Luke 9:51-62 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
A Samaritan Village Refuses to Receive Jesus
51 When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him; 53 but the people would not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?”[a] 55 But he turned and rebuked them.[b] 56 And they went on to another village.
Would-Be Followers of Jesus
57 As they were going along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 But he said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
This passage starts out strange, but ends with a challenge. So let’s get to it!
Here’s the strange part: The disciples say to Jesus “Lord, do you want us to bid fire come down from heaven and consume them?” That sounds awfully harsh.
When we read passages like this, the first thing we need to do is find out the context – what was the situation? What might have been the circumstances surrounding it?
The first thing that’s significant here is that they were travelling through Samaria. We know that Jews and Samaritans did not get along, to put it mildly, and hadn’t for hundreds of years. In this context, it’s not surprising that the people of that unnamed Samaritan village “would not receive him” – they had a long, long history of not being “received” or accepted by the Jews, so it stands to reason that they would want to return the favor. Both the Samarians and the Jews had long since forgotten their common heritage and ancestry, and this passage underscores that.
Even so, this is still strange for several reasons, not least because of the harshness of James and John, who are ready to blot out an entire village. We can maybe understand, though not necessarily accept, their anger when we remember that friendship and hospitality, particularly to strangers, was one of the highest values of all the peoples of Palestine. Clearly, the villagers failed to do show that hospitality, but that still doesn’t exonerate James and John, no matter how egregious that snub might have been.
David Lose writes: “But the details are worth tarrying over: Jesus has set his face for Jerusalem and so will let nothing deter him from embracing the cross that awaits him there. He travels through a portion of Samaria and the residents of a Samaritan village don’t receive him because ‘his face was set toward Jerusalem.’ I don’t, quite frankly, understand exactly why they wouldn’t receive him or how his urgency played into that. And maybe James and John don’t either. But they don’t really care. They immediately suggest calling down fire from heaven to consume this unreceptive community.
“Calling down fire. To consume an entire community. Burning them all – women, men, children, animals… everyone and everything. You know – spoiler alert if you haven’t watched the end of Game of Thrones yet! – the thing Jon Snow killed Dany for. [I’ve never seen ‘Game of Thrones,’ but I guess that Jon Snow dealt pretty harshly with Dany.]
“Yeah, I have a hard time with this passage because I’m so incredibly disappointed, shocked, and confused by this violent reaction…James and John are disciples and have been with Jesus for some time by now. Shouldn’t they know better? Yes, they should. But, it turns out, even disciples can be affected by triumphalistic tribalism…Even disciples can decide that to be different is to be less than human.
“Or at least that’s what the disciples James and John apparently think. It’s just as likely that they got that chilly reception from the Samaritans, because Jesus barely noticed the Samaritans himself – his “face was set toward Jerusalem,” which is to say that Jesus was marching to his destiny with a single-mindedness of purpose that simply didn’t allow for such niceties as staying overnight even with congenial foreigners – as some Samaritans had been to them before. So, maybe instead of snubbing Jesus and his disciples, the Samaritans perhaps saw Jesus’ determination and simply decided that offering them hospitality would not have been accepted anyway, and they just stood back and waved to them as they passed by.”[1]
Well, maybe. In any case, Jesus and his friends were not welcome, kind of like those signs along the Interstate out in Montana that state: “No Services”; though it’s not spelled out, what that really means is: “Don’t even think about stopping here!
The Samaritans, as Wikipedia tells us, “are adherents of Samaritanism, a religion closely related to Judaism. Samaritans believe that their worship, which is based on the Samaritan Pentateuch, is the true religion of the ancient Israelites from before the Babylonian Captivity, preserved by those who remained in the Land of Israel, as opposed to Judaism, which they see as a related but altered and amended religion, brought back by those returning from the Babylonian captivity… The Samaritans believe that Mount Gerizim was the original Holy Place of Israel from the time that Joshua conquered Israel. The major issue between Rabbinical Jews (Jews who follow post-exile rabbinical interpretations of Judaism, who are the vast majority of Jews today) and Samaritans has always been the location of the chosen place to worship God; Jerusalem according to the Jewish faith or Mount Gerizim according to the Samaritan faith.”[2] This conflict echoes in our own day in the differences between, say, Catholics and Protestants; ironically, though we believe in the same God, and follow the same Jesus Christ, we have used our God-given ingenuity to find differences that we use to separate us.
After the Babylonian Captivity, the stage was set for centuries of disagreement, a kind of religious “Hatfields and McCoys” feud that sometimes broke out in skirmishes – William Barclay tells us that “[t]he Samaritans in fact did everything they could to hinder and even to injure any bands of pilgrims who attempted to pass through their territory.”[3] But for the most part, the relationship (to use the term loosely) remained a stalemate between cousins who most definitely did not like each other.
All this is by way of giving you a bit of background as to why James and John said what they said; they were just acting out of those centuries of discord and disagreement.
But the first important thing to note here is the reaction of Jesus. He says, “No.” Actually, he probably said a lot more than just “no,” because the text tells us that “he turned and rebuked them,” which is an older way of saying, “he chewed them out but good.” Nobody was going to get a shower of hellfire and brimstone that day.
