of God “came to His own people and His own received Him not” (Jn 1:11).  In their rejection of Jesus the people rejected the Seed of the woman who came to crush Satan’s head (Gen 3:15).  They rejected the One who is the “I AM” who was “before Abraham” (Jn 8:58).  They rejected their own Savior.

And that is why Jesus wept for His own people.  They had, as Paul recounts in Romans 9, received the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises.  They had the patriarchs; they had the prophets.  From their own flesh and blood came the Christ.  But they refused to hear Him.  In stubborn unbelief they chose to close their ears to His words of repentance and salvation.  And in doing so they blasphemed the very same God whose name they claimed to bless.  In their rejection of the One who came as the Lamb of sacrifice, they were left only with their sin and God’s wrath against their sin.

So it is for them that our Savior wept, and said, “If you had only known, even you, the things that make for your peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

One of the most fascinating truths about God is that He chooses to hide Himself in order to reveal Himself; He hides Himself in order to reveal His mercy and love.  He covers Himself in the lowliness of the baby of Bethlehem and the suffering Man of Calvary.  Wrapped in our flesh and blood, He comes in the likeness of sinful man to redeem the world.  He exchanges the throne of His heavenly glory for the ignominy and horrors and agony of the cross.  He wears no other crown than the crown of thorns set upon His brow in ridicule and scorn.  To her shame Jerusalem cannot see in this Man the things that make for peace.  Ironically the blind beggars knew who Jesus was and called out to Him saying, “Son of David, have mercy on me” (Mt 9:27), but Jerusalem, with eyes wide open, was blinded to this truth; she remained in the darkness of unbelief.

Jerusalem had a long history of rejecting God’s call to repentance and faith.  She had a reputation for slaughtering the prophets God sent to her, as Jesus lamented in Mt 23:37, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!”  And now, being quite consistent, she would do the same with her Messiah.  Without Him, Jerusalem would have no peace with God; rather, she would become the object of His wrath.  Our Lord’s lament over Jerusalem would find its fulfillment in the devastation that would come in 70 AD.  The destruction of Jerusalem still stands today as a gruesome reminder and a sign for the fate of all who reject Christ.

Jesus said that this fate came upon Jerusalem because she did not know the time of her visitation.  Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, sang in his Benedictus, that “the Dayspring from on high has visited us” (Lk 1:78). When God visits His people He comes with the purpose of bringing them salvation.  When God visits His people He comes with the purpose of rescuing them from sin, death, and hell.  The intended purpose of this divine visitation is first and foremost blessing and not condemnation.  Sadly, though, Israel did not know the time of God’s visitation.  She did not know the day of salvation; therefore she rejected the Son who came to be her Savior.

The words of today’s Holy Gospel are not only descriptive of what happened to Jerusalem long ago.  The Holy Spirit inspired the evangelist to record these happenings for our instruction as well, and for our repentance and faith.  In I Corinthians 10:11, after the Apostle Paul described how the Israelites had been baptized into Moses in the Red Sea and partook of spiritual food and drink only to come under God’s judgment on account of their idolatry and immorality, he went on to write, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition on whom the end of the ages have come.”  In other words, God is calling you to repentance; He is calling you to faith in the same Christ who came to Jerusalem long ago.

Now is the time of your visitation; God comes to you now, in your day and time.  The Gospel which Israel rejected is now being proclaimed to you.  God has preserved unto you His saving Word and His holy sacraments.  God was in Christ making peace through the blood of the cross.  The only peace worth anything is the forgiveness of sins.  Peace with God means that God does not hold our sins against us, but instead He has laid those sins on His Son who has atoned for them all with His own blood.  To have the Son is to have peace with God.  To have the Son is to be reconciled with God.  To have the Son is to have life in that heavenly Jerusalem that will never be destroyed and never pass away. 

To have the Son of God is to have peace with God.  To be without the Son is always to be at war with God.  And that war is a battle that none of you can win; because if you fight God, you always lose.

But God has brought that warfare to an end in His Son.  In His body Christ carried the punishment of all our sins, and His blood blotted out all of our guilt.  And ever since that time, Christ delivers to you the benefits of His death by means of the Gospel and the Sacraments, specifically, the preached Gospel, Holy Baptism, Holy Supper, and Holy Absolution.

These are the means by which He visits you today; these are the means by which He delivers to you the very same salvation that He won for you on the cross.  These are the means – the concrete delivery systems – that God uses today in His Church to deliver His forgiveness, life, and salvation.  His Word and His Sacraments are the ONLY means by which this is done.  We are not to look deep into ourselves for peace; we are not to look to each other for peace, for there we will only find turmoil and death.  No, dear friends, Christ invites you to look by faith to Him and to Him alone as He reveals Himself in His gifts of Word and Sacrament.

Yes, dear fellow redeemed in Christ, the body and blood of Jesus Christ are the things that make for peace.  That is what God gives you from His altar today and every Lord’s Day.  As surely as Jesus came to Jerusalem to suffer and to die, so surely He comes here today to give you the fruits of His redeeming sacrifice. 

He has already come to you this day through the Absolution spoken by His pastor, the word of forgiveness which is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.  He has come to you in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, as through water and the Word of God you been given forgiveness of sins, been rescued from death and the devil, and given eternal salvation. 

Christ has already come to you today through the three readings, the very Word of God.  He has already come to you today in the Divine Liturgy, which is simply the Scriptures set to a certain order.  He has already come to you today in the preached Gospel of His suffering, death, and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins. 

And He comes to you today here at this altar with His holy and precious and very real body and blood which He places into your mouth and by which He delivers to you His forgiveness, strength, and peace.

God grant you faith to receive Him as He comes in His body and blood and so to live in the peace that only He can give, the only peace that ever matters.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.