NOTES for Luk 19:41-44

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.