THE GOOD AND BAD SAMARITANS
LUKE 9:51-56
6 6 10
REV ANTHONY E ACHESON
In today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we hear that, “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face like a flint to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.”
We are all familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan that appears in Luke 10.It’s interesting and significant that today’s story from Luke 9 -appearing just one chapter earlier in Luke - also involves Samaritans. Today’s example of Samaritans, however, is not at all an example of good Samaritans. We might even be tempted to call them a group of bad Samaritans.
Today’s story occurs at the time when Jesus is beginning his final journey into Jerusalem. In verse 52 we hear that Jesus’ disciples entered a village of some Samaritans to make advance preparations for the travel of Jesus and his group. But the Samaritans there would not receive him.
The backdrop here, as for the more famous ‘Good Samaritan’ story in Luke Chapter 10, is the fact that Samaritans and Jews were highly antagonistic, each believing the others’ religion to be wrong; each disliking the other as an ethnic group. Because Jesus was a Jew; because he was travelling to observe the Jewish Passover in Jerusalem; and because Samaritans were at odds with Jews and Jews with Samaritans, these Samaritans were unwilling to extend hospitality to this Jewish man or his group.’
The disciples reacted to this refusal with their desire to call fire down from heaven on these inhospitable Samaritans. Jesus, of course, immediately and unambiguously rejected their approach. His willingness to rebuke people close to him and in his own group; was a hard thing to do. Our human tendency is to smooth over potential disagreements and conflicts in our closest in circles. But as most of us have learned, it is impossible to successfully do that in the long run.
It is easy to hear about the disciples hostile and conflictual response and think to ourselves, ‘We aren’t like those people.’ In the first place, we know we can’t call actual fire down from heaven on those we don’t like. But we may and do think unloving thoughts about those who are ‘other’ to us, or are different from us. We may and do become people who want to raise the ante in conflict and disagreement against those who oppose us. We may very definitely be or become people who want to use violent and destructive means to try to solve problems. That’s basically what those disciples were doing. There was a problem between Jews and Samaritans. That was a real problem. But their method of trying to solve it was to use violence and to call down harshness against those they opposed, and who opposed them.
You and I, like them, may indeed entertain patterns of thought that lead us to think we can solve significant problems in our world by raining down fires from above. Consider, for example, the planes and jets and automated drones that this very day and week and month are raining fire down on Muslim towns and villages half way around the world. In the process of doing that they are killing substantial numbers of women and children, as happens again and again and again. Suchh accidents are not at all rare, but are tragically frequent.
So before we dismiss these disciples as holding ancient superstitions about miraculous interventions; or before we dismiss them as people who might have been having a particularly curmudgeonly day; you and I may want to ask ourselves if we too, like those early disciples, allow ourselves to be drawn into collective ways of thinking that also glorify the raining of fire down from heaven on those whom we today may oppose. And you and I may want to ask ourselves the question, ‘Is that really the most effective way to solve real problems.’
I said a moment ago that there were real problems between Jews and Samaritans. Today there are also real problems between the Western world and the Muslim world. There are real problems today between America and certain violent groups in the world. Is raining fire down from Heaven the best way to solve those problems? This gospel reading at the very least asks us and encourages us to ask that question. For those of us who look to Jesus as our primary model, teacher and guide, and for those of us who look to Jesus as our most foundational window into God, this passage calls us clearly to take note of the fact that Jesus has no interest whatsoever in raining any fire from Heaven down on anyone.
In just a moment we come to our monthly table of communion, in which the fundamental metaphor of that table is the metaphor of being broken. It is important to note the main metaphor of this table is not an encouragement to go out and inflict brokenness on any other. The main metaphor of this table is one of having the courage - the spiritual courage, and also the psychological courage - to allow brokenness within ourselves when life brings brokenness to us or requires brokenness of us.
Every time we take communion the bread is broken before our eyes. That symbolizes the brokenness that Jesus allowed in his own being, rather than inflicting brokenness on His enemies. Every time we come to this table and receive the juice, that always involves brokenness. Every grape that resulted in the contents in that cup had to be mashed down and broken. It used to be done by human feet. The symbology of this table has to do with the fact that Jesus had a choice between either using the strategy and methodology of inflicting brokenness on his enemies, or of using a higher and ultimately more effective power of allowing brokenness to come into His own being in such a way that would release the power of God from within his own being to find a better, higher, more effective way to solve human problems.
He allowed Himself to be broken, rather than inflicting brokenness on someone else or on some group of others. He did so in order to do right and in order to bring the kind of healing that comes from God, and that’s what we see also in Jesus in His relation to these Samaritans. When it came to their hostility to him, the disciples’ attitude was, ‘Let’s crush them.’ Jesus’ approach, however, was very different. Jesus’ alternate approach was to go find another solution that was non-violent and non-destructive.
As we come to this table today, I invite us to reflect on the importance of placing our major focus in our spiritual lives on dealing with our own imperfectness rather than thinking of how we can deal with the imperfectness of others. Remember that this chapter in Luke 9 comes before the one in Luke 10, which is the Good Samaritan story. In the Good Samaritan story, it’s the Samaritan who is good, and the Jews who are bad. In this story in Luke 9, it’s the Samaritans who are bad, and the Jew, Jesus, who is depicted as being good. If you look at Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 together in Luke as a unit - which I think is very helpful to do - you see that what Jesus is doing is making the same point in both stories except in chapter 9 it’s the Samaritans who get ensnared in unlove against their enemy, the Jews, and in Chapter 10 it’s the Jews who get ensnared in unlove against their enemy the Samaritans. Jesus makes it clear that regardless of which group you belong to, there is for any person in any group an equal danger to use your primary group membership as a way to engage in and even use as an outlet for human sinfulness.
One of the primary ways that sin works in human life is through groups. I want to repeat that because I think that’s one of the most important things we can hear: one of the primary ways that sin works in human life is through groups. The most serious incidents of destructive and damaging sin that we human beings engage in most of the time, are the sins we engage in by allowing the collective entities we belong to engage in the attitudes and actions that we might not do as individuals; but that we will offer consent to our larger collective affiliations to engage in.
Some of these most serious incidences of destructive and damaging sin are specifically the sins committed by racial and ethnic groups, which are what these Samaritan-Jew stories in Luke 9 and Luke 10 are about. The most serious instances of destructive and damaging sins that we humans engage in are the kinds of sins that are committed by nation states, by military organizations, by religious organizations, by corporations. Think of the sin that the BP corporation has committed against the human race. That’s a major, major sin that has been committed against the world in our time. Think of the sin that the Roman Catholic church has inflicted on the human race by allowing pedophilia to go on year after year; that is a major, major sin. I could give you many more examples, but I believe it’s important we understand that we often allow our larger groups - our religions, our nations, our military, our racial groups, gender groups - to do the kinds destructive dealings on our behalf that we as individuals would never commit personally. A very important part of the spiritual life is to be aware of, and to be willing to acknowledge, which of the collective sins we say ‘yes’ to, by supporting those large collective patterns.
So as we approach this table, I invite us to include in our reflections how it is that we may support the larger doings of hurt and harm in the racial, the ethnic, the national, the military, the religious, the gender, the corporate systems that we’re involved in, that we might reflect on ways we give support to those ways of dealing hurt and harm, and to the ways in which we can call and challenge those larger collective entities to be instruments of grace and love and creativity and building something better for the future we all look forward to.
I ask and offer all these things in the name of the living Christ who calls us to live out those highest and best possibilities both as individuals and in larger groupings. In His name we pray it. Amen.
