Samaritans and Jews: A History Shared

Illustratrion

In the new Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series, I have been delighted to see that in episode after episode the star of the series has not been the curiosities discovered through space exploration… although there are plenty of those… instead it has been the raw exploration of human nature that has thoroughly grabbed my attention.

One story line in particular that has caught my heart strings is that of Doctor M’benga who hides a secret from the rest of the crew. This is a small spoiler, but for the sake of the gospel… I think it’s worth it.

As the episode where the Doctor’s secret is revealed, suspicion toward the doctor is raised early on. Something just feels “off” with the Doctor… and I recall wondering if it was even something nefarious.

By the end of the episode, however, it is revealed that his deep dark secret that he has kept from the crew is that he has a stowaway hidden in the pattern-buffer of the transport… a stowaway who happens to be his 12 year old daughter who is terminally ill.

When her presence potentially puts the ship at risk, however, the doctor is painfully willing to release her from the buffer and allow the disease to run its course.

Captain Pike, playing the role of the Knight in Shining armor here, finds another solution. The doctor’s daughter can stay. Hope for a cure is still possible. She has a future… her presence matters and even becomes part of the mission of their starship.

Samaritans and Jews: A History

When we deal with people, there are often histories and experiential layers that we are simply unaware of. Or even if we are aware of those layers… we may not realize the extent to which they affect an individual.

The Doctor had a secret history… stowed away from the rest of the crew. It was not an illicit one… but it was filled with pain and distrust. For him to speak openly about his daughter’s existence could potentially have put her at risk. He feared outsiders knowing about her… because each new person meant that his chances of exposure were raised that much more.

In today’s scripture, Jesus’ disciples struggle with a people who have a history… the Samaritans. The Samaritans aren’t hiding daughters in transport buffers on a starship… but they are harboring a significant pain from years past.

Over the years, you’ve likely heard a good deal about the Samaritans… especially the Good Samaritan. Perhaps you have heard the general mistrust that the Jewish people had toward the Samaritans… that they were outsiders… people to be feared and pushed away. Hence, part of the scandal when Jesus tells the parable of the “Good Samaritan” who does the faithful work that the Jewish faith leaders failed to do.

What you might not know, however, is that the Samaritans and the Jews had a shared history… even a shared faith. Like the Jews, the Samaritans also worshipped YAHWEH… they worshipped the same God that the Jews did… the same God that we do.

But the Samaritans were not quite the same as the rest of the Jews. Their Bibles only contained the first five books of the Bible… they had Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy… and it stopped there. The books they had received some 1,000 years prior were enough for them… they didn’t need the additional scrolls that the Jews had written in the time since Moses.

Additionally, while most Jews recognized the Jerusalem Temple Mount as their high holy place… the Samaritans had chosen Mount Gerizim where they believed Abraham had nearly sacrificed Isaac before God stepped in and provided a different lamb for the slaughter.

And while one might think that having two different holy sites would be a good thing… their differences in faith turned into a significant rivalry. Their closeness to one another became a resentment of one another. And sometime between 112BC and 111BC, Jerusalem attacked the land of the Samaritans and, specifically, the targeted the high Holy Place of Mount Gerizim… the Jews of Jerusalem wiped out the temple of the Samaritans so that Jerusalem would be the undisputed center of Judiasm. As you can imagine, however, it only solidified the rift between the two peoples. The resentment for Jerusalem amongst the Samaritans exploded.

The Samaritans had a history with Jerusalem… there was pain there… mistrust… fear of letting someone connected to Jerusalem in because the memory of what happened last time was still fresh.

And here in scripture, 140 years later, Jesus and his Jewish disciples come through the Samaritan lands on their way toward, of all places, Jerusalem.

The Disciples’ Mission: Prepare the Way

Now for the disciples in today’s gospel, their mission is straight forward. They have been commissioned by Jesus to be the new John the Baptists in the world. Prepare the Way! That’s what they’re supposed to do.

And so they try to do just that. They go ahead of Jesus, telling people the story of this amazing Messiah who has healed people and taught great things… and that now is setting his sights on his ultimate goal which is to go to… drum roll? Jerusalem.

The Anger Cycle

The Samaritans want little to do with any Jew, quite frankly. But to help someone who claims to be the Jewish Messiah further strengthen the claims of Jerusalem as the Holy Place of God?? It would be nearly unthinkable.

When the Samaritans hear where Jesus is going… they reject him before he can even arrive. The very idea of him and what he represents… Jerusalem… is revolting for them.

The division is too great. Jerusalem has caused too much pain. We cannot forgive. We cannot forget. And… I think… if we were in their position we might feel similar.

