NOTES for Luk 19:42

When we read that our task is to imitate Christ in everything, we mostly take these words as a convention. This Gospel text can be read from that point of view. In such a situation a person either waves his hand in resignation and says, "That is how it turned out," or reaches open gloating: "There, we told you that you could not do this, that you had to do it this way; now suffer and be tormented."

But Jesus, "looking at it, wept over it." He is powerless to impose Himself; everyone is free to receive Him or not receive Him. But the result of refusing life with Christ is so terrible that God weeps when He thinks about it. This is not despair from powerlessness, but grief over the choice a free person makes. And this even though Jesus knows that such refusal will lead Him Himself to the cross in a few days. Yet He does not weep over that; He weeps over what the people chosen by God are casting themselves into.

Here is the utterly clear portrait of God: He created the human being free; He will die a terrible death because the human being chose to kill Him; knowing this, He weeps over how terrible the life of the person who made this choice will be. This is what He calls us to imitate.

The day has come of which the prophets of Israel spoke with fear: God has visited His people. From deepest antiquity people waited for this coming of God and placed all their hopes on it. Not only Israel, but many other peoples at the beginning of the first century of our era expected the appearance of someone who would bring them peace and open the way to life. To some degree even we, after two thousand years, have inherited this expectation and hope for God's visitation. The prophets proclaimed that the sun would be darkened on that day and all creation would change, sin would cease, and people would be redeemed from death. "Oh, that You would tear the heavens and come down!" exclaimed the author of the second part of the book of Isaiah. "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes, leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills", as the Song of Songs presents this day as a happy meeting of lovers.

And now He comes. A multitude of disciples, perhaps several hundred people, praise the great works of God and bless His coming. But right there, among the distrustful crowd, there are those who consider it necessary only to reproach Him for immodesty: "Forbid Your disciples to praise God and You!". And almost no one thinks about what He called for many times through the prophets: "Amend your evil ways, so that you do not perish on that day." Only His Most Pure Mother and close disciples are given to feel His sorrow. He comes, and even on this day we do not know that to meet Him we must stop doing evil and learn to do good. How should we meet Him, and by what can we deserve His favor? What should we do so that He will bless us and help us? "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live," He said through His messengers. But we think that we must perform certain rites and arrange splendid celebrations. As if this would serve for our peace and give us peace in this meeting with Jesus.

If He does not enter Jerusalem today, we will not be able to become partakers of His Body and Blood. If He does not give Himself up for us, we will remain prisoners of death. But His chosen ones do not recognize the time of visitation; they do not recognize that the expected and foretold day has come. And therefore Jesus weeps. Recently the Lord spoke in one of the passages about what His disciples should rejoice in. Today we understand what we need to fear: failing to recognize the time of visitation.

In today’s reading there is the rejoicing of the disciples and the sorrow of the Lord Jesus.

Indeed, true and genuine faith is always joyful. This does not mean that a Christian must always be in high spirits, but even amid trials and sin our darkness must not smother the light. If joy seems incompatible to us with reverent fear of God, the seriousness of prayer, and penitential weeping, then we resemble the Pharisees “from among the crowd,” to whom the Lord said that if we did not rejoice, the stones would have to do it for us!

The second aspect of this encounter between God and humanity is Jesus’ sorrow over Jerusalem, which failed to recognize His coming. This sorrow is one expression of His love for sinful people. The Lord does not grow angry, curse the city, or punish it; He only weeps. He brought us life, and we turned away from His gift. The memory of these tears often restrains us from sin far more powerfully than fear of punishment or God’s wrath. We encounter God in prayer, in reading Scripture, and in worship almost every day. Let us therefore remember the rejoicing and the tears in today’s chapter.

