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Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Almighty and everliving God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
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Scripture citation(s): Luke 19:41-48
A Sermon by
Fr. Austin
on
Luke 19:41-48
✛
The Tears of Jesus
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Jesus famously wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, wept, to be precise, when he was invited to “come and see” where the body of his friend lay. Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. [Jn 11:34-35] I’m sure every one of you has been there. You receive the news. You clear your calendar, you make your travel, you get to the place, you ask the people who were there when it happened, “Where is his body?” And at some point it hits you, suddenly, and without control. This beloved person has died. You weep.
Jesus famously wept at the sadness of the human situation, our sad situation where everything comes to an end, where nothing beautiful goes on breathing forever, where blood vessels harden and neurons stop firing, Jesus famously went down to the place all our loved ones go down to, went down there with Mary and Martha and the townspeople and all of us, went down to see the place where a human being, a friend of his, is placed at the end, went down to the cave of death, went down and broke down.
You’ve been there. You know how death is bitter and unarguable and final, how the hand you used to hold is now cold—and then put away and gone—; and whether when you last held it that hand was 102 years old, or 57, or 80, or 10, it doesn’t matter, you cannot hold it again; unarguable and final and bitter, death brings all humankind to tears; this is so sad, being human is so sad.
And down to us comes Jesus, down with us. He weeps too. It’s famous, and rightly so, because I do not think we could bear human life if we did not know Jesus wept.
When he came down at first, it was not into a tomb but a womb, a tiny, intimate space, hidden and silent and secret. When (nine months later) he came forth at Bethlehem, the heavens broke out in song. Part of what they sang was this: “Peace on earth.” Hear it as Handel wrote it in the “Messiah,” with the octave drop: Peace—on earth. The heavens’ joy was that peace had come down to earth.
Peace had come down to earth because peace was not on earth. And that brings me to tonight’s gospel reading, the other time that Jesus wept.
This one is not so famous as the other, because, I think, it is not so easily understood. We are on the day of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the day we can, if you want, call Palm Sunday. Jesus has been riding on a colt; people have spread their clothes along his way; and as he came nigh to the city, the whole multitude . . . began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice. They called him the King coming in the name of the Lord. And they said peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.
And while they were joyfully saying “peace in heaven,” Jesus beheld the city. And Jesus wept. They are all around him, they are rejoicing, they are saying “peace in heaven”—and he is weeping.
This weeping of Jesus is because the city has rejected the things which belong unto its peace; it has put the things that belong to peace away from its eyes. There may be peace in the city of God, but the city of man has turned away from peace.
What is peace? Peace, we could say, has to do with human beings living together in the right way. A city at peace has decent people in it, sound industry, a humane culture. Its people live together harmoniously, and at the same time they have peaceful relations with other cities. Above all else, a city of peace would know Jesus when he comes.
The human city has failed to be a city of peace, and just so it brings Jesus to tears. Jesus weeps at the difference between the heavenly city and the earthly one. Jesus’ tears make it manifest how much he cares that we live well together; it grieves him to behold how in fact we live together.
And so to bring peace on earth, to finish what was announced by the angels, turns out to require the very thing that Jesus wept over in his famous weeping. To bring peace on earth requires death, Jesus’ death. His death is the way, finally, peace breaks into the world. The crucifixion is, as it were, one great cosmic teardrop from the eye of God, coming down from the Father to the earth. God knows the sadness of being human, the obvious sadness of death, the less obvious sadness of our failures to live with one another. God knows, and God weeps.
Yet in the tears of Jesus, just as in the cross itself, we find our hope. Weeping turns out not to be the last word—as we will see in this coming week.
