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A reading from the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 5 to 29 and 39 to 42 as printed in the liturgy.
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.
It was about the sixth hour.
A woman from Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him,
How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
Jesus answered her,
If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink,
you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.
The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
Jesus said to her, Go call your husband and come here.
The woman answered him, I have no husband.
Jesus said to her, You are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands,
and the one you now have is not your husband.
What you have said is true.
The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
You worship what you do not know.
We worship what we know.
For salvation is from the Jews.
But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
For the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ.
When he comes, he will tell us all things.
Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.
Just then his disciples came back.
They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, what do you seek or why are you talking with her?
So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
Can this be the Christ?
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.
He told me all that I ever did.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
And many more believed because of his word.
They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe,
for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord God.
Thank you for that scripture reading, Terry, and good morning, Christ Church.
My name is Andrew.
I'm one of the pastors here.
I missed you last week.
Not that much, though, because I got to sit in a cabin and eat popcorn and throw snowballs at the youth
and teach them about Jesus and the church, and it was a really good time.
Why don't I open us up in prayer, then we'll dive into God's word this morning.
Father, we want to declare with the Samaritans in this village that indeed, this is the Savior of the world.
Would we dive into the depths of what it means that you are the Savior of the world,
what it means that you are the Savior of this Samaritan woman?
Would we be amazed, God, at the way that you deal with us, at the way that you have chosen to be our God among us?
So be honored in the preaching of your word, and we pray these things in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
So we're continuing our series in the Gospel of John.
We're now in chapter four.
We're at the famous story of the woman at the well, Jesus and the woman at the well.
And, you know, this is actually not the first time I've ever preached this text.
The first time was maybe six to eight years ago.
I was a seminary student in Philly at Westminster Seminary,
and I tried looking for my old manuscript, my old audio recording, but I couldn't find it.
And I was really disappointed because I had to start over all over again.
But, you know, maybe it's for the best because while I remember being super excited as this young, aspiring pastor
preaching this, you know, famous text about Jesus and the woman at the well,
I also remember the sermon bombing pretty bad in northeast Philadelphia.
Sorry to those folks.
As in, it was definitely not the bomb, all right?
It was one of those sermons where I came to church that Sunday, like, oh man, I'm not feeling this.
I don't got it today.
I mean, I feel like that most of the time here at Christ Church, but especially that Sunday, I was like, mm-mm.
And the people, they knew.
They were struggling.
So hopefully it'll be better this time.
I can't make any promises.
But yeah, I went away from preaching this passage not feeling like I did it justice.
And then came this week.
And it was, it was like just as hard.
It was just as surprisingly difficult to figure out how to preach this text.
But I think this time around, I've kind of come to understand why this text is a little bit difficult to preach.
It's a pretty long one.
It's got tons of details.
It's overflowing with so many themes that you could pick to preach on.
You could preach Jesus, the healer of racial and ethnic cultural conflict.
Jesus, the uplifter of women and the outcast.
Jesus, the living water that satisfies everyone's thirst.
Jesus as a model for how to share the truth about the Christ.
You could preach on Jesus in sex or marriage or singleness or on worship in spirit and in truth.
There are a lot of ways that you could go with this text, John chapter 4.
But I think what makes this passage really, really difficult, especially to preach in 25 to 30 minutes,
is this kind of complicated dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
It's got some really, really strange twists and turns, some really weird transitions throughout the conversation.
I think about it.
It goes from a conversation about water to living water to husbands and then to prophets, right?
And then to mountains and then they talk about worship and then they talk about the end times.
And then all of a sudden Jesus says, I am the Messiah.
And she's leaving her water jug there going into the city and telling everyone,
come see a man who told me all that I ever did.
Thus saith the Lord, right?
That's it.
It's strange, right?
Well, what I want to do today is I want to try to help us make sense of all these twists and turns in the story
because I'm really convinced, I'm really convinced that if we can understand why,
after this strange conversation with Jesus,
why this woman all of a sudden leaves her water jug behind and goes back into the town
and tells people to come and see a man who told her all that she ever did,
I think if we can understand why she responded in this way to this encounter with Jesus,
I think we'll get a wonderful glimpse of the heart of God
and the goodness of the good news about Jesus.
I think we'll get a sense of the pursuing love of the Father.
