Christian Art | Jesus Wept For The Destruction Of Jerusalem
Luke 19: 41-44 – Week 33 Ordinary Time, Thursday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
41 ¶ And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,
42 Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
43 For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side,
44 And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.
Jesus is so very sorry for a city and a people he loves that he must weep at the sight of Jerusalem. Here is the centre of Jewish faith, while the Jews are the people to whom he has directed most of his teaching, and they are the first chosen people of God.
There is such tragedy here. Peace could be so very attainable, if only they knew and could accept the ways of living at peace, but they cannot. Nor are they alive to presence of Jesus among them. It seems inevitable: just as prophets of old were rejected, so too will Jesus be.
Jesus foretells the Jewish revolt and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. He has tried to instil in his Jewish listeners an ethos of peace and humility, together with an entirely new notion of the Kingdom of God. He has taught an end to pride and sectarian rivalries. He has told his listeners to give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God’s what is God’s – a kind of separation of church and state, of the religious from the secular.
The memory of the Maccabean revolt has, though, lingered in Jewish consciousness, and pride renders the Roman subjection intolerable. Some Jews are going to rebel. There will be infighting, the rebellion will be crushed, and the Temple razed, never to be rebuilt, and there will be great bloodshed. The Jewish faith will be forced to change, to reconstruct itself in new ways, and Christianity also will be affected: while the Christians actually flee Jerusalem during the rebellion, the loss of the Temple marks a diminishing of Jewish Christianity – of the church first led in Jerusalem by James the brother of Jesus – such that henceforth a Pauline Christianity will predominate, including converts of the diaspora but also strongly geared to Gentiles.
Christ’s is an emotional, human response to this great tangle of history. We might find ourselves alerted in these verses to just why it is that Christ’s offering of himself as the sacrificial lamb must be here in Jerusalem. It seems the whole of salvation history is gathered together here at this nexus point. It seems good also, that rising above the upheaval, there is the overarching figure of the cross, victorious, all-conquering, eternal.
See also: Jesus Wept | Death And Resurrection Of Lazarus | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ | Humanity Of Jesus
BY the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. (Psalm 137)
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
Jesus Wept Meaning For The Destruction Of Jerusalem
Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, as he foretells its destruction at the hands of the Romans. This event is significant not only for its historical context but also for its theological and spiritual implications.
Elsewhere in the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew speaks too of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, which would occur in AD 70, and the signs of the end times that would precede it. In Matthew 24:3-8, Jesus’ disciples ask Jesus about the signs of his second coming and the end of the age. Jesus responds by speaking of wars, famines, earthquakes, and other disasters as the birth pangs of a new age, which would culminate in the coming of the Son of Man.
Similarly, the book of Revelation depicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple as a sign of God’s judgment upon the world, and the beginning of a new era of salvation. In Revelation 11:1-2, John is told to measure the Temple in Jerusalem, but to leave out the outer court, which has been given over to the Gentiles. This symbolizes the fact that the Temple, and by extension, the entire city of Jerusalem, is about to be desolated by its enemies.
However, the destruction of Jerusalem is not just a historical event in the Bible; it also holds spiritual and theological significance. It speaks to the consequences of disobedience and rebellion against God’s ways, as well as the compassion and love of God for His people, even in the face of their rejection of Him.
In Luke 19:41-44, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem because he knows the devastation that will befall its people. Jesus speaks of the siege that will come upon the city, the destruction of the temple, and the slaughter of its inhabitants. Jesus laments the fact that they did not recognize the time of their visitation, when the Messiah had come to them. This weeping is a profound expression of Jesus’ love and compassion for his people, even in the face of their rebellion.
Throughout the Bible, we see the consequences of disobedience and rebellion against God’s ways. The prophets of the Old Testament warned of God’s judgment upon Israel if they continued to disobey his commandments. The prophet Jeremiah spoke extensively about the impending destruction of Jerusalem, which was ultimately fulfilled in 587 BC when the Babylonians conquered the city and destroyed the Temple. Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, as well as the restoration that would come after the exile.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Saint Paul speaks of the consequences of sin and disobedience in his letters. In Romans 6:23, Saint Paul writes: ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ This verse underscores the importance of recognizing our sinfulness and turning to Christ for salvation. Similarly, in Galatians 6:7-8, Saint Paul warns that ‘a man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life’. In these passages and others, Saint Paul emphasizes the reality of judgment and the importance of repentance and faith in Christ for salvation.
Pope Francis has said: ‘Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, because it had not recognized the time of its visitation. We too, Lord, we too have not recognized it, your visit among us.’ Pope Francis highlights the continuing relevance of Jesus’ tears for people today. Pope Francis is emphasizing that we must recognize the signs of God’s presence in our lives and respond accordingly, turning away from sin and embracing the message of salvation that Jesus brings. Just as Jerusalem failed to recognize its opportunity for redemption, so too we can miss the opportunity to receive God’s grace and mercy if we are not vigilant and attentive to His presence in our lives. The weeping of Jesus over Jerusalem is a call to repentance and a reminder of the urgency of turning to Jesus in faith, trusting in Jesus’ love and mercy.
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
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The Christians living in Jerusalem wanted no part of the Jewish Rebellion and, remembering Jesus’ prophecy, fled Jerusalem as the Romans advanced. They avoided the slaughter, and for this there arose enmity between Christians and those Jews who adhered to the old Law. There was a parting of the ways. The Jews went to rebuild their religion, led by the Pharisees and along exclusive lines, never more to be centred on Temple worship. The Jewish Christian Church which had been in Jerusalem waned – the Temple had been of great importance to Jerusalem Christians also. Henceforth, the Church would become more and more of the Gentiles [ … ]
