Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Third Sunday after Pentecost, 29^th of June 2025

Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

I am going to begin this week’s Reflection with a very radical and controversial statement. Faith should not be imposed by violence. No one should be killed for worshipping the wrong god, or the right God in the wrong way.

For us, twenty-first-century Australians, these are not radical sentiments. We are much more likely to be horrified when religion does lead to violence. But for most of human civilisation, it would have seemed quite normal to kill those who seemed not to follow the same God. I referred last week to the Cistercian Abbot who is reported to have said of a French town in which heretics lived side by side with good Catholics, ‘Kill them all, for the Lord knows those that are His’. For millennia, many people, not just Christians, would have considered this an admirable saying.

The Hebrew Scriptures are certainly full of occasions upon which the Lord of Israel is said to have instructed his people to murder those who did not worship him. When the people of Israel first began to occupy the land that had previously been occupied by ‘Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites’ (Joshua 3:10) it was seen as praiseworthy that under Joshua the people ‘devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in [Jericho], both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys’. (Joshua 6:21) Later, once the people of Israel had claimed a king for themselves, King Saul lost the Lord’s favour because when the Lord told him to ‘go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,’ Saul instead spared ‘King Agag of the Amalekites’ and ‘the best of the sheep and of the cattle and of the fatted calves, and the lambs, and all that was valuable and would not utterly destroy them’. The Lord wanted the genocide of the Amalekites, and because Saul failed to do that, we are told, ‘the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel’. (1 Samuel 15)

One side of the Hebrew Scriptures worships a violent and vicious tribal god. But throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is a second stream, with a God who cares as much for the stranger as for the Israelite. At the very time that the people of Israel are told to ethnically-cleanse the land that becomes Israel, they are also told ‘You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt,’ (Exodus 22:21) and ‘You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt,’ (Exodus 23:9) and, most amazingly, ‘The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God’. (Leviticus 19:34)

Jesus, brought up on the Law and the Prophets, learned and taught from this second stream. Everything Jesus preached came from the Hebrew Scriptures, but as we see today, he also challenged the Hebrew Scriptures. Today’s gospel reading comes from the beginning of the journey that takes up about a third of the Gospel according to Luke, when Jesus has ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem’ to his death. Jesus has just spoken with Moses and Elijah on the mountain about his departure, his ‘exodus’. Now he shows how he differs from Elijah. One of the things that Elijah did during his prophetic career was to destroy Samaritans with fire. The king of Samaria had sent messengers to consult with Baal, and God had sent Elijah to ask the messengers why: was there no God in Israel? When the king heard Elijah’s question, he sent a captain and fifty men to ask Elijah to come to him. The second Book of Kings reads: ‘But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.’ (2 Kings 1:10) This happened twice, but when the third captain approached Elijah on his knees, God told Elijah to go with him to see the king. Elijah visited and prophesied the king’s death. Earlier, Elijah had had four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal killed after a competition over which of them could call down fire from heaven: ‘Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon and killed them there.’ (1 Kings 18:20-40) Astonishingly enough, neither of these stories makes it into the Lectionary.

These are the precedents that James and John want to follow. We are told that the reason the Samaritans reject Jesus is ‘because his face was set toward Jerusalem’. The Samaritans were descended from the people left behind during the Assyrian Exile, and they believed that God was to be worshipped on Mount Gerizim, rather than in Jerusalem. To them, Jesus is going to worship God on the wrong mountain. To the Jewish James and John, the Samaritans are once again rejecting the Word of God. Elijah had killed the Samaritans of his time; surely Jesus has just as much reason to call down fire.

What James and John are suggesting is in perfect accord with one part of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus, however, is drawing on the other part. Throughout his ministry, Jesus has been preaching a message of love and forgiveness and rejecting violence as a solution to religious problems. It does not matter how right the disciples are; their theological correctness is not to be demonstrated, as Elijah demonstrated his, with murder.

Luke then shows another way in which Jesus differs from Elijah. In the story of Elijah’s calling of Elisha, Elijah found Elisha ploughing. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, ‘Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ Elisha then returned to his home, slaughtered and cooked the oxen, and gave them to his people before following Elijah and becoming his servant. Every one of the three hard sayings in today’s reading: ‘foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’; ‘let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God’; and ‘no one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’ can be seen in reference to the story of Elisha joining Elijah, with Jesus demanding more of his followers than Elijah demanded of Elisha. For those who follow Jesus, there is to be no satisfying killing of God’s enemies, and no turning back to farewell their families. Following Jesus is much more difficult than following Elijah, because Jesus is much more than a prophet.

‘For freedom Christ has set us free,’ writes the Apostle Paul to the Galatians. He is telling the Galatians that they do not need to be circumcised to belong to the people of God; they are not required to follow the Law. Indeed, Paul argues, for Gentiles to follow the Jewish Law would be to deny what Christ has done for them. But Paul quickly goes on to remind these Gentiles who must not follow the Jewish Law that their freedom from the Law must not become license. We Gentiles cannot behave in any way we wish. We are to avoid all the works of the flesh, many of which are things that divide human beings one from another: enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, and factions. Christ has set us free, says Paul, to freely demonstrate love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Fortunately for those of us who are not naturally peaceful, patient, or gentle, the ability to live in love is a gift from God. Christian virtues are fruits of the Spirit rather than works.

Faith should not be imposed by violence. No one should be killed for worshipping the wrong god, or the right God in the wrong way. I do not think that anyone here would argue with that – at least I hope not. But God demands more of us than a refusal to command fire to come down from heaven and consume those with whom we disagree. As the Apostle Paul writes, the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ He promises that those of us who seek to live by the Spirit will be guided by the Spirit into love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If we do this, we will be worshipping the God revealed both in the Hebrew Scriptures and by Jesus, the one who told the people of Israel millennia ago, ‘you shall love the alien as yourself … I am the Lord your God’. This is the God in whose way we are called to walk. Amen.