The people of Judea greet Jesus as He enters Jerusalem as the King who comes in the name of the Lord. This is true, but not at all in the sense that those greeting Him attach to these words: the Kingdom He is coming to establish is unlike any earthly kingdom. For now, Jesus has influence comparable to the authority of the people’s leaders. He can put the Temple in order, and no one can hinder Him because the people listen to Him without ceasing. Unfortunately, though they listened, not all of them heard Him. That is why tears are in His eyes at the very height of the celebration: even those who place their hope in Him seek an entirely different salvation from the one Christ wishes to give, and therefore many of them will very soon turn away from Him.

And what do we today expect and desire from Him? Is it what He wishes to bring us, or what we project onto His image because we want to see Him as an expression of our own moods and whims? And do we desire Him Himself?..

The evangelist combines in one account Jesus' triumphal entry into the holy city, when praise and joy cannot be restrained by any force, so that even the stones are ready to sing glory to the coming King, and Jesus' sorrowful weeping over Jerusalem. The city of promise here becomes a collective image of all who wait for Christ, who cannot live without Him, but who do not recognize Him and cannot believe that their hope is being fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Before our eyes there is both triumph and catastrophe, because the city, the people, and individual persons are given the long-awaited opportunity to see, recognize, and meet their dream, but they "do not know the time of visitation."

Deep down, we would probably like this time to be clear, obvious to everyone, or at least for it to be optional, not for everyone. But such a time does happen, and what is most terrible is that it can be missed: one can fail to recognize God when He passes nearby...

Today's reading contains the disciples' rejoicing and the Lord Jesus' sorrow. True, genuine faith is indeed always joyful. This does not mean that a Christian must always be in high spirits, but even amid trials and sin our darkness must not smother the light. If joy seems to us incompatible with reverent fear of God, with the seriousness of prayer and penitential weeping, then we become like the Pharisees “from among the crowd,” to whom the Lord said that if we do not rejoice, the stones will have to do it for us!

And the second aspect of this encounter between God and man is Jesus' sorrow over Jerusalem, which never recognised His coming. This sorrow is one expression of His love for sinful people. The Lord is not angry; He does not curse the city or punish it, but only weeps. He brought us life, and we turned away from His gift.

Often the memory of these tears restrains us from sin far more strongly than fear of punishment or of God's wrath. We encounter God—in prayer, in reading Scripture, in worship—almost every day. Let us remember the rejoicing and the tears in today's chapter.

Entering Jerusalem, Jesus weeps over its fate. He clearly foresees the city's sad destiny: in A.D. 70, after the anti-Roman revolt raised by the Zealots and the war that followed, Jerusalem will be razed to the ground by the Roman army sent to suppress the revolt. In the Middle Ages, and partly also in modern times, an opinion was widespread and popular among Christians that this catastrophe became a punishment for the Jewish people's rejection of the Messiah sent to them. Yet Jesus Himself looks at the situation differently. For Him this is above all a tragedy, a national catastrophe. He does not look at it as just retribution. For Him it is rather a rejected and therefore missed opportunity.

In the lives both of individuals and of whole peoples, there are crossroads at which the direction of further spiritual movement is determined and set for years ahead, if we are speaking about a person, or for centuries ahead, if we are speaking about a people. There is nothing predetermined here, no program written in advance, no fate or doom. On the contrary, such a crossroads is always a moment of highest freedom. A moment of that choice when the person himself or the people themselves choose and determine what later may look to them like doom or fate. The day of the Savior's entry into Jerusalem became such a moment for the Jewish people.

Of course, one can say that the enthusiasm with which the crowd met Him in the streets of Jerusalem was not worth much: the enthusiasm of crowds never lasts long. But the people did have the possibility of a choice, a serious choice determining further history for centuries ahead, and Jesus understands this perfectly. He also understands something else: like all such choices, this one essentially comes down to whether to follow God or one's own opinions, traditions, and habits. And the second option is always catastrophic. The only question is how soon this catastrophe will come. That it will come is beyond doubt: missed opportunities always exact a price, and the greater the opportunity, the more terrible the catastrophe will be if that opportunity is missed.

That is why Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He understands as no one else does what has been given and what has been missed. And He also understands what the consequences will be.