Because Jesus Said So--Devotion for August 9, 2023

Because Jesus Said So--Devotion for August 9, 2023

"Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them. The crowds with one accord listened eagerly to what was said by Philip, hearing and seeing the signs that he did, for unclean spirits, crying with loud shrieks, came out of many who were possessed; and many others who were paralyzed or lame were cured. So there was great joy in that city.... But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women." [Acts 8:5-8, 12]

If everybody you knew from childhood had taught you to hate a certain group of people, but Jesus had told you to love them... who would you believe?

If your teachers, neighbors, and relatives had all raised you with the belief that some folks were not acceptable to God, just by their very nature, but then Jesus had come along and said otherwise, whose instruction would you follow?

If your entire upbringing had been built on the assumption that "Those People" were your enemies with the wrong religion, wrong culture, and wrong way of speaking, but then Jesus told stories that made those very same folks the heroes, would you welcome them just because Jesus said so?

Or would the force of inertia from old prejudices hold you back from embracing the folks you had been brought up to keep at arm's length?

That's the question at play in this story from the life of the early church: whether faith in the particular teaching of Jesus was strong enough to overcome old animosities and bigotry, or whether those ingrained prejudices would snuff out the flickering flame of love.

You don't have to know a great deal of ancient geography to see why this episode from the early church is such a big deal; you probably already picked up on the name of the city where Philip went to tell people about Jesus, and it started ringing bells.  He went to "Samaria," which--you guessed it--is where the name "Samaritans" comes from.  And you probably already know that in the first century, there was a fierce hatred between Jewish and Samaritan communities, one which had gone back for generations.  Each group eyed the other with suspicion, derision, and contempt for having the wrong religious practices, heritage, and dialect.  That's why Jesus' parable about a Samaritan who saves the day was so shocking to his first hearers--it had the impact of imagining a pastor and church council president walked on by the man in need while an Afghan refugee or central American migrant seeking asylum stopped to help.  Everybody in Jesus' hometown had been raised in an atmosphere of hostility toward Samaritans, and they had learned it from their parents, grandparents, and generations further back. 

But then along comes Jesus who doesn't accept those prejudices, and who won't just accept and pass along the xenophobia that others had gotten so used to that they didn't even notice it any longer.  And when Jesus' followers began an intentional community (we call it "church") continuing to live by his way and inviting others to join them, they dared to take Jesus' inclusive vision seriously.  It wasn't always smooth, and it wasn't always speedy, but they did.  The early church preserved the memory that Jesus had spoken to a Samaritan woman as a social equal at Jacob's well, and then her witness became the catalyst for drawing all her neighbors to know Jesus, too.  They retold Jesus' story about a Samaritan who truly understood what it meant to "love your neighbor" when the Respectable Religious leaders didn't.  And they shaped their lives around the kind of love Jesus had taught them--even when it led them to re-evaluate and leave behind the old hatreds their families had ingrained in them.  Their faith in Jesus didn't only mean believing certain things about Jesus, but actually taking seriously what Jesus said and taught.

That's what makes this story such a big deal.  Here an early Christian leader, by the name of Philip, took seriously what he had come to believe because of Jesus.  When the church in Jerusalem scattered to avoid persecution, Philip deliberately chose to go to Samaria. And he didn't go there as a way of going in to hiding or covering up his faith in Jesus--he went there to keep telling more and more people about him.  In other words, Philip went to Samaria with the clear intention of including--gasp!--Samaritans in the community of Jesus.  Just a few years earlier, when Jesus was first gathering disciples, that would have sounded scandalous and outrageous.  (Remember that time a village of Samaritans didn't want to receive Jesus, and the disciples' first instinct was to ask Jesus for the OK to call down fire from heaven to incinerate them all?  That's where the bar was set.)  But something changed over time--the community of Jesus' followers actually dared to listen to his teaching. They still struggled with just how to live out his commandments (as we still do), but they really did attempt to live out what they believed--to trust what Jesus told them, and to live by it.  So when Philip goes to Samaria, it is a momentous thing, because it meant that the early church was trying to live out its faith through love--to include the ones they had all been raised to exclude, and to embrace the ones they had grown up hating... all simply because Jesus said so.

Two thousand years later, that's worth remembering.  When we deliberately welcome those we had been taught to shun, it's not because we are bent on disobeying Jesus or rejecting the Bible, but just the opposite: it's because we are daring to take Jesus' example seriously.  When we look at ourselves honestly enough to see where old prejudices have us in their grip, it's the voice of Jesus that helps us to shake them off and show love.  When we intentionally seek out the folks we were always told were "unacceptable," it's not because we're ignoring God, but exactly because we are trying to listen to what God has said in Jesus.  Even if it means leaving behind the legacy of hostility that an earlier generation taught us to hold onto, we dare to show love to the ones labeled "enemy," precisely because of our faith in Jesus, not in spite of it.

Today that might mean some honest self-reflection and a willingness to let Jesus stretch us beyond our comfort zones and maybe even beyond what other people told us was right.  It might mean a willingness to trust Jesus' word and way even above what we've always assumed and what we had always been taught.  I know that can sound scary, and it runs the risk that others will look at us skeptically and accuse of, well, who knows--moral carelessness, being friendly with "sinners," and all the same things they accused Jesus of, too.  But that's just it: when we are actually listening to Jesus and live out our faith in him, that will always lead us to love more widely and risk being labeled a troublemaker... just like him.  

That's worth the risk.

Lord Jesus, help us hear your voice and to take your teaching seriously, even when that stretches us beyond our old assumptions.