Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, March 28, 2021
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: While the people prepared to celebrate the past, Jesus wept for what he could see was still coming.
Jerusalem was busy preparing for the Jews’ most important celebration—Passover. It was a complex ritual to remember the events of the Exodus when God delivered the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. As with any celebration, this one especially took careful planning and preparation.
Ironically, they were so busy with their holiday plans, they could not see that they were on the brink of another, even more important deliverance. They were oppressed by Rome and knew that they needed to be liberated from their political oppressors. Maybe this Jesus would help them to be free. They had no idea they were also bound to sin and death, or that they could be freed from it. While they were busy preparing for a celebration of a liberation in their past, Jesus was preparing for an event that would liberate all people in the present and for eternity.
But their liberation from sin and death would not deliver them from the continued and increasing oppression by Rome and those around them. Jesus could see that their political situation was getting worse, even as he worked to save their spirits for eternity. He wept for them, knowing what was coming for them. He wept, knowing they would reject his words of peace and radical love. He wept for the pain and turmoil he could see coming, and for the human dysfunction he could perceive was already here. Jerusalem was a pressure cooker ready to blow, and all he could do was move into it, one painful, isolated, seemingly hopeless step at a time.
