Jesus Weeps Over Jerusalem

 Israel, and the Jewish people were proud of their temple, Jerusalem city, and even the city wall. While singing hosanna to Jesus, who was making his meek entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, they must have also sung of the magnificent temple, and expected triumphant victory. Some even asks Jesus to ask them to be silent, lest the Romans get provoked. Their priorities were all over the place. Jesus looks on the city Jerusalem and wept over it (Luke 19: 41-44). Jesus does not see their achievements and success as real victory and success—and that is a painful reality. Our successes are not successes in the sight of God is a subtle reality that we conveniently don't see or acknowledge. His tears fell because of what the city had failed to become. As its name suggests, Jerusalem is ‘the city of peace’—and it was given all the opportunities to be—prophets, the temple, a fortified city etc. But it made a mockery of it all. And gradually it would even kill its Saviour. Some had supported killing Jesus because he disturbed the status quo; and others support it in fear of the Romans.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), a Scottish philosopher, critiqued the Victorian era for its excessive industrialisation, superficial progress, and elaborative life style. He was well aware also of the exploitation and looting happening in the colonies of the British. The Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, 1837 until her death in 1901, marked by hollowness of official institutions, arguing that a focus on profit and utility had replaced genuine purpose and spiritual meaning. Society became spiritually hollow and morally bankrupt. There is an anecdote said about him. Thomas Carlyle once went for the funeral of one of his friends. His friend was very rich and affluent, but unfortunately had the habit of cheating. Nevertheless, Thomas had loved him. When Thomas came back from the funeral, his wife found him extremely sad. She went to console him thinking that he must have been affected by the demise of his friend, but Thomas replied, ‘I am not sad because I lost my friend, that is natural, today or tomorrow all of us have to die. But I am sad because, my friend was born as a human being and died as a thief.” He had lost what actually mattered the most—his character.

A tiny episode from the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy might through light on this subtle spirituality. As they were wandering, the mole asked the boy, what do you want to become when you grow up? ‘Kind”, said the boy.

The gospel passage ends Jesus telling Jerusalem, “you did not recognise the time of God’s coming to you.” We live in a world structured by selection and chance, by doors that open to some and remain closed to others. Yet the deeper tragedy is not inequality of opportunity, but the poverty of our response to the opportunities we do receive. We are all Jerusalems in our own way—fortified cities blessed beyond measure, yet somehow blind to the very graces that could save us. When Kapil Dev was a teenager, there was a cricket game at the Chandigarh stadium. He used to watch the game daily.  One day a player was missing in a team. The captain was upset. He asked Kapil Dev whether he could substitute the missing player. “I am glad,” said the 13-year old Kapil. The teenager played well. From that day, he became a regular player in the team. Later he rose to be a world-famous cricketer.  What helped Kapil Dev was his accepting of the chance given, and hard work.

Consider the conversation we avoided that could have healed a relationship; the risk we didn't take that would have revealed our strength; the moment of courage we postponed that would have changed our trajectory; the truth we didn't speak that someone needed to hear. These are not mere missed appointments—they are the slow suicide of the soul, the gradual betrayal of our own becoming. Do we use our chances to grow? Do we rise up to the dignity in which we are created? Do we live up to our potentialities?

"You did not recognise the time of your visitation." These words should terrify us. When we refuse the invitation to grow, to risk, to love, to speak truth, we don't merely miss an event—we fail to become. We remain perpetually less than we were created to be. We die incrementally, not all at once—first the dream dies, then the courage, then the hope, until finally the person we might have become is buried beneath the person we settled for being.

We fold our arms not because we are incapable, but because we are afraid. Fear whispers its seductive theology: Wait for certainty. Wait for safety. Wait for permission. Wait until you're ready. And while we wait, nursing our anxieties like precious possessions, the opportunities slip away.

We envy others' chances while our own lie neglected at our feet. We don't see our own abundance because we are mesmerised by someone else's. We scroll through others' victories while our own battles go unfought. We catalog others' graces while our own go unacknowledged, unused, and eventually, unclaimed.

Jesus weeps over Jerusalem not to condemn but to wake it up. but what we will do with what remains.