Sixth Sunday after Pentecost: Our Freedom in Christ

2 Kings 2.1-2, 6-14

Psalm 77.1-2, 11-20

Galatians 5.1, 13-25

Luke 9.51-62

 

The Jews of Samaria hated the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Jews of Jerusalem hated the Jews of Samaria.  Many, many years before Jesus, religious differences had driven them apart; and, as it is all too common even today, their different ways of worshipping God and their different ways of understanding the power and nature of God in their lives had led to vicious hatred and antipathy.  By the time of Jesus, calling someone a Samaritan was considered a common insult among mainstream Jews.  It was the same as calling someone dirty, stupid, irreligious or backward.  To hate the Samaritans was a way of keeping God’s religion pure, of preserving “authentic” Judaism.  One striking fact of Jesus’ life and ministry is that he carried his message to the Samaritans.  The writer of the Gospel of John tells us that he spoke openly with a Samaritan woman.  He also tried to break down the prejudices other Jews held toward the Samaritans, particularly in his telling the parable of the Good Samaritan in which the hated Samaritan is in fact the good neighbor, far more than the supposedly religiously orthodox priest and Levite who pass on the other side of the road to avoid the beaten man.

Like in so many other instances Jesus’ message did not always get across to his followers.  Old habits die hard and none so hard as that of ingramied prejudice and hatred fuelled by religious differences and self-righteousness; none so hard as the habits which allow us to separate people into the neat categories of “us and them”.  And so when Jesus and his followers are not welcomed by the Samaritans in a certain village – not welcomed because they are headed for Jerusalem, the immediate response of the disciples James and John is retribution.  “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” (Luke 9.54)  Now, maybe they weren’t there when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, maybe they did not get the parable’s point, but clearly they had been well-schooled in the ubiquitous human response to use vengeance and revenge to hurt or, better still, utterly destroy one’s enemies; a response which has made itself evident in every people, in every place, in every time.  But Jesus’ response is not the conditioned human response of “us and them.”  He rather tells off John and James for buying into the structures of violence and retribution.  In front of his other followers he rebukes them.  Some ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke add the following words which Jesus addresses to James and John: “You do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them.”

There is in this short episode from the Gospel of Luke one of the core aspects of our salvation – that Jesus offers us a way beyond our very human need to create “us and them” distinctions.  The rivalry and hatred between the Jews of Samaria and the Jews of Jerusalem have been played out over and over throughout history, and continue to be played out in our own day – in parts of our country black against white, legal resident against “illegal” alien; in our political life, conservative against liberal; the list could go on and on.  Being in one or other of these camps seems to give human beings the right to denigrate, injure, demonise; and at the very worst it seems to give them the right to kill or even utterly destroy those whom we have cast as our opponents.  The horrific genocides of the last century and the current are evidence enough of that.  It is the way of human life.  It is the human condition.  And so to paraphrase words from Paul to the Romans: “Wretched race that we are! Who will rescue us from this way of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (cf Romans 8.24-25)  Jesus demonstrates to us that there is a way beyond “us and them” structures and definitions. 

The message of salvation is that Jesus comes to set us free, and that salvation is not so much freedom from external forces, but rather from our own death-dealing and life-destroying ways of thinking and being.  Jesus consistently lived, pointing out that our status quo divisions based on prejudice have no meaning: men and women, clean and unclean, Jew and Samaritan, believer and unbeliever.  The freedom which Jesus offers us in salvation is the freedom to let go of our need to create enemies, of our need for self-righteousness, of our need to hate and seek vengeance; it is the freedom to see these needs for what they are, simplistic and destructive ways of protecting ourselves and our short-sighted interests; he offers the freedom to cease living a conditioned human life – conditioned by centuries of “us and them” thinking; conditioned by the need to be right or think ourselves better-than – and to live an authentic human life, a life which reflects our truest nature – the image of God. 

But living that authentic human life does not happen by magic.  It is a struggle in which we must always remind ourselves to what are called and consciously abandon our first inclination to create divisions between ourselves and our fellow human beings, demonising and eventually victimising them.  Simple belief in Jesus does not save us from those inclinations, but rather shows us the way which we must travel.  In the letter to the Galatians  Paul finds himself reminding them of the freedom  to which they were called in salvation.  “For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5.1)  The natural human inclination to create insiders and outsiders had reared its ugly head among the Church in Galatia.  Those who had been Jews before becoming Christians wanted their Gentile sisters and brothers  to also become Jews first before they could become Christians.  You can imagine the kinds of heated arguments which ensued and the mechanics of victimisation which prevailed.  They had become slaves of their need to be right, of their need to make others believe and think the way they did.  And so Paul reminds them that in their attempts to be right, in their attempts to draw just the right theological lines and boundaries they had given up the freedom which is theirs in Christ.  He reminds them that their adherence to conditioned responses, to conditioned human life, will not only destroy the community in Galatia, but it will ultimately destroy those who, by drawing lines among their brothers and sisters, long to be right and righteous:  “If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” (Galatians 5.15)  He reminds them of the authentic human life to which their freedom in Christ calls them: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Galatians 5.14)  When you love your neighbour as yourself, then there is no possibility of creating insiders and outsiders – everyone belongs.

Our freedom in Jesus Christ is the freedom not to act out of conditioned human responses, comfortable and safe as they may be, but to be liberated to make choices based of the Good News of love, compassion and inclusivity.  Our salvation is, in part, the process by which we draw wider and wider circles, encompassing ourselves and others in authentic human life; circles of inclusivity which free us more and more from slavery to hatred, victimisation, and simplistic notions of indsiders and and outsiders and into the glorious liberty of the children of God..  It is “for freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5.1)