+ Lent 2 – March 16th, 2025 +
Series C: Jeremiah 26:8-15; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The ancient city, Jerusalem is as rich in history as its name is in irony. Jerusalem means city of peace, or the Lord will provide peace. And yet throughout history, it’s hard to find peace in the city of peace.
Jerusalem of the Scriptures is a city that faces hardships, bloodshed, idolatry, destruction, and ruin. Jerusalem of the Scriptures is a city steeped in innocent blood.
It began with the innocent blood of the sacrifices in the temple built by Solomon under God’s instructions for his people. Innocent blood shed to atone for their sins and share God’s holiness with his people.
It wasn’t long before the sacrifices of the temple were swapped for idols of foreign gods. Israel was no longer content for the peace YHWH provided and looked to other gods.
So, the Lord sent his prophets to warn the people: flee from sin, return to the Lord. Jerusalem quickly earned a reputation when it came to prophets. Just ask Jeremiah how Jerusalem treats the prophets. He was arrested, thrown in to a pit, his books burned. According to tradition, the prophet Isaiah was sawn in two in a hollow log in Jerusalem. The NT doesn’t fare any better. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death in Jerusalem. James, the brother of John the fisherman, was killed by Herod in Jerusalem.
Jeremiah knew all this but didn’t seem to care. “Do whatever you want with me, but rest assured, that if you put me to death, you will bring the guilt of innocent blood on yourselves and on this city and on those who live in it.”
Jerusalem was steeped in “innocent blood.” In Jerusalem that Pilate washed his hands of Jesus’ blood and declared, “I am innocent of this man’s blood” and where the people cried out, “Let His blood be on us and our children.” In the temple in Jerusalem, Judas tried to give back the money paid to betray Jesus because he had betrayed “innocent blood.” And the priests refused to take it back because it was “blood money” so they bought a “Field of Blood” with it.
Jerusalem had a bloody history from its mysterious origins: the blood of sacrifices and Passover lambs and prophets and martyrs leading down to Jesus, God’s Lamb, the final and ultimate innocent Blood, the One who atones for the sin of the world.
As makes Jesus way to Jerusalem in Luke 13, he knows all of this. Those were his prophets he sent to his people. And now many of those same people are rejecting him and plotting to kill him. Neither Herod, the two-bit king, nor the scheming Pharisees, will stop Jesus from going to Jerusalem. Jesus employs a bit of sacred sarcasm….Tell Herod, that fox, I’ve a job to do. I must finish my course. I must go to Jerusalem. 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.
As Jesus laments over Jerusalem and his people, for he knows that Jerusalem is a city that is soon to be steeped in innocent blood once again.
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! You would not.
Every time Jerusalem killed a prophet, every time Jerusalem shut her ears to the Word, it was Christ they rejected. “How often I have longed to gather you.” The old mother hen has been clucking away for centuries through priest and prophet, through Torah and scribe, calling to her children, but they would not. They would not trust. They would not believe. They would not abandon their idolatries and adulteries. They would not live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
It breaks Jesus’ own heart. This is His city, His temple, His throne. Yet He is unrecognized, unwanted, hated. “He came to His own, yet His own did not receive Him.” We’re reminded here that salvation is ever by grace, gift unearned, always the mercy of God. The Son of God has to go this way. For us. For all. For you. He spreads His wings over the city that wants Him dead, over a world that considers Him a stranger, an alien, a nuisance, an imposter, a fraud. He spreads those arms wide to embrace every sinner and every sin in the only death that saves.
It is tempting to think we’re not like the people in Jerusalem. That we’d never be so dense as to reject Jesus and His Word. We’d never refuse to be gathered by God. And yet, within each of us beats the heart of an obstinate, stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-headed sinner. Left on our own, we “would not” either. Left to our own, we would not deny ourselves, take up our cross, or follow Jesus on the way of death and resurrection.
And yet this is precisely why Jesus cannot and will not stay away from Jerusalem. The Lord will provide peace – not political peace…something that will endure. The peace the Lord provides is not found within the walls of Jerusalem it’s, but on a hilltop outside the city, where God makes peace for you by the innocent blood of his Son Jesus.
Jesus goes to Jerusalem for your sins of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He goes to shed his innocent blood for you and on the third day rise again. Jesus goes to Jerusalem to lay down his life for you not when you’re at your best behavior and on your best day, but on your worst. Jesus dies, not for the perfect and righteous and godly, but for the ungodly, for the obstinate, stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-headed sinners…for you and for me.
And by his dying and rising, Jesus provides the peace that Jerusalem the city was always intended to be a picture of: his peace. Only this new Jerusalem isn’t an earthly one. You won’t find it on a holy land tour. This Jerusalem is the Church, which comes down from above, from heaven, as a beautiful bride dressed for her wedding day, radiant, spotless, glorious, processing down from heaven. This is Jerusalem redeemed, restored, raised up. Her murders have been atoned for in the death of God’s Son. The blood shed in her streets has been washed by the blood of the Lamb. Her streets once littered with stones cast in hatred are now paved in gold. The prophets and apostles she killed are now her firm foundation. And Christ the Lamb, who died at her gates, is the Lamb enthroned, her Light and her Life.
This is your city! You are free citizens of that city made holy by the blood of the Lamb. And here you are steeped in, baptized in, fed and nourished with, and forgiven in…the innocent blood of Jesus. You are citizens of the heavenly and holy Jerusalem, God’s free city, redeemed in the death of Jesus, raised in His resurrection, glorified in Him and soon to be seen in glory when He appears in glory on the Last Day. Then you too will say, “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!”
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment