In all honesty, it's fast becoming one of my favorite passages. Not because it's particularly insightful (well, I mean it is the Bible, but you know what I mean) and it's not particularly quotable. I enjoy it because I can picture it happening in my head and, at least in my imagination, it was pretty funny.
James and John: The Original Neville and Seamus?
"On the way they entered a Samaritan village
to prepare for his reception there,
but they would not welcome him
because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.
When the disciples James and John saw this they asked,
“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven
to consume them?”
Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village."
This passage is an excellent example of the difference between good and bad zeal. Unlike the guys who come later in the reading, James and John know exactly what they're getting themselves into. By this point, they were in. They weren't some newbie wannabe-disciple who can't even abandon everything. They've been with Jesus for a while, and they are pumped.
So, when Jesus and co. were on their way to Jerusalem and got rejected by some Samaritans, James and John were ready. What's that? You don't like my friend Jesus here? BOOM, FIRE FROM HEAVEN. YOU JUST GOT BURNED, OLD-TESTAMENT STYLE.
Or not.
But that totally would have happened, if James and John had their way. They didn't say anything like "Jesus, what should we do to deal with these anti-Semites who don't like us none?" They went straight for the fire-cabinet.
If my Harry Potter reference above wasn't enough, try this Doctor Who one on for size. They were being a bit like Strax.
"It's beautiful. Should I destroy it?"
Anyway, let's look at this situation from the very beginning. Jesus and co. are travelling to Jerusalem, and that involved passing through a Samaritan town. Now, if the story of the Good Samaritan taught us anything, it's that Samaritans and Jews didn't exactly get along very well. So it's not really surprising that they "weren't welcomed" in this village.
James and John, having just received power from Christ, were eager to try it out. I don't know if they interpreted the cold reception as a personal insult toward the messiah or (more likely, in my opinion) they were a bit trigger happy. They were boys with new toys, namely the "'Oh God No' Burning Death Playset"
So why did Jesus only vaguely rebuke them? I mean, he literally called Peter Satan just because Peter told him not to say he was going to die. Shouldn't they, I don't know, at least have gotten a time out?
James and John were exhibiting what was actually a very admirable quality - zeal...just not in the right ways. They were definitely not lackadaisical followers of Christ. They were eager to defend the faith with every power given them by Christ. That's a good thing. We could all learn a thing or two from their enthusiasm.
What we shouldn't imitate, though, is their methods. Not because they were foolish to think they could actually call down fire from heaven - far from it, actually. If they had actually gone and done it with requisite faith, God-willing it would have happened. They were foolish to think that it was the right way to deal with their problems.
Jesus certainly gave us that sort of destructive power - he openly told us that whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth is loosed in heaven. He gave us that balance of good and bad. But it's still up to us to determine the right time for it.
What James and John should have done was approach the situation with love. Honestly, isn't that something we could all do a little better? Somebody insults us, we're tempted to call down fire upon their heads - if not literally, at least in our imaginations. Or on twitter.
We can be so hard-headed sometimes that we are ready to go to war over little things. How many of us can be calm one moment, but as soon as we get behind the wheel wish that our cars came with some sort of rocket launcher standard?
Maybe it's not little things like that that make us want to call down fire, too. Maybe it's big things we are right to get upset about. There are a lot of people doing a lot of bad things. Surely we're allowed to get mad at them, right?
This is where it gets tricky, because even then we are meant to act with love. If I'm going to get really honest and personal right now, this is something I'm struggling with. Somebody does something bad - more than just a minor insult like in this passage - and it gets very tempting to go to war inside. It's very easy to stop caring about them, and even easier to imagine bad things.
Whether it's somebody cutting us off in traffic that gets us upset, or somebody doing terrible terrible things to people we love, the result is the same when we stop caring - we stop being like Christ.
It's bad enough when we stop caring in our personal interactions, but it's even worse when we do it in the name of the Church, like we saw in this gospel. James and John were ready to destroy just because they weren't Jews and didn't like Jews.
If, as Catholics, we're being honest with ourselves here, we're not exactly the most well-liked group of people out there. I've quoted that verse from John about the world hating us plenty of times, but it's still true. There are a lot of people that won't welcome us, as the Samaritans didn't welcome Jesus. If we "call down fire" on every one of them...what does that make us? Yeah, we'd be the most enthusiastic Catholics out there, but at the expense of not really being all that Catholic in the first place.
Zeal and enthusiasm are great things, but only when they are communicating the right message: love. So no matter how hard it gets, whether the hurt comes from somebody is against you, or against your Church, or against your God, remember what exactly it is we stand for. Love, acceptance, tolerance, and not-blowing-everybody-who-disagrees-with-us-up.
No comments:
Post a Comment