The Lament that Leads to Liberation

When Jesus approached Jerusalem for the final time, he wept bitterly over the city's spiritual blindness. His tears weren't for himself but for people who missed the peace he offered because they were consumed with politics, religion, and power. This prophetic lament came true when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, exactly as Jesus predicted. His example teaches us to feel deeply about brokenness, identify what's missing in our world, and move beyond tears into redemptive action. Like Jesus, we must walk toward pain and injustice to bring healing and peace.

Transcript

This morning, if you have your Bibles, I'd like to invite you to open them up to the book of Luke. It's in the New Testament. We're going to start in Luke 19. And we're only going to read a very short pericope this morning. Everybody say the word pericope.

Okay, let's try again. Everybody say the word pericope. So pericope is a word that means a short section of scripture. Pericope. Okay.

Did you learn that today? It's spelled like pericope. Pericope. All right, so this comes to us from the book of Luke, chapter 19, verses 41 through 44. If you don't have your Bibles this morning, you can follow along on the screen.

But here is the word of the Lord for us this morning. 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.

So let me ask you some questions this morning, and these are rhetorical. You don't need to say anything out loud. But when was the last time you cried because something absolutely broke your heart? Not because you got a cut, not because you were hurt, but because you had a wound of the heart where your heart was broken? Maybe it was a news story about the wars being raged in our world?

Was it a murder of children in America due to gun violence? Was it the divisiveness of our nation? Was it because of a broken relationship, a diagnosis, the loss of a job? Are there things in this world that are so tragic you just feel too powerless to fix?

So the he that scripture is talking about this morning is Jesus. And that is exactly right where we find Jesus as he's journeying on toward Jerusalem. And if you know where we are in Scripture, Luke 19 is when Jesus is moving toward Jerusalem and the end of his own life there in Jerusalem, he know he's going to be crucified. And in this moment, outside the city, as he's looking over the city, he's not angry, he's not frustrated. Jesus is crying because he's heartbroken.

So let's dive into Luke 19, and we're going to start with just verses 41 and 42. So we can kind of begin to get a better understanding of the heart of God as revealed in the Scripture. So Jesus is approaching Jerusalem, and he saw the city, and it says he wept over it and said, if you even you had only known in this day what would bring you peace. But now it's hidden from your eyes. So the story that we're launching into this morning comes right after some more recognizable stories that I think many of us in here would know.

Luke chapter 19 starts with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, but he's going through Jericho. And there in Jericho, he meets a man by the name of Zacchaeus. Does that sound familiar?

I want to hear something in here today. Does that sound familiar? Okay. All right. So I'm sure that many of us in here know who Zacchaeus is.

And we know that in Jericho, the life change that Zacchaeus has when he has an encounter with Jesus. Jesus calls this tiny little man down out of the sycamore fig tree and says, hey, Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house and we're going to have dinner. And just in that moment, as Jesus calls Zacchaeus out of the tree and Zacchaeus hops down, in that very moment, Zacchaeus was prompted to repent of his sin. And he promised that he would no longer cheat people and pay back in that moment, four times anything that he had ever stolen. The story in Luke at the beginning there ends in verse 10 when Jesus confesses that he came to seek and to save the lost.

From that story, we move right into the next one in Luke, where Jesus teaches those around him using a parable of the 10 Minas. So this is a parable about a nobleman who goes away to be made king. Before leaving, he entrusts his servants with money, and he instructs them to invest it. Find a way to increase what I've given you. Upon his return, he rewards those who were faithfully productive, but he condemns one particular servant who did nothing with his mina out of fear.

Meanwhile, those who rejected his kingship, his kingship, faced judgment. And right after this teaching, Jesus is moving toward his final approach to Jerusalem. On his way into Jerusalem, he sends to his disciples, hey, there's a town ahead of us. You'll find a cult there, a cult of a donkey. Go bring it back, and I'll ride into the city on this.

And this fulfills this prophetic imagery of Jesus as a humble king arriving to the city of Jerusalem in peace. And he rides on toward Jerusalem, and as he does. The crowd of disciples recognize this kind of prophetic imagery that Jesus is fulfilling on this cult. And they begin to praise him. Jesus, you have healed so many.

