Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 143
GOING THROUGH SAMARIA
1. At the end of June, A.D. 27, because of the increasing opposition of the Jewish religious rulers, Jesus and the twelve departed from Jerusalem…. The people of southern Samaria heard Jesus gladly, and the apostles, with the exception of Judas Iscariot, succeeded in overcoming much of their prejudice against the Samaritans. It was very difficult for Judas to love these Samaritans.
2. Said Philip: "Master, these Greeks and Romans make light of our message, saying that such teachings are fit for only weaklings and slaves... They assert that your religion is not for this world; that men cannot live as you teach. And now, Master, what shall we say to these gentiles?”...Jesus said to the twelve: “I have come into this world to do the will of my Father and to reveal his loving character to all mankind... I declare to you that my Father in Paradise does rule a universe of universes by the compelling power of his love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world.
3. “But who told you that my gospel was intended only for slaves and weaklings? Do you, my chosen apostles, resemble weaklings? Did John look like a weakling? Do you observe that I am enslaved by fear? ...The service of the kingdom on earth will call for all the courageous manhood that you and your coworkers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loyalty to the gospel of this kingdom. It is easy to die in the line of physical battle when your courage is strengthened by the presence of your fighting comrades, but it requires a higher and more profound form of human courage and devotion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth enshrined in your mortal heart.
4, "Today, the unbelievers may taunt you with preaching a gospel of nonresistance and living lives of nonviolence, but you are the first volunteers of a long line of sincere believers in the gospel of this kingdom who will astonish all mankind by their heroic devotion to these teachings. No armies of the world have displayed more courage and bravery than will be portrayed by you and your loyal successors who shall go forth to all the world proclaiming the good news—the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men. The courage of the flesh is the lowest form of bravery. Mind bravery is a higher type of human courage, but the highest and supreme is uncompromising loyalty to the enlightened convictions of profound spiritual realities. And such courage constitutes the heroism of the God‑knowing man”...This was one of the most impassioned addresses which Jesus ever delivered to the twelve. Seldom did the Master speak to his apostles with evident strong feeling,
5. Andrew asked Jesus: "Master, are we to practice self‑denial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self‑control of your teaching?” ...”John indeed taught you the way of righteousness in accordance with the light and laws of his fathers, and that was the religion of self‑examination and self‑denial. But I come with a new message of self‑forgetfulness and self‑control...
6. “Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who captures a city. Self‑mastery is the measure of man's moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development ...By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God... The new law of the spirit endows you with the liberty of self‑mastery in place of the old law of the fear of self‑bondage and the slavery of self‑denial.
7. "Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the influence of the evil one when in reality you have but been led astray by your own natural tendencies.
8. “It is the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling spirit, which ever works by love... If, then, my children, you are born of the spirit, you are forever delivered from the self‑conscious bondage of a life of self‑denial and watchcare over the desires of the flesh, and you are translated into the joyous kingdom of the spirit, whence you spontaneously show forth the fruits of the spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self‑control, even the heights of terrestrial mortal attainment—true self‑mastery.
9. "Andrew, you cannot talk men out of their perplexities when they reach such a stage of involvement, and when so many persons with strong feelings are concerned. I cannot do what you ask of me—I will not participate in these personal social difficulties—but I will join you in the enjoyment of a three‑day period of rest and relaxation.
10. "My brethren, you must all learn the value of rest and the efficacy of relaxation. You must realize that the best method of solving some entangled problems is to forsake them for a time. Then when you go back fresh from your rest or worship, you are able to attack your troubles with a clearer head and a steadier hand, not to mention a more resolute heart. Again, many times your problem is found to have shrunk in size and proportions while you have been resting your mind and body."
11. About seven hundred years B. C., Sargon, king of Assyria, in subduing a revolt in central Palestine, carried away and into captivity over twenty‑five thousand Jews of the northern kingdom of Israel and installed in their place an almost equal number of the descendants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamathites....Alexander gave the Samaritans permission to build a temple on Mount Gerizim, where they worshiped Yahweh and their tribal gods and offered sacrifices much after the order of the temple services at Jerusalem...The antagonisms between the Jews and the Samaritans were time‑honored and historic; increasingly since the days of Alexander they had had no dealings with each other.
12. Nalda...was much surprised to have a Jewish man thus speak to her at the well and ask for water, for it was not deemed proper in those days for a self‑respecting man to speak to a woman in public, much less for a Jew to converse with a Samaritan ...And being a woman of lax morals, she was minded openly to become flirtatious, when Jesus, looking straight into her eyes, with a commanding voice said, "Woman, go get your husband and bring him hither." This command brought Nalda to her senses..."My Lord, I repent of my manner of speaking to you, for I perceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet." And she was just about to seek direct and personal help from the Master when she did what so many have done before and since—dodged the issue of personal salvation by turning to the discussion of theology and philosophy.
