Luke 13:31-35
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ. Amen. Today, I am paging through this old hymnal. This is the you may some of you may recognize it if you were Lutherans from long ago. This is the 1942 hymnal from the synagogue conference called the Lutheran hymnal. And I'm doing it because one of the one of the hymns that I love for today didn't make it into our new hymnal. And it is number 419 it is the hymn called O’er Jerusalem, Thou Weepest. Now you know it's the 1942 hymnal because it uses the word o’er instead of over and thou weepest. Pretty great, right? I love this hymn because it was written by an American Lutheran named Anna Hoppe. She wrote a number of hymns in this hymnal. She was around 1919. She was born, and so she wrote a number of hymns specifically that would go into the Lutheran hymnal. And she wrote this to the tune of comfort, comfort ye my people. For those of you who don't know comfort, comfort ye my people, is comfort, comfort ye my people, Speak ye peace, Thus saith our God.
We've got a updated version in our new hymnal, but it quotes Isaiah, who is predicting that after the destruction of Jerusalem, God will bring comfort to the city by returning the people there from exile, and even better, that he will bring comfort to Jerusalem and all of Israel and all of God's people everywhere, through a Savior who would come after that exile. And Anna Hoppe wrote a companion, something that points to Our reading today, and it goes, or Jerusalem the weepest in compassion, dearest Lord, because the comfort was there looking out over the city of Jerusalem, the Messiah himself, Jesus the Christ, and he looks at a city that he had come to bring peace to he had come to bring salvation and love and eternal life, and they wanted to kill him. They rejected him. And so she writes this, this great hymn, using that tune to show exactly what happens when comfort comes to the city that God's peace was brought to them and they rejected it, which is perfect for the city of Jerusalem, because it It shows both what the city was supposed to mean and what it actually did.
The city of Jerusalem is the historic symbol and place for God and His people, and it became that because of King David, ever since David conquered the city of Jerusalem and made it his city, the tabernacle dwelled there, where the Ark of the Covenant was, and then David's son, Solomon, built a temple there, a permanent building for God's presence and The Ark of the Covenant, that was both the symbol and the dwelling of God in that place. It stayed there, and so Jerusalem was the symbol for Israel. The kings were there who were supposed to be the shepherd of God's people, the priests were there, who were the ones who would deliver the means of grace, the forgiveness and love of God to His people, who would offer the sacrifices and the worship of God towards him as well. The prophets would gather there who were supposed to proclaim the message of God to His people.
Jerusalem might as well have been the nation and very often, the prophets and the Bible speak of Jerusalem as if it's all of Israel. Just like the news might say Washington, when they mean America. God had chosen that place to be the place he would call home, where he would rule his nation through the kings and speak to all his people, and yet it became the place that symbolized rebellion and failure, because that's where it was, a place filled with false worship. If you read the story of Kings and Chronicles. It talks about what had happened with the temple when little Josiah became king. Josiah became King when he was eight years old, and when he heard the book of the law, he decided to have the temple renovated, and to do that. What did they do? They took out all of the false gods that were in the temple standing right before the God who said, You shall have no other gods before me.
The kings were the ones who did that. And instead of leading God's people in righteousness and peace and worship, they led them away from him. They led them into sacrificing to the false gods and the prophets. Well, you know what happens when a king has power? A whole bunch of people gather around him and tell him what he wants to hear. It's never changed. It's the same today, and those prophets did exactly that. Oh, King, you're so smart for worshiping all these false gods. Your kingdom is going to last forever, and that's exactly what happened when Jeremiah came to the temple in our Old Testament, reading and proclaimed the Word of God. They got really mad, the Kings, the priests and the prophets, they turned away.
In the beginning of Isaiah, Isaiah tells a song of a vineyard where God had come, and He planted a vineyard, and he fertilized it, and he protected it, and he planted the best vines, and he did everything that he could. He he tilled the soil, he made it just right, and he made it grow. And then he got there, and after years of work. He got there and he looked for grapes, and he found wild grapes, and so he destroyed his vineyard.
This is what Jesus sees when he looks out at Jerusalem, a city that kills the prophets, a city that destroys the worship of the true God, that rejects their savior, Jesus Christ, and he mourns, he says, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not behold your house is forsaken. Jesus mourns, he cries, he weeps.