You've done such great things. The kingdom of God is here in you. And they're worshiping and they're singing and they're excited. Scripture says that they laid their cloaks on the road, offering Jesus this kind of royal welcome. And again, I want to remind you, we are still outside of the city of Jerusalem.

So this is not the Palm Sunday story that we've heard. This is a little bit before that.

But it's similar. And just like on that Palm Sunday, not everyone who was there was pleased. The Pharisees look at Jesus and they say, hey, tell your disciples to knock that off. We don't. We don't want that here.

You are not the king. That's not how this is going to work. Tell them to be quiet and respectful as they enter the city. And then the scene ends with Jesus proclaiming to his disciples, proclaiming to the Pharisees that if this crowd around him was silenced, even the rocks would cry out in praise of who Jesus is. So all of that is a context that's surrounding our story this morning.

And then we see Jesus looking at Jerusalem. He's off in the distance. And in that moment, Scripture starts out by saying Jesus weeps over the city. Something in that moment breaks his heart. But why the tears?

Right? It's clear that Jesus is not weeping over his own coming death. Jesus knows what's going to happen, right? Jesus has known since the beginning. If we believe that Jesus is God omniscient, right?

But his words don't indicate that he's fearful of what's to come. There's something else. It's not about him. It's something else that's happening. The way that scripture presents it is that he's crying for the city, for the people in the city, for the missed opportunity.

He says, if you even you had only known what would bring you peace.

But the people inside the city walls had no idea what they were missing. They were too busy with politics, with religion, with power, with pride. The people inside the city of Jerusalem were blind spiritually. Jesus was coming into the city to fulfill God's purpose for all of us. But the people in Jerusalem who had a front row seat to God's saving grace, they were going to miss every bit of it.

And that moment, that realization for Jesus is what broke his heart. The true, lasting peace that Jesus offers slipped right through their fingers. And Jesus knew it was going to happen. So we're going to learn a little more Greek today. I've really enjoyed diving into the Greek because I'm a nerd.

It's fine. The word used to talk about Jesus, tears. Here is the Greek word eklausan. Can you say eklausan?

I'll let that one slide. So this word eklausan is the Greek word that has the same. It's the same word that's used to described. It's used to describe Peter, as Peter recognizes, as the cock crowed that morning after Jesus death, that he has denied Jesus three times. And then Peter begins to weep bitterly.

This word ecclausan indicates more than just crying. It's bitter, it's violent. It's a lament, not just a sadness. So lament means to mourn aloud, to express sorrow or regret in a demonstrative way. Right.

You are really, really crying. When a person is lamenting, they are telling the world with loud tears exactly how they feel. Many of the ancient prophets used words of lament to try to convince God's people when they were falling away from God. As a matter of fact, Jeremiah is the namesake of the book of Jeremiah. And he is often referred to as the weeping prophet due to how often he openly laments the state of his Jewish brothers and sisters.

He uses words like this, found in Jeremiah 9:1 O Levi. There you go. All right. Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears. I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.

Did you know there's a book in the Bible called Lamentations? Yeah. So it's all about lamenting, Right? And here it is in Lamentations 1:16. This is why I weep.

And my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit.

There are many places in scripture where prophets, priests, and even Jesus lament what's happening all around them. And lament is different than just a simple grief. Grief says, I've lost something. Lament says, this didn't have to happen this way.

And here in Luke is, Jesus is approaching the city of Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jewish people, where their temple is where they worship their God. Jesus is lamenting the ignorance of all those who don't receive what he has to offer. And they don't see the irony here that through the hundreds of years that they have worshiped in this city, through the hundreds of years that they have cried out for God to send them a deliverer, the deliverer is coming in Jesus.

Jesus, we believe, is God made flesh and he's coming to heal his people. And Jesus is doing all of this knowing that he's going to be rejected.

To be clear, Jesus is not crying in this moment because he's weak, because he's overly emotional. He cries because he sees the truth and no one else can see it.

Jesus sees the people or sorry, the systems that crush his people. Jesus sees religion that excludes. He sees the leaders who love control and power more than compassion. He sees the people being taken advantage of. He sees widows who feel like they have no other alternatives to provide for their fatherless children except through the sale of their bodies.

He sees the orphans who have nothing, so they resort to stealing food in order to survive. Jesus knows that within the city walls there are people taking advantage of those who are on the brink of losing everything. And it breaks Jesus heart. And so Jesus laments, it does not have to be this way.

