June 27, 2010 Galatians 5:1, 13-15, 22-

26 Luke 9:51-62 “No

Command to Burn”
Dr. Ted H. Sandberg

It’s almost time – time for Jesus to face the terrible ordeal in Jerusalem. Luke tells us, “When the days
drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The verse could perhaps
more accurately be translated, “When the days were fulfilled for him to be taken up.” For Luke, this is
the decisive turning point in his story. 1 Jesus turns toward Jerusalem, on his way to the betrayal, on
his way to the trial, on his way to the cross. He and his disciples turn toward Jerusalem for the time is
near.
While Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels have Jesus traveling through Perea on his way to Jerusalem,
through Jewish territory, Luke has Jesus take the more direct route which was through Samaria.2 Luke
tells us, “On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not
receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.”
The reason for the Samaritans’ rejection of Jesus isn’t exactly clear here. Why would Jesus’ desire to
go to Jerusalem cause the Samaritans to reject him? I can understand their rejection of him because he
was a Jew. As you know, Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. But to be rejected because he was
going to Jerusalem is something I don’t understand. Nonetheless, that’s what happened.
When Jesus and the disciples were rejected by the Samaritans, the disciples – especially James and
John – became angry. They said to Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down
from heaven and consume them?” Evidently, the disciples had already forgotten Jesus’ earlier
directions in Luke 9:5 when, in sending them out to proclaim the kingdom of God, he said, “Wherever
they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony
against them.” Jesus didn’t command them to have fire rain down as punishment for their rejection of
him, or one of his disciples.
Ah, but we can understand how James and John felt, can’t we? Luke doesn’t give us any details about
how the Samaritans rejected Jesus and the disciples, but we can fill in the gaps. I’m sure they didn’t
come up politely and say, “Sir, we don’t like strangers in our village. We would much appreciate it if
you would go on your way.” Of course, even that simple rejection would have been a cultural insult.
Hospitality is a part of Middle Eastern culture, and simply to reject the stranger is a great insult. I
would guess, however, that added to the rejection would’ve been a few racial slurs, and maybe a push
or two, and probably a crowd gathering to make sure Jesus and the disciples left. “Get out and stay
out!!” would’ve be the kindest thing they would’ve said. So James and John were angry and they
wanted to command fire to rain down on the village, just as Elijah had caused fire to rain down on his
sacrifice in his “duel” with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:38) and on the kings messenger in 2
Kings 1:10. “Punish them, Jesus!” they said. “Or let us punish them. Nobody should get away with
rejecting you!”

1 1. Thompson, James W. “Exegetical Perspective: Luke 9:51-62,” Feasting on the

Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 3, David L. Bartlett
and Barbara Brown Taylor, Gen Ed., Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2010, p.
191.

