Tolerance

TTolerance

Luke 9:51 – 55

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

9:51 When the days were approaching for His ascension, He was determined to

go to Jerusalem; 52 and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and

entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. 53 And they

did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. 54 When His

disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command

fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55 But He turned and

rebuked them. 56 And they went on to another village.

In Luke’s gospel, this is his final time going into Jerusalem, and of course, we know

what’s going to happen there. The writer is trying to tell us the step-by-step events that

occurred during that last trip. Thus, he began his journey in Galilee and proceeded

towards Samaria.

To travel from Capernaum, which is in the Galilee, to Jerusalem, which is in Judea, you

had to pass through Samaria. They were very few roads that existed in Jesus’ day. The

main road toward Jerusalem was to take the Via Maris road, which was near the

Mediterranean Sea, down to a point where you took the crossover road to Jerusalem.

Since Jesus would’ve had a large entourage with him, they could have traveled alone as

a large group on the road. Normally, people would not travel by themselves.

Bandits and thieves were always on the road searching for people who were by

themselves so that they could rob them and if one resisted it could result in their death.

So, Jesus and his entourage entered the Samaritan territory. Jesus knew that they had a

fine food and water, and it would have been nice if they could have had a place to sleep

rather than sleeping outside. They did not have tents with them. These were rugged

people, they slept on the ground when necessary.

The culture of the day said that when a dignitary or religious leader came toward a town,

that one or two persons would be sent ahead to announce that this person was arriving.

They would also help the town prepare for the arrival of the dignitary. Jesus sent

messengers ahead of him, as was the custom of the day. The messengers returned to

tell him that the town was not interested in his stopping in.

This appears to go completely against the culture of the Near East regarding hospitality.

Near Eastern people were very hospitable even to strangers, however there were some

constraints. The first constraint was that one family could not host a large contingency

that we know was with Jesus at that time. Food was scarce and even though the lady of

the house would have made bread for strangers who may come knocking at her door,

she certainly would not have made enough bread for 12 to 20 people. There was also

the understanding that in this case a religious leader was going to come into the town

who was already a controversial figure. The people of the town would’ve been

concerned that if they hosted Jesus and his entourage, that the religious leadership even

of Samaria might not have been pleased about it. Unfortunately, even in Jesus’ day,

smears were out there about who he was and what he was doing. That was very

unfortunate because the Samaritan village that he was going to visit lost out on a

fabulous opportunity. The author of Luke’s Gospel doesn’t even tell us the name of the

village was.

James and John wanted to have Jesus destroy the village in the same manner that Sodom

and Gomorrah were destroyed. However, Jesus rebuked them. Why in the world did

he rebuke them? Well, that’s the lesson that we need to learn from this passage. I call it

tolerance. Jesus is saying to us that we must be tolerant of people who do not want to

believe in him as God’s Messiah or even as God on earth. If Jesus were to destroy every

person even in his day that did not believe in him, there wouldn’t be very many people

left at that time.

Jesus also recognized that people in different areas of the world will view God

differently. That is why we have so many religions in the world. Think about the church

for just a moment and realize that there are over a thousand recognized denominations

in Christianity, and that doesn’t even include all the independent churches that are out

there. We have differences in interpreting the Scripture and the doctrine and the rituals.

Over the course of 2000 years, different thinking has developed about Jesus’ mission

and how we are supposed to react to him and to the Bible.