This is the kind of grief that leads to action. Because lament is never just passive, it's also prophetic. Jesus weeps not because he's weak, but because peace was so close. It was within reach and we missed it.

Then scripture moves on in Luke 19 and Jesus. Jesus then begins to prophesy over the city of Jerusalem. It says this in verses 43 and 44. 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 of God's coming to you.

These words, friends, are awful, right? And the hard part is that these words would actually come to pass not long after Jesus was resurrected. Judea, the place where Jerusalem was located, was under Roman rule. I think everybody knows that at this point during Jesus life and after Jesus life, resentment was boiling over due to the heavy taxation from the Romans. There was religious oppression and there was constant political instability.

It just seemed like ruler after ruler became more and more violent to impress the Roman Emperor. And the Jewish people eventually just had enough. And so it was the year 66 that a full scale revolt break out over all of Judea against their Roman oppressors. This became known as the first Jewish Roman war. That revolt eventually spread into Jerusalem.

And as the Jews overpowered the Romans there stationed within the city, they actually declared a state of independence from their Roman occupiers. But it didn't last long. As a result of this Jewish uprising, the Roman emperor Nero sent Vespian. Sorry, Vespasian, to crush the rebellion and to take back all the cities in Judea that had been lost to the Jewish rebels. Vespasian began in Galilee and then systematically went all the way around Judea, reclaiming Jewish cities for Rome.

And as he did so, he slaughtered and enslaved many of those who rebelled against their emperor. And then it was in the year 70 CE that the Roman legions encircled the city of Jerusalem. And it was during the celebration of Passover, one of the Jews most important religious holidays. To capture the city, they built literal embankments and siege ramps. The Romans besieged the city for so long that there developed an infighting among the Jews inside.

Trapped in Jerusalem, the city was being ravaged. There was no food, not enough water. And eventually the city fell. After breaching the walls of the city, the Romans destroyed everything, and I mean everything in that city.

The Jewish Roman historian Josephus records that over a million people died. And the temple was burned to the ground and completely leveled. Everything that Jesus had prophesied came to pass. Embankments were built. Jerusalem was in fact, encircled by her enemies.

The people of the city were dashed to the ground. There was not one stone laid upon another that was left in the temple. There's even stories about how they burnt the temple before they destroyed it so that they could capture all the gold. They burn it at such a high heat, all the gold that was in the roof and around the top of the temple began to run down the walls. And the Romans began to collect all that gold.

After the temple was destroyed, the city of Jerusalem had rejected its Messiah. And the consequences were both physical and spiritual. God came to the Jews in Jerusalem, and they did not truly recognize him for who and what he was.

There's a lot in this scripture that we don't get as we just read through.

So what are we supposed to do as we see this emotion of Jesus? Break through this scripture this morning. What are we supposed to do with the tears that Jesus wept over his city?

Well, I'll tell you this. I think there should be times when we feel what Jesus feels again. Jesus didn't weep because he was weak. He didn't weep because he was frail. He wept because he loved so deeply.

His lament over Jerusalem wasn't just a simple emotion. What Jesus expressed on that day on the road to one of the most important cities in all of the ancient world. For Jewish people, it was a prophetic grief that was born from a divine intimacy that Jesus wanted to bring to his people. He saw the city's beauty. He remembered its incredible history and its calling to be the center of Jewish worship.

But in that moment, he also recognized its blindness. And he felt all of it. And it was heavy.

The same happens to us today if we pay attention to the city around us. And that might be the city of Tulsa, it might be Broken Arrow or Jinx. Whatever city you're a part of. Friends, oftentimes we are spiritually blind to the needs of people right around us. Come on, Denise.

This example of Jesus reminds us that we shouldn't always rush past Lament. That lament serves a purpose. Sometimes we have to just sit in our emotions, right? We live in a culture today that tries to do everything we possibly can to avoid pain. We numb discomfort, and then we rush to resolution.

But Jesus took the time to stop on his way into Jerusalem and to weep. To give this moment the intensity that it needed. He paused to respond emotionally to what he was feeling. And sometimes we too have to just pause. Sometimes we have to let the silence speak for us.

If Jesus could weep over a city that he loved and that he knew was going to reject him, what does that mean for us? To weep over the brokenness that we find in our own cities where we come from?

