The curious case of the Samaritans and the Jews
themes of Race and Community in Scripture • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 1:07:23
0 ratings
· 442 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
The Good Samaritan is one of the best known parable that Jesus taught, made vastly more convicting and powerful by
our understanding of the great rift between the Jews of Palestine and their closest neighbors and indeed relatives. The Samaritans. Jesus uses the image of the good Samaritan to show us that if a Samaritan can consider a jew his neighbor then there is no one we cannot count as our neighbor.
Today I want to take a close look at this rarely talked about but massive problem for the people of Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. Their relationship with their sister nation Samaria.
History Israel and Judah a divided nation. Separated because of Solomon’s failures to be a good king.
Both nations struggled to be true to God after that. But Israel, because they didn’t have the temple fell much more quickly into Idolatry and after thier failure to listen to God’s prophets God allowed them to be overrun by the assyrians.
Israel falls to the Assyrian empire Judah continues for about 100 years before she falls to the Babylonian empire.
During that hundred year period we see the formation of Samaritans as a people.
It wasn’t who they were at first- it was just what they were called by the people of Judah. They were a mixed people the remnant of the Israelites that were not taken into slavery by Assyria- and then the immigrants that were loyal to the Assyrians that were sent to replace the peoples that were taken into slavery.
Now obviously the peoples that came from Assyria were pagans, they had no knowledge of Yahweh and his peoples. But this is where things get funny.
Lions in Israel (2 kings 17:24-29)
And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord. Therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, and let him go and dwell there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord.
But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the Samaritans had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived.
So while the mixed peoples of Samaria were pagan others were worshipers of the one true god. Not that that was something that their brethren in Judah acknowledged. Some even worshiped and sacrificed at the temple in Jerusalem.
But division grew between the Jews (from Judah the southern nation) and the Samaritans. And it really became apparent after the Jews returned from their exile to rebuild Jerusalem.
At this point both groups had been through horrible losses and their national identities were loss and being rebuilt. So when the Jews returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple. ( Ezra 4:1-5)
Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”
Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
Now I want you to notice that the book of Ezra doesn’t say whether this was the right or the wrong thing to do. It is acting as a history. And so we are left to wonder what would have happened if they had not refused the Samaritans? Would Israel and Judah have been united in worship?
But we do know what did happen through the work of archaeologists and the historians of the period. Since the Samaritans were not allowed to worship in Jerusalem they build their own temple to worship Yahweh on Mount Gerizim. Which they claimed was the better place to worship Yahweh since the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob offered sacrifices on that mountain.
After that the feud between the two very small and very weak tribes grew only worse.
They argued about who was right, who worshiped God rightly and who had the correct scriptures.
But like these arguments tend to do, the arguments led to insults and deep divide between the two groups.
Such that Jewish rabbi’s firmly refused to even allow a Samaritan to convert to Judiasm. Though every other gentile ethnicity was allowed to do that.
Other Jewish rabbis even claimed that Samaritans had no souls.. that they among the human race were not truly human at all but soulless animals.
Now remember- These two tribes were really very very similar.
To outsiders they would seem almost the same.
Both worshiped the same God. Both followed the same Law- Torah. and both groups spoke Hebrew.
But the Jews made no secret of the face that they preferred their conquerors pagan romans and greeks to their brothers in Shechem.
Now reading the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the writings of inter-testamental rabbi’s you might think that this hatred was deserved. That the Samaritans were pretenders and pagans. paying a weak and perverse lip service to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob.
By the time jesus was on the scene there was a great rift and a great hatred between the two groups.
Jesus’ enemies called him a saraitan as a way to discredit him and insult him
The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
And Jesus’ own disciples would only suggest fire from heaven for a Samaritan town that refused to let them stay there after the many towns, including Nazareth that had been ready to stone Jesus.
When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 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?” But he turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.
But Jesus put a stop to that sort of thinking!