It seems to me that Jesus loves the people who are lost. He looks out at Jerusalem, the people who would reject and kill him, and he says, I love you. To me, it looks like a parent who is struggling with a teenager in addiction, you do everything you can, you provide every support, every help. You do the rehab, you go to meetings, and they just can't seem to break out of it, and all they can do is cry.
Jesus loves the lost, even if they reject Him, even if they kill him. And he shows that love when he's nailed it to a tree and says, Father, forgive them. And they don't know what they're doing. He always wants people to come to Him no matter what, and that's why I read this passage with sadness in my voice instead of anger, because I think you could do that. Couldn't you? You could read, oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets. But I don't think Jesus was doing he wanted them to repent. And I think what's amazing and confusing about this is that when we look at Jesus and we think about his ministry, is that it was adorned with power everywhere, everywhere Jesus went, he went about curing people and doing amazing things, and that's what he's saying earlier. He says, I cast out demons and perform cures today, tomorrow and the third day I finish my course.
And yet, all this power, all of this might, couldn't sway the people of Jerusalem. I mean, Jesus could have done some other things, right? He could have been like Paul out on Damascus, like hovering over the city of Jerusalem and saying, Why are you rejecting me? But he didn't, and it's a great mystery why Jesus doesn't do that in the lives of people today, we don't understand exactly why he works the way he does. We don't understand why he didn't do something like that in Jerusalem as well, but we know that's not what he does, that even Jesus, Christ Himself, looked at a people he wanted to save, and they rejected him. And I think Jesus's mourning is a lot, a lot like the mourning that many of us do when we look at our family or our friends who've turned away from the Christian faith, especially you parents who raised your children in the church, who guided them, who did everything you could, who brought them to Sunday school, who brought them through confirmation, members of the Church did everything you absolutely Could, and then they just decided it wasn't for them.
And I bet it breaks your heart, just like it broke Jesus's heart when he looked out over Jerusalem. And it's important to know that Jesus is there with you in that too. He looked at a city that he loved and wept. Wept because all his best efforts, all his power, all his might, and they still rejected him. He wanted them to be saved. He wanted them to receive His love, and yet they would not. And Jesus was there with you in the full experience of your morning, just as he felt our sicknesses and our diseases, just as he experienced death with us on the cross so that he would rise to give us life. You are not alone in your morning. Jesus is with you. Jesus, He loves the lost, and I think that should teach us not to feel guilty in these circumstances, because every parent looks on that and wonders, what could I have done? Could I have done something different? Could I have maybe done this day? Maybe that was it. Maybe, maybe I was cranky before church, and that did it, or I complained at the wrong time.
Or, you know, you could think all like that, but you can't even be Jesus, can you? And even Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, What are you doing? Why are you rejecting me, the man who cast out demons and performed cures and did signs and wonders and rose from the dead and still they rejected him. And that's just how the Christian. In faith. First, the power of God is there for everyone who wants it. When the word goes out and the Holy Spirit is there to claim them, to say, receive my love, receive my healing and my forgiveness, sometimes people just say, No, we don't know why. Even Jesus, the same thing happened for all of the prophets. Do you think we're better than Isaiah, who saw the Lord in the temple with the seraphim above him, or Ezekiel or Elijah or Samuel, or all the guys in the Old Testament, the entire history of Israel, was rejection of the message.
It's just what happens you I also want to leave you with some hope, because Jesus looked out at Jerusalem before his death and resurrection, He cried over the people who would shout, Crucify Him, crucify Him and deliver him up to Pontius Pilate, but only a few days after that, on the day of Pentecost, Peter would stand up and say to the crowd that shouted, Crucify Him. This Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made Lord and Christ. And they cried out, what shall we do? And the people who shouted crucified Him, called him Lord, and were baptized that day, 5000 because there is always hope. The Gospel is always open. The invitation is always there. The message of the Word of God can always change a heart. The work that you did as parents was not futile.
The seeds that you planted and watered and sowed are still there, the Holy Spirit can still do his work. Don't give up. Don't count it as lost. Continue in your prayers, because we have a Savior who is gracious and merciful and calls all people to be saved, who wants nothing more to give them than to give them his love and mercy and peace so that we can be raised from the dead on the last day with them. We can offer that love. We can look out with hope even as we mourn the current situation, because the invitation is always open, God's mercy is always available in Jesus name amen.
Find us on Youtube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.