Given in Sorrow
For Meditation (Richard Haney)
During Lent, we are exploring what it means that Jesus Christ is given for us. In these passages from Luke’s Gospel, we encounter Jesus, lamenting and weeping for Jerusalem. When we reach Holy Week and contemplate Jesus’ suffering and death, the words of Isaiah 53:4 will seem such an apt description of Jesus’ travail:
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”
In our first passage (Luke 13:31-35), Jesus laments that Jerusalem has not understood him nor welcomed him. He is the latest in a long line of prophets sent by God who will be opposed and killed. “Nevertheless, I must go on my way today…, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.” Jesus is living into his destiny but laments being rejected by those he loves. In his lament, Jesus tells Jerusalem, that though He loves them like a mother hen gathering her chicks for safety, their house or Temple is forsaken. Like the prophets before him, the messiah has been rejected.
In the second passage (Luke 19:41-44), Jesus the Prince of Peace, sees judgement and destruction coming to the City of David and its people, and he weeps over the city of Jerusalem because they do not know what makes for peace, for shalom. This comes chronologically right after the Palm Sunday celebration that takes place on the outskirts of Jerusalem. In both cases, judgement is pronounced upon Jerusalem. And in his weeping, he prophesies that the city and temple will be destroyed, stone by stone.
For God so loved the world, He sent his only Son… BUT they have not recognized him nor received him. They are blind and they are spurning the gracious gift of the Father.
As you prepare for worship this week, ask God to help you draw close to Jesus, the “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” What might it mean to enter into Jesus’ suffering for his people, the world and for us?
Questions for reflection and discussion:
What are all the reasons Jesus is sorrowful? Is it more than the immediate crisis facing him? What can we learn from his tears?
Can you recall other times in the gospels where we encounter Jesus weeping or lamenting? What can we learn from those moments?
Do you ever sense that your ‘holy week’ experience rushes from Palm Sunday to Easter and that you miss Maundy Thursday and Good Friday? As you plan your own schedule for Holy Week this year, how will you plan time(s) to worship during the shadows—in between Palm Sunday and Easter?
Do you recall a time you entered into someone else’s suffering (weeping with those who weep)? What was that experience like? Are there persons or peoples or countries whose present-day suffering invites you into an experience of “solidarity in suffering”?
Luke 13:31-35
At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
Luke 19:41-44
As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”