Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 19:41-48)
Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.
Duŋ mi deri jɛ ŋa̱c a cäŋɛ walɛ kɛn tin nööŋkɛ mal! Kä täämɛ cakɛ tey kä ji̱.
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Within the last couple of months, there was a special episode of the ABC TV program Q&A all about spirituality and religion. And during the episode, one person asked a question to the panel: “Has God gone quiet?” – He turned up in burning bushes, sent prophets and all sorts of people, worked miracles, etc. etc. but why has he gone quiet now?
And one of the panellists, a Christian by the name of John Lennox who has often publicly debated atheists, gave this answer:
“I don’t think that the problem is that God is not speaking, the problem is that we’re not listening.”
What do you think of this man’s response? What do you think?
Has God stopped speaking, or have we stopped listening?
But really these things go very much together: because if we have stopped listening to God, then the voice of God is blocked out for us.
If God calls and calls, and we continually become deaf to him, eventually we get so deaf to him that we don’t hear him any longer. It’s not that God has stopped speaking, but the problem is that we continually ignore him.
It’s like nagging: a mum can keep on nagging her son to take out the bins, or clean up his room, or hang his towel up in the bathroom, but eventually, the son becomes deaf to it. The son becomes deaf to his mum, he no longer hears her voice any more. But then the voice turns into something else: it becomes louder and louder, it starts to nag, so that the son gets annoyed with his mum, and might even blow up at her and yell at her. And sometimes relationships like this can be damaged for life because people get sick of listening to each other. And the only way these relationships can be repaired is for them to get together, sort out their business, apologise to each other, and try to reconcile. But the bigger the argument, the more drastic the reconciliation needs to be.
This is exactly what happens in our reading today.
Jesus comes into Jerusalem and says:
“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
The people of Jerusalem are deaf to the voice of God. They don’t know the things that make for peace. Now these things are hidden from their eyes. They have stopped listening to God so much that they can’t hear any more, they can’t see anymore. These things are hidden from their eyes.
Then Jesus foretells the downfall of the city. He says:
Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 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.
When people stop listening to the voice of God, God threatens to punish them. Jesus says: They days will come upon you, when your enemies will come. This is what it says in the Small Catechism: God threatens to punish all who break these commandments. Therefore, we should fear his wrath and not do anything against them. But He promises grace and every blessing to all who keep these commandments. Therefore, we should also love and trust in Him and gladly do what He commands.
God is a very strict judge. If we have done something wrong, we will be punished for it. God requires vengeance, he requires recompense, he doesn’t let anything go unpunished. Sometimes, when we’re forgiven as Christians, we sometimes also still have to live with the consequences of our actions in this life. For example, if someone commits murder, they can be forgiven in the church by God, but they still have to go to gaol for it. There’s a punishment for the crime.
But there’s a difference between the punishment of God, and what many people call “karma”. Karma means that whatever you do, you will get your come-uppance. If you tread on an ant, you will be reincarnated into an ant that gets stepped on. If a skinny person calls someone “fat”, they’ll find themselves a “fat” person in the next life.
Now, Christians don’t believe in karma. Karma is impersonal. It just happens. It’s uncontrolled. Karma doesn’t have anyone in charge of it – it just happens by itself.
Christians believe that all punishment belongs to God. And we do believe that God punishes. But he also relents.
In the book of Jonah, Jonah walks into the city of Nineveh and says: “In 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed!” But then, what happens? The people repent! And then we read: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it.”
So God punishes, but he also relents. He also changes his mind. God is not ruled by karma. God is not held to the laws of the universe, or the laws of the world. He makes the law. God is not someone who works for a faceless government and says: “I’d love to help you, but I’ve got to do what the paperwork tells me.” He’s not a bank employee who says: “Sorry, but I’m not allowed to write you out a cheque for that amount.” God says: To hell with the paperwork, to hell with frugality. If I want to do it, I’ll do it. In fact, I’ll send my Son into the world to die for you, so that you will know that the paperwork’s been ripped up. It’s been nailed to the cross and covered in blood.
Colossians 2 says: God cancelled the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
He forgives. He changes his mind. He can actually decide that he won’t punish after all. And that’s his business. That’s his right!
(By the way, people who believe that unbelievers are predestined to hell don’t understand this. Grace is not some abstract system, but it is the action of a living, personal God!)
So listen to our words from the gospel again, where we read:
And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 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.”
But now, Jesus makes a solution to this problem. Since the people have not been listening to him, he has to do something dramatic. He has to clear the air.
