Living Well Purpose: To challenge us to live like Jesus

Transcription

1 March 27, 2011 John 4:1-30 Encountering Jesus sermon series Creekside COB Pastor Rosanna McFadden Living Well Purpose: To challenge us to live like Jesus It s not always the things which we plan which determine the course of our lives. Often, it s an unexpected occurrence or encounter that makes the difference. It must have been this way for the Samaritan woman who encountered Jesus at Jacob s Well. There s nothing unusual about a woman being at a well -- drawing water was women s work, and it had to be done every day except the Sabbath. Drawing water was hard work, and women would go first thing in the morning or late in the day to avoid the heat of the desert climate. Like any tedious and repetitive job, it went better with company -- women would go the well together to exchange news and gossip and no doubt complain about their husbands and children. Going to the well was a forerunner of the morning office break, where employees would emerge from their cubicles and gather around the water cooler. But not the woman in this story. She s at the well in the middle of the day -- about noon. She s probably avoiding the other women because it s hard to join the gossip when you re the gossip. She s a woman with a history: not a nice-husband-two kids-a dog-and a white picket fence history, but a did you hear who she s living with now? history. I can guarantee you that any woman who has had five different husbands has had a complicated life. The fact that she s currently living with a man who is not her husband is a scandal. She s an outcast in her village and in her culture.

2 She s an outcast for Jesus culture, too. Jews hated Samaritans, not because they were so different, but because they came from the same family tree. Samaritans were Jews who had intermarried with foreigners during the Babylonian exile and occupation, and the pureblood Jews had despised them ever since. It s like those distant cousins on your mother s side of the family who nobody ever talks about or talks to. They might seem like nice people, but somewhere in the distant past there was a rift in the family and you don t get together with them anymore. They re terrible people and that if you re around them something terrible might rub off on you. For Jesus to talk publically to any woman he did not know was a breach of social etiquette. For him to ask a Samaritan woman to give him a drink was just crazy -- he would be ritually unclean if he touched a bucket which belonged to a Samaritan woman. No Jew who cared about his religious or social standing would share food or utensils with a Samaritan, and this woman knows it: she asks, What are doing asking me for a drink? It is remarkable, under these circumstances, that Jesus encounter with the woman at the well -- whose name we are never told -- is the longest recorded dialogue with Jesus and anyone anywhere in the Bible. The woman at the well may be an outcast, but she s no fool, and she s got spunk. She engages Jesus in theological discussion about eternal life and correct worship. Even more significantly, she is the first person in John s gospel to whom Jesus confesses that he is the Christ, the Messiah. John relates a series of stories of people who are trying to figure out Jesus identity. Unlike Nicodemus, whom we heard about last week, this woman gets it -- not immediately, but before she leaves her jar and runs back to the city. As with Nicodemus, Jesus talks about spiritual truths as physical realities. With Nicodemus it was being born again, with this woman it is living water. Neither of these things make sense if taken literally. The idea of actual living water is, frankly, confusing and a little bit creepy to me. If we re going to understand what Jesus means by living water, we re going to have to go below the surface of what he saying. What

3 does living water represent for you? Or, to frame it a bit differently, what does it mean to live well? I tend to equate living well with a life of ease: a large, comfortably furnished house and plenty of whatever I need, food, drink, entertainment, and especially plenty of time to pursue my favorite leisure activities: reading, running, resting. I think on some level this is what the woman at the well wanted, too: to get a break from the tedious, unrelenting need to haul water, to be relieved of physical need, to never be thirsty again. Is this what Jesus offers her? A magical solution to all her problems? I don t think so. I expect that at some point that same day, maybe after a long afternoon of talking to all her neighbors about the Jew she met at the well, the Samaritan woman s throat got dry, and she had to get a drink of water. I ll bet she needed water the next day, and the next. So how did this encounter with Jesus change this woman s life? In part because this is such a long conversation, I didn t have Sandy read the whole story, which goes on to tell us how this woman left her jar at the well and ran back to tell her neighbors about Jesus. Verse 39 says, Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman s testimony, He told me everything I have ever done. That sentence is packed with incredible information: first, many Samaritans believed in Jesus, a Jew, as the Messiah, God s anointed one. Second, they listened to the testimony of a woman, a woman whom they tried to ignore every other day. And finally, the woman s testimony is not I haven t needed a drink of water for three days, her testimony is This man told me everything I have ever done. The implication is He knew everything I have ever done, and he spoke to me and used me as his messenger anyway. Do you see all the boundaries which Jesus has stepped across in this encounter? Boundaries of ethnicity, and gender, and prejudice. This woman was someone Jesus society and religion said he had no business speaking to, and yet he gave her the gift -- God s gift -- of purpose and credibility. He didn t take away her physical needs, nor

4 is there any indication that he fixed her messy relationships, but he chose her to proclaim him as the Messiah anyway. Maybe there is something here for us in what it means to live well. My first thoughts about living well as having lots of stuff, are, in the words of the hymn, rich in things but poor in soul. My definition of living well didn t include anything about family or faith or relationships. My definition of living well is shaped by the American Dream, but it doesn t have much to do with what the Bible says about a fulfilling life. I believe a biblical pattern of living well is to live like Jesus. Jesus life was not about what he accumulated, but what he had to give. I m not thinking primarily of money: you can give money to the church and other fine causes and still not give yourself to God or other people. I m thinking of the kinds of giving that take us out of our comfort zones, the kind of giving which may teach us more about ourselves than it does about the people we meet. I ve shared with some of you about my volunteer work at Goshen Interfaith Hospitality. Goshen Interfaith is part of a national network which coordinates local churches to host homeless families, feed them supper, give them a place to sleep at the church overnight and provide breakfast the next morning. Goshen Interfaith has a day center where adults and preschool children can be during the day. I ve spent several hours a week there over the past few months. I wish I could tell you that this is a generous and selfless act of service, but that isn t entirely true: I have a class assignment to do volunteer work, and the director of IHN is a friend, and I figured we could work something out. It turns out that my assignment there is one of the most difficult things I could have been given: I have nothing specific to do. I hang out with the families and play with the toddlers and listen to whoever is talking, arguing, or telling their story. This probably won t come as a surprise to you, but I am drawn to the more orderly facets of Christian ministry: a well-organized paper, a worship service which is thoughtfully planned and rehearsed, visual

5 and oral presentations which are worked out well in advance. I have had plenty of practice with these kinds of tasks, and I had a whole load of them in this past week. The very last thing I wanted to do was to spend a couple hours hanging out for no reason in particular. I don t care if the job is demanding or difficult, but let me feel like I m accomplishing something. IHN is not an orderly place. The director and staff are well-trained, competent, and committed, but the families there, by definition, have lives that are in chaos. This week I walked into a setting with wailing toddlers, bickering parents, and a frazzled staff and it was all I could do not to turn around and walk out. What good was I doing, anyway? I hadn t saved anyone from poverty or witnessed to anyone about Jesus, and I wasn t going to solve the social problems of Elkhart County. Besides, I had a sermon to write. It was only then, when I considered the story of the woman at the well that it occurred to me that maybe the person who needed to change was me. In fact, that was the only person whom I could change. What if God led me to IHN not for the difference I could make in the guests lives, but because of the difference they would make in mine. It was a sobering thought. After all, I thought I was the one who had it together. Maybe, with all my to-do lists and agenda to accomplish something, I had lost the ability to just hang out with people and listen to them. If God is present everywhere, then God is just as much in the day center at IHN with wailing kids and overwhelmed parents as God is in our orderly planning. This doesn t mean that God wants families to be homeless, or that Christians shouldn t try to do something about the problems of poverty, but it was a reminder to me that we can encounter Jesus anywhere: Jesus isn t limited to the times when we re prepared and we invite him to join us for Sunday worship, Jesus wades into the messiness of everyday life and meets us there, too. In order to truly give to people we don t know, we need to cross over the boundaries to where they live -- or, in this case, to where they don t have a place to live. This is exactly the kind of giving which Jesus practices with the Samaritan woman. He engages her in conversation, he listens to her,

6 he speaks to her as an equal. After she tells her city about him, Jesus and his disciples go and stay with the Samaritans for two more days and many more people believe. Believing in Jesus isn t a theoretical, intellectual exercise. When we believe in Jesus, we behave like Jesus, and we risk crossing the boundaries which divide us from our neighbors, those whom we despise, and our enemies. Because when we behave like Jesus, we become like Jesus. And becoming like Jesus is like having a spring of living water within us: we will never again be thirsty for meaning and purpose; we will be living well.