Trinity 10 The Sunday of Jesus Weeping and Cleansing the Temple August 5, 2018
Trinity 10 The Sunday of Jesus Weeping & Cleansing the Temple
Luke 19:41-48
August 5, 2018
“House of Prayer”
(Some thoughts of this sermon are taken from various sermons by Rev. David Petersen for Trinity 10.)
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As Jesus angrily drove out people and animals from the Temple with a whip He had hastily fastened together, He said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
Two hundred years from now, the home you currently live in, along with the town you live in, the church you worship in, and the country that you hold citizenship in, may all very well be gone. Or, at any rate, may be only a shadow of what they are today. Despite our current President’s bid to make America great again, no nation in the history of the world has ever been great for that long. We shouldn’t delude ourselves. Nothing is guaranteed in this world. America is never guaranteed to be great. And the map is never guaranteed to stay as it is. In fact, the map is more guaranteed to change than anything else.
And every change in the world is always a call that we should repent and examine our own lives. Are we putting all our hopes and dreams in this world? This world is not our home. The home you live in is not your true home. The nation you reside in is not your true country. The pleasures of this world are not our true pleasures. And if we think we will somehow save this world or this life or this home—then we will lose the true world and life to come. Jesus says, “Whoever would save His life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”
Seventeen years ago I was a junior in college and five hours from home. Word came to me that my father was ready to sell the entire farm, all the home and land where I had grown up, and a buyer was lined up. I went into a professor’s office that night and wept my heart out. By God’s grace, the deal fell through and times got better. But it was a great warning to me. And a call to repent. No place in this world is our true home—even a farm that has been in the family for generations.
In the Gospel reading it was Jesus weeping His heart out. Weeping for the beloved city of God, the city of peace, Jerusalem. For even she would not stand. No one would make Jerusalem great again. They had forsaken their God and the things that truly make for peace. So they would be destroyed.
Jesus looked over the beautiful and beloved city, where Abraham had once brought his son Isaac to sacrifice him in faith to God and God had spared his son. The beloved city where David had once ruled as King, where David had sung his hosannas, where he had confessed his iniquities and received the Lord’s forgiveness, where he had made God’s people great in the land. Jesus looked over the beloved city where Solomon had built a glorious Temple for the Lord and where the Lord had filled it with His glorious presence. He looked over the beloved city that had been ravaged by the Babylonians and then lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt by the exiles that returned home some seventy years later. Even this great city of Jerusalem would not be made great again. Even the great city of Jerusalem was not guaranteed to stand. Because even the great city of Jerusalem is not our true home. At least not the Jerusalem of this earth. But the Jerusalem that is above. Our heavenly Jerusalem.
So forty years after Jesus stood in that place and wept, the Romans with their leader Titus came in and did exactly as Jesus had foreseen. Jesus wept bitterly as He looked ahead and saw them barricading in the city, surrounding them and hemming them in on every side, tearing down every stone of the city and Temple. The great city had forsaken God and refused to believe in His Son Jesus Christ.
And that is a warning to you and me and a call for us to repent. We cannot hide out in this world and pretend that everything will always get better. The world isn’t getting better. That view of history is completely wrong. We’re not progressing to some perfect utopian world. The world has certainly progressed technologically and medically. But life is much more than technology and medicine. The world is just as full of sin now as it was then and is now even more bent on its own destruction.
If you, then, can’t count on anything guaranteed in this world, if you can’t save even your own home or country or city or church or anything else of this world, if even God’s great city of Jerusalem cannot stand, then what will we find that will stand? What will we find that cannot be destroyed? What will we find that we can place all our hopes and dreams and faith in for eternity?
The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. Of all the places in the world that should have been a lasting refuge for God’s people, it should have been the Temple in Jerusalem. Even if all else was destroyed, that should have stood firm. The Temple was the very place where God dwelt with His people. Where He heard their prayers. Where He received their sacrifices. Where He gave them His blessing, His forgiveness, and His peace.
The Temple should have been their place of refuge. Their Rock of Ages. Yet when Jesus is done weeping over the city and descends upon the Temple, He doesn’t find a place of refuge and peace. He finds a den of iniquity. He finds a place where robbers are hiding out between their pillaging and thieving. He finds a place where sinners are coming not to confess their sins but to hide them behind a cloak of hypocrisy. He violently drives them out in anger and says, “You have made this temple a den of robbers.”
In John’s Gospel, the authorities get angry with Him and come to ask Him by what authority He does these things. And Jesus answers, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And His disciples later understood He was talking about His body.
Temples and cities may fall, nations and church steeples may crumble, homes and lands may be destroyed, but He, Jesus Christ the Living One, will never be destroyed. Our sin destroyed His body on the cross, and in three days He rose indestructible.
He is our Rock of Refuge. Not this building. Jesus Christ the Living. He is our house of prayer. Nations may rise and kingdoms may fall, but our God stands forever. Two hundred years from now, He will remain. No matter what else on the map changes, the Church’s one foundation will still stand. He will continue to stand as our house of prayer.
His Word and Sacrament will remain unto the end of the ages. And even as He weeps for the beloved city and Temple of God that would not stand, and even as He weeps for those who don’t know His true peace, He still offers Himself for all who will take refuge in Him. He gives His own self to destruction on the cross that He might rise indestructible, our eternal house of prayer. In the name of Jesus. Amen.