Not My Agenda but Thine…

“When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set his face to go to Jerusalem.  And He sent messengers ahead of Him.  On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for Him; but they did not receive Him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.”

I have to confess, I’ve always kind of skimmed over this passage to get to the rather interesting exchange that follows between Jesus and his disciples: 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 [Jesus] turned and rebuked them.  Then they went on to another village.

That’s just an interesting story on so many levels – not the least of which being that James and John felt that they had the authority to call down fire from heaven on people that rejected Jesus; talk about a temptation to abuse power!  But seriously, although the center of the story is about Jesus’ rejection of that kind of petty retribution, there’s more going on here than I first realized.  I’d failed to pay attention to why the Samaritans rejected Jesus, because that in itself is a little unusual.

See, in the Gospels, one of the things we tend to find over and over is that it’s the outsiders who are much more likely to be open to Jesus’ message and ministry.  John’s story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 is a prime example.  But here, we find that although Jesus’ purpose is to enter a Samaritan village as part of His ministry, they reject Him.  Why?  Because His face was set toward Jerusalem.

You see, the Samaritans and the Jewish people didn’t get along well; there were hundreds of years of bad blood between them, and one of the sore spots was where God should be worshipped: in Jerusalem or on Mt. Gerizim.  Who is right?  Who is closer to God?  The text gives us a clue that the reason the Samaritans of this village rejected Jesus is because He continued to see His mission in terms that included the enemies of the Samaritans (which is, ironically, one of the problems that the Pharisees had with Jesus: that He continued to spend time with sinners and tax collectors and Gentiles).

We tell ourselves that we would never reject Jesus if He reached out to people that were different than us.  We would never turn our backs on Christ for loving people of another race, for spending time with “sinners” or outsiders.  Yet how often do we condemn our brothers and sisters in Christ who reach out to people whose opinions, politics, culture or lifestyle are different than ours?  There’s no room for self-righteousness on the right, left or center here; it’s a question of whether we’re really able to believe that God loves the world that He gave us His only begotten Son, not just the people we approve of or agree with.

I’ve got a friend from college who has a ministry with people in positions of power and influence in our government.  Our politics are miles apart, but I agree with him wholeheartedly when he spoke about the need that our leaders have for spiritual care.  Let us not throw stones when others are called to minister in areas we have a difficult time embracing, lest we find ourselves turning our backs on the mission of God that is always bigger than our vision can encompass.

Pastor Brian