Friends, it is okay for us to let our hearts break for what breaks the heart of God.

But then we're invited to play a role in healing that brokenness. Just as Jesus played a role in healing the brokenness of the world through the acts that he committed there in Jerusalem.

Sometimes we're also going to have to name the peace that's missing. Jesus didn't just weep in this moment. He diagnosed. He says, if only you knew what would bring you peace. You did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.

Jesus isn't just acting on a vague sadness. Here he is lamenting the root of a missed opportunity. The Jewish people for hundreds of years have said, we want a Messiah. We want a Savior. We want to have our God be brought near to us.

They begged for it for hundreds of years. And when that Savior shows up, they say, no, we don't want you. We want someone else. We want a mighty king and a warrior. This humble servant stuff I'm not a fan of.

And so they reject Jesus, the Prince of Peace. They wanted victory, but refused vulnerability. They desired change, but they refused to be transformed by the words and deeds of God lived out in Jesus.

So do we still do that today?

I think we do. We've recently seen the ways that we foul Everything up when we rely on our human condition to push against what we see as wrong. In these last weeks, we've seen political assassinations. We've seen the weaponizing of the judicial branch against political enemies. We've seen our own military be used as peacekeepers in our own cities against unarmed protesters.

We again do not recognize the transformation that God is calling us to through the example of Jesus. And I think all of these events are worth weeping over. The things that we are experiencing in our world today would break Jesus heart. I want to remind you this is not a political issue. This is not a right versus left.

This is a. We don't get the Jesus of the Gospels anymore.

So where in our world today have we been guilty of trading peace for pride?

Have we chosen being right over being reconciled? Have we clung to control instead of surrendering to God's grace? Have we built walls of self protection instead of bridges of compassion? I think, yes. Where have we ignored the way of Jesus in our world today?

Remember, Jesus came lowly riding on the colt of a donkey. He didn't come riding a war horse. He offered peace through mercy, not peace through dominance. He called for repentance, not applause.

What parts of Jesus way have we resisted? Because they're too costly, too quiet, too slow.

Friends, we have to be the people. That lament leads to mission. Jesus didn't stop at the tears, right? Oh, Jerusalem, it sucks. And then turn around and go the other way, right?

He wept, yes, but then he kept writing toward betrayal, toward suffering, toward rejection, toward the cross. His lament wasn't a dead end. It was a doorway to redemptive action.

Jesus's grief over Jerusalem didn't paralyze him. It propelled him. It pushed him into the calling that he had on his life. He didn't retreat from the rejection. He leaned into it with his love.

He didn't curse the city. He chose to carry its sins. Our grief should move us today toward healing, toward justice, towards restoration. If we truly feel what Jesus feels and we name what's broken in our world, then we must do something about those places of brokenness.

So friends, it's time for us to recognize the things in our lives that we feel weigh on us. What injustice breaks your heart and what are you doing about it? Who in your life is spiritually blind that needs to know the love of Jesus? And how are you showing them the way? Where is peace missing?

And how are you becoming a peacemaker? What do you see in Tulsa that would make Jesus weep today? Or broken Arrow? Or jinx or wherever the heck Kim and Kyle live. Whatever city that's in.

What is it? Yeah, I don't believe it. That's not a thing. Ramona Church There is so much brokenness in our world. And I believe that if we are to be the Christ Church that He's calling us to be, then we are called to work towards fixing those places of brokenness.

We can't be content to just recognize those things and say, oh, man, those are awful, and weep over them. We. We are called to ride in and work towards fixing them. And it's not easy, and it can't be done on our own. We all have to be involved because Jesus continued on toward the city.

We are called to step into the places in the world that are broken today, too. We can't just name the places where people have missed peace. We have to become messengers of that peace. We have to be bringers of peace.

Jesus walked toward the cross in Jerusalem so that resurrection could come. We have to walk toward pain, injustice, and the spiritual needs of others. Not because we're strong, but because we've been missioned and commissioned to do it. We are sent by Jesus to be his hands and feet at work in the world around us.

We follow the weeping King into the world that he loves. Because lament is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of liberation. It's the moment when we stop pretending that everything's fine and we start to begin to build something better. Church, let's build something better together.

Amen. Let's pray.