13. “God is spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Your salvation comes not from knowing how others should worship or where but by receiving into your own heart this living water which I am offering you even now.”. ..Once more she resorted to questions of general religion, saying: "Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the coming of the Converter...he will. declare to us all things"—and Jesus, interrupting Nalda, said with startling assurance, "I who speak to you am he”
14. This was the first direct, positive, and undisguised pronouncement of his divine nature and sonship which Jesus had made on earth; and it was made to a woman, a Samaritan woman, and a woman of questionable character in the eyes of men up to this moment, but a woman whom the divine eye beheld as having been sinned against more than as sinning of her own desire and as now being a human soul who desired salvation, desired it sincerely and wholeheartedly, and that was enough.
15. Jesus said to Nalda: "Woman go your way; God has forgiven you. Henceforth you will live a new life. You have received the living water, and a new joy will spring up within your soul, and you shall become a daughter of the Most High."
16. The apostles never ceased to be shocked by Jesus' willingness to talk with women, women of questionable charter, even immoral women. It was very difficult for Jesus to teach his apostles that women, even so‑called immoral women, have souls which can choose God as their Father, thereby becoming daughters of God and candidates for life everlasting. Even nineteen centuries later many show the same unwillingness to grasp the Master's teachings.
17. Even the Christian religion has been persistently built up around the fact of the death of Christ instead of around the truth of his life. The world should be more concerned with his happy and God‑revealing life than with his tragic and sorrowful death.
18. Nalda told John that Jesus had told her "all I ever did." John many times wanted to ask Jesus about this visit with Nalda, but he never did....Jesus never told her she had had five husbands. She had lived with four different men since her husband cast her aside, and this with all her past, came up so vividly in her mind at the moment when she realized Jesus was a man of God that she subsequently repeated to John that Jesus had really told her all about herself.
19. When Andrew sought to persuade him to eat a bite before speaking to the crowd, Jesus said, "I have meat to eat that you do not know about." When the apostles heard this, they said among themselves: "Has any man brought him aught to eat? Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?" When Jesus heard them talking among themselves, before he spoke to the people, he turned aside and said to the twelve: "My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work ...Behold these people coming out from a Samaritan city to hear us; I tell you the fields are already white for the harvest. He who reaps receives wages and gathers this fruit to eternal life;
20. “For herein is the saying true: 'One sows and another reaps.' I am now sending you to reap that whereon you have not labored; others have labored, and you are about to enter into their labor." This he said in reference to the preaching of John the Baptist.
21. In any religion it is very easy to allow values to become disproportionate and to permit facts to occupy the place of truth in one's theology. The fact of the cross became the very center of subsequent Christianity; but it is not the central truth of the religion which may be derived from the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
22. The theme of Jesus' teaching on Mount Gerizim was: That he wants all men to see God as a Father‑friend just as he (Jesus) is a brother‑friend. And again and again he impressed upon them that love is the greatest relationship in the world—in the universe—just as truth is the greatest pronouncement of the observation of these divine relationships.
23. True religion is the act of an individual soul in its self‑conscious relation with the Creator; organized religion is man's attempt to socialize the worship of individual religionists.
24. Worship—contemplation of the spiritual—must alternate with service, contact with material reality. Work should alternate with play; religion should be balanced by humor. Profound philosophy should be relieved by rhythmic poetry. The strain of living—the time tension of personality—should be relaxed by the restfulness of worship.
25. The feelings of insecurity arising from the fear of personality isolation in the universe should be antidoted by the faith contemplation of tie Father and by the attempted realization of the Supreme.
26. Prayer is designed to make man less thinking but more realizing; it is not designed to increase knowledge but rather to expand insight.
27. Worship is intended to anticipate the better life ahead and then to reflect these new spiritual significances back onto the life which now is...Worship is the technique of looking to the One for the inspiration of service to the many. Worship is the yardstick which measures the extent of the soul's detachment from the material universe and its simultaneous and secure attachment to the spiritual realities of all creation.
28. Prayer is self‑reminding—sublime thinking; worship is self‑forgetting—superthinking. Worship is effortless attention, true and ideal soul rest, a form of restful spiritual exertion. Worship is the act of a part identifying itself with the Whole; the finite with the Infinite; the son with the Father; time in the act of striking step with eternity.
Discussion Questions
1. Why is the policy of nonresistance and nonviolence still a problem in our world?
2. How are we transformed by the Spirit of Truth?
3. What is the difference between the freedom of self-mastery and the bondage of self-denial?
4. How does one achieve self-forgetfulness?
5. Who are the outsiders today that we are hesitant to accept?
6. Do we use theology today to avoid discussing personal spiritual challenges or doubts?
7. Are the values of the Fifth Epochal Revelation less prominent than the fact of The Urantia Book?
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