Year C
June 30, 2019
Luke 9:51-62
Today’s gospel reading from Luke comes about halfway through Jesus’ ministry. He has left Galilee for the last time and is walking from Galilee to Judea. He has made is turn toward Jerusalem and toward the Cross.
Galilee is the province in the Northern region of Palestine (the name the Romans gave to the region) - it what was once the Northern part of the kingdom of Israel. Judea is in the South; what once was the Kingdom of Judah. Between the two regions, we find Samaria. Samaria used to be the southern part of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Despite our current connotations of Samaritans as being “good,” Galileans and Judeans alike despised the Samaritans. Samaritans had a few things going against them. While they considered themselves to be children of the covenant of Abraham and followers of the God of Israel, they worshipped and provided sacrifices not at the temple in Jerusalem but at Mt. Gezerim. Further, the Samaritans were descended from Gentile people and Jews that were not deported during the Babylonian exile - they were not, by blood, fully Jewish. Thus, Judeans and Galileans both did not consider their Samaritan neighbors to be Jews. There developed this deep and long-held rivalry between the groups. Yet, on the other hand, Gentiles - Romans, Greeks, etc. did not consider the Samaritans to be Gentiles because they worshipped the God of Israel.So the Samaritan people lived in this space of not being Jews, but also not being Gentiles. They were dehumanized, some claiming that they were “not even a people” (Sirach 50:25-26). They had become untouchable - to the point where, when travelling from Galilee to Judea, people walked around Samaria. They couldn’t cross the threshold, the border. So they went around. Galilean Jews would cross the Jordan river to the East, travel on the Eastern side of the Jordan river, then cross into Judea south of Samaria. Even in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, while Jesus travels from Galilee to Judea, the authors do not narrate Jesus ever stepping into Samaria. A good Gallilean, a good Jew wouldn’t dare set foot in Samaria. Luke on the other hand, narrates Jesus crossing the uncrossable. Hopefully by this point in our year in the Gospel of Luke, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Yet again Jesus crosses the uncrossable and goes into the very places that he shouldn’t be.
Jesus crosses the threshold. He crosses the uncrossable to share the Gospel of the coming of the kingdom of God and gets what? Rejection. Wait… what? Jesus crosses the uncrossable to share the Gospel and gets rejected. We might expect Jesus to cross into Samaria and get welcomed with open arms. The Good News is finally going to Samaria. But no, he gets rejected. When I think about it more, I’m not so sure that I blame the people of the Samaritan village.
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| Vince Flango [Public domain] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VikingHall.jpg |
Are they coming to convert us to their way of worshipping God? Does following this Jesus person mean becoming *like* them? Sing their hymns? Worship in their temple? Do they expect us to forgive and forget this easily? Are they going to “pretend” to like us just to get their way? Are they going to pretend to accept us just to reject us when we refuse to be anything but ourselves? Are they going to love us for who we are - not who they hope to turn us into?
Martin Luther - our namesake - while I clearly am thankful for his theology of grace. His attitude toward our Jewish siblings was harmful (and to be frank - anti-Christ). He thought that our Jewish Siblings would be so overwhelmed with Luther’s proclamation of the Gospel that they’d become Christian (and he wrote horrible things about the Jewish people when they didn’t convert to his version of Christianity). He didn’t love his Jewish siblings for who they were, but for who he hoped they’d become. He had an ulterior motive - and a love that stopped short. I can imagine the Samaritans being suspicious of this same kind of attitude coming from the messengers that make their way into the Samaritan town. Is there some ulterior motive to their arrival? Is their love going to stop short?
I don’t blame the Samaritans for initially rejecting the Gospel. I don’t. They had for so long been beaten down and oppressed by their neighbors that even the good news of the Gospel seems like anything but good news. But that doesn’t stop Jesus from crossing the threshold and crossing the uncrossable - even as he knows that the Samaritans at this point aren’t in a place to hear the Gospel. Jesus goes into the village anyway. Jesus remains present anyway. And we know, from the rest of Luke and Acts, that the Gospel remains present with the Samaritans. Even they - those who society deems untouchable - aren’t out of reach of the God revealed in Jesus that loves all of humanity.
James and John - so often the image of the worst of the disciples - upon seeing the rejection of their neighbors ask if they should command fire to rain down from heaven. Jesus - instead of rebuking the ones that rejected him - rebuke his own disciples. If they command fire to rain down from heaven, the disciples become exactly what the Samaritans fear. And the possibility of relationship is gone. It goes up in smoke. The Good News that they came to proclaim would be anything but “good.”
So often Jesus leads us to cross into the uncrossable places. Those places that we’re told that we aren’t supposed to go. Those places that aren’t proper places for proper and “good” Christians to go. What are our uncrossable places? The prisons? Pride parades? The bars? So often Jesus leads us to touch the untouchable people. The people who have been pushed to the margins. The people who have been dehumanized - those people that we don’t want to consider a people. The people that “good Christians” wouldn’t associate themselves with. Who are the people our society deems untouchable people? Those who are homeless? Those in the LGBTQ+ community? Those who have migrated here? Those who are undocumented? Those who believe differently than us, think differently than us, talk differently than us? We may all have different answers for these questions. But the simple truth is: none of them are out of the reach of the God revealed to us in Jesus. That’s the good news we can find today; in the face of rejection, Jesus keeps working, the Gospel keeps working.
Helpfully, today’s passage cautions us against the idea that when we cross into uncrossable places and go to those deemed untouchable that we’ll be welcomed with open arms. Often, we are met with suspicion. The church and Christianity have done immense harm to the very people that Christ stands alongside. We have to acknowledge that. Crossing the uncrossable and ministering to those deemed untouchable is hard work. It is a hard vocation. Yes, We face rejection. Yes, We face misunderstandings. Yes, We face suspicion. “Why really are you here?” And do we blame them?
Breaking down walls and standing alongside the people who are marginalized and who hurt takes love - the love of God that we’ve found in Christ. It takes joy - the joy found in the Good News of Christ; that joy that cannot be contained. It takes peace - the kind of peace that Christ offers that breaks down barriers. It takes patience - patience when facing rejection and suspicion, dwelling with and among communities and individuals. It takes kindness. It takes generosity - in time, in treasure, in how we see our fellow human beings. It takes faithfulness - the faithfulness to our baptismal callings, faithfulness to our neighbor - knowing that we are faithful because God is faithful. It takes gentleness - gentleness of heart, of speech, of action. It takes self-control - ya know, like not asking for fire to rain down from heaven. To use Paul’s words today: It takes the fruits of the Spirit. The good news is that Jesus promised the gift of that Spirit. And we trust the Spirit to do her work in our community and in the world through us and among us. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”Amen
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