Luke 9:51-56--A Samaritan Village Rejects Jesus

Luke 9:51-56
English Standard Version
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A Samaritan Village Rejects Jesus
51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. 53 But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 And they went on to another village.

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We've talked quite a bit about Jesus' rejection by the "Jews" (those in political and religious authority over the people of Judea and Galilee), and we've seen Jesus be rejected by the Gentiles that lived on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, but we haven't talked much in the gospel of Luke about the Samaritans.  They lived in the land between Judea and Galilee and were a mix between Jewish and Gentile ancestry.  Before Judah was taken off into captivity by Babylon, the northern ten tribes that had formed the nation of Israel and followed their false gods and built temples to them in the northern kingdom were taken into exile by the Assyrians.  While Babylon seemed to focus mostly on reeducation of the leaders and trying to demoralize the general populace, Assyria tried to make those they took captive lose their identities by splitting the people up so among their empire so they could not form communities and forced them to marry people from other nations.  This is where the Samaritans came from and they were hated by both the Jews and the Gentiles--they didn't fit into either world, having only the first five books of Moses for their Bible and worshiping at the temple their forefathers had built.  The woman at the well tries to address some of these issues with Jesus in John 4, but He keeps the conversation on track.  In that story in John 4, the whole town believes.

The Jews so hated the Samaritans that typically they would avoid travelling through Samaria when going from Galilee to Judea or vice versa.  Jesus knew the Samaritans wouldn't make Him or His disciples unclean though and travelled through Samaria on more than one occasion.  This is one of those occasions as we're actually getting close to the time that Jesus is going to die on the cross now (Luke indicates this) and Jesus is on a timetable.  He needs to get to Jerusalem so that specific events happen on specific dates to fulfill the meaning of the events that are going on with Passover for those dates (I'll try to explain some of those things as we go along, but it's likely Luke won't talk much about that since he's writing to a Gentile audience).  All that's important to Luke's readers here is that there wasn't time for Jesus to take the normal long way around because He had to take the direct route to get to Jerusalem on time.

While in Samaria, Jesus does seem to preach the gospel to and minister to some of the Samaritan people, who we don't have much of a record of Him ministering to up to this point (Philip the Evangelist and others will go to Samaria in the book of Acts though).  When the people there also rejected Jesus, for it was prophesied that all would reject the Messiah before His crucifixion--neither Jews nor Gentile nor Samaritans would accept Him fully as the Messiah--James and John, "The Sons of Thunder," show their bigotry towards Samaritans and ask Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to destroy the town (imagine Sodom and Gomorrah, because that's probably what they are thinking of--they imagine these people to be as bad or worse than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah).

Jesus rebukes them for having such and attitude and thinking that it is up to them to pronounce condemnation and ultimately damnation on people that reject Him.  If they do die rejecting Him, then He will be the Judge that will condemn them one day.  The Word of God will convict them in their rebellion, so we need do nothing more than preach the Word to them and like Jesus did here, move on to the next place whenever the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is rejected.  They are not rejecting us, but rejecting Him.  Jesus knew this was all part of the plan--He was to be rejected by men and then crucified by them.  We don't have any indication what happened in the next town, but even though Jesus was in a hurry, He had time to stop and minister to these Samaritan towns along the way, even the ones which He knew would reject Him--a people that had long ago traded real worship of the LORD for a god of their own creation (a pair of golden calves like those created a Mount Sinai).  Jesus still loved them and wanted to see them come to repentance and have those that would believe restored to God's family once again.  Make time for the people that everyone else tells you to stay away from, and check your pride and prejudices.  If Jesus were to ask His disciples to call down fire from heaven on every town and village that rejected Him, it would have started by His home town of Nazareth burning because it was there that that He was rejected when He preached to them in the synagogue and they would not hear what He had to say to them.  This has been a pattern all of Jesus' ministry, but James and John decided that God needed to treat these people differently than their Jewish brothers who had rejected Jesus over and over again.  This passage tells us much about ourselves and about Jesus and the hearts that each of us have for others who the world tells us that they don't deserve the gospel (those we've heard called "deplorable" and "irredeemable" recently by some politicians).  Do you want to see "those people" in heaven with you, or do you like James and John want to call down fire from heaven because waiting for the fires of hell is too long?