The second thing that’s important to note here is that Jesus deliberately chose to enter into Samaritan territory in the first place. Why would he do that? Why would he set foot in a country where he could almost count on being hindered or even injured by the natives? Did he simply take a wrong turn? Actually, no; we’re told that going through Samaria was a more direct way to get to Jerusalem, and we just read that Jesus had “set his face” toward Jerusalem; and so maybe he just wanted to get there as fast as possible. That’s certainly plausible.
Or maybe he had something else, something much more wonderful, in mind. And this is where the history lesson we just had becomes relevant for us this morning.
Jesus always turns the “normal world” on its head. And he always does so to show us both the vast difference between God’s way and the world’s way as well as to invite us to follow God’s way. Here, when he, as a Jewish rabbi, a man thoroughly trained in the traditions of his people, might have been expected to say to James and John – “You better believe we’re going to rain fire down on these people,” he says and does the exact opposite – he shows grace. He teaches tolerance.
Tolerance is much more than simply “putting up” with something that bothers you. That’s not really tolerance so much as it is endurance. Endurance has a limit. Tolerance does not. Endurance has more to do with a situation and with emotions. Tolerance is an attitude, a lifestyle choice.
Simply by his presence in Samaria, Jesus indicated a new attitude of tolerance must be taken toward the Samaritans. Instead of taking the long way round and crossing the Jordan to avoid Samaritan territory (John 4:4-5), he went right into it, and more than that, he audaciously and scandalously spoke with a Samaritan woman, contrary to every Jewish custom there was (John 4:9), and finally, he even went so far as to say a time would come when worshiping in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerazim would not be important (John 4:21-24). Jesus made it abundantly clear that his followers were to be tolerant of others, no matter who they were. Most tellingly, when asked whom to regard as “our neighbor,” Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan – he deliberately chose a Samaritan to be the “good guy” in the tale – precisely because Samaritans were so despised. Tolerance does not mean simply accepting what another might say, without question, or not expressing one’s own opinion – it’s standing in the same room with such a person and debating, and not just picking up your marbles and going home. Anybody can do that. And we’ve all done it, myself included. But it takes courage and, believe it or not, a spirit of respecting and even honoring that other person to stay put and listen, and maybe, just maybe, learn something; and maybe, just maybe, the other person will learn something, too. That’s the difference between dialogue and mere argument. The Irish have a saying: “Good marriages are not made in heaven; they’re fought for.” I think that’s true here, too – Jesus brings his disciples to that place, not just because it’s the quickest route to Jerusalem, but also to show them in no uncertain terms that our God is larger than Samaritans, or Jews, or Greeks, or any of the divisions we create among ourselves. Even after three years of being with Jesus every single day, they still didn’t get it – so Jesus brings them to that village so that they will.
For us, too, it’s a given that Jesus not only talked to, but ate and drank with tax collectors and sinners – the lowest of the low, those on the bottom-most rung of the ladder of life; we learned this in Sunday School; we’ve heard it in any number of sermons – so often, in fact, that we’ve become numb to it. It’s just part of our mental woodwork. The utter radicalness of this just goes right by us.
To recover some of that sense of radicalness, to understand why the disciples were often so shocked and the Pharisees and bigwigs of Jesus’ day so outraged, try this little exercise: Retell to yourself the story of the Good Samaritan, but instead of the word “Samaritan,” insert the name of someone or some group that you just can’t stand – and then let the shock wash over you, feel the sense of outrage well up from your guts when you realize that that person or that group is exactly who and what Jesus had in mind when he told that story about who our neighbors are – it’s them! Yes – THEM! And you will have one of those “aha!” moments where you grasp the Gospel and it grabs hold of you. Then you will begin to understand just what Jesus means when he commands us to be tolerant – for us Christians, this isn’t a choice, but part of the package that also includes “loving our neighbors as ourselves,” loving our enemies, doing good “unto the least of these.” Jesus says to us, “I command you to show tolerance to others, and especially to those you like the least or fear the most.” And you better believe that ain’t easy! In fact, I believe that it is almost humanly impossible – and that is why we have to rely on God’s grace. Only God’s grace can perfect us and make us able to do those things we are not otherwise equipped to do.
That’s why we say that tolerance is a virtue. And even more than that, tolerance is a duty.
What Jesus taught the disciples that day went entirely against the grain of their world. It also goes against the grain of our modern world. But we must resist that temptation to close in on ourselves, as much as we must be forthright in challenging the world to conform to the vision God has for it.
Each time we push others away, each time we choose to isolate ourselves, we die a little inside. And, worse than that, our mission to be the eyes, ears, hands and feet of Christ in our generation, goes unfulfilled.
But we can’t let this stand. In every generation, God has raised up people, people just like us, to be agents of reconciliation, agents of tolerance, agents of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are that generation now.
Make no mistake, Sisters and Brothers – the world truly does depend on us!
The challenge I referred to is to keep going, keep loving, keep listening, keep challenging, and to keep reconciling. So today, let’s begin to try to do something that might seem impossible. Let us show our world of fears and suspicions that there is a better way, and show tolerance and love to those whom we consider the Samaritans of our day.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Lose, David, “Pentecost 3 C: Fire from Heaven,” “…in the Meantime,” http://www.davidlose.net/2019/06/pentecost-3-c-fire-from-heaven/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans
[3] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Luke, The New Daily Study Bible, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, pp. 153-154