Tuesday in Proper 21, Year 1
Zechariah 8:20-23
Psalm 87
Luke 9:51-56
This sermon was originally preached by Br. Sean Glenn [then, ssje] at the evening celebration of the Holy Eucharist on Tuesday, September 28, 2021 at the Conventual Church of St. Mary & St. John, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This evening’s lections highlight for us a very important dual reality about what we might call “the Religious world-view.” The passages from Zechariah and Psalm 87 remind us that the beauty and goodness of religion have real power to bring people into a relationship with the Divine. Here a context is disclosed where the abundance of God’s love become so incarnated by the life and worship of God’s people that all people will long for nothing more than to enter into that life.
Peoples shall yet come, the inhabitants of many cities; the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Come, let us go to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I myself am going.’ …
‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’1
Glorious things are spoken of you *
O city of our God.
The singers and the dancers will say, *
“All my fresh springs are in you.”2
But the dual nature of this reality obtains when God’s people forget their poverty and claim the goodness of God as their own goodness; when God’s people claim the mercy of God as their sole and exclusive possession. Little known to the disciples as this juncture, only a Holy self-disregard can properly contain God’s grace.
Jesus and his disciples enter a Samaritan village. Luke tells us that because Jesus has “set his face toward Jerusalem,” the residents of that village refuse to receive them. Luke asks us to notice the dynamics of cultural and religious prejudice at work in both the disciples and the Samaritans. Not only do the Samaritans not receive Jesus and his entourage because of their decided and purposeful aim toward Jerusalem. Jesus’ disciples, too, display a similar (if not over-blown) rejection of the Samaritans’ otherness.
Since the Babylonian exile, Jews and Samaritans lived with an ugly mutual apprehension of one another. Samaritans did not consider Jerusalem the proper meeting place with God, but preferred instead to worship on Mount Gerizzim. For the Jews, this was tantamount to an embrace of the pagan practices historically known there. For both, a tinge of national pride undergirds the theological enterprises they seek to define and protect.
Jesus, however, refuses to engage in the petty claims of nationalism or religious sectarianism.
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 towards Jerusalem. 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 he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.3
Surely, none of us has ever desired the cosmic destruction on our enemies. If my own experience of myself has taught me anything, however, I nonetheless suspect that we have all certainly come very close to such a desire. We should be mindful that Jesus, having set his face toward Jerusalem, has the full scope of his mission and fate in mind—the immense suffering, the rejection, the misunderstanding; and still also the infinite joy to follow. These words of Isaiah must have been close to his heart:
I gave my back to those who struck me,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face
from insult and spitting.The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near.4
We do not know exactly how Jesus rebuked his disciples in this instance, for Luke does not tell us. We can imagine that these words from Isaiah must have burned right through whatever admonishment he gave. For us, in an era when it is easy for wealthy nations to quite literally rain down fire from heaven on their (frequently poorer) enemies, Jesus calls on the faithful to be vigilant, discerning, and inclined always to mercy—for the God incarnate in Jesus Christ shows his power “chiefly in showing mercy and pity.”5
What the disciples don’t realize is, they need the mercy and pity of God just as much as the Samaritans they scorn. They were, as Matthew Henry in his commentary on Luke notes, “ignorant of the prevailing motives of their own hearts, which were pride and carnal ambition. … It is easy for us to say, Come, see our zeal for the Lord! and to think we are very faithful in his cause, when we are seeking our own objects, and even doing harm instead of good to others.”6
When beauty and goodness pour forth from the life and worship of the faithful, the faithful must always be aware that this grace is not of their own making; we cannot own it. God blesses His people so that they might gratuitously give it away. God’s declares power “chiefly in showing mercy and pity.” The temptation to inquire as to whether another is “deserving” cannot abide the worship such a God. Luke bids the faithful enter into a Holy self-disregard that recognizes God’s blessings as gifts for the wholes world, not a select few. He asks us to be mindful of the religious temptation to lay our hands on the mercy of God—and keep it for ourselves, defining with great zeal who is “in” and who is “out.”
Jesus tells us this will not work.
Luke’s Jesus invites us to look deeply at the ways we deal with people who do not honor our religious convictions. Are we ready to write them off—ore even destroy them?
We can live this tension with care and mercy, however, asking God to smother whatever wrath remains within us. The city founded on God will not know our sinful wrath. In the fullness of Gods’ time, may God’s people serve the risen Christ in all they meet, whether they are accepted by them or not. I leave us with the words Edwin Markam:
“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”
1 Zechariah 8:20-23
2 Psalm 87:1, 6
3 Luke 9:51-56
4 Isaiah 50:6-8
5 From the Collect for Proper 21
6 Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (Moody Publishers, 1981)
Copyright © 2021 Sean R. Glenn