S: Ezra 4:1-4
Now the enemies of Judah and
Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple for Yahweh
the God of Israel. And they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the
families, and they said to them, “Let us build with you. Like you, we seek
your God and have been sacrificing to him from the days of Esarhaddon the king
of Assyria who brought us up here. But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of
the heads of the families of Israel said to them, “It is not for you but
for us to build a house for our God. For we ourselves alone will build it for
Yahweh the God of Israel, just as 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 officials against them to frustrate their plan for all the days of Cyrus
king of Persia until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
O: This was a major step in the
increase of the enmity between the Jews and the people who would be eventually
known as Samaritans, to the point that by Jesus’ time, they would have nothing
to do with each other. There may already have been some prejudice before that
due to the fact that the Samaritans had a syncretistic form of Yahweh worship,
but it certainly got a lot worse in Ezra’s time. Praise the Lord that Jesus
then overcame this with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-42. The Samaritans
came to Christ in droves as a result of that.
Because of the enmity between the
Jews and Samaritans that started with Ezra above, many Jews when travelling
from Judea to Galilee would actually cross over the Jordan to Perea, and travel
on the east side of the Jordan till they got far enough north to cross back
over to Galilee. Jesus did not do that. He deliberately travelled through
Samaria and germinated the Samaritan revival.
It may have been after that
Samaritan revival that Luke 9:51–56 records some Samaritans not welcoming him
because he was headed for Jerusalem – the Samaritans’ own prejudices against
Jews reared its ugly head. James and John, the “Sons of Thunder” as Jesus
called them in Mark 3:17, in their hot-headedness, wanted to call down fire
from heaven to destroy them, but Jesus rebuked them for it.
Then, not long after that, Jesus
in Luke 10:25-37 makes a Samaritan the hero of the story in the Parable of the
Good Samaritan. Then in Luke 17:11-19 we see the healing of the ten lepers,
where only the Samaritan comes back to thank Jesus. And finally in Acts 1:8,
just before He gets taken up into heaven, Jesus commands His disciples to witness
to Samaria as part of the Great Commission.
The result of all this was a
reconciliation between at least the Christian Jews and the Christian
Samaritans. Acts 8 tells the continuing story where Philip went to another city
in Samaria and led many to Christ there, and Peter and John laid hands on them
and they received the Holy Spirit.
A: We are surrounded by people who do not believe in Christ.
Some of them are hostile to our faith. We might have prejudices against them, just like the Jews had towards Samaritans. Jesus calls us to show them His love, rather than hostility. Even as we hold
firmly to Christ, we must show His mercy to all.
Related to this, see The Parable of the Good Muslim.
P: Father, help me to always be a good ambassador for Christ, and to show people Jesus’ love. Help me to overcome any prejudices I may have. In Jesus’ name, amen.
