In Luke chapter 9, a Samaritan village rejects Jesus. James and John, in their infinite wisdom, ask Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to burn up the offending Samaritans. Jesus rebuked them and they carry on.
There are two interesting things to explore here, firstly why James and John thought that was a good idea, and secondly that they end up doing exactly that not so much later.
Why Fire from Heaven?
James and John want to call down fire from heaven—which probably means lightning rather than something even more dramatic than that—because they are thinking of 2 Kings chapter 1.
It’s the reign of king Ahaziah, son of Ahab. Moab has rebelled against Israel’s imperial rule, and Ahaziah has fallen through the floor and lay sick. He sends a group of messengers to inquire of a demonic false god—it’s called Baal-zebub for crying out loud, literally ‘Lord of the Fly’—to see if he would get well. Elijah waylays the messengers and says, essentially, because you didn’t ask Yahweh you won’t get well.
Ahaziah doesn’t take it well. He twigs that Elijah, that great troubler of his parents, was the one who spoke with them and sends a unit of fifty men to deal with him. The ask him to come down from where he is. He says if he is a man of God, fire from heaven will come down instead, and they all die by lightning strike. This happens a second time, another fifty men dead. The third time with a third fifty men, this third captain approaches Elijah and asks that they could please live, and Elijah accompanies them on the advice of Jesus (the angel of the Yahweh). He tells the king to his face that he’ll die because he tried to consult a false god, and the king promptly does.
Elijah’s life is full of strange stories, but this is one of the less well-known ones. He’d already called fire from heaven on the prophets of Baal at Carmel, many years before, but the theme continues.
Fast forwards. James and John are accompanying a man that in Luke’s narrative they’ve just heard Peter call the Messiah and then they’ve accompanied Peter to see that same man have a chat with Moses and Elijah after which they heard Yahweh call him his Son; we can understand when they get annoyed when some people reject him. Add to that our location, Samaria, we’re in the same place that Elijah’s status as a man of God was challenged. They fully expect that if they pray to heaven that lightning will strike those who reject Jesus as he is at least Elijah’s equal. They’re doing what they thought Elijah’s example wanted them to. It puts their nicknames as the Sons of Thunder into a different light.
Jesus rebukes them, as we would expect him to, but we should allow the story to further unfold. In the strange kindness of God, one of them got to do exactly what they wanted to.
Calling the Fire
Fast forward to Acts 8. Philip has been travelling to the city of Samaria and preaching the gospel. Several people come to the faith. For whatever reason (interesting, but not to be discussed here!) he is not able to fill them with the Holy Spirit, just baptising them in water in response to their repentance and faith. They call for Peter and John to come up to Samaria. They then lay hands on the Samaritans and—what do you know—they receive the Spirit.
Luke doesn’t make use the phrase ‘fire from heaven’ in his narrative so we’re inferring rather than just reading the text, but we would often speak of the Holy Spirit in those terms. Pentecost has something like tongues of fire appearing on the heads of those who receive.
In essence, back in Samaria, John got to call down fire from heaven. His original desire to curse has been turned into a desire to bless, the Lord answered his prayer from Luke 9 but in his kindness brought the Samaritans to repentance first. Then God blessed them as a result of John’s initial desire to protect the name of Christ. There’s something redemptive even of John’s response: his anger was good but was not turned to righteous ends.
The Lord turns even our misguided hatred of our enemies to blessing, for both our and their good. We should pray for our enemies and love them as Jesus called us to, but even when we don’t manage it and allow our sin to control our rejections, the Lord will graciously turn our evil prayers to good ends. Nothing is wasted in God.
Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash
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