Practicing What He Prayed
As a child growing up in the Sonoran Desert, I would regularly pray for snow when it would get cold enough for there to be a snowball’s chance in Tucson. And I would regularly be disappointed – my earliest crises of faith. There was nothing I could do to be an answer to my own prayer, nothing at all. Unless God brought the snow to Tucson… no snow. (*1)
In weightier matters, though, God sometimes marks our prayers “returned to sender.” Like praying for a job but not applying for one, or praying for a neighbor to come to know the love of God but doing nothing to share the love of God with our neighbor. Jesus didn’t pray for unity but live for division. Jesus’ prayer for unity matched His lifestyle.
You’re probably familiar with the term Samaritan, as in the Good one, even if only from a legal standpoint like the Good Samaritan laws that protect a well-meaning neighbor from getting sued for their kindness. But did you know that Samaritan is a more loaded political term than Republican or Democrat ever will be?
When ancient kingdoms would be victorious in battle, they would often transport the captives into exile, and displace some other people to live in the newly conquered territory. Such was the history of Samaria, so that when Jews in Jesus’ day looked at Samaritans, they didn’t see them as the real deal, either ethnically or religiously. The animosity between the two groups rivals anything the donkeys and elephants have achieved.
In an earlier chapter in the gospel of John, chapter 4, we read this simple little statement in verse 4 that Jesus had to go through Samaria. Jesus’ need to travel through Samaria was less one of geography than it was of mission. Jesus looks for dividing walls of hostility (*2) and like President Reagan addressing the Berlin Wall in 1987, Jesus seeks to tear down such walls wherever He finds them. In the story of a Samaritan woman whom Jesus encounters at a well in the heat of day in John 4, Jesus not only tears down the dividing wall between Jews and Samaritans, but additional walls between men and women, and between those who’ve apparently lived righteous lives and those who obviously haven’t. Jesus went straight after the donkey elephant war of His day, the Jews/Samaritans, regularly choosing Samaritans to be the heroes of His stories. And the political (as well as religious) tension between Jews and Samaritans wasn’t the only one He addressed. When Jesus put His team together, He intentionally invited people from all fragments of the farm. There were uneducated fishermen, a tax collector (probably significantly more well-off financially, but relationally challenged, since the occupying Roman empire was his employer), a revolutionary, and more just among the twelve.
The Jewish political leaders, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, had limited authority, since the whole area was under the control of Rome. So when the Sadducees and Pharisees decided that Jesus was too much of a threat to their status, they had to get permission from Rome to put Him to death. The political tensions between Pilate and Herod, as well as between both of them and Caiaphas, the High Priest of the Jews, forms quite the backdrop to Jesus’ final hours pre-resurrection. When Jesus says from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” (*3) I believe He was speaking to the entire mess and everyone who had a part in it.
Jesus continues this mission after His resurrection from the dead. One of the Pharisees likely present and shouting for Jesus’ death was Saul of Tarsus. When reports came that Jesus was now alive again, Saul was determined to stamp out such a ridiculous idea before it gained any traction. While on His way to Damascus to arrest some more of these first Christians (or Followers of the Way as they were first called (*4)), Saul was literally stopped in his tracks by the resurrected Jesus. And in a powerful picture of how far Jesus goes in breaking down the dividing walls of hostility, Jesus asks Ananias, one of the very men that Saul is hunting down, to go and lay hands on Saul and heal him of his new physical blindness which reflected his previous spiritual blindness. (*5) Ananias obeys after a brief discussion with Jesus, and this same Saul became better known as the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest “foe becomes friend” stories in history. In subsequent years Paul, too, would address newly surfacing political tensions within Christianity. (*6)
Not only did Jesus practice what He prayed, but so did those who ministered in His name. And such is our call in our day.
I still remember December 8, 1971 when we got 6.8 inches of snow, the largest ever recorded in Tucson. Proof that there is a God, haha.
Ephesians 2:14, referring to Jesus, says, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility”
In Acts 22:4 Saul/Paul speaks of his persecution of the Followers of the Way. In Acts 11:26 we learn that followers of Jesus were first referred to as Christian in Antioch of Syria. Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life…”
The entire story is gripping, and can be read in Acts 9.
The biggest one was between those who argued that Christians had to become Jewish first by following Jewish law. Acts 15 declares the resolution of this tension.