2 2. Thompson, p. 193.
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As Christians, we aren’t surprised that Jesus wouldn’t allow James and John to do this. We’re not
surprised that Jesus rebuked them, because we know that Jesus teaches peace and forgiveness. But in
our hearts, we sympathize with James and John. We sympathize with them because we, too, have
been rejected because of Jesus. Visitors worship with us and don’t come back. We invite friends to
church, but they say “No, we don’t want to go with you to that church.” We share the Good News of
Jesus Christ, but people say, “I don’t believe Jesus was God. He was just a good man. I don’t need to
believe.” We’re rejected and we’re hurt, and out of our hurt comes anger and a desire for God to show
that we’re right. “Strike ‘em down, God. Show the world who You are! Show the world You’re
God, the all powerful!”
We feel this, and may not even recognize how conditioned we’ve been by our culture to feel this way.
Walter Wink, writing in his book Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of
Domination says, “Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world. It has
been accorded the status of a religion, demanding from its devotees an absolute obedience to death.
Its followers are not aware, however, that the devotion they pay to violence is a form of religious
piety. Violence is so successful as a myth precisely because it does not seem to by mythic in the least.
Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It is what works. It is inevitable, the last and,
often, the first resort in conflicts. It is embraced with equal [quickness] by people on the left and on
the right, by religious liberals as well as religious conservatives.”
Wink goes on, “The roots of this devotion to violence are deep, and we will be well rewarded if we
trace them to their source. When we do, we will discover that the religion of Babylon – one of the
world’s oldest, continuously surviving religions – is thriving as never before in every sector of
contemporary American life, even in our synagogues and churches. It, and not Christianity, is the real
religion of America. . . [T]his myth of redemptive violence undergirds American popular culture, civil
religion, nationalism, and foreign policy, and it lies coiled like an ancient serpent at the root of the
system of domination that has characterized human existence since well before Babylon ruled
supreme.”3
“Jesus taught the love of enemies, but Babylonian religion taught their extermination. Violence was
for the religion of ancient Mesopotamia what love was for Jesus: the central dynamic of existence.
For this early civilization, life was as cruel as the floods and droughts and storms that swept the Fertile
Crescent. Recurrent warfare between the various city-states in the region exhausted resources. Chaos
threatened every achievement of humanity. The myth that enshrined that culture’s sense of life was
the Enuma Elish, dated to around 1250 B.C.E. in the versions that have survived, but based on
traditions considerably older.
In the beginning, according to this myth, Apsu and Tiamat (the sweet- and saltwater oceans) bear
Mummu (the mist). From them also issue the younger gods, whose frolicking makes so much noise
that the elder gods cannot sleep and so resolve to kill them. This plot of the elder gods is discovered,
Ea kills Apsu, and his wife Tiamat pledges revenge. Ea and the younger gods in terror turn for
salvation to their youngest, Marduk. He exacts a steep price: if he succeeds, he must be given chief
and undisputed power in the assembly of the gods. Having extorted this promise, he catches Tiamat in
a net, drives an evil wind down her throat, shoots an arrow that bursts her distended belly and pierces
her heart; he then splits her skull with a club, and scatters her blood in out-of-the-way places. He
stretches out her corpse full length, and from her corpse he creates the cosmos.
3 3. Wink, Walter, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of
Domination, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1992, p. 13.
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Clearly, creation in this Babylonian myth is an act of violence. Tiamat, the “mother of them all,” is
murdered and dismembered; from her cadaver the world is formed. Order is established by means of
disorder. Creation is a violent victory over an enemy older than creation. The origin of evil precedes
the origin of things. Chaos is prior to order. Evil is prior to good. Violence exists in the godhead.
Evil is an permanent component of life, and possess a fundamental priority over good. That’s what
the Babylonian myth teaches, and that’s pretty much the myth that pervades our society, indeed, the
world, today.
The biblical creation story is opposed to all this. In the Genesis account, a good God creates a good
creation. Chaos doesn’t resist order. Good is fundamentally prior to evil. Neither evil nor violence is
a part of the creation, but both enter as a result of the first couple’s sin and the workings of the serpent.
A basically good world is thus corrupted by free decisions reached by creatures. In this far more
complex and subtle explanation of the origins of things, evil for the first time emerges as a problem
requiring a solution.4
In the Babylonian myth, however, there is no “problem of evil.” Evil is simply a primordial fact. The
simplicity of its picture of reality commended it widely, and its basic mythic structure spread as far as
Syria, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Germany, Ireland, and India. Typically, a male war god
residing in the sky fights a decisive battle with a female divine being, usually depicted as a monster or
dragon, residing in the sea or abyss. Having vanquished the original Enemy by war and murder, the
victor fashions a world from the monster’s corpse.5
Now you may feel that these old myths have nothing to do with today. You may feel that they’re only
ancient history, and nothing to worry about in this, the 21 st Century. But that would be wrong. This
Babylonian myth of violence continues today in the religion of “might makes right.” The enemy is
evil and war is the enemy’s punishment. “Unlike the creation story which sees evil as an intrusion
into a good creation and war as a consequence of the Fall, the Babylonian myth regards war as present
from the beginning. Life, therefore, becomes combat. Any form of order is preferable to chaos. Ours
is neither a perfect nor a perfectible world; it is a theater of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes
to the strong. Peace through war, security through strength: these are the core convictions that arise
from this ancient historical religion.” This is what’s known as Redemptive Violence – we’re saved
through violence.
Think this idea that we’re saved by violence doesn’t exist today? Let me suggest you watch again
Superman, Superwoman, Captain Marvel, the Lone Ranger, Batman and Robin, the Roadrunner and
Wile E. Coyote, Spider Man, The Hulk, and the Harry Potter series. Good triumphs over evil through
violence. Rain that fire down from heaven. Punish those who oppose us, who insult us, who reject us.
If we can’t do it ourselves, leave it to Dirty Harry or James Bond. To even suggest that we seek
peaceful solutions rather than using the military raises doubts about ones patriotism, because we
“know” that our enemies are evil, peace doesn’t work, only the military can succeed. Some even want
to nuke the oil spill in the Gulf. Only violence can save us. In the old “Get Smart” TV series, Agent
99 says to Maxwell Smart, “You know, Max, sometimes I think we’re no better than they are, the way
we murder and kill and destroy people.” To which Smart retorts, “Why, 99, you know we have to
murder and kill and destroy in order to preserve everything that’s good in the world.”6
After Jesus rebuked James and John for wanting to command fire to rain down on the Samaritan
4 4. Wink, p. 14.

5 5. Wink, pp. 14-15.

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village, Luke tells us, “They went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone
said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds
of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ To another he said, ‘Follow
me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury
their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ Another said, ‘I will follow
you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a
hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”
These are harsh teachings from Jesus, teachings that cause us to ask, “what am I to give up? What am
I to do without so that I can follow Jesus?” Perhaps, you and I are asked to give up that Babylonian
myth of redemptive violence, put aside the idea that violence can save us. Perhaps we’re to follow
Jesus and his command to love one another and love even our enemy. We may not want to even think
about the possibility that we as individuals, or we as a nation, are more Babylonian than we are
Christian, but the possibility exists, I’m afraid. From the TV programs we watch to our reactions to
those who threaten us, we seem to be followers of the Babylonian Marduk than we are followers of
Jesus Christ.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Jesus asks us to turn away from violence and instead accept his
peace, peace in our lives and peace in the ways of the world. My belief is that the ways of peace can’t
do any worse than 9 years of war. Who are we following? My prayer is that we’re following Jesus
Christ.

6 6. Wink, p. 21.
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