My latest sermon

Yesterday I spoke in church again. What a great time it was. I really felt the pressure and the pleasure. Normally I struggle with what to preach on but this time I saw so many signs of confirmation from God (I will post on those later). Here is the main body of my talk. There were a few ad-libs which I haven't included. One major change though; I dealt with the two interpretations of the passage differently. I ended with the call to talk to Jesus if you felt like the woman at the well. Hopefully, if you make it through the sermon it'll all make sense

When I started to go to church, I expected it to be very different from what it was – I didn’t have any real experience of church, beyond what I had seen in films or on tv. I expected cries of sinner! Backslider! Other judgemental calls. I expected to be told that I needed to repent or I would go to hell

I Never experienced anything like that though. Instead I found a family, I found acceptance, I found love (of all sorts). I rarely heard about sin. Outside of occasional personal reading of the Bible, it never really came up. I knew that I was a sinner, the Bible was clear on that. However, nobody had ever confronted me about it. Was I free and clear? Had I done enough? Turns out I had been confronted about it, just confronted in the most remarkable way.

Please turn with me to John Chapter 4.

4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴ Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband.¹⁸ The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

This is a very well-known passage and contains someone who, if anyone does, deserves to be called a sinner. This passage shows us several things about both the woman and Jesus.

She is a Samaritan Woman who was at the village well at around midday. This is an interesting point and fairly easily explained. In the Middle East at this time, women generally went to get water early in the morning and in the evening. At other times it was too hot or too late in the day. She was probably avoiding the other women.

She has had 5 husbands and is with another man right now who is not her husband. Even today this would probably cause a lot of tongue wagging. In the First Century this would have been utterly scandalous.

I grew up in a village where gossip was almost a second currency. Everyone knew everyone’s business. I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of that and, to my shame, I know what it is to be on the giving side too.

She is a fallen woman. A loose woman as my Gran would have called her. She is at the bottom of the rung and Jesus talks to her.

What does Jesus talk to her about? Water! I have never understood what this was all about. If you just read the passage it doesn’t make any sense. The woman is surprised that Jesus asks her for water (more on that in a little bit) and then he offers her living water. Water that will mean she is never thirsty again.

Have you ever been really thirsty? Really really thirsty? It must be a common thing in the middle east but not so here in Fort William. When you are truly thirsty though, that first draught of water can be so sweet. But it fades. Eventually you will be thirsty again.

So what is Jesus on about? The woman wants the water he offers but look at her reasons for it – she wants to avoid having to come to the well again.

You see, we as humans have been sinners for almost all the time we have been humans. Being a sinner means wanting to go our own way. Wanting to get what we want, when we want it. Having desires is what makes us a sinner. Desire for money, for fame, for power, for love. They are all wrong desires and they all lead us away from God. The Bible is clear on this, all have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God.

At the heart of every human being is a longing for something. We have a hole that seems unfillable. Christians believe that it is a Christ shaped hole but what about those who don’t know Jesus?

Having dreams is fine. It is ok to be aspirational but the woman at the well has tried to get happiness from sex and relationships. She has had five husbands and yet there isn’t any satisfaction for her. If these all worked, there would be no shame. She wants to hide from her shame and her pain.  She keeps changing the subject. She keeps trying to distract Jesus, not wanting to confront her past and her present. She is not a fulfilled person. If she were fulfilled, she would be happy. She is not happy.

All sorts of people have tried to fill the hole with all sorts of things. Sophia Loren – ‘In my life, there is an emptiness that is impossible to fulfil’ despite the fame and the beauty and the money she was empty. Boris Becker ‘ I was rich, I had all the material possessions I needed … but I had no inner peace’.

It is this hole, this emptiness, that drives people to search for things and, sadly, drives all too many to drink or drugs or worse when they find out that the things they wanted are no longer enough. It was this hole that had driven the woman at the well to become what she had become.

What Jesus offers is a true satisfaction. A complete answer to this spiritual thirst. Complete and utter satisfaction and gratefully she received it. Later in this chapter we see a complete change in the woman. This scared, unhappy woman, ashamed to be seen by the other women in the village, goes and gets the others. She drags them to the well to see the man who had finally shown her where true satisfaction lay.

What a remarkable encounter that she had with him.

What I have said already doesn’t begin to touch the surface of the remarkableness of this passage. Not only is Jesus’ offer remarkable, everything he does is remarkable.

You see, Jesus, a single man, talks with a woman! A Samaritan woman! A fallen Samaritan woman! Jewish men were forbidden from talking with women but Jesus broke that religious taboo.

But she was a Samaritan. A member of a mongrel and traitor race that had intermingled with foreigners and lost their Israelite status. So, ethnically she was lower than low. Worse though, The Mishnah, a Jewish religious document, says that Samaritan women were considered to be menstruants from an early age. She, and anything she touched, was unclean. Anyone who touched it would be unclean and Jesus broke this ethnic taboo and was prepared to become unclean just to share the good news with this woman.

She was a fallen woman. An adulteress. A harlot. A Whore. Good men didn’t mix with such people and yet, this moral taboo is also shattered by Jesus.

Jesus’ whole approach to this woman is amazingly gentle. He, of all people, had the right to judge her and to call her a sinner. He doesn’t. He is gentle and compassionate.

Compare this approach with the way he treated Nicodemus in chapter 3. Here was the ultimate insider, a Pharisee, a member of the council and someone who should have had it all. Jesus is harsher on him.

What he really says when he tells Nicodemus that he has to be born again is that his whole life up to this point has not been good enough. He tells him that his obedience and his rules and his position mean nothing.

At no point does Jesus tell the woman at the well that her life is not good enough. He knows all about her life but he doesn’t condemn her.

Even though he is gentle, Jesus is firm with her. She tries to turn the tables by talking about how he doesn’t have what he needs. She tries to bring up the religious differences between Jews and Samaritans. Many Jews would have got angry about the temple thing. They would have easily been riled up.  Jesus just ploughs on with telling her the Good News.

Right at the end of this little interaction with the woman at the well Jesus does something almost unique in the gospels. Hardly ever does Jesus reveal his true identity. When he is being questioned by Caiaphas he dodges the question about his nature till the very end, when he is called the messiah by peter and the others, he tells them to be quiet. Here, in this quiet part of the wrong town in the wrong country, talking to the wrong woman from the wrong race, he freely admits that he is the messiah. Would you share your most important secret with someone you have just met? Someone who is like this woman?

I have been reading a book called ‘Preaching’ by Tim Keller. It talks about how to get the most out of a passage from the Bible. How does it apply to our lives is one of the key questions it points out.

There are two ways in which I think this passage applies to our lives.

Firstly, are we the woman at the well? Maybe we have spent out lives searching for something to fill that gap. Maybe we have tried something like sex. Or alcohol. Or drugs. Maybe it is something different. This passage tells us that it is ok to be like this. People will get like it and they can find help. If that’s you, and you feel a longing today for finding out more about Jesus, that’s the Holy Spirit prompting you. There is satisfaction available. That hole can be filled. Please don’t leave here today without talking to someone about it and praying about it with us. Speak to me, or Gary, or anyone really! If you can’t talk to any of us today, please talk to Jesus. I promise you he is waiting and will listen to you.

Please remember that with the woman at the well, Jesus was prepared to break any amount of taboos to speak to the woman. Nothing you have done is bad enough to stop him wanting to speak to you or help you.

Most of us here however are probably not identifying with the woman at the well. Most of us are probably more likely to read this and identify with the person offering the truth about Jesus. Here is something very important. Jesus models how we should approach sharing the good news about him.

The thing is, what has your Christian life been like? If you are like me, I suspect you have spent a long time in the Christian Bubble. Going to church, reading Christian books, meeting with Christian people, listening to Christian music and having Christian thoughts.

I don’t mix with many people outside that bubble and that’s something I hope changes. You see, one question that God is asking me through this passage today is, who is your woman at the well?

I remember a few years ago listening to a speaker who shared a story that impacted me so much. I make no apology but every time I have read it this week in preparation for talking today It has had me blubbing like a baby (welling up?)

It is a story told by Tony Campolo and it is a little bit long but please bear with me

Up a side street I found a little place that was still open. I went in, took a seat on one of the stools at the counter, and waited to be served. This was one of those sleazy places that deserves the name, "greasy spoon." I did not even touch the menu. I was afraid that if I opened the thing something gruesome would crawl out. But it was the only place I could find.

The fat guy behind the counter came over and asked me, "What d'ya want?"

I said I wanted a cup of coffee and a donut.

He poured a cup of coffee, wiped his grimy hand on his smudged apron, and then he grabbed a donut off the shelf behind him. I'm a realist. I know that in the back room of that restaurant, donuts are probably dropped on the floor and kicked around. But when everything is out front where I could see it, I really would have appreciated it if he had used a pair of tongs and placed the donut on some wax paper.

As I sat there munching on my donut and sipping my coffee at 3:30 in the morning, the door of the diner suddenly swung open and, to my discomfort, in marched eight or nine provocative and boisterous prostitutes.

It was a small place, and they sat on either side of me. Their talk was loud and crude. I felt completely out of place and was just about to make my getaway when I overheard the woman beside me say, "Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm going to be 39."

Her "friend" responded in a nasty tone, "So what do you want from me? A birthday party? What do you want? Ya want me to get you a cake and sing 'Happy Birthday'?"

"Come on," said the woman sitting next to me. "Why do you have to be so mean? I was just telling you, that's all. Why do you have to put me down? I was just telling you it was my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?"

When I heard that, I made a decision. I sat and waited until the women had left. Then I called over the fat guy behind the counter, and I asked him, "Do they come in here every night?"

"Yeah!" he answered.

"The one right next to me, does she come here every night?"

"Yeah!" he said. "That's Agnes. Yeah, she comes in here every night. Why d'ya wanta know?"

"Because I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday," I told him. "What do you say you and I do something about that? What do you think about us throwing a birthday party for her—right here—tomorrow night?"

A cute smile slowly crossed his chubby cheeks, and he answered with measured delight, "That's great! I like it! That's a great idea!" Calling to his wife, who did the cooking in the back room, he shouted, "Hey! Come out here! This guy's got a great idea. Tomorrow's Agnes's birthday. This guy wants us to go in with him and throw a birthday party for her—right here—tomorrow night!"

His wife came out of the back room all bright and smiley. She said, "That's wonderful! You know Agnes is one of those people who is really nice and kind, and nobody does anything nice and kind for her."

"Look," I told them, "if it's okay with you, I'll get back here tomorrow morning about 2:30 and decorate the place. I'll even get a birthday cake!"

"No way," said Harry (that was his name). "The birthday cake's my thing. I'll make the cake."

At 2:30 the next morning, I was back at the diner. I had picked up some crepe-paper decorations at the store and had made a sign out of big pieces of cardboard that read, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" I decorated the diner from one end to the other. I had that diner looking good.

The woman who did the cooking must have gotten the word out on the street, because by 3:15 every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. It was wall-to-wall prostitutes and me!

At 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner swung open, and in came Agnes and her friend. I had everybody ready (after all, I was kind of the M.C. of the affair) and when they came in we all screamed, "Happy birthday!"

Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted so stunned so shaken. Her mouth fell open. Her legs seemed to buckle a bit. Her friend grabbed her arm to steady her. As she was led to sit on one of the stools along the counter, we all sang "Happy Birthday"' to her. As we came to the end of our singing with "happy birthday, dear Agnes, happy birthday to you," her eyes moistened. Then, when the birthday cake with all the candles on it was carried out, she lost it and just openly cried.

Harry gruffly mumbled, "Blow out the candles, Agnes! