“THE TEARS OF GOD”
Saint Luke 19: 41-48
10th Sunday After Trinity: 31 July Anno Domini 2016
Father Jay Watson SSP
When’s the last time you cried? I don’t mean shedding a tear or two because your body hurts or feelings were hurt or even something else bad happened to you. When was the last time you wept copiously, salty tears streaming down your face because you felt the killing Law of God’s Commands? When was last time you cried because you just felt so horrible that you had hurt The Lord by your actions—your trespasses against His Divine and Perfect Law of Love?
If you only bawl when things go wrong in your life you’re no different from the pagan. The heathen lose loved ones and have heart attacks also. If you weep over another’s misfortune at least you’re showing human empathy and perhaps even enough solidarity with a victim to move you into actual Christian charity in deed and not only in emotion. But, when you smite your breast like King David when deep contrition has pierced your own soul and heart…God’s Word has worked its first and alien mission.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem. The Prince of Peace wept over the city of Salem/Shalom—Peace! He was not crying over the building, not even the Temple. Jesus was and is the New Temple in His very Flesh and Blood—His Body as both tabernacle of the fullness of The Trinity as well as the fulfillment of all the Hebrew prophecies. He is the Seed of Abraham by being the root of Jesse the 2nd Person of the Godhead—God of God, of the same substance as The Father.
All weeping from man comes from the fallen condition of man. You cry because you are a sinner. While crying can be almost therapeutic at times it doesn’t really make things better. Only Jesus makes things better.
Eve wept tears of pain in childbirth and then again when her dear Abel was murdered by her other son. The tears, and screams, of those not on the ark, mayhap haunted Noah for years. Scripture is filled with countless examples of the people of God crying for expected reasons—usually mourning the death of Saints: Sarah, Jacob, Miriam, Moses, and others. David wept at the death of Saul and his own newborn child that died, but nowhere is the tears of the sinner more poignant and touching than when David weeps over the death of his son, the usurper and Regicide villain, Absalom. Were we to be honest everyone in this room has wept this week past.
Can you weep though, over your sins; over your sinful “old Adam?” Repent.
“If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace.” While Christ first addressed His words to the nonbelievers in His city, for He knew that those who would die rejecting Him, who would be there when Rome destroyed the city and Temple, rejecting Him would be choosing Hell rather than Heaven; the heat of the eternal desert rather than the fruit of the eternal Eden.
Since none of you at this very moment is talking about yourself or looking at yourself in the mirror of self (or an actual mirror) that’s a good thing. Where are you on Sunday morning while most others are doing things away from the Nazarene. You are at the Tabernacle of The Trinity, brought by The Paraclete to participate in receiving Peace. While others are eating croissants and getting ready for the Royals game (or whatnot of the World and its mammon) you are being fed forgiveness and getting ready for the rehearsal meal of eternity’s consummation Wedding by eating and drinking God’s Body and Blood.
From the day you had Christ’s tears, water from His side, His mouth, His eyes, poured over you at the + Font you have “known” (believed and trusted) the things which belong unto thy peace. You this morning again are constrained by the Spirit to know the time of thy visitation. Jesus visits you here and now. Those not here are not in His presence. His Sacramental and actual presence in His Absolution and Supper brings His tears and His peace. Christ cried when His foreskin was cut off of Him at 8 days. He wept when sin claimed the life of His Guardian and step-father Joseph. He wept over the death of His friend Lazarus and shed tears many more times that Scripture does not record. But the tears He wept in Gethsemane and on The Tree of Calvary were not for Himself but for you. The tears of your Dad or Mom crying for you may have moved you at one time to change behavior, maybe even to be self-sacrificial and more loving, and more obedient. But the tears of Jesus, His crying for you is God’s very own will and heart moving and doing and suffering and dying for your eternal Peace. His tears are the tears of God of God and they give you all of Jesus even as His Body and Blood give you all of Jesus—of The God/Man. You are about to be Visited again by this salty and salvific salve of saving.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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