This coming Thursday is the Fourth of July. For the past few years, our daughter Katy has gotten us tickets for the Fourth of July celebration in Allendale. That celebration includes a full concert by Katy’s Waldwick Community Band. That celebration also includes fireworks which go off on the far side of the Allendale lake. Now the fireworks begin just past dusk. The first year we were there, all the ducks who had just settled down with their ducklings for the night flew up in terror at the noise and light of the fireworks.
Jesus’ disciples, John and James, wanted to do more than wake up the people of a Samaritan town with fireworks. James and John asked Jesus if they should call fire down from heaven to destroy this particular village. Jesus sent some of his followers ahead of him to prepare the way for Jesus. Jesus’ disciples tried to do that in this particular Samaritan village.
This particular Samaritan village refused to receive Jesus. The Bible tells us Jesus set His face towards Jerusalem. That was Jesus’ goal. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be taken up. Jesus was going to suffer, die, be raised again and taken up to heaven.
James and John had been two of the three disciples who had been with Jesus at the Mount of Transfiguration. There, Jesus’ clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. There, God the Father overshadowed the mountain with glory.
There, God spoke out loud. “This is my Son, whom I have chosen. Listen to him.”
Jesus taught his disciples about the cross in His future.
“Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men.”
Just before the Transfiguration, Jesus had been more specific.
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
James and John had a picture of who Jesus was.
God just said, “This is my Son. Listen to him.”
So James and John thought this town had a lot of nerve to refuse to receive Jesus.
“Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” James and John asked.
Say the word, Jesus, and we’ll ask God to make this town into toast. It does hurt to be rejected, and refused. It hurts more when we see our loved ones rejected.
But Jesus turned and rebuked his disciples. And they went on to another town.
The King James Bible even reports that Jesus said, “Ye know not what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”
If God were to blast away every town that refused Jesus, there would be no towns left in this world. In our sinful human nature, we’d certainly call a few well-placed lightning bolts down on enemies of the Gospel. But Jesus had another approach.
Jesus called people to repentance. Jesus called people to turn from and to be sorry for their sin. Jesus called people to put their faith in Him, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
When Jesus finally did get to Jerusalem, Jesus took up a cross, suffered and died for all people. Jesus, like a lightning rod, took on himself all the anger of God at all sin for all time.
Jesus’ prayer from the cross was, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Jesus suffered, died, and rose again for that town of Samaritans. Jesus suffered, died and rose again for James, John, and all the other disciples Jesus suffered, died and rose again for you and for me.
God used the very hatred and rejection of His own people as a means to save the world. God used the ignorance, mockery and cruel efficiency of Roman soldiers in the crucifixion to save them, too.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who paid for the sins of the whole world. God’s anger at all sin was poured out on Jesus as He took our place and punishment on the cross.
There will come a day when God gives the whole world a wakeup call. God will destroy the world by fire. And the world’s highest and mightiest will want to hide from God under a rock. God’s own Son, Jesus will judge the world.
But before that happens, God calls us and the whole world to repentance. God calls us to turn from sin, disobedience and self-destruction. God calls us, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit to trust in Jesus, God’s Son. Through faith in Jesus, God’s Son, God forgives all of us our sins. Through Baptism in Jesus’ name, God calls us beloved sons and daughters.
Jesus is not ashamed to call us his own brothers and sisters. God pours out His Holy Spirit into our hearts in our baptism. God pours His Holy Spirit into our hearts in the constant hearing and reading of God’s Word. God strengthen and renews our faith in the gift of Jesus’ body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. God makes us witnesses of God’s amazing grace, love and forgiveness in Jesus.
I love the fact that being rejected by one Samaritan village didn’t stop Jesus from sharing the Gospel with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, and with her whole town.
At the end of that visit, the whole town confessed in John 4:42, “We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Rejection by this one village didn’t stop Jesus from healing a Samaritan, along with 9 others of leprosy. In fact, the Samaritan man healed of leprosy was the one man who returned to thank Jesus for making him whole. Rejection by this one village didn’t stop Jesus from telling the story just a few chapters later in Luke of the Good Samaritan. This Samaritan cared for a man who had been beaten and robbed on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem. Two other more respectable people saw this wounded man, yet passed by on the other side.
After Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus told his disciples that they would be his witnesses.
Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
The book of Acts tells us that Philip the Evangelist shared the Good News of Jesus with the Samaritans. Peter and John also visited Samaria, and prayed that those who had heard Philip might receive the Holy Spirit. Then the two Apostles placed their hands on these baptized Samaritans, and they did receive the Holy Spirit. God set a different kind of fire in their hearts and lives.
Sometimes you and I, in speaking the Gospel, will meet up with rejection. We take a risk when we witness. I remember our former Director of Christian Outreach Matthew Hass and I went prayer walking through the town stores in Closter. I’d love to do some prayer walking again.
Through prayer walking, God helped us build a relationship with many of the store owners and workers in town. Matthew or I asked those working in the stores if they had a need for which we could pray. Most people stopped and thought of something. Matthew and I spent some time talking to God about these needs in church after our walk.
But one store owner said, “We don’t want any. Get out of here.”
Youch! We left her store immediately. But outside the store, and a little bit farther away, we prayed for that store and its people anyway.
Though at times we adamantly refuse God, God will keep coming back to us with a call to repentance and faith until that last day comes. So we ask Jesus to forgive us when we’d rather hurt people than share Christ’s love with them. We ask God’s Holy Spirit to bless and guide us. God’s Word does go out to the very ends of the earth. Not all will hear or accept it.
But some will, by the power of God’s Word and Holy Spirit.
We ask God’s Holy Spirit to help us as we serve as Jesus’ witnesses. On all who do receive Him by faith, God pours out grace, mercy, and new life in Jesus’ name. Amen.