Sermon - Trinity X - Luke 19:41-48

As Christ entered into Jerusalem at His Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday, He wept saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!” This peace that Jesus speaks of is not the peace our world wants, even though the world always claims to want it. 

In the 1960’s and 70’s, the peace our culture wanted was world peace. An end to the fighting and bombs and killings. They wanted all the violence and bloodshed to end. I’ll admit that I, like Luther, tend to lean more on the side of pacifism than most American conservatives do today. War is a terrible thing. However, pacifism or a cessation of fighting isn’t the peace of which Christ speaks.

Neither is that the sort of peace which today’s world espouses either. Today’s America doesn’t so much value a cessation of fighting, but rather considers conformity to a certain set of ideals to be true peace. Peace in today’s world is all about supporting and affirming a diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs and behaviors, and when everyone has conformed to these ideals then there is peace. 

So today’s anti-christian culture and media shoves this conformity to abhorrent sinful beliefs and behaviors down everyone’s throat in order to get peace. Then the church itself has now begun to cry out that we should be peaceful like the world around us, by affirming everyone’s beliefs and behaviors, saying that God loves you just the way you are. The church is tempted to have peace with the world around us by simply conforming to the world’s sinful ideals. 

Many churches today say that there are many ways to heaven, but there are not, since the only way is Christ. Many churches say that deviant sexual practices ought to be celebrated, even though they are perversions of God’s design for marriage. Many churches practice open communion and gladly receive all pagans and heathens at their altars, when our Lord expressly forbids this. Many churches support abortion on demand, no-fault divorce, living together outside of marriage, women preachers, and all other forms of sin so that they may have their supposed peace with the surrounding culture! 

In this way, many of today’s churches “have rejected the word of the Lord, so what wisdom is in them?... They have healed the wound of God’s people lightly, saying ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace.” Our Lord Himself rebukes us when He says, “Would that you, even you, had known the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” It really should be quite clear that Christ makes peace.  

Yet from so many the peace of Christ which surpasses understanding has been hidden! The world runs after wealth and happiness and vain carnal pleasures and calls that peace! But the Lord doesn’t weep in vain. 

In Genesis 6, when all the people of the world, probably a few billion of them, had all fallen away from the worship of the true God, “The Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the Land...for I am sorry that I have made them.” The Lord God was grieved to His heart, was sorrowful that His beloved people had wandered off into vain myth and rejected Him. So the Lord sent a flood and drowned the whole world, but saved the only faithful people left, Noah and His family, eight souls in all. The Lord doesn’t weep in vain.

Our Lord Christ wept over Jerusalem, the place where His holy temple was to be found and true worship was to happen. Yet Christ had to drive out moneychangers from the temple, saying, “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” So Christ foretold the destruction of Jerusalem: “For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” In 70AD, Jerusalem, both the city and the temple, were sieged and destroyed. The Lord doesn’t weep in vain.

In the days before Jerusalem was destroyed and the world was flooded, the people “were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.” The people were living as though they had peace and security, they were living happy lives filled with all of their carnal pleasures, not knowing the things that make for peace. Likewise today, we pretend to know of what our peace consists. We live out our days in luxury, eating and drinking and being merry, ignoring our sin and instead unashamedly celebrating pride.

Such is our world today and such are we who belong to this frightful generation! We see around us only peace. Were we ashamed when we committed abomination? No, we were not at all ashamed; we did not know how to blush. So when Christ confronts us with our sins, we feel no shame, only anger, only fierce bloodthirsty anger. 

Indeed, the sin Christ confronts today in our scripture lessons are most applicable to us here today. We live as though we have peace, and yet we have no peace, not really. We’re like wild pigs, rooting in the mud and wallowing in our own filth and disease, wandering around the countryside just destroying everything we see. As in the days of Noah, the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually! We live as though everything is good and we’re just fine on our own! But since the wages of our sin is death, we truly have no peace in ourselves, only destruction. 

But the Lord doesn’t weep in vain. Instead He gives us time to repent of our sin and turn back to Him. The Lord weeps and mourns over His people because of His intense love for them that they would turn from their sins and live! Ezekiel writes, “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” St. Paul writes, He “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 

Indeed, from the deeply compassionate heart of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, we see the things that make for peace! Jesus rode into Jerusalem that fated Sunday in order to make atonement for all! Jesus is the one who makes for peace. The blood and tears He spilled are shed for sinners such as us. Just as He doesn’t weep in vain, neither does He bleed and die in vain, for from His wounds we are healed, and not lightly.

Our Lord doesn’t just proclaim that we have peace, as the world and our sinful flesh wants to do. He doesn’t just ignore the problems and go about his business. He doesn’t just tell us it’s all good, so have a nice day. But He cries out to us through tears and sorrow, begging us to turn away from sin, because our sin kills and that’s not what He wants. He tells us things aren’t all good and that we’re not good enough as we are, but that we need to change. And then He changes us by paying the ultimate price: death. Not just any death, but His death, the death of the Son of God, for us poor ignorant sinners. 

Dear Christians, pay attention to your weeping Savior. You’re not fine and you won’t find peace within yourselves, no matter how much you ignore the problems. So stop turning a blind eye to the abominations taking place in our midst, in our own homes, but instead plead with Him who can alone for sin atone. Replace your pride over your sins with shame, and instead appeal to your Savior for a clean conscience. 

Draw near to Jesus; see the wounds in His hands, feet, and side, His body and blood. From the depths of your sins cry to Him, beg of Him for mercy. Because from the depths of His heart He imparts peace to your troubled heart. Like a mother hen gathers her brood beneath her, so does our Christ gather us together under His outspread arms on the cross and welcomes us in. He doesn’t turn a blind eye to our problems, but He cures them, He forgives them, He makes you whole. He gives you peace, not just between you and your neighbor, but also between you and the Father. He doesn’t just say your problems are alright, but He takes away your problems, and makes you right with Him.

Go in the peace of Christ. Amen.