Trinity 10
When the Roman general Titus, who would later become emperor, laid siege to the city of Jerusalem in AD 70, he found a city overcrowded and divided into factions against itself. Titus surrounded the city, as Christ had foretold, driving them to hunger and despair. The city had three walls, and the first two quickly fell, while the Jews were dying of starvation in large numbers. The historian Josephus writes that best friends came to blows over small pieces of bread, and children ripped food from their parents’ mouths. Corn became more valuable than gold. So desperate was their hunger that people began to eat hay, and leather, and manure, and finally their own excrement.
When the city was finally conquered, 115,000 corpses that had died of starvation were burned, and in all 600,000 died in the siege. Josephus said that the events of the siege were so gruesome that he doubted future generations would believe them. The Roman soldiers told of a wealthy, respected Jewish woman who slaughtered her young child in the cradle, roasted half and ate it. When the soldiers found her, she offered the other half of her child to them.
Other soldiers found a certain Jew retrieving from his own excrement gold that he had swallowed. A rumor began to spread, and soldiers, believing they would find gold, began to disembowel many surviving Jews, and more than 2,000 died this way before Titus put a stop to it.
Titus wished to spare the temple, a priceless building, but it was set ablaze and reduced to ashes in the final battle. When it was concluded, on the eighth day of September, very little remained of Jerusalem to indicate that a great city had once stood there.
This is why Jesus weeps in today’s Gospel. But the kindling of God’s judgment on the city was lit centuries earlier. The prophet Jeremiah was given this Word from God to preach at the entrance to the temple: “Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’”
Those words, “The temple of the LORD!” were deceptive because they trusted in the rituals of the temple without fear of the God of the temple – YHWH, the LORD. They were doing temple things, but had no repentance. They willfully broke the Commandments – stealing, harming their neighbor, engaging in sexual impurity – and then came to the Lord’s house as though none of that mattered!
Is there a counterpart to that today? We could call it “sacramental hypocrisy.” It is when outward Christians become convinced that their sinful lifestyle makes little difference, as long as they have been baptized and are at least occasionally “doing” the Lord’s Supper. Do not trust in these lying words, “The baptism of the Lord!” or, “The Table of the Lord!” or, “The liturgy of the Lord!” Will you go on in your selfishness, your sexual dalliances, your lies, and then come to this house and say, “I am delivered to do all these abominations”? May it never be!
Does this mean that the temple of the LORD meant nothing? By no means. Does it mean that Baptism and the Table of the LORD are unimportant? God forbid! But the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit – a broken and a contrite heart, these God will not despise. The key to temple worship, the important thing about using God’s sacramental gifts is an attitude of repentance – repentance that is not merely a one-time act but a lifelong attitude. That repentance is the “sacrifice” we offer to God in our worship.
To come to the temple with sacrifices, or to come to the Lord’s Table, without repentance, is to commit robbery, an attempt to steal the things of God. When such behavior continues year after year, then finally judgment comes. Today Jesus, on the cusp of His crucifixion, sees the judgment that will come on the city of Jerusalem, and He weeps. Isn’t that an amazing testament to our Lord’s compassion? Jesus knows the evil that this city is about to commit against Him, the horrific crimes they will commit against Him as He is scourged and slashed. But instead of longing for their destruction, He weeps over it.
This demonstrates the mind God has toward us sinners. He wishes for us to know and receive the things that make for our peace, even while we are rejecting them. But although the Lord weeps, about forty years later His patience comes to an end, and Jerusalem is destroyed. Judgment for us is likewise coming, and we must repent while there is time.
Jerusalem was destroyed for not recognizing the time of their visitation, that Messiah had come, the promised Savior had come, the God-man Jesus. We who have heard the preaching of the Gospel, who have received the gifts of the temple – will the same fate befall us?
Why was the Jerusalem temple destroyed? For judgment, to be sure. But there is a more important reason why the Jerusalem temple was destroyed, has not been and never will be rebuilt: because it is no longer needed. The temple housed the glory of God. There God met with His people, announced His peace, gave them His forgiveness. There the glory of God dwelt.
When God became man, when the Second Person of the blessed Trinity took on our human nature, there was the glory of God, there was the dwelling of God. That is why St. John writes in his gospel, “The Word became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled, set up His temple] among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” That is why Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it” – for He spoke of the temple of His body. That is why the veil of the temple was torn at the crucifixion – and the Scripture explains that the true veil, the curtain into the Holy of Holies, is the flesh of Jesus. Jesus is the new temple, because in Jesus the fulness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form.
So considering the destruction of the temple, listen to this glorious prophecy in the book of Amos: “On that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, and repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, and rebuild it” [9.11]. The temple was destroyed in Jesus, as He was pierced and pummeled, and on the cross made a whole burnt offering, and a sin offering. He was slain as our Passover Lamb and made to be our peace offering, and on the third day the Father raised Him up, raising up the tabernacle of David. In Jesus, the damage done to the human race in the fall is repaired. In Jesus, the ruins of our nature are raised up. By our baptism into Him, and our continuing in communion with Him, we are being rebuilt.
So we need not journey to a far and distant land to find a holy place. We need not pine for a rebuilt temple. The temple is where Christ is. And Christ is where His Church is, the place where the Word is preached and the Sacraments are administered as He instituted them.
Now under the old Testament, in the tabernacle and finally the Jerusalem Temple, most of the sacrifices were eaten by the priests – the bread and the wine, and the body of the animals. The one sacrifice in which the people participated directly was called the peace offering. The peace offering was not a sacrifice to make peace; God instituted it as a declaration of and participation in the peaceful communion that exists between God and His people.
When the priests and people became corrupt and full of hypocrisy, doing the rituals God established without paying attention to the Words God said, the Lord accused them of saying, “Peace, peace” when there was no peace. Today Jesus says, “If you had known the things that make for your peace.” Christ Jesus, you see, was sent to be the peace offering, establishing communion between God and man. That is why, when Jesus was born, the holy angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good-will toward men.” And when Jesus was brought to the Temple for the rite of Presentation, Simeon said, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy Word.” I learned an amazing thing this past week: the word “salvation” was a term often used for the Jewish peace offering. So, when Simeon continues, “For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation,” we could just as well translate it, “peace offering.” There is Simeon, holding the newborn Jesus in his arms, saying, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace … for mine eyes have seen Thy Peace Offering” – Jesus is our peace offering; He is what makes for our peace!
So now, the only thing for us to do is what the people in today’s gospel did: hanging on Jesus’ words, attentive to hear Him. And the reason why God has given each of us in the church various gifts, as we heard in the Epistle, is to lead and help others say, “Jesus is Lord,” to recognize Jesus as our peace offering. God the Holy Trinity has given each of us different gifts, but all for the same purpose: to build up the Church as a living temple, a place where the praise of God rings out every day and week, and where people are sent out into the world to show forth the love of God in everything we do and say.
So what should we take away from today’s Bible readings? Know what makes for your Peace: Jesus, the Peace Offering! Receive the things that make for your peace: this Eucharist, the New Testament Peace Offering by which God Himself communes with you, and you with Him, and you receive His never-ending peace now, and the promise of your resurrected body on the Last Day.
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