“TRINITARIAN
TEARS TO TREASURE”
Saint Luke 19.
41-48
10th Sunday after Trinity: 4 August Anno
Domini 2013
Fr. Jay Watson
SSP
In The + Name of
Jesus
God has will and desire. “God is love” records the Disciple who
rested his head on the Lord’s breast. The Love of God is self-sacrificing and
giving beyond our understanding. And, while a Spirit cannot cry and an
omnipotent 1st Person cannot cry (at least not as we might think…we
think) God can cry, for the Christ did.
While humans cry for many varied reasons,
the main two seem to be: for happiness and for sorrow, grief, and loss. You cry when deep inside of you something
elemental and core is moved and affected.
The Creator and Sustainer God Who made human
emotions as well as human senses and intellect, would (did) always cry with
Perfect holiness and righteousness.
The Lord’s deepest yearning is that all men
would be saved and come to the knowledge of His Christ—His love & communion
in the Flesh!
Thus God cries for both his Lambs, and for
those not in His flock.
The Lord wept with Adam and Eve as they
cradled their dead boy Able in their arms…but He ALSO cried for the wayward and
lost Cain. God cried for the heart-ache of barren Sarah and again with her in
her joy over baby Isaac…but He ALSO cried when Hagar and Ishmael wandered
off. There were salty sorrows over
Esau’s callous indifference and Samson’s foolish and headstrong misadventures.
The Lord’s tears could have turned the entire desert wasteland into an ocean
over His passion for the rebellion of the Hebrews’ 40 years of murmuring sin. When King David wept over dead Absalom, the
Pre-Incarnate Angel of the Lord also wept…for both David’s grief and
for Absalom. When Elias, Esaias and Jeremias wept over their own persecutions
the Son of God wept with them and with their stiff-necked
rejecting congregations…God cried for His ancient people Israel even BEFORE the
Christ approached the City of David.
The tears of God are more than supportive
sympathy or even the presence of empathy. The tears of Jesus are part
of the whole of the entire activity of Jesus to save. Jesus’ tears
create and give life; they wash; they refresh and fill; they keep alive,
vibrant, and at peace.
The Messias born of Mary is the Man
Who weeps over Jerusalem and Shawnee. The Christ begotten from eternity is the
God Who weeps over the saved and the lost of David’s city and
over the saved and lost of you and your cities (your nuclear families, your
communities, states and countries).
For all those who do not know the things
which belong to their peace; for you during every day when you forget, neglect,
or even maliciously spurn the things which belong and ensure your peace, HE WHO
IS PEACE weeps and acts. For the tears of Jesus are BOTH passive and active.
The Water of Life is both, still and moving; calm like a pool, and alive like a
white-rapids river!
Jesus beheld you and your lost city, your
lost and condemned condition, from the Garden, all the way to His gates of
Heavenly Grace. He left the Mount of Transfiguration, Trinitarian splendor, and
descended to your traitorous squalor. He ascended to Jerusalem to be Salem,
“The”
Peace Which passeth all understanding. “These
things,” Jesus’ Person and Work—His God/Man identity and His Paschal
Sacrifice, are hid from the eyes of unbelief, and even from the daily eyes of
sinful trespasses. But He reveals them in the tears of His Word!
“For the
days shall come upon thee…” and the days came upon the God/Man—born in the “fullness of time.” The Christ permitted
His enemies to cast their siege trench against Him in the mob of Sanhedrin
thugs and assassins. He deigned, as the passive Lamb, to let them compass Him “round, and keep [Him] in on every side.” They bound Him,
beat Him, scourged Him, mocked Him, and “laid
Him even with the ground”…so that the Roman executioners would have better
leverage in pounding the iron spikes through His innocent and spotless flesh!
It was Jesus’ will and love that accepted, yea embraced, His enemies and
persecutors who did “not leave one stone
upon another,” as He suffered, died and was laid broken of life in the
grave. He, The City of God, the Temple of the Trinity was destroyed and in the
shambles of ruin—apparent…but not eternal…only three days.
Today is the Third Day—Easter Sunday all
over again. Today is The Day of the Lord’s Visitation.
He wept for you before Genesis 1 that He might weep for you at the summit
of Jerusalem, at Lazarus’ tomb, at Gethsemane, at Golgotha, and at the Day you
were + first visited. His tears, Water from the God/Man, from His side—His
heart—yes, but also from His eyes, which beheld you, like Bartholomew, under
the fig tree of His New Jerusalem, His Peace which is found in His Church, in
His written Word and mysterious Word. He weeps in tears of sorrow over your “buying and selling,” your mammon
worship, your thievish temple desecration in thought, word, and deed; but He
weeps this morning over your reception of His Absolving + forgiveness. Jesus’
tears are the Blood and Water of love-incarnate that are eaten in His Body and
drunk in His Chalice.
Cry and weep with the Christ in repentance,
and then be visited by your Shepherd at the well of His tears, and rejoice in
salvation.
In The Name of
The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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