1 Corinthians 12.1–11 + Luke 19.41–48
Tenth Sunday after Trinity
How often do you ask yourself, or someone else, “What time is it?” When we ask, “What time is it?” we’re often asking because knowing the time helps us know where we are supposed to be or what we are supposed to be doing. Is it time work, for class, for an appointment, or for a meeting? Is it time for practice, leisure, rest, or sleep? Knowing the helps us know what we are to do be doing at the moment. If we lose track of time, or worse, if we think it’s a different time from what it really is, the schedule is off, and we miss whatever it was time for.
The Jews had a problem with time, but they didn’t realize it. Jesus approaches Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding a colt, and as He draws near the city of Jersualem, he weeps over it. He weeps and says, “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.”
The time of their visitation was not just when Christ came to Jerusalem, but the entire ministry of Jesus. For three and half years, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Co 5:19). For three and half years, God was in Christ preaching good tidings to the poor in spirit—the penitent. He was healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to those held captive by sin, opening the prison to those who had been bound by the devil. He proclaimed the acceptable year of the Lord, comforting all who mourned over their sins and consoling those who mourned over the sorry state of Zion, the church. He said in John 12:47, “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” God was in Christ visiting the Jews, reconciling the penitent and believing to God, not counting their sins against them.
During His gracious visitation He also earned the things that made for their peace. He lived without sin. He was perfectly righteous in thought, word, and deed throughout His entire life to earn a perfect righteousness that availed for all mankind. He suffered and died on the cross to pay for the sins of the world and acquire forgiveness for all people, so that all who believe in Him receive the forgiveness earned. But the Jews’ time of visitation didn’t end when they crucified Christ, or when He rose from the dead, or even when He ascended into heaven. After His resurrection from the dead, He sent out His apostles so that through them, His gracious visitation would continue. He gave them the ministry of reconciliation, His ministry, and made them His ambassadors, through whom God pleaded with sinners to repent and receive by faith the things that made for their peace, and thus by faith be justified, declared righteous, and reconciled to God.
But the Jews did not know the things that made for the peace, nor did they know the time of their visitation. If they had known it was the time of God’s gracious visitation, they may have repented of their sins and believed the gospel. They didn’t recognize the time because they imagined God’s past gracious visitations—which had given them the law and the land and the temple—were sufficient. Others failed to recognize the time of God’s gracious visitation because they looked for God to visit them by means of a mighty Davidic King who would destroy their enemies and rule over them in a glorious earthly kingdom. When He sends them His apostles, some will believe. But the majority will eventually have enough of it, kill the deacon Stephen, and a great persecution will arise against the church at Jerusalem, scattering all but the apostles, and at some point, even they will leave the city to preach elsewhere. Then the time of God’s gracious visitation will be over.
After that comes God’s visitation in wrath. Jesus sees this, too, as He approaches Jerusalem. “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.” Jesus’ words, spoken some forty years before that event, find their fulfillment some forty years later when Roman armies will lay siege to Jerusalem and eventually it’s destruction. Christ’s faithful will have left by that time, obeying His words in Matthew 24 to flee to the mountains when they see the abomination that causes desolation. But the Jews who did not believe, who rejected God’s gracious visitation in Christ and the things that made for their peace, the gospel, died and Jerusalem was razed to the ground. And it all happened, Jesus said, “Because you did not know the time of your visitation.”
What time is it? For everyone alive, it is the time of their visitation. The apostles continue to preach through their written preaching in Holy Scripture, which you read and we hear every Sunday. St. Paul teaches us in one of those writings, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Co 6:2). As long as the day is called “today,” God is graciously visiting you, His called preachers with you “Be reconciled to God” (2 Co 5:20). Be continually reconciled, each day, by living in repentance and trust that Christ has, by His innocent life and bitter suffering and death, earned for you the things that make for your peace with God.
How do you do this? Christ teaches us in the second half of the gospel, when he drives out those who bought and sold so that He could teach there. The Jews had squandered the gift of the temple’s divine service. They used the temple precincts for profit, not prayer and preaching. But Christ would accomplish their visitation, to save those who would believe, while those who rejected Him would have that which judges him on the last day, the word Christ had spoken. Christ’s cleansing of the temple directs us to use His word rightly, to hear preaching, since that is how He visits us with His grace and mercy. His word and preach is how He creates faith in us, the faith that reconciles us to God because it is counted for righteousness. We are not to take His word and worship for granted, as the Jews did. This was one of the reasons they missed the time of their visitation. Christ’s cleansing of the temple also reminds us to be engaged in prayer, which is the heart’s response to His word and preaching, asking for those things He has promised and giving thanks for them.
Today’s epistle shows us that God gives other gifts of grace through the Word, and that we ought not squander them, but use them for the profit of all. Paul lists several gifts of grace the Spirit gives: the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healings, the working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, kinds of tongues, or languages, to another the interpretation of tongues. While the Spirit no longer accompanies the true preaching with some of these outward manifestations, even as He did not always give the apostles the ability to heal or work miracles, He has continued to give many gifts. He gives the word of wisdom, the wise application of God’s word to individuals, and the word of knowledge, the ability to impart the knowledge of God to others. These are gifts by which you, in your conversation with others, encourage one another in the faith. He gives the gift of discerning of spirits, that is, discerning truth from error, and wants every Christian to exercise that gift in whatever proportion He has given it. Whatever gifts you may have been given, Paul wants you to use them for the profit of all, to edify others, and to serve your neighbors.
Part of knowing that today is the day of salvation, the time of Christ’s gracious visitation, is also to know that this time does not last forever. The day of salvation ends for each person on the day he dies, and Christ will bring it to a close for all when He returns in glory. On that day, He won’t be visiting in mercy, but in judgment. With that in mind, know what time it is and know what it is for. It’s the time of Christ’s visitation in mercy, the time in which He brings you the things that make for your peace with God, now in this life and for eternity. Be reconciled to God each day by repentance and faith. Use His word and preaching to build you up in repentance, faith, prayer, and faithful use the gifts received. You know what time it is. You know what you’re to be doing in it. Amen.