We'll get a sense of the costly grace of the Son
and of this communal fellowship of the Holy Spirit that He wants for us.
A love, a grace, and a fellowship that free us and fill us to be the people,
to live the lives we've always wanted to live.
To live the lives that God has always wanted us to live.
So are we ready to dive in?
We don't have a lot of stories today.
This is the story.
Jesus and the woman at the well, right?
Let's start at verse 5.
You're going to want to have your printed text in front of you, your liturgy,
because we're going to be looking down at this text a lot.
Let's start with verse 5.
So he, Jesus, came to a town of Samaria called Sikar,
near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey,
was sitting beside the well.
It was about the sixth hour.
Tons of things we could talk about here, but I want to talk about Samaria.
What is Samaria?
If you know nothing about Samaria, if you know nothing about the Samaritans
and their relationship with Jesus' people, the Jewish people,
what you need to know is that the relationship between the Jewish people
and the Samaritans was incredibly hostile, and it had been for centuries.
All right?
Shortly after the death of King David's son, King Solomon,
after the building of the temple, there was a civil war between the north of Israel
and the south of Israel.
And the south of Israel had its capital in Jerusalem,
and the north of Israel had its capital in Samaria.
And what you need to know about the history of Israel is that,
while the southern kingdom, they did have a few good kings,
the northern kingdom had all terrible kings,
all kings who went their own way, did not follow the way of God.
And then, eventually, for their own political ends,
they set up their own place of worship outside of Jerusalem,
away from the temple that God had told Israel to build.
Like, now we're going to do our own thing.
All right?
So you can imagine, like, in the eyes of the southern Jewish people,
how blasphemous this would have been.
And then, to make matters worse,
when the Assyrians came from the north and the east to come,
and they first conquered the north,
they first conquered Samaria,
shortly after that, the northerners, they began to intermarry
with these foreigners from the north and the east of Assyria,
and they began to intermarry with people who did not worship Yahweh.
And so the religion became even more impure,
and you can imagine the hostility and the division
between the Jewish people and the Samaritans
growing and growing and growing over the centuries.
In 110 BC, there's a Jewish king who comes up
and actually destroys this sacrilegious temple in Samaria.
And then you have another story of maybe six,
I think it's six in the common era,
where there are some Samaritans who sneak into Jerusalem.
They sneak into the Jerusalem temple, and they defile it.
They scatter human bones in it and make it unclean.
There's just tons of animosity, tons of back and forth.
But this is the history between the Jewish people and the Samaritans.
They hated each other.
To the average Jewish person, the Samaritan was a half-breed,
an impure person with an impure religion.
And to the Samaritans, the Jewish people were their judgmental relatives,
the ones who rejected them and saw them as inferior and unfaithful
and unworthy of association and utterly separated from God,
even though they claimed Abraham as their father too.
Now look down with me at verse 7.
This is the history between the Jews and the Samaritans.
Then verse 7, enter a Samaritan woman who's come to draw water.
And this is where things really start to get interesting,
because what was she doing all alone at the sixth hour at high noon
drawing water from this well?
Normally this was supposed to be a communal chore,
a communal activity, the drawing of water,
with all the other women in the town,
and certainly not at the hottest time of the day.
This was supposed to be a communal group chore done in the cool of the morning
or in the cool of the evening.
But here she is.
She's all alone in the heat of the day.
Something's up with this loner of a woman.
And as the text unfolds in verse 18,
that this woman is doing her chores in the heat of the day
and in lonely isolation probably has something to do with the fact
that she has a past.
She has a past.
She's had five husbands and is now with a man who isn't her husband.
She's probably a despised social outcast.
And yet, in spite of Jesus and this woman's weariness in the heat of the day,
in spite of their people's centuries of ethnic hostility,
and in spite of the patriarchal society that they lived in,
in spite of the fact that Jesus knew everything about this woman's past,
in spite of the fact that he was a Jewish rabbi, right,
who if he was seen speaking to such a woman,
it would jeopardize his reputation.
In spite of all these factors,
the most unlikely of conversations ensues
between Jesus and this forsaken outcast of a woman.
And thus begins the longest recorded one-on-one personal encounter with Jesus
in all the gospel accounts.
It's with this woman, of all people,
the Samaritan woman at the well.
It's a conversation between the Son of God
and an unnamed outcast Samaritan woman.
A conversation in which a righteous, faithful, and pure Jewish rabbi
is willing to take an unclean Samaritan woman's cup
and put it to his lips for a drink.
It's a conversation in which the holy creator of the universe
is willing to ask this destitute woman for a favor, for a drink.
This is our God. This is Jesus.
Now, the Samaritan woman is just as astounded
as any Jewish person would be
that Jesus has initiated a conversation with her
and that he's even cool with drinking from her water jar.
She's very aware of and even bound by the social conventions,
the social norms that Jesus had just breached.
And she says in verse 9,
How is it that you, a Jew,
ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
She's saying, Who do you think you are?
Who do you think I am?
And how can you ask such a favor from me?
But Jesus says in verse 10,
If you knew the gift of God
and who it is that is saying to you,
Give me a drink,
you would have asked him.
And he would have given you living water.
He's saying, Oh, I know who I am.
And if you only knew who I was too.
If you only knew.
You think it's crazy that I,
a male Jewish rabbi,
am asking you, a Samaritan,
for a drink of water?
I got something crazier for you,
he says to her.
I got something crazier for you.
I can give you for free.
You only need to ask.
I can give you living water.
Welling up to eternal life,
a gift from God himself.
And at this point,
the woman thinks Jesus is just talking about
some kind of running water maybe,
some other source.
And she meets Jesus with skepticism.
Verse 11,
Sir, you have nothing to draw water with.
And the well is deep.
Where do you get that living water?
Are you greater than our father Jacob?
He gave us the well and drank from it himself
as did his sons and his livestock.
She's like,
Look, our forefather Jacob gave us this well.
And here you are asking me for a drink.
Bro, you don't even have a bucket.
You don't even have a bucket.
What are you talking about, man?
But Jesus challenges her.
Verse 13,
Everyone who drinks of this water
that Jacob dug up for you
will be thirsty again.
But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him
will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him
will become in him a spring.
A spring of water welling up to eternal life.
And at this point,
the skeptical Samaritan woman is just like,
All right, sure.
Sounds great.
Verse 15,
Sir, give me this water then
so that I will not be thirsty
or have to come here to drink water.
That sounds good.
If you really have that kind of living water
that can forever quench my thirst,
sure, I'll take some of that.
I'll take some of that.
And this is where things get really confusing.
Right?
She says,
Yes, I like this living water
that you're offering,
but I kind of don't believe that you have
because you don't even have a bucket.
And then in verse 16,
Jesus says,
Go call your husband and come here.
Like, what is going on in this conversation?
They were just talking about water
and the lack of buckets
and all of a sudden,
we're talking about,
Go call your husband and bring him here.
How in the world did this conversation
go from living water to a husband?
Is Jesus just completely changing the subject?
Well, I think the answer becomes clearer
if we follow the dialogue further.
She says in verse 17,
Look with me.
I have no husband.
She indulges this change of subject.
She says,
I have no husband.
And Jesus says,
You are right,
saying I have no husband.
For you have had five husbands
and the one you now have
is not your husband.
What you have said is true.
What's going on here?
How did it get to this?
Well, I think Jesus is doing,
what he's doing here
is that he's revealing to this woman
her deepest thirst.
Her deepest thirst.
Jesus is saying,
If you want living water,
something that can forever quench
your every thirst
and turn you into a life-giving spring,
welling up to eternal life
for yourself and for others,
you have got to come to terms,
not just with your thirst for this well water.
You have got to come to terms
with your deepest thirst.
And for this woman,
it had to do with something with her past.
Having had five husbands
and now having a man who was not her husband.
And you know,
I don't want to judge
or make too many assumptions about this woman.
I think a lot of preachers and commentators
can easily do that.
We don't know the stories
behind the first five husbands
in this woman's life.
Maybe they all divorced her
each time for reasons out of her control.
Maybe some of them passed away.
Or maybe she really was unfaithful.
To some of them,
maybe to all of them,
maybe she was shamefully promiscuous.
We don't know.
But what we can know
is that her life is not at all
what she had intended or wanted, right?
We can know that at least.
No one gets married
planning to have four more spouses
in their lifetime.
No one gets married
planning to end up with someone
who isn't their spouse.
And we can also know
that her relationship
with this six man at least
who isn't her husband,
it's not what God wants for her.
