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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
For all that is new and unique about this year’s U-S presidential election, at least one thing is old and common, namely the candidates’ promises about the modern nation of Israel and her capital‑city, Jerusalem. For example, Republican frontrunner businessman Donald Trump reportedly has promised to be neutral when dealing with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz has criticized Trump for not promising to move the U-S Embassy to Jerusalem, as previous presidents have promised but never actually done. On the Democratic side, frontrunner Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton no longer promises to move the U-S Embassy to Jerusalem, for some a litmus test of support for Israel, while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, has promised, somewhat like Trump, that he would aim for a “level playing-field” in U-S Middle East policy. That U-S policy is driven not only by Israel’s role as a major U-S ally in the region but also by a false understanding of the country and Jerusalem’s role in some future Kingdom of God on earth, like that kingdom the millennialists imagine. In tonight’s Passion Reading, we heard Jesus Himself, in the Praetorium of the Roman governor, deny that His Kingdom was of this world, but, in the Penitential Psalm that we prayed and on which we now reflect, we spoke of the Lord’s arising and having pity on Zion (another name for Jerusalem), for the appointed time to favor her had come. You may want to re-open your hymnal to Psalm 102 as we reflect on that psalm, continuing our Lenten sermon series on the seven Penitential Psalms.
In Psalm 102 we see a close relationship between the city of Jerusalem and the psalmist, who may have been a king of Judah, such as Hezekiah (so Wohlrabe, CPR 25:2, 58), although the psalm’s ascription does not say who the psalmist is. In fact, Psalm 102 is unique among the psalms in that its ascription, which is not printed in the hymnal, does not give a liturgical or historical note or the author’s identity but instead gives the author’s condition (TLSB, 944), saying, “A prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord” (ESV). Based on its content, Psalm 102 is usually thought to be later than Hezekiah’s time, such as when the people of Judah and Jerusalem, about all that was left of the once-larger Israel, were in exile in Babylon (but compare Weiser, 653). Regardless, the psalmist feels cut down in the prime of life but, having absorbed the spirit of earlier psalms (Leupold, 707), the psalmist also knows that God is ready to hear, and, in the midst of affliction, the psalmist believes in and depends on the eternal faithfulness of the Lord (Wohlrabe, CPR 25:2, 58-60), as should we.
When we are afflicted, we might be more inclined to think that the Lord is not with us at all than to think that the Lord is justly visiting us with His righteous wrath over our sin, which is what the psalmist appears to think (CSSB, 892). We do not know the precise details of the psalmist’s affliction or his sin, but, in some sense, his agony certainly is the agony of anyone in distress (TLSB, 944), including us, who know our own sin as the psalmist knew his own sin. The psalmist speaks of his days passing away like smoke, of his bones burning like a furnace, and of his heart withering. The psalmist is like birds that live alone and birds that are awake while others sleep. And, the psalmist is taunted and derided by his enemies. The psalmist was not the first to so suffer affliction, be faint, and pour out his complaint before the Lord, and he was not the last to do so, either. As we earlier prayed the psalm, we also poured out our complaint before the Lord over our being faint and suffering affliction. And, with the psalmist, we implicitly confessed that we with our sin had provoked the Lord’s righteous indignation and wrath, the Lord’s picking us up and, as it were, His throwing us away.
Psalm 102 is said to be unique among the Seven Penitential Psalms in that it speaks of death as a consequence of sin (Leupold, 707, citing Vilmar). But, we also find in Psalm 102, as in other Penitential Psalms, outward evidence both of the psalmist’s inward sorrow over his sin and of the psalmist’s faith that the Lord will forgive his sin: the psalmist, apparently covered in ashes and weeping (Keil-Delitzsch, 114; compare Wohlrabe 58), cries out in prayer to the Lord, first asking for a quick answer and then at the end speaking as if he had already received it. When we turn in sorrow from our sin and trust the Lord to forgive our sin, then the Lord does just that: the Lord forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says that several of Psalm 102’s final verses were spoken of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:10-12), thus identifying the man Jesus as the immutable Lord (Keil-Deltitzsch, 118). The psalmist’s and our days may be as fleeting as an evening shadow, and we may wither away like grass, but, in contrast, the Lord is remembered throughout all generations, and He is enthroned forever (Leupold, 711; Wohlrabe, 59). So enthroned, the Lord is in a position to answer our prayer, and we in faith count on His pity and favor for the sake of Jesus’s suffering—suffering like that we heard of tonight in the Passion Reading—and His death on the cross for us—when He was afflicted and taunted and derided by His enemies. The psalmist may have wanted deliverance from his immediate afflictions and a restoration of Jerusalem, but, for the sake of Jesus Christ, the psalmist and we receive things far greater: deliverance in the form of the forgiveness of sins and a Jerusalem that is out of this world.
The psalmist’s comfort comes from God’s Holy Word spoken through His prophets, such as that spoken through Jeremiah about specifically when the exiles would return to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 29:10). We likewise are comforted by God’s Word read and purely preached. The psalmist anticipates his own words’ being recorded for a generation yet to come, a people yet to be “created”, who will praise the Lord. And, thereby the psalmist arguably anticipates Holy Baptism, as some commentators think a better translation is that the people are “re-created” (Wiser 651-652, 654; confer Neale and Littledale, 296-297), and, at the Baptismal Font, we in Christ truly are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17); there we are forgiven, rescued from death and the devil, and given eternal salvation. The psalmist spoke of eating ashes like bread and mingling tears with his drink, but we, who are comforted as he was, also move to Holy Communion, where we eat bread that is Christ’s Body and drink wine that is Christ’s Blood, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (confer Innocent III as cited by Neale and Littledale, 293). The Sacrament of the Altar is our food for the way, through this life of afflictions, and so it gives us peace and joy.
We have such peace and joy objectively, even if we do not always feel them subjectively. The psalmist himself seems to have several mood changes in Psalm 102 (so Leupold, 713), but the psalm ends with him confident of and praising God for the greatest-possible fulfillment of the Lord’s promises to him. The Babylonian exiles did go back to Jerusalem, and the city eventually was built up to some degree of glory, perhaps especially by Herod the Great at the time of Jesus. But, the Romans destroyed that Jerusalem and what was left of the Jews as any semblance of a nation holy to the Lord. Even today, for all the U-S effort and politicians’ promises since 1948, the nation by the name of Israel and its capital Jerusalem, with a U-S Embassy there or not, is not now and never will be the Israel or Jerusalem of God’s eternal promises. They like the rest of the nations and capitals of the world, as the psalmist says, will perish, but the Lord will remain. They will wear out like a garment and be changed like a robe and pass away, but the Lord is the same, and His years have no end. In the new, holy Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven from God, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore; for, the former things have passed away (Revelation 21:1-27; confer TLSB, 945). There, in the new, heavenly Jerusalem, our ancestors, we ourselves, and our children and grandchildren—all who believe and so are saved from their sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ—we all, in the psalmist’s words, will dwell secure and be established in the eternal presence of the Lord.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +