A Resolution For 2025: More Weeping
One of the things I love most about our Lord Jesus is His practice of and teachings on being a peacemaker. The passage for this week’s sermon might not immediately strike you as being on that topic. But here. I’ll let you decide.
As he (Jesus) approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it 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. 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. 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.”When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, “’My house will be a house of prayer’, but you have made it a ‘den of robbers.’”Everyday 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. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. From Luke 19: 41-48
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)
Jesus is not angrily asking God to bring fiery justice down on Jerusalem; instead, He’s making one more warning-prophecy, still looking for someone to rescue. He knows that in 70 AD, 600,000 of His Jewish people will be killed during a Roman onslaught against Jerusalem, and the future makes Him weep. Faced with opposition, we humans can quickly begin calling down fire and brimstone, but our Savior wept over the pain that was to come to His actual enemies.
It makes me want to break out into a little doxology!
Later in the passage, when Jesus is more action-oriented and “cleansing the temple,” I still sense great restraint on His part. We must understand that the temple was not permanently cleared that day. It’s possible that the very next day, the merchants and money changers turned their tables right-side-up and got right back to work. Jesus was not vengefully, forcefully enacting a lasting change; His act was a short demonstration of His desire for the temple to be a place of worship and peace. He hurt no one; He caused no one harm. He was clearing Himself a stage so that for the rest of the week He could keep teaching, extending more invitations to those who rejected Him.
Also interesting to me, He did not invite His followers to join Him in clearing out the temple. There’s not even a record of them cheering Him on. Perhaps they already knew that only Jesus could do this shocking thing righteously. In any case, they don’t seem to be participating, by His design. Always, Jesus’s desire for His followers was that they should be peacemakers, too.
Compare Jesus to the leaders and teachers at the end of the passage. Faced with an “enemy” in Jesus, the Pharisees wanted nothing less than murder. They wanted to catch and punish. In their zeal for God’s kingdom and “justice,” hatred had taken over. They had no tears of love to weep.
How are we doing, Church, at being peacemakers like Jesus? In our attempts to change the world, do we speak truth humbly and cry for the lost? Can we resist the desire to bring Christ’s kingdom here through our own power and might, and instead, pray for the Spirit to bring revival? Can we refuse the way of the world, where victors delight in the trouble of their enemies?
More personally, what is my own default mode when facing a relational conflict? Anger or love? Do I pray for my enemy’s comeuppance or his salvation? Do I have a clear-eyed view of his imago dei and my own muddy motivations and morality?
Father, teach me to be humble and gentle in spirit. I want to weep more in 2025, not curse. Give me restraint and compassion when someone disagrees with me. You have not led me into battle but into love. May my life look more like yours every day. Amen.
