At the time of Jesus it had become almost proverbial that the Jews and the Samaritans were not at all in good terms, to put it mildly. Both sides looked mutually on each other as heretics. The Samaritans claimed they were the authentic worshippers of the true God, whom they worshipped on Mount Garizim in the southern part where there was yet no temple.
As we recall, even Our Lord's disciples were scandalised when they saw Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman near the well. It is precisely this ancient quarrel that provides the background to the first part of today's Gospel.
The Samaritans would not welcome Jesus and his Galilean disciples on their way to Jerusalem. These Galileans were crossing Samaritan ground for the wrong reason and therefore deserved not hospitality but contempt.
Confronted by this hostility, James and John (referred to elsewhere as the Sons of Thunder), inspired perhaps by Elijah's ability to summon divine 'pyrotechnics' on heretics as we gather from the First Book of Kings, ask Jesus: "Lord, would you not have us call down fire from heaven to destroy them?"
Surprisingly enough, this passage is little used as a demonstration of Jesus' teaching and practice on non-violence and non-retaliation. He knows about the retrograde mentality of the Samaritan neighbour. Rather than return hate for hate, he understands, forgives and moves on. This is in line with his repeated teachings on forgiving and loving our enemies.
After this stunning example of tolerance, there follows an episode demonstrating how profoundly demanding Jesus can be. When Jesus meets a potential disciple, the man addressed to him what appears to be a reasonable request: "Let me bury my father first". And Jesus replies: "Let the dead bury their dead: come away and proclaim the kingdom of God!" In first century Palestine it was customary that the eldest son of the deceased, after taking care of a proper burial, should stay home for some time to manage the property of his deceased parents and eventually be free to do as he wishes.
If that is the situation implied here, Jesus' reply is not at all a command to skip a parent's funeral. Rather it is a challenge to leave home now and join in the Master's mission. Against this background these apparently puzzling episodes at the start of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem should be understood as illustrations of the cost of discipleship, anywhere and any time.
Jesus still invites all of us, not just celibates, to break free from the expectations of our cultures when the mission of announcing the reign of God demands it. More frequently than we might like to admit, Christ's commission invites us to respond to misunderstandings and hostilities with compassion and nonviolence.
As David Watson has written: "If we were willing to learn the meaning of Christian discipleship and generous enough to live it, the Church would be transformed and the resultant impact on society would be staggering." As a writer has put it, "a Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, a hand through which Christ helps".
Not every Christian can go out and preach Christ's teachings, but every Christian can live it and so transform society from within. Words fly, as the proverb says, but examples move.