NOTES for Luk 19:45-48

Each of the evangelists, in keeping with the logic and particular features of his narrative, gives us an account of the cleansing of the Temple. The point is that for the Jews who saw the Lord Jesus driving the sellers out of the Temple, this was a sign that He truly was the Savior of the world, the Christ. The prophet Haggai says of this Second Temple that its glory would be greater than the glory of Solomon's Temple, because the Deliverer would come into it. And now Christ drives out of the Temple the bustle unworthy of the holy place and then, as the evangelist Luke writes, He teaches every day in the Temple. Day after day, again and again, Christ proclaims the Father's love and calls people to repentance.

It is important for us to notice how the evangelist Luke speaks about His listeners. The Synodal translation offers the words: "...all the people listened to Him intently"; in the Greek original, however, the evangelist uses a very vivid word: "...all the people hung upon Him, listening." This kind of persistence, when we literally hang in clusters upon Christ, catching every word of His, is what prevented the chief priests and scribes from immediately carrying out their treacherous plans. They wanted to destroy Him, but they could not, says the evangelist, because all the people were literally hanging upon Him. The world's enmity against Christ, the resistance of the forces of evil to His saving action, proved powerless when people listened to His word in this way.

The resemblance between this image and the words of Christ quoted by the apostle John in chapter 15 of his Gospel draws attention to itself: "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me." It is characteristic that here the evangelist Luke uses not his usual word "ochlos," crowd, but "laos," people - the word that later came to refer to the laity in the Church.

The expulsion of the merchants from the Temple is probably one of the best-known Gospel episodes. But what lies behind it? Of course, we could reduce it simply to outrage at the ‘baseness’ of what was happening. Yet the trade in the Temple courtyard and beneath the surrounding colonnades was not ordinary trade but, so to speak, ‘sacred’. People sold what was needed for sacrifice: sheep, goats, doves and everything else a pilgrim—or sometimes a local resident, who as a city-dweller had no other source for these things—might need. Of course, even such trade was not entirely lawful from the Torah's standpoint. The Temple is the Temple; trading within its precincts is forbidden, even in what we would now call service areas.

Evidently, in Gospel times this prohibition was easily evaded by appealing, on the one hand, to certain ‘ingenious’ interpretations of the relevant legal provisions and, on the other, to expediency and an established tradition that may by then have been several centuries old. But Jesus apparently recognizes neither as authoritative. He acts with the decisiveness of a prophet, to whom things were sometimes permitted that were not permitted to others. There can hardly be grounds for doubting that this is precisely a prophetic act, something like the symbolic actions prophets sometimes performed: actions that could look strange or even provocative but always had a definite spiritual meaning.

Of course, one such action could not restore order: everything in the Temple courtyard would soon have returned to its former state. But the Saviour's purpose was different: to draw people's attention to a habitual, almost traditional violation of a commandment God had given, a law He had established.

A violation that could of course be justified by expediency or tradition, but remained a violation nonetheless. This action of Jesus was certainly not spontaneous. His attitude towards the Torah and tradition as a whole was exactly the same: He denied neither, but restored both to their original meaning.

If we observe the Torah, we must do so to the end, without compromise and without deferring to tradition, however ancient, if that tradition contradicts the commandment. And if we follow tradition, we must fully understand its true meaning, without which it degenerates into prejudice or meaningless ritual. For both the Torah and genuine tradition will find a place in the Kingdom. Spiritual compromises and prejudices, however, hardly will.

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?..

Today's reading allows us to see the Kingdom through the eyes of Jesus' contemporaries, who welcomed him as he entered Jerusalem (vv. 35–38). Messianic expectations were intense at the time, so it is no surprise that Jesus carefully conceals his identity as Messiah until the appointed moment. The enthusiastic crowd in Jerusalem's streets explains everything: had Jesus so much as hinted at his mission, he would immediately have been made the leader of a popular movement like the many that were then breaking out in Judea.

But sooner or later Jesus had to declare himself publicly, and he apparently chooses a moment when there will simply no longer be time to make him the leader of a messianic uprising. His own first act is to go to the Temple, where he then remains until the very end of his ministry in Jerusalem, having first cleared its courts of the traders who had taken them over (vv. 45–48).

Trading in the Temple court was, of course, forbidden by the Torah but sanctioned by tradition; moreover, it brought considerable income not only to the traders themselves but also to the Temple treasury. Jesus, however, evidently had no intention of tolerating a tradition that contradicted the God-given Law. For him, the messianic Kingdom begins with the holy place becoming truly holy, and here there can be no compromise. For the people, on the other hand, the messianic Kingdom was to begin with expelling the Romans and restoring independence; almost everyone then thought the rest would follow easily. It is precisely this false ordering of priorities that Jesus draws attention to as he weeps over Jerusalem (vv. 41–44). In speaking of ‘trenches’ and encirclement, Jesus undoubtedly has in mind the events of AD 70, when another anti-Roman uprising did indeed grow into a religious war that ended in defeat and the utter devastation of Jerusalem.

That uprising became possible precisely because so many people then understood the Kingdom in purely outward, political and ideological terms, and scarcely thought of it as a spiritual reality. This shift of emphasis made the catastrophe inevitable. And it proved a double catastrophe: first the Saviour's death on the Cross, then the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. But while Jesus' death on the Cross culminates in his resurrection, the national catastrophe lasts for centuries. And Jesus weeps as he sees centuries of his people's suffering. Perhaps he also weeps because even he is powerless to change anything here. For every people, like every person, is free. And chooses its own destiny.

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...

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.

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.