Luke 9:51-54,56
[51] As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. [52] And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; [53] but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. [54] When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them ?” [56] Then he and his disciples went to another village.
(This is such an extreme response and harks back to Elijah, the prophet, who was around during the Omride Dynasty of Israel (from 885 bc onwards) and called down fire from heaven (I Kings 18: 20-40) to make a point about whose god had true power.)
The Jews and Samaritans hated each other, and had done for centuries, but they shared millenniums of history and worshipped the same God (John 4: 4-26) and Jesus had already made it clear he’d come for the Samaritans too. Maybe James and John needed that example to open their minds to the truth that the gospel is for all? It was something the early Jerusalem church struggled with but eventually overcame. It’s something some elements of the church still struggle with - the ‘they’re not our kind’ attitude...... It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.
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