Jesus Weeps

There are two times that Jesus is recorded weeping in the Scriptures. Once as he stands at the tomb of his good friend Lazarus, lamenting the loss of his friend and face to face with the specter of grave.^[1]I preached a sermon I am particularly proud of on this text here. The second time is found upon his entry to Jerusalem. The last week before he is crucified, Jesus enters the city riding on a colt. The people welcome him as a conquering hero. You see, in their minds the fact that he’s riding a colt is a minor detail. They all have heard about this Jesus, the miracle worker who may even be God’s Messiah, the anointed one who would finally bring about the judgment of God upon the Romans. The people want bloody revolution, they want a fight and here, finally, is one who might be God’s chosen instrument in bringing victory and vindication. Sure, they’d like their king to be on a stallion, standing tall above the crowds on a stately horse, but maybe, they ventured, all he could find was a a colt. For the writers of the gospels, however, Jesus’ chosen vehicle, the colt, is not an ancillary curiosity but expresses the very point of the story. The fact that he is not on a war horse tells us everything about what he says as he stands far off from the city crying over its coming fate:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, ⁴² saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.

The Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans

Approximately 40 years from Jesus’ fateful ride into Jerusalem, the war horses will come. Except they won’t be carrying the Messiah, they will be mounted by Roman generals leading legions of Roman soldiers to march upon Jerusalem. The people of Israel will gear up for war thinking this is a battle like the days of old when their own generals went by the names of Joshua and David. In days of old God would speak to the leaders of Israel before the battle, commanding them to be faithful in order to ensure victory. The problem in this instance is that God has already spoken, in fact he came himself to speak, and he what he said to the people staring down the barrel of the Roman gladius is simple, “Run, don’t fight.” But as Jesus foretold, they missed that word and thus they fight. They fight because that’s the only way they can envision conquering. They fight because they think that’s what God wants them to do.

And they lose. They lose everything. Josephus, a Jewish historian on the Roman payroll, records the horrors visited upon the Jewish people because they try to resist the Romans. What he describes is a literal hell on earth. He describes the utter desperation of the city’s inhabitants, dying of starvation, the most chilling tale being that of Mary, a woman who kills, cooks, and eats her own son.^[2]See Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews Like, I said, hell.

Hell On Earth

Hell is the one place in all of the universe where God is absent. In hell, there is no love, hope, justice.  As humans, we have seen the sorts of hells on earth throughout our history due to human hatred. This hatred is fueled by a myopic will to power a completed inability to see the humanity or at least a ready willingness to dismiss it. Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

The suggestion that we arm every corner of society to the teeth sounds, to me, like hell: a complete failure of the imagination. If all we can envision in a world fraught with violence is having more people equipped to return fire, we have lost both our minds and our way. For Christians, the notion is particularly absurd. Jesus showed us that the only way to undo violence is to exhaust its power in self-giving love. When Jesus gave his life on the cross, the devil actually thought he had won. The devil, caretaker of hell that he is, is bereft of imagination. The devil colluded with the powers of the world—human sin, religious systems, political empires—to crucify the son of God. But because he was unfamiliar with what C.S. Lewis called “the deep magic”, because he lacked imagination, he could not conceive that in giving his life completely, Jesus was making a show of these powers, disarming them, nailing them to a cross.^[3]Colossians 2v14

Hell is the place where nothing new can be imagined —a world that trades eyes for eyes, a world that says the answer to America’s gun problem is more and more guns.

Imagining A New Day

The Scriptures envision a day where weapons of warfare will be melted down into tools for farming. ^[4]Isaiah 2:4What if every Christian responded like this guy, who though he loves to shoot his gun and would never use it to purposefully hurt anyone, decided to part with it?

Sure we would be more vulnerable in a sense, but well, isn’t that kind of the point of our faith? In embracing weakness, absorbing violence, turning the other cheek, and praying for those who persecute us we are not conquered but conquer through the love of God. As John writes to the church:

For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.^[5]1 John 5:4

We were in hell, dead in our sins, nothing new was possible until our Savior, in a profound act of imagination, liberated the world not by conquering, not by fighting, not by demanding but by laying down his life. Jesus showed us the only way to peace is a cross. He invites us to imagine our own lives completely shaped by his, carrying our crosses and following him. May we as the church imagine a new way way, grace and peace to you.

In the Old Testament, few gods other than YHWH (the name of the Israelite God) warrant mention.  The Old Testament witness is univocal in its condemnation of idolatry but usually these alt-deities are lumped into categories, “gods” or “idols.”  However, there are a few pagan objects of worship that warrant mention by name because of their particular allure to the covenant people.  Among those specifically referenced are Baal, the chief god of Canaanite cult, Asherah, the mother goddess of Canaanite and Babylonian origin, and Molech, a Canaanite god notorious for commanding human sacrifice.^[1]Mentioned by name in Lev. 18:21; 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:10; Isa. 57:9; Jer. 32:35   The nation of Israel was not like our own consumerist culture looking for the flashiest spiritual fads or the latest most “relevant” message to allow a person to be their best self.  Rather, these deities were much like the political parties of the ancient world.  The idols named in the Old Testament came with promises attached to them.  Deities promised fertility, harvests, victory in battle, all it required was the devotion of the worshipper.  For the most part, these idols were a part of a pantheon of divinity and thus did not require the sole devotion of its members.  YHWH seems to be unique in this regard.  The OT writers go to great lengths to display differences between the way of YHWH, the way of holiness, justice, and mercy with the way of the idols, who seek to divert Israel’s gaze away from YHWH and are powerless to bring about blessing of provision they promise. The psalmist in Ps. 106 reflects:

35 but they mingled with the nations and learned to do as they did. 36 They served their idols, which became a snare to them. 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood. 39 Thus they became unclean by their acts, and prostituted themselves in their doings.

The psalmist describes his own heritage of faith, a history of idolaters.   Often in the course of its idolatry, the nation of Israel does not explicitly give up on faith in YHWH.   They simply try to mix it with faith in idols.  While YHWH forbids any image trying to capture the essence of who he is, the pagan cults allowed for gods that you can see.  There is something alluring about an idol, about a god you can hold in your hand, a god that promises to get things done for you no matter the cost.  YHWH demanded unflinching, singular devotion but the pagan idols let you have your religion a la carte—a little YHWH, a little fertility goddess.  It’s all very pragmatic.

We live in a bleeding world.  On the whole, America in 2018 is violent, hostile, embittered, and divided.  Schools, concerts, and churches have all become shooting galleries of horror and devastation.^[2]I write this in wake of the horrible devastation in Parkland but unfortunately, I know this content will be evergreen, not needing one event as its referent  I am not sure if a world in the throes of sin and idolatry can evince itself as anything other.  But here’s my fear.  When I survey the world that is hostile to God—the world that in John 3:16, God loves so much that he gives his Son for them— and the world of the white evangelical church in America.^[3]I think it is important, in this instance, to distinguish this particular segment of the larger evangelical church as the majority of our Black, Latino-American, Asian-American and Native American … Continue reading, I do not see the kind of difference I would expect. What I see, instead, is a church that is trying to combine a small understanding of devotion to God with fervent devotion to political entities and thus both literally and figuratively is sacrificing its sons and daughters at the altar of the idols.  The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.  In large part, the white evangelical church has blindly supported a political agenda that, in the face of heinous acts of mass murder, essentially shrugs and says, “the blood that was shed is the price of upholding the 2nd Amendment.”  Sounds a lot like sacrifice, does it not?

The loss of life is unspeakable, but as horrible as that result it, it is not the only consequence. Not only do the lives of the innocent suffer but future generations face the consequences of our lack of faithfulness.  The white evangelical church in America is shrinking^[4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/15/white-christian-america-is-dying/?utm_term=.9aa7d1395c5f because it has forsaken its witness in the face of political pragmatism.  It remains to be seen what effect that this will have on the wider church in America.  I tend to think a new kind of evangelicalism will rise from the ashes, led by minority leaders and female voices that are already emerging, but that hope does not stopping me from  lamenting over the church of my own cultural heritage, weeping because we do not know the things that make for peace.

The church, in not modeling the peaceful way of Jesus, is aiding and abetting the proliferation of weapons of indiscriminate murder in America.

It is possible to be love America and to love Jesus.  But we can only learn to love America rightly by loving Jesus fully.   Anything less than the God revealed in Jesus is an idol.  Both God and the idols demand sacrifice.  There will be blood. Will we continue to sacrifice the blood of the innocent to our idols of political relevance or will we cling to the blood of Jesus shed on behalf of the world to make peace?  Will we give up our American rights and embrace our God-given mission of peace and mercy?   Either we will sacrifice the blood of the innocent and our witness along with it or we will offer our bodies as living sacrifices, burning with the love and beauty of our God.