When the son gets so fed up with his mum nagging him, they have to go and sort themselves out, and get it all out in the open, and reconcile.
So we read:
And Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
He walks into the temple and clears it out all the people who are buying and selling.
Now why did Jesus do this, we might ask?
He says: “You have made it a den of robbers.” The word “robber” here doesn’t really mean a “thief” in the sense of a shop-lifter, but rather someone like Ned Kelly -- someone who goes out on the highways and robs people. They were people who rebelled against the government and beat people up to get their money. In the Good Samaritan story, the man is beated up by “robbers” and left for dead. This is the sort of person which is meant by the word “robber” in this passage.
Also, in John’s gospel, where Jesus clears the temple, he says, “You have made my father’s house a place of trade.”
So what is Jesus attacking here? What is he angry about?
In all of the passages, where Jesus clears out the traders from the temple, we see in each place, “My house shall be a house of prayer.” Jesus is not saying that trade or buying or selling is a dirty thing, but when it was put into the temple, it compromised the temple in such a way that it couldn’t be prayed in any more. The temple could no longer be a house of prayer in the way that it should be. It was a building that was set aside for a holy purpose and shouldn’t be compromised in that.
By the way, we also need to give this issue very serious consideration in our churches. Even though the church is not a building but the people who gather in it, our church buildings are blessed and set aside for a holy purpose. If we use them for anything else, we need to make sure that the church as a house of prayer is not compromised, and that the sanctuary of God, the place where we hear the word of God, where we offer prayer, and receive the holy sacrament, is not defiled.
So Jesus gives the temple a clean out. He chucks out the traders and the sellers.
And then what do we read:
And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priest and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.
He taught them. And he taught them daily. He taught them every day.
God threatens to punish. But then he goes and heals. He teaches.
Psalm 119 says: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Jesus teaches the people. And now they can hear! It’s not like before when Jesus said that the things are hidden from their eyes. Now, he goes into the temple and begins to open their eyes again, anew, afresh.
So let’s examine ourselves today in God’s presence. Do we think that God has stopped speaking? Do we think that God is no longer involved in the world and is no longer calling people?
If the answer is yes, then his words for us are these: “These things are hidden from your eyes… Your enemies will come and will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
So where do we hear the voice of God?
First of all, we hear it in the Holy Scriptures, the bible. And the bible is not a shut book, but it is a book of sermons. It is a book that is always being open and spoken. So the ministry of pastors in the church is to speak the words of the bible. That’s what pastors are called to do. Pastors are called to give voice to the words of the bible, and most importantly to speak the forgiveness of sins over people.
Each week, when we come and confess our sins, and we hear the absolution, the forgiveness of sins spoken to us, we are being spoken to by God’s own voice himself, through the ministry of the pastor. Don’t let yourself be blinded to this reality. You might think that you go to church week after week and hear the same thing and it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Well, wake up to these words! They do mean something! Jesus is teaching you! Don’t become deaf like the city of Jerusalem. Remember, once upon a time the same words were said in the temple week after week, and the words of Jesus did come true: the temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, and has remained destroyed for almost 200 years, and now there’s a great big mosque in the place where the temple was. Be careful! Listen to the voice of God when he speaks to you.
Listen to the words: “I baptise you.” “Baptism now saves you”.
Listen to the words: “Take and eat, this is my body given for you.”
Listen to the words: “The Lord bless you and keep you.”
Let those words clean you out, through and through. The temple of your body will be cleared out, and be made a temple of the Holy Spirit, and you will begin to listen to Jesus there too. Is there something on your heart that you know you should do? Is there someone on your mind you haven’t spoken to for a while and might need to give a call? Have you made a promise to someone which you haven’t kept? Do you have an unresolved argument with someone?
All these things are the voice of God. Don’t let them be hidden from your eyes. Let your conscience, your heart, your mind, be sharpened by God and his word. But your conscience, your heart, your mind won’t save you. The only thing that can save you is the living words of God. So let your heart be comforted, let your body, the temple of the Holy Spirit be strengthened, let it be built up with the holy and living words of Jesus: “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Make sure you know on this day the things that make for peace. Recognise the time now of his visitation. Listen to Jesus daily, and hang on his every word. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, come and clean us out through the power of your Holy Spirit, and make us to hear your word again, anew, and afresh. Teach us your word daily. Give us every day everything we need to support this body and life, and every day, richly and daily, forgive us all our sins and the sins of all believers. Amen.
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