"Recognizing God Coming to You" Tenth Sunday after Trinity August 9, 2015 Luke 19:41–48
The shortest verse of the Bible is telling in what it says about God. It’s in John chapter 11 and says simply, “Jesus wept.” He approached the tomb of his friend Lazarus and his emotion poured out of him in tears. Death is not the way God intended things to be. So in the face of death Jesus wept. In today’s Gospel reading Jesus is approaching the city where He Himself will die. As He does, He looks out over the city and His heart goes out to the people. He again is brought to tears. If only you had known the things that make for peace. But now you are under judgment. Your city will be overthrown. You will be left in devastation. You think you know what makes for peace but you did not recognize the time of your visitation. That is, you did not recognize God coming to you. They did not see that peace comes from God, not from themselves. When the people of God seek peace apart from the means through which God gives peace. Listening to the voices of false prophets, as we heard in the Old Testament reading, who proclaim peace when there is no peace. The message of the false prophets is always the same: it is peace apart from the Triune God. It is peace sought in the heart or the mind or the pleasures of the world rather than peace in the sacrifice of the pure Lamb of God. It brings Jesus to tears, so that when He is pronouncing judgment, He is doing so through tears. This is why they did not recognize the time of their visitation. That is, they refused to see how God was coming to them. The irony is that God was coming to them in the person who was speaking those very words. But they didn’t even see it! That is, they didn’t believe it. They didn’t believe in Jesus as the means through which God gives His peace. They didn’t believe He was God and Savior. Do you recognize God having come to you? Where, at the font a flood of grace washed over you and you became a child of God with every confidence that He hears you and loves you? Or have you listened to the false voices in the world and in the Church that you are a self-made person? That your dignity is within yourself. That you do not deserve to suffer trials and hardships. That you don’t really need the forgiveness of all your sins because there are a lot of good things you do that God should certainly take into account. And ultimately, that you are not utterly corrupt in your heart, mind, and soul, and therefore Jesus ends up being and afterthought in your life. Recognize God for who He is and how He comes to you. He has come into your life in the person of His Son in the waters that flooded you with His grace and forgiveness. As Jesus continued His journey to the cross He entered the temple. Did the people who went to the temple recognize God when He came to them? When Jesus entered the place, He saw that what had been the place of worship had been turned into a marketplace. But Jesus goes farther than that. He says they have turned it into a den of thieves. Jesus drives them out so that instead of the temple being a place where they play the charade of offering sacrifices it can be a place of prayer. Jesus is making His way to the cross and as He is He is making the transition from the temple to Himself. He enters the temple and drives out the false worship of the those selling animals for sacrifice, whose god is their pocketbook rather than the true God. Jesus quotes from the Old Testament Scriptures, God saying, “My House shall be a house of prayer.” They certainly didn’t recognize that everything they were doing in the temple in desecrating it would come to an end when the temple would be destroyed. They certainly didn’t recognize the very Lord who alone would be worshiped being in their very presence in the temple. What about you? Do you recognize God when He comes to you? There is no temple necessary anymore as Jesus has transitioned us from the temple to Himself. Do you recognize Him when He comes to you in this place of worship? Do the words of the proclamation of the Word of God ring out to you as the gift that it is? That in hearing the Gospel proclaimed in this place you are a recipient of the Lord Himself, that God is coming to you in the person of His Son? Or do you listen to those who would steer you toward things you can do or need to do to be more successful in your work or in your marriage or in your church? Or the voices that tell you that hearing the Gospel proclaimed just isn’t enough, because after all, who remembers what was said on Sunday by the time it’s Thursday? Listen rather to your Lord, who in declaring the House of God the House of Prayer, did so in light of His impending offering up of Himself as the ultimate prayer to the Father in giving His life as the sacrifice for the sin of the world. He is the one proclaimed in this place and He is proclaimed so that you may hear His forgiveness for you. As He entered the temple on that first day of the week He continued to do so through that week, back there every day that week and teaching in that very temple. At the end of the week, on Friday, He ends up on the cross. But this work of God in Christ is not just a one-time work of God on the cross. Day after day leading up to the cross Jesus was teaching in the temple, and the people hung on His words. When God comes to us in the person of His Son, we see that He continues to do so. We must continue to hear Jesus teach us, and He does that in the Gospel and the Sacraments. We must hang on His words. His one-time work of salvation for you in Baptism is continued at the very altar where the Sacrament of His body and blood is given to you to go into your mouth all the way to your soul for eternal strength and comfort. It is true that God is very present and very real when He comes to you in the person of His Son in your Baptism and in the proclamation of the Gospel. But it is especially true at the altar where the Lord says of things you can see and taste, bread and wine, This is My body, given for you; This is My blood, shed for you. Recognize the time of your visitation and that it comes often to you at this very altar, your Lord coming to you as He desires to do to forgive you and strengthen you and give you peace. In the Introit this morning we prayed along with the Psalmist, “I call to God, and He hears my voice.” What makes it possible for us to have this kind of confidence that He hears us? It is His Son. God comes to us in His Son and in His Son we may go to God, being confident He hears us. This is what the Catechism is teaching that the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven,” mean: “God tenderly invites us to believe that He is our true Father and that we are His true children, so that with all boldness and confidence we may ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.” We pray in confidence to our Heavenly Father because He has given us His Son. We have confidence because our worship and prayer is not centered in our own notions of religion but centered in Jesus Christ. We have confidence because when we are laid out by His judgment due to our sin we have the gracious invitation to repent and then hear the forgiveness of our sins delivered to us. We have confidence, simply, because we recognize God coming to us. Here is how we recognize God coming to us. We look to the places where He has promised to be: the font, the pulpit, and the altar. Don’t always recognize God in your life? Continue to look to these places. They are the very places where God Himself shows up. For you. God coming to you in His Son to forgive you and strengthen you. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
