The amount of effort it takes to write a "shortener". Yes, you could do this in java, most likely. However, it would take a ton of effort and likely still not cover as many cases as the easy to write lisp would.

As an example, I have the beginnings of something like that in javascript at http://taeric.github.io/DancingLinks.html (in the appendix. Functions "div, table, etc.") I've done similar in java before to get the same basic structure that I could run in any c like language. I still miss the flexibility of lisp.

edit: to see another example of mine showing some of the advantage of the "macroness" see http://taeric.github.io/CodeAsData.html and see how little code it took to make a tree walker in lisp. (Not just the tree walker, but indeed, the tree.)