Now when James and John hear that the Samaritans are rejecting Jesus before they can even meet him… they’re torqued off. Sure… Jesus had been rejected elsewhere… but those were fellow Jews. Who do these Samaritans think they are? Don’t they know that Jesus is going to Jerusalem?

Indignation fills their hearts… all the disciples can see is the rejection of their master which, to them, makes no sense. And so they go to Jesus… ready to bring fire and brimstone to their enemies.

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

The cycle of anger and violence is about to be ignited again… literally. And it’s not that the disciples were on shaky territory with their idea here… at least as far as scripture is concerned. The Prophet Elijah had called down fire against the troops of a King when the King tried to dismiss YAHWEH’s prophet. This was the Son of God that mere peasants of Samaria were rejecting! Right? It was time for some judgement. Burn their villages to the ground with holy fire! Right? Right Jesus? No? Oh.

Creating Community

In a move that likely took the disciples completely off-guard… Jesus rebuked his disciples for even saying such a thing. An ancient scribe when he was transcribing this text even scribbled a few words in the margins hundreds of years ago as a reminder to what was said about Christ in John 3:17. This is what the scribe wrote, “I did not come to the world to destroy the lives of people… but to save them.”

Even when faced with rejection and with the power of Holy Fire at his fingertips… Christ saw these people as people in need. These people were still suffering from the pains of 140 years ago. They still hurt from the loss of their Holy Center… the place where they would pilgrim to in order to be in the presence of God.

Jesus understood that he was unwelcome not because the people hated God… but because they loved God but had been hurt by those of Jerusalem.

And so Jesus interrupts the cycle. Rather than hurting those who were already hurt… Jesus’ resolve to go to Jerusalem to suffer and to die for these who are pained… his resolve seems to have grown all the more. And does he hold a grudge?

Directly after Jesus rebukes his disciples… they go on to the next village. And, we might presume… this was yet another Samaritan village as they were still presumably in Samaria. And while we don’t know whether he is accepted at that next village or not… we do hear Jesus tell that scandalous parable about the Good Samaritan in the very next chapter of Luke.

Even after Jesus had been rejected by the Samarians in that first village… Jesus sought to help the Jews view the Samaritans not as enemies but as fellow human beings made in the image of God… even if they worship at a different place and don’t have quite as many books in their scriptures.

Through an act of significant wisdom and insight to the past as well as the humility to walk away… Christ starts the foundation for building community between these two severed peoples. He offers the possibility of a bridge when even his own disciples wanted to call for another fire.

And why? Because Christ is concerned about ALL of God’s children. When he travels into Jerusalem and goes to the cross… he doesn’t die just for the sake of Jerusalem but for all creation. Where another all-powerful being might have seen reason enough to just let us burn… Christ offered his life to create a bridge for us into the Kingdom.

Today’s Strife

As we wrestle with the challenges of THIS day… as we watch January 6th Committee hearings unfold and hear testimony after testimony… some people calling each and every testimony a lie and others simply left infuriated.

As the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade and we have some in the community celebrating an end to abortion while others mourn the decision...

As gun violence has reeked havoc in our country over the last several weeks and months to such a degree that we actually had a bi-partisan bill come together...

As we still sit in the wake of the protests and riots of the last two years as race equality questions have been lifted up in a way that really hadn’t been seen since the late 60s...

As people find their families divided over questions on vaccines...

As questions of finances in the US and the world cause us to wonder about our own stability...

As all of this goes on… and that’s just in our own country… we are reminded of Christ’s journey through Samaria those years ago… and we remember his teachings to his disciples of 2,000 years ago.

We, as Christ disciples this day, are called by Christ not to bring fire against one another but to work toward building bridges over the gaps that divide us from one another. We are called not to deal with each other from a place of hate, mistrust, or envy… but from a place where we try to understand the histories and pains that those on the other side have experienced.

Now should we stand for what we believe in? Yes. But let us make very certain that we set our own faces toward Jerusalem… that we come from a place not of power but of humility.

In the ministries of not only Jesus but also his apostles and the church, God’s plan is to be carried out not violently or from a place of dominance but through weakness… through vulnerability… through an openness to our own faults and failures.

We each have our own histories and our own pains that we carry with us. Remember that the other guy or gal does too. And love them just as God loves you. Sometimes that means engaging in listening and conversation… sometimes that means walking away in humility. But don’t bring the fire. Instead, remember your baptism… and carry the water of life into these challenging times.

Christ’s journey with his face set toward Jerusalem continues even today.