Desolate

Propers: The Second Sunday in Lent, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

More than 500 years before Jesus’ birth, the prophet Jeremiah warned the people of Israel that Babylon was coming—a great empire from the east, to whom the Israelites had foolishly boasted of their wealth. And God sent Jeremiah as His prophet to call His people to Him, to gather them beneath the mercy of His wings; to turn them back from their wickedness, their cruelties, and their oppression of the widow and the orphan and the alien in the land.

Return to Me, sayeth the Lord, and I will protect you, I will provide. I will guard you from Babylon as I guarded you from Egypt and Assyria and all the other empires who sought to conquer and dismember you in generations past. Repent, return to the Lord your God, and I will forgive you, I have already forgiven you, if only you would trust in Me, learn from Me, live according to My Commandments for My will is that you might have life and have it abundantly! But as is established so often throughout the Bible, God does not force. That’s not His way. And so Jeremiah prophesies: “See, your House is left to you, desolate.”

Throughout Luke’s Gospel, and indeed throughout the Bible, the city of Jerusalem is not so much a place as it is a character. This was the capital conquered by David, the heart of the Kingdom of the 12 Tribes. The city name means Shalom, “peace.” For in Jerusalem stood a mountain—the same mountain, it was held, upon which Abraham offered Isaac unto God—and on this mountain stood the Temple of Solomon, one of the great wonders of the ancient world. In the heart of that Temple, on the peak of Mount Moriah, stood the Ark of the Covenant, holding the Ten Commandments given by God through Moses, along with a pot of miraculous manna and the budding staff of the first High Priest.

These were the signs of God’s Covenant; of His fulfillment of the promises given unto Abraham; of His liberation of His people Israel from slavery in Egypt; and of the giving of the Sacred Law which made a mixed multitude into one people of God. The lid of the Ark was called the Mercy Seat, the footstool of the Lord, where Heaven met earth. This was the nexus, the intersection, of God’s relationship with humanity, and with the whole of the cosmos, through His people Israel. And over the Mercy Seat stood two enormous gold-wrought angels, wild cherubim with their wings extended protectively over the Ark, the Mount, and thereby the world.

This was the House of God on earth: Jerusalem, the navel of the world. And this, proclaims Jeremiah, is the House that shall be left desolate. The Babylonians will come and destroy the Temple. The building will be toppled. The Ark of the Covenant shall be lost. And all the things that bound God to Man—the people, the nation, the Holy of Holies—it will all be uprooted and carried away. And this will not be the fault of God, who commands His people to turn back. Rather, this will be the choice of men, who flee from God to idolatry and sin.

And so it came to pass. The Israelites did not repent. Babylon came down in all her might, and there were none left to protect Jerusalem. The Temple, the city, the nation itself, were one and all wiped off the map. All seemed lost. But lo and behold, just as God went with Adam and Eve when they barred themselves from Paradise, so also the God of Israel goes into Exile along with His people. He entered into their punishment, into their sufferings, along with them, that in time they might return, and rebuild, and be His people once again.

Almost 600 years later, Jesus returns to this same Jerusalem, restored and rebuilt. There’s a new Temple now, even larger than the first, and while the Ark of the Covenant is lost, it is still the Mercy Seat, the House of God, the nexus of Heaven and earth. But it is also, as in the past, the site of cosmic conflict: the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. The Temple is once again corrupted by idolatry, by the worship of money and power and the oppressive structures of empire. Babylon is long gone, of course, but the new flavor of the month is Rome.

Jesus here identifies Himself with the prophets, indeed as the Prophet, with a capital P. The prophets of old were sent by the Father to speak for the Father. But Jesus is the Son. He speaks as the Father Himself, for He is the Father’s own and shares the Father’s authority and power and life: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” He laments. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood beneath her wings, and you were not willing.” Century upon century those wings were extended, covering the Mercy Seat, covering and comforting God’s people in their sins. And here Christ quotes Jeremiah before Him: “See, your house is left to you, desolate.”

Jerusalem has fallen again into the same old sins. And this will result in the same old consequences: the Temple will be destroyed. For indeed, the House of God cannot stand without God, and when the people reject God they reject His House. And this is not the will of the Lord. But whether we admit it or not, it is the will of a fallen humanity, of a people who pray not “Thy will be done,” but to whom God tearfully laments, “thy will be done.”

And so the Prophet shall be killed, the Son shall be slain, and the House will once again be left desolate. But as before, this is not to be the end. God will not abandon His people, will not abandon His world, no matter how many times we abandon Him. For what happens when the Son is killed, when Christ is crucified without the city gate? There is a great earthquake, and the curtain of the Temple, separating the Holy of Holies from the profane world without, is torn in two from top to bottom. And this is no flimsy piece of cloth mind you, but something like 120 feet high and six inches thick. It has embroidered upon it the image of the very cosmos.

The House is left desolate because God leaves it. He is no longer in the Temple. He is no longer on the mountain. There is no more need for sacrifice, for now God is on the Cross, spilling out His own Blood for the salvation of the world. The old Temple is done. The old House is empty. But now the true House of God, the true Temple of the Lord, the true nexus of Heaven and earth, is none other than the Body of Jesus Christ our Lord. And that Body is now God’s Church.

You are the Temple of God’s Spirit now. You are the place where Heaven touches earth. And as such, your body, your soul, your life, is now the site of cosmic conflict. Wherever God builds a church, they say, the devil erects a chapel next door. But this can be good news. It may seem impossible to imagine that you are the Temple of God. You are the Mercy Seat. You are the love God sends out into the world. For after all, who are we? We are sinners. We are broken. We are so often stupid and selfish and foolish and cruel. We make such awful mistakes.

Yet it was Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, which was chosen as the site for God’s final victory over Satan and all the forces that defy the Goodness and Beauty and Truth that God intends for this world. It was Jerusalem that witnessed the Passion, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

It was Jerusalem where Christ extended His wings upon the Cross, as a mother hen gathers her brood, that the ocean of mercy might pour out and swallow up the entirety of the world. If He could do that with so sinful a city, imagine what He will now do here through you.

40 years after the Crucifixion—a single biblical generation—the armies of Rome came to destroy Jerusalem, just as Christ had prophesied, like Babylon before them. And we have multiple historical accounts of something truly shocking that occurred. When the Legions besieged the walls, both sides witnessed a great commotion in the sky, an army marching through the heavens, abandoning Jerusalem. The city fell not long after. And the Temple has not been rebuilt to this day.

You are now the New Jerusalem. You are Holy of Holies and the Mercy Seat. You are the site of God’s own Life and Blood and Spirit poured out for the redemption and the Resurrection of the whole of Creation. And so out we are sent to a world in great need, as was Jeremiah, as Jesus, casting out demons and healing every ill—all the while proclaiming, with a joyful heart, “Blessed is the One who comes in the Name of the Lord.”

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.