I

Psalm 24; Luke 9:51-55; Nehemiah 9:6

For such a short story, there is a lot of “I” in our sketch from Luke’s gospel. It is a seemingly innocuous event—Jesus heads for Jerusalem and passes through a Samaritan village—big deal, huh? But then everything falls apart. The innocuous piece collapses to be replaced by something dangerous. 

Let’s look more deeply…

The first line says everything we need to know—Holy Week is coming, Jesus knows it, and he determinedly sets out on the last journey he will make in his earthly life. He obeys his Father in heaven. He commits to their shared work—the redemption of the world and us within it. Jesus becomes the Christ.

So far, so good for us. We know this part of the story well. We hear it, believe it, and form our faith lives around it—it is the Gospel!

No one else in the story, though, sees any of that, and that is precisely where we need to fix our attention. 

Jesus’ route passes through Samaria. Being who he is, he welcomes the opportunity to welcome those who to that point had been disregarded, dismissed, and deemed unworthy of God’s kingdom. As Jesus was, so Jesus is. He seeks to lodge with the Samaritans along the way, embodying the true welcome God feels and issues to every human being God creates. Now, one might think this news would be welcomed with great joy, but look what happens—the opposite—the Samaritans hear the invitation, but reject it out of hand. Why? Because Jesus has determined to be in Jerusalem—the very seat of the institutional bigotry that has afflicted the Samaritans for generations. If Jesus is going there, we want no part of him.

This truly tragic turn of events revolves on a single axis—the axis of I. The Samaritans can see no viewpoint but their own. They assume their assumptions are correct—Jesus is just another Jew, another person with ulterior motives, and another peg in the wall between the Samaritans and their God (note that Samaritans worshipped the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as the remnant of the long destroyed Northern Kingdom of Israel). They have never moved to forgiving their cousins for this affront. Why should they? Those same cousins make sure that Samaritans always know their place, creating legal insults that make Samaritans separate and unequal every time they enter Judah and Jerusalem. But—and here is the tragedy—their self-justified reaction leaves them out, blinding them to the real presence of God with them.

On this anniversary year of the great Selma march for civil rights, we should have all compassion for the Samaritans. Those marchers knew every hurt, every offense, and bore every scar as did the Samaritans. When someone tramples us, we fight back. When someone declares us unworthy, we react. When that someone does so in the name of God, well, then, so much for God…Yet, like the Selma marchers exemplified, there is a more excellent way—lose the “I.” Break the cultural demand that everything and everyone be treated as a matter of self. In the presence of Christ—even in the presence of great human evil—the most important person in the room is Jesus. Lost in self, the Samaritans only saw Jesus’ fixation on being in Jerusalem; they could not see what was really happening, nor where Jesus’ great determination came from. 

Do we?

As we consider our answer to that self-examination, look a bit further to the response of the disciples to the Samaritans’ response—

Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

Well, now there’s a helpful response (har, har…)… Poor James and John really stick their feet in it! Sure it hurts to be rejected, and it really hurts when the rejection comes from somebody you really despise—who are you to reject me? Yet, the issue here is exactly the same as with the Samaritans—James and John only see the world through the eyes of self. Everything that happens only matters as they define it by their terms. 

In our current context, there is a real drive to lose patience with enemies. We want to be rid of them. As the amendments to the Book of Order wend their way through the presbyteries voting on them, some of those bodies have experienced the tumult of neighbor turning on neighbor, with some declaring that the body is no longer fit for their participation, so they leave. As we confront terrorism draped in religious cloaking, there is a gut reaction to “Kill ‘em all and let God sort it out!,” as a long-ago t-shirt proclaimed. In government houses, the old rules of politics are gone, replaced by a “beat ‘em at all costs” ideology that tolerates no compromise. 

And how are we doing? Are we happier? Are we safer? Are we fuller?

The cure is the same as before—lose the “I.” Look to Christ, taking the world on his terms. That means reacquainting ourselves with the God of all creation. That means seeing the world as a gift of grace. That means seeing one another as family. That means realizing  that a great many of the most violent divisions between us are human constructs. That means seeing the presence of Christ in every face, hearing his voice as someone speaks, and responding in love. 

So much could have happened on the road through Samaria, but I got in the way. Let’s remove that obstacle in our hearts, in our community, and in the world. There is too much good waiting to happen.