Dear Friends,
In his book, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, Richard Foster describes what is called the Prayer of Tears. “Tears are a sign – not an infallible sign, to be sure, but a sign nevertheless – that God has touched [our] center. Through the Prayer of Tears, we give God permission to show us our sinfulness and the sinfulness of the world at the emotional level. As best I can discern, tears are God’s way of helping us descend with the mind into the heart and there bow in perpetual adoration and worship.”
The gospel reading this week (Luke 13:31-35) records Jesus in full lament over the sinfulness of Jerusalem. God’s prophecy, delivered through prophets of old, declared that God was going to do a new thing – that the Kingdom of God was at hand. The people were to repent of their faithlessness and turn to God. Jesus knew that God desired nothing more than to gather all of God’s children into the embrace of love. But the people remained unmoved – tied to the practices of the Temple.
This passage marks a pivotal moment in Jesus’ journey – both inward and outward -to the cross. In his travels, he is moving ever closer to Jerusalem, the city where great prophets of old had been reviled and killed. It is also the inward journey as he knows that his faithfulness to God will ultimately lead to his own suffering. Getting ready to enter into the great city of Jerusalem, Jesus knows that his work there will be rejected by the very people whom he loved and for whom he was going to give up his own life. And so, looking out over the city of his people, he prays a prayer of tears and prepares to enter Jerusalem.
See you Sunday,
Rev. Martha