One of the notable things about Jesus’ Ministry is that he focused on going to those who had inherited the covenant of Moses. He wouldn’t preach to gentiles and only rarely and with hesitation did he even heal gentiles. But Jesus, who was a Jew himself, saw right through the false distinction between the Jews and the Samaritans and he would minister to them. And patiently love them even when they rejected him.
We read about the story of Jesus at the Well. Where he met a woman and Shared his message of redemption with her as if she was… Well, , A jew. But we also see him go on to proclaim his message of Grace, Repentance and that he is the Savior they had been waiting for to through her to the entire village.
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
This kind of openness and clarity in his teaching was rare- Remember how with the Jews Jesus would tell parables and constantly be attacked by rabbis and pharisees. He message was frequently clouded to confuse the hardhearted. But in two days with the Samaritans Jesus Shared with such clarity that they got the heart of the gospel. After three years many of the Jews that Jesus ministered to failed to understand his message.
Not only that but Jesus would honor a Samaritan leper for his gratitude and forever equate the word Samaritan with compassion with his story of the good Samaritan.
Jesus clearly considered the Samaritans to be part of covenant Moses. He didn’t consider them to be soulless or unclean. Rather he loved them and called them to be part of his kingdom, far before the Holy Spirit would lead peter to begin baptizing gentiles.
So I hope I have proven my point- that the Jew’s approach towards the Samaritans was wrong and not Godly.
Now Today I want to talk about what was broken in Judah’s relationship with Samaria. And what we can learn from that brokenness and Christ's response.
Judah’s Brokenness is reflective of our brokenness.
The two tribes could have benefited befriending one another. Israel and Judah Together with Galilee would have been a much strong group united. The Samaritans would have benefited from being able to worship at the table. and the Jews would have benefited from their help in building it.
It is likely as well that the syncrinistic beliefs of the Samaritans would have gradually disappeared if they had been able to worship regularly in Jerusalem and be taught by Jewish rabbis.
And we are much the same. Whether I speak of us as a church, us as a city, or us as ethnic group we all weakened by our tendency to draw lines in the sand. They could be the result of accidents of history and language. like the tragic arguments between the Acadian, English. Or they could be the result of small arguments blow out of proportion by proud heads and poor hearts. Like the arguments that have caused we Presbyterians to find a reason to split and re-split every generation or so.
And in many of these situations what we have in common with each other vastly outweighs what has separated us.
But We cling to the conflict and that separation grows greater and more justified in our own eyes.
Jesus spoke about this tendency when he said:
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
When we grow so focused the hurts that have been done to us, or the mistakes that others have made that we can not see them for human beings or see that shared history that brought us together in the first place - then we have entered into the error of the Jews and the Samaritans.
Let’s pause for a second and think about it. Who do you bare this kind of ill will towards in your life? If not you personally then what about your family, your community, your church or your culture?
pause for about 10 seconds.
We live in a world that thrives on these types of distinctions. If we disagree with people we turn our backs on them. We “cancel them” Or we gossip and defend our personal vendetta.
But while the world may be broken. Our churches can not be. Christ didn’t die for us to continue to splinter as a churches over a thousand minor arguments.
If you remember last week then you will remember that the church is intended to be the great healer bringing people together from every tribe every tongue and nation. United by God’s grace and his spirit flourishing within us all.
Though we are different we become one. in Jesus.
And It is his example that we can follow. in seeing this actually happen in our hopelessly fragmented world where even the people with the most in common find something to fight over.
We are saved by Grace. We haven’t earned it God just gave it to us. So we need to be humble in every conflict. Looking for those logs in our own eyes. Those assumptions or oversteps that have harmed the relationship.
We need to focus on what we have in common. One thing that we have in common is God’s love. God loves every person you will ever meet. And if he loves them and made them then we have that in common.
Finally we have his help. When it grows hard to find a way through our histories of hurt or cultural, and perspectival disagreements then we have the power of prayer. Prayer to ask God to show us a way through our brokenness to bring healing and unity to communities, churches and relationships.
And while this doesn’t mean that we should get along with everyone at all times it does mean that we should question and repent of those tribal behaviors that hurt not just our enemies but our churches and families as well!
Let’s pray!