Homily For The Tenth Sunday after Trinity 2026
Today, we will be focused primarily on our Gospel, which is found toward the end of St. Luke’s Gospel in Chapter 19, which begins the narrative surrounding Holy Week leading up to Good Friday. St. Luke tells us of Jesus coming to “the city,” that is the Holy City-Jerusalem, Zion. For Israel, there was no holier place. It was the holy city for the Jews and one of the great cities of the ancient world. Pliny the Elder described Jerusalem as “by far the most renowned city of the ancient East”. We should note that Jesus came as often as he could, given the distance and his relative poverty, to Jerusalem. For our Lord, even from youth, loved to be near the Temple and the Royal City of David.
As Jesus comes to the city, as he is going up to Jerusalem to offer himself for our sins, the road from Jericho up to Jerusalem presents a glorious vista, which would normally evoke awe and wonder in those coming to Zion. Keep in mind this is Palm Sunday.
It will be filled with all the complex emotions of the crowds, for Jesus is the Messiah and it is proper for all the crowds to cry, “Hosanna!”, for Jesus said the rocks would cry out if he silenced his disciples, the masses of people. What should be a jubilant entry, we read instead, is marked by the tears of Christ weeping at the sight of Jerusalem. It is worth noting that this is the only time in St. Luke’s Gospel that we read of Jesus weeping. The other reference is in St. John’s Gospel and the shortest verse in the English bible where Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus. He weeps over the sorrow of Mary, Martha and the crowds of mourners, even as He Himself is preparing to raise Lazarus from the dead. The weeping in our Gospel for today is categorically different because it is a completely different word in the Greek that often carries with it the sense of audible, intense weeping or lament. Certainly, he laments, weeps and wails for the hard-heartedness of his people, indeed, the stubbornness and fickleness of those He came to save.
The lament also carries with it a connection to the weeping prophet, Jeremiah, the author of our Old Testament Lesson for today. There, Jeremiah is instructed by the Lord to stand in the Temple court and prophesy against the temple and the holy city if the people continue in their spiritual rebellion. God promises to make the Temple “like that of Shiloh’ and will make Jerusalem a curse to all the nations of the earth. Instead of repenting, we read that the priests, princes and the people of Jerusalem wanted Jeremiah put to death for telling them the truth of God’s judgment for unrepentant sins. It wasn’t an immediate destruction, but some 25 years after Jeremiah’s prophecy in Chapter 26 the Babylonians destroyed the Temple, making it like Shiloh in that God’s glory had departed with its destruction. Jerusalem was a byword of what happened to those who resisted the power of Babylon - a curse despite all its former glory. All the splendor of David and Solomon was ruined.
Now Jesus is weeping over their rebellion. We see in our Lord’s tears a desire for reconciliation - a love for sinners despite their hatred of their Creator. Their hearts are full of ignorance and rebellion. Ignorance of the true intention of Christ’s kingdom and in complete resistance to the true Messiah. Instead, the varied opposition in Jerusalem had in mind a particular type of Messiah that they wanted. Our Lord’s opponents wanted a Messiah in their own image. For the liberals, the Sadducees, they wanted a Messiah who would cast away the old ways. The Messiah they imagined didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, and he made compromises with the pagan culture. He would have been accommodating. The Pharisees wanted a different type of Messiah - the ultimate conservative. One who would take the Law of Moses seriously. This Messiah would enforce the expansive religious code that the scribes and Pharisees built around the core of the Law. He would be tough on vice - truly alienate all who did not take the Law seriously, who didn’t take the Sabbath seriously.
Instead of finding what they wanted, both the liberals and the conservatives were so irritated, so committed to destroying Jesus that we read in another section of the Gospels that they worked together to get rid of him. They hated one another but it is clear that their hatred of God’s true work in Jesus was even greater. We mustn't forget all the ways they tried to destroy him - to catch him in his words, to tempt him to offend one or the other of their religious parties.
Add to this the fickleness of the common people. This Gospel occurs on Palm Sunday in the midst of the adulation of the crowds. They had their own expectations and betrayals. He was Jesus the miracle worker - the one whose tears preceded the raising of Lazarus on the eve of Holy Week. He was Jesus the one who would drive away the shame of Gentile domination by sending the Romans packing. These are the same crowds who would prefer a murderer, an insurrectionist to the King of Glory.
Compound all our Lord’s enemies and all their opposition and hatred towards Him. Add divine omniscience that knew fully what was in the heart of men and women. This is what moved the pity of our Lord and caused him to weep for the spiritual illness of the nation represented by the Holy City.
