If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!

 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation."

Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, "It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'"

And He was teaching daily in the temple.  But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him. 

- Luke 19:41-48

Yesterday we read that after Jesus taught the parable of the minas, He went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.  And it came to pass, when He drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mountain called Olivet, that He sent two of His disciples, saying, "Go into the village opposite you, where as you enter you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat.  Loose it and bring it here.  And if anyone asks you, 'Why are you loosing it?' thus you shall say to him, 'Because the Lord has need of it.'"  So those who were sent went their way and found it just as He had said to them.  But as they were loosing the colt, the owners of it said to them, "Why are you loosing the colt?"  And they said, "The Lord has need of him."  Then they brought him to Jesus.  And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him.  And as He went, many spread their clothes on the road.  Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, saying:  "'Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD!'  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"  And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, "Teacher, rebuke Your disciples."  But He answered and said to them, "I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out."

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, "If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation."  Jerusalem means "foundation of peace," my study bible tells us.  It notes that only faith in Christ brings true peace -- a truth hidden from a city that will soon rebel against its Savior.  Furthermore, it says that there are two kinds of peace.  There is a type of shallow harmony that results from ignoring issues of truth.  Genuine peace is reconciliation to God through faith in Christ and acceptance of truth.  But genuine peace may have division as a byproduct because not everyone wants truth.  In the fallen world, divisions are necessary for truth to be manifest (12:51-52, see also 1 Corinthians 11:18-19).   Jesus' prediction here will literally manifest at the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, as it was rumored that there was gold between the stones of the temple.  Only a portion of one retaining wall of the magnificent temple would remain.

Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, "It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'"   Those who bought and sold in the temple were trading in live animals to be used for sacrifices.  Jesus' action speaks to corruption and the temptations from greed.  My study bible says that the cleansing of the temple also points to the necessity that the Church be kept free from earthly pursuits.  It notes also that as each person is considered to be a temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19), it is also a sign that our hearts and minds must be cleansed of earthly matters; that is, an outlook based purely on a materialist perspective.

And He was teaching daily in the temple.  But the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people sought to destroy Him, and were unable to do anything; for all the people were very attentive to hear Him.  Here is the repeated tension noted in the Gospels for the leadership:  they wish to be rid of Jesus, but His popularity among the people makes this not possible -- as the people wish to hear Him teach.

The powers at work are juxtaposed here.  In a worldly sense, there is Jesus the preacher, the One who has been received into Jerusalem by those who follow Him as Messiah.  On the other hand, there is the establishment, the religious rulers of Israel, who represent the people to the Roman Empire of which Israel is now a colony.  Those religious leaders find Jesus to be a problem.  He's an outsider.  Moreover, He tells the truth.  He finds their practices covering selfish motives, even corruption, and criticizes that they don't truly uphold the Law and the aims of the Law.  He rails at their hypocrisy, and how they fail to help the poor, the widows, the dependent.  He chastises them for their lack of care, and their cherishing of their own power and authority.   The cleansing of the temple is the most openly hostile act toward their kind of leadership that Jesus will do.  It is a statement of His authority as Messiah, and it is also a condemnation of the practices they allow, the greed covered up under official practice.  One thing we can say for certain here is that Jesus' words teach us about the necessity of the sacred in our lives, and the difficulties we may be called upon to endure in order to protect that sacredness.  "It is written," He says, "'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a 'den of thieves.'"   Jesus quotes from two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah.  In that chapter of Isaiah from which Jesus quotes, the prophecy is striking, and we may read more fully the verse and the one following it:  "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.  The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says, 'Yet I will gather to him others besides those who are gathered to him'"  (Isaiah 56:7-8).   It speaks clearly of the actions of this Messiah and what is to come.  The chapter in Jeremiah speaks of the injustice and infidelity of the people to God's commands, and their failure to heed the prophets sent to them with God's word.  Jeremiah 7:25-26 clearly prefigures Jesus' parable of the Wicked Vinedressers, which He will tell in the temple in the next chapter in Luke:  "Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them.   Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers."  The warning to Jerusalem becomes far deeper, and tied to eschatological prophecy, when we understand the force of what Jesus is saying.  The rejection of God's word will go too far, the failure to heed Christ's word means Jerusalem truly fails to understand the things that make for her peace.  This isn't about a failure to uphold certain practices, and it's not about a fallen world that is full of selfishness.  It is about the failure to cherish what is most dear, to truly uphold the things that make a difference between whether we create a heaven or a hell on earth -- and the profundity of this truth belongs to absolute levels we can't even grasp.  These leaders of Jerusalem fail to "know the time of her visitation."  When we reject what is sacred, we may scarcely comprehend what it is we accept and how extraordinarily we lose.  Jesus calls us to pay attention, as have done the prophets before Him.  The peace of Jerusalem isn't something that was simply lost at this time 2,000 years ago:  it's something we must all sincerely understand for ourselves as those who would be part of the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, the Church even here in this world as in heaven.   What do we cherish?  How do we act as if we see His face everywhere?  Can we, too, identify "a den of thieves" that would rob us of such a gift?  Jesus' words hold true for the world as well as individuals, for we are each temples to God, as my study bible says.  Let us echo His call to discernment and to truth.