Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Return to me, the Lord your God
The story of Israel is our story.
Reading: Luke 13:31-35
The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:
What is the greatest suffering that afflicts a human heart?
Some might say: loneliness—to feel that no one understands you. Others, the suffering and death of a loved one. A mother would rather suffer and die in place of her children than to see them suffer.
But I propose to you today that one of the greatest sufferings that can afflict us is the anguish of an unrequited love.
We see this trope everywhere in literature. And perhaps you have experienced yourselves, when a gracious act of love is rejected by an ungrateful heart. When you’ve made a gift of your very selves, but that gift is left unopened, unreceived, or even despised.
And at the risk of sounding like a heretic, one may ask: is this not the greatest anguish that afflicts an impassible God?
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were unwilling!”
Indeed, the story of Israel has been a story of an unrequited love. She is a bride who is unfaithful to her Groom.
This double vocative, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, also reminds me of the refrain we sing during Tenebrae after each lesson — Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return to the lord your god.
In the darkness of our Lord’s passion, we re-live, inserting ourselves into the ruin of Jerusalem because we, too, have rejected God through our sins. We, too, have given our hearts to idols.
The story of Israel is our story.
But You know that this is only one part of the story.
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, while we were still sinners, when we are yet dead through our trespasses, Christ died for us and made us alive in Him. (Romans 5:8; Eph 2:5)
Unlike a human lover, God has no need of a return to be delivered from His anguish. But His whole intent is upon restoring our dignity which we have squandered by giving our hearts to false lovers.
The lament of Jesus and of all the prophets spring from a Heart pregnant with Love. Christ laments but his arms are already outstretched on the cross; like a mother hen, his wings are open to embrace his wandering chicks. And this is the other side of the story we should never ever forget.
That is the story of Grace. The story of undeserved love.
Though we should fall seven times a day, we might yet seek his favor.
Though we should reject his love seventy times seven, we might yet hope.
We might yet cry out from the depth of our heart: Lord, let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleading.
We might yet look forward to a day when we shall say with Israel, and with all those who have once rejected Him yet chosen to return to Him who have promised to redeem Israel from all his iniquities: Blessed are you who comes in the name of the Lord!
Image: Charles Lock Eastlake (1846), Christ Lamenting Over Jerusalem. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