Jerusalem did not know the hour of its visitation -what Jesus means by “this thy day”. They did not know the things that “belong to its peace” - those would be the things that would bring it true peace. Even as we examine the roots of Jerusalem and the meaning of its name, we learn that it means The City of Peace or more specifically, the Foundation of Peace. God’s presence and protection secured its peace - not the actions of men nor the false ideal of its permanence, the solidity of its always having been there. What happens when one refuses to accept the foundation of one’s peace and security? What happens when one, in ignorance or in direct opposition, rejects the Messiah and the type of kingdom He was bringing?
His kingdom was not of this world but His rule certainly has implications for all earthly kingdoms and peoples.
Jesus prophesies what would happen some 40 years after his Resurrection and Ascension. For 60 years, leading up to the Jewish revolt of 66A.D., there were a series of messianic figures who drew to themselves crowds of followers and attempted to overthrow the Romans. One such group succeeded for a few years in the mid-60s in supplanting the Romans until Rome doubled down on their plans to suppress Jewish revolt. When that revolt was put down in roughly 70 A.D. The Romans went to great pains to make sure not one single stone of Herod’s temple was left on top of another. Herod’s temple, what was called the Second Temple, suffered a similar fate to that of the First Temple which Jeremiah testified against and the holy city, the former city of peace, became a byword and curse to the nations as an expression of futility in opposing the Pax Romana, the peace through the power of Rome.
Jesus does weep over the sins of people and the coming destruction and we then read in our Gospel of his cleansing of the temple, which was followed by his glorious teaching.
As he enters the outer court of the Gentiles, the only place at the Temple where a non-Jew was allowed to pray and meditate, our Lord confronts the clamor of people converting money and the noise of the sacrificial animals being traded. His anger is not so much against the commercial transactions as much as who is being excluded by these activities. Business was crowding out the Gentiles. The very prophets that the high priests and the religious establishment profess to love and obey bear witness against them. Jesus brings together Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 into a compressed reference to both. For Isaiah 56:7, says “For mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”
Israel has converted the place of the drawing near of the Gentiles into a den of robbers - a place where the ungodly hide out and hide their spoil, believing that their physical presence in the Temple would protect them from the consequences of their sin and their disregard of the coming of the Messiah. Jesus speaks to Jerusalem being destroyed, with a great lament and the Temple will be destroyed as well. Yet, the broader promises of Isaiah 56 will be fulfilled for those outside Abraham’s covenant - God would enlarge the New Covenant to not only receive Jews, but Gentiles as well, those who were not permitted to come into the temple (such as eunuchs) would be welcomed. For the purpose of the Temple, was the promise of God’s presence among them in proper worship and Jesus through His Apostles took the Gospel out to the Gentile world. In doing so, they brought them into the greater Temple of Jesus’ Body, the Church. We have all this Christian language of being as choice stones united in a living temple, one that is not tied to one particular geographical location or single time in history. Jesus, the Ascended Head, rules and reigns while His Body is a living Temple incorporating all nations and tribes. So even in His weeping over destruction, Jesus is directing us toward the greater reality of the Church.
We come to this passage every year on this Sunday, so it begs the question how does our Lord’s foretelling of the historic fact of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem bear upon the practice of our faith in the present? Sure it happened. Indeed it is an apologetic for the reliability of Holy Scripture. The fact is important but the greater importance is to understand Our Lord’s love for his enemies. One of the first lessons in the Sermon on the Mount, one of the Lord’s first sermons, is to love one’s enemies. As I said earlier, Jesus knows what his enemies desire to do to him and he weeps over the physical manifestation of their spiritual brokenness which will bring the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Their hatred of Him was no mystery, yet he weeps for them.
How many of you have people who you know hate you? How many hate Christ and his Church? How many hate all that you may love and hold dear? What lesson does Jesus teach us in these circumstances? Our hearts must break for those who hate us and, more importantly, hate Christ and his church. Jesus knew the full consequences of Jerusalem’s rebellion. We know that all who hate Christ, all who hate the good that God has placed in this world will suffer eternal punishment and separation from him. Jesus knew. God knows. We don’t know with certainty who will believe and who won’t. We are called to pray for the enemies of Christ, pray for those who despitefully use the Christian church, pray for those who persecute the Church so that the same mercy of God that brought us into the family of God may redeem enemies of Christ into his Kingdom. In doing so, perhaps they will be saved. Regardless, if they are saved or not in the end, our hearts, our souls will be transformed by embracing Christ’s approach to his enemies.
Beloved, I encourage all of us to ask God for an extra measure of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives, that we might be filled with this love of Jesus for those who are far from Him, and that we would pray without ceasing for the conversion of those who seek to do us harm because of our faith in Him. Let us ask that we might be more fully aware of the forgiveness, mercy and grace that we have received from God and might be more animated to see all people - evil and kind, wretched and more presentable - all people - transformed by the love of Christ who weeps for those who chose to be his enemies. Amen.