Right?
A sexual relationship
relating to another person
as a spouse
who is not actually your spouse.
This is not God's will
or design for her
or for any of us.
And I think John Piper
was so right
in his sermon on this passage
when he said that
no one goes through five marriages
and an additional
extramarital relationship
without either starting thirsty
or ending thirsty.
And Jesus was prophetically
revealing this truth to her.
You've got a thirst
and it has to do
with this past of yours
with these five men
and now this six men.
Her pursuit of a husband
and probably a happy home
and a marriage
and whatever supposedly
normative status and lifestyle
that came with such things,
a pursuit not so unlike
many of ours,
it left her thirsty.
It'll leave us thirsty too
if we don't watch out.
And now with this six men
who is not her husband
or maybe we could read it as
who is not her husband,
maybe he's someone else's husband,
she's worse off
than when she'd begun,
thirstier than she's ever been
in more ways than one
at Jacob's famous well
at high noon.
She's here at this well,
she thinks she's gonna satisfy
some kind of thirst,
but Jesus shows her
you are so much thirstier
than you even know.
And you know,
a lot of commentaries
and preachers think
that this woman
tries to change the subject
away from her sex life.
They think that she's trying
to move the conversation
to something maybe
more superficial,
more intellectual,
more theological,
like talking to a prophet
about something
he might be interested in.
But I wanna follow
the commentators
Leslie Newbigin
and Herman Ritterbos
because I think something else
is happening here
when she responds
to Jesus' intimate knowledge
about her five husbands
and her current partner.
Look with me at verse 19.
In verse 19,
when she says,
Sir,
I perceive that you are a prophet.
Our fathers worshipped
on this mountain,
but you say that in Jerusalem
is the place
where people ought to worship.
I don't think, actually,
that she's trying
to deflect Jesus' prophetic words
into her life.
I think she's actually
beginning to acknowledge
who Jesus is.
You're a prophet.
What is a prophet?
I think a lot of times
we think of a prophet
as someone who makes predictions,
but most properly,
a prophet is someone
who speaks the words of God
and opens people's eyes
to their waywardness.
A prophet is someone
who calls people back
into right relationship
with God.
After all,
isn't she trying to
if she's trying
to divert Jesus
into another topic,
seems like she would
have been successful
because Jesus goes on
with this topic, right?
But I think what's really
going on here
is that she has received
the prophetic words
of Jesus
about her deviation
from God
in her sex life.
And recognizing
that Jesus
is at least someone
who speaks the words of God,
she is now bringing to him
a genuine concern
that she now has.
And this is the concern.
She says,
All right,
you're right.
I've been unfaithful
to Yahweh.
I've been unfaithful
to the Torah.
I've been with this man
who is not my husband.
But now,
this is problematic
for me,
Mr. Prophet.
This divide
between us Samaritans
who worship here
and you Jewish people
who worship in Jerusalem,
well,
that's a huge,
huge problem
for me now.
Look,
Mr. Prophet,
I'm already an outcast
here in Samaria.
They won't even let me
worship and offer
sacrifices to atone
for my sins
here on Mount Gerizim.
But if you are right
and the right place
to worship
is where the Jewish people
say in Jerusalem,
well,
how could I,
of all people,
ever deal
with my sin?
I must be hopeless
if you are right.
And at this point,
all hope seems lost
for this woman
at the well.
But the good news
of the gospel
is that with Jesus,
there is always hope
for Jesus is not only
the prophet who reveals
our waywardness,
but he is a prophet
who shows us
the way,
the way to life,
the way to living water,
the way back to God.
He is himself
the very way,
the very truth,
and the very life,
and no one comes
to the Father
except through him.
Listen to what he says
to her.
He doesn't shrug
and say,
it's okay,
as long as you're sincere
and you mean well,
you're close enough,
just have a good spirit
about it,
and you'll be accepted
as a true worshiper
of God.
He's honest.
Verse 22,
he says,
you worship
what you do not know.
We worship
what we know
for salvation
is from the Jews.
Yes,
the Samaritan religion
is a deviation
from the truth.
But he says
in verse 21,
believe me though,
the hour is coming
when neither
on this mountain
nor in Jerusalem
will you worship
the Father.
Verse 23,
the hour is coming
and is now here
when the true worshipers
will worship the Father
by the Spirit
and the truth
for the Father
is seeking such people
to worship him.
Do you realize
what Jesus is saying
to her right here?
This is the gospel.
Confronted by her sin
with some man
who is not her own husband,
she sees the wide chasm
between God
whose temple
is in Jerusalem
and herself
as an immoral,
outcasted,
Samaritan woman
and yet here
Jesus is saying
to her,
the hour is coming
and is now here
because I'm here,
because God
is among you,
because the true temple
is here,
I am the true temple
and true worshipers
will worship the Father
not by their own effort,
not by figuring out
a way to sneak
into Jerusalem
as a Samaritan
to offer right sacrifices,
but the way
to be in right relationship
with God
as a true worshiper,
Jesus says,
is by the Spirit
and by the truth,
for the Father
is seeking such people
to worship Him.
Jesus is saying,
you're right,
the chasm is far
too wide
for you to cross
the gap on your own,
but through the Spirit's power
and through me,
the truth,
and because the Father
is the one
actively seeking
and pursuing worshippers,
there is a way
to be right
with God once again,
apart from your
insufficiencies
and despite your
insurmountable obstacles,
it's by the Spirit,
it's by the truth
and by the ever-seeking
Father,
the pursuing Father.
And as this woman
hears the good news
of this hour
that is coming
when she will actually
be able to worship
and be restored
into a right relationship
with Yahweh
by His Spirit
and His truth,
she can't wait.
Wouldn't you believe
that to be good news
for you?
She cannot wait
for that hour
to come
and she says
in verse 25,
I know that Messiah
is coming,
He who is called Christ.
When He comes,
He will tell us
all things.
I can't wait.
And yet to her surprise
and to her delight,
Jesus says to her
in verse 26,
literally in the Greek,
ego emi,
I am.
His very first statement,
I am the one
speaking to you,
I am He.
I am the Messiah
that you're longing for.
And this changes
everything for the woman.
This changes everything
for her.
And she leaves
her water jug behind
and she returns
to her town
and she invites
everyone in the city
to come and see a man
who told her everything
that she had ever done.
And I want to wrap up now
by highlighting
this incredible
response of hers
and I want to talk about
what prompted this response
and then how this is
relevant for us.
Now check it out
in verse 28,
how she leaves her water jug
behind with Jesus.
She just leaves it behind,
leaves it right there
with Him at the well.
I want you to imagine
her love-hate relationship
with that jug of water
before she met Jesus.
On the one hand,
it's the very instrument
that she daily depended upon
to secure her own survival
and to quench her thirst
again and again and again.
She can't live without it.
And yet on the other hand,
she daily strains herself
to carry that heavy jug
back and forth
by the sweat of her own brow,
wishing she never had
to draw water with it
ever again,
wishing for an eternal spring
instead.
Does that sound familiar?
Does that sound like
our lives,
the paradoxical relationship,
right,
between the exhausting grind
of life we seek freedom from,
but also our dependence
upon the grind
for our survival
and meaning?
Maybe we're not so different
from the Samaritan woman,
are we?
Laboring day after day
to quench our thirst,
believing the lie
that Jacob's well
and her water jug
were the best shot
that she had
at survival,
the best shot
that she had
at somewhat quenching
her thirst.
Until boom, right,
she meets Jesus
and her relationship
to the well
and her relationship
to that jug of water
are completely transformed.
And she isn't thirsty
like she was before.
I also want us to notice
how she runs not away,
she doesn't run away
from the town,
but she runs toward
the very town
in which she was an outcast
of promiscuous repute.
this woman who approached
the well as an ashamed loner
is now running toward people.
And this woman
who has had five husbands
and is most recently
with a man who is not
her husband
is now openly telling people
in verse 29,
come and see a man
who told me all
that I ever did.
Who would do that?
Especially with a past
like hers.
Who would highlight that?
Who would broadcast that?
Come and see a man
who told me
how much of an adulterer I was.
How immoral I am.
How much of a sexually
perverse deviant I am.
Someone asked the question,
what was it about
this woman's encounter
with Jesus
that led to
such an incredible response?
Well in short,
I think she found,
I think it's that she found
the man
she'd always needed
but never knew to seek.
Never knew she even wanted.
When she looked
to quench her thirst
with man after man
through marriage and sex
and maybe domestic dreams,
Jesus said,
all you need is me.
All you need is me,
the living water.
You don't need this well.
You don't need that water jug.
You don't need these other men.
All you need is me.
Is that a word
for some of us today
from Jesus to us
that all you need is me?
Because see in Jesus,
she found a man
who loved her
like she'd never been loved before.
Like she'd never been loved before.
A man who though
he had every reason
not to speak to her,
every reason not to enter
into a relationship with her,
she found a man
who wanted to give her
a free gift.
She would just ask.
Right?
Verse 10,
if you knew the gift of God
and who it is
that is saying to you,
give me a drink,
you would have just asked him
and he would have given you
living water.
This is the gospel.
It's free.
You just ask
and he wants to give it to you.
She found a man
who loved her
unconditionally.
A man who knew her
to the bottom
and loved her
to the heavens.
A Jewish man
who though,
knowing everything
she ever did,
still wanted to talk to her.
Still wanted to give her
living water for free.
Still believed that she could be
in right relationship
with God
as a true worshiper.
Still told her
that she was worth pursuing
and not without hope
and that she was even able
to be filled with
the spirit and presence
and power of God.
That God had a plan
for this woman
to make her
a spring of life-giving water
even for others.
In Jesus,
she found a security
and a steadfast love
unlike any
she'd ever experienced.
And all of a sudden,
she was freed.
She was freed
from the judgmental opinions
of others toward her.
Who cares
what the townspeople think
if I have
the steadfast love of God?
That's how
she could run back
into this city.
Come and see
a man who told me
all that I ever did
and still loved me
with all that he is.
And still included me.
And still wanted
to be my savior,
my Messiah.
Do we understand
the liberating power
of Jesus?
The freedom
of this gospel
that is preached
here by the church.
That the good news
that we don't need
what we think we need
and that
the living water
of eternal life
is completely free
for whoever
simply asks.
That this good news
that we can be both
fully known
in all of our sin
and fully loved
by God's
abundant grace.
This good news
that even when
we are running away,
the Father is seeking
those who will worship him.
The good news
is that we cannot
outrun his spirit
or render false
his truth in Christ.
Christ's church,
do we really understand
this liberating gospel
of Jesus?
Can we,
with the same enthusiasm
of this woman
at the well,
can we invite
and call others
with the same vulnerability
and confidence,
the same humility
and boldness,
can we approach
our friends
and our family
and our colleagues
and our neighbors
saying,
come and see a man
who told me
everything I ever did.
Come and see a man
who knows about
my porn addiction.
Come and see a man
who knows about
my aberrant sexual life,
my marital unfaithfulness,
my multiple partners
and flings and affairs.
Come and see a man
who knows about
my selfish, greedy heart
and habits,
how I use my time
and how I use my money.
Come and see a man
who knows all the hatred
and contempt in my heart
for my spouse,
my boss,
my parent,
this or that kind of person.
Come and see a man
who knows the deepest,
darkest secrets
of my past.
Like what if the strength
of our witness
didn't depend on
how much we knew
or how much we were able
to reason and debate
and explain our faith
like Nicodemus surely was?
But what if the strength
of our witness
has more to do
with the magnitude
of the forgiveness
and the grace
poured out upon us
in Christ?
What if the people
in our lives
knew even just some
of what Christ's blood
has atoned for
in our lives?
What if the millions
of people out
in our world today
who struggle every day
with not being enough,
with not measuring up,
with guilt upon guilt,
what if they knew
the man who though
knowing all that
they ever did
chose not just
to be God among us
but a thirsty God
among us?
A thirsty God among us
not just at Jacob's well
at the sixth hour
but at the sixth hour
upon the cross.
Would they
and would we with them
astounded
that neither death
nor life
nor angels
nor rulers
nor things present
nor things to come
nor powers
nor height
nor death
nor anything else
in all of creation
could ever separate us
from the love of God
in Christ Jesus
our Lord?
What if they knew that?
That's what we're saying
when we say come
and see
a man
who told me all
that I ever did.
If they knew that
if we all knew that
would we all not
declare
along with the rest
of the Samaritans
from this woman's village
in verse 42
that this is indeed
this is indeed
the Savior
not just of the Jews
not just of the Samaritan woman
not just of you
and me as individuals
this is the Savior
of the world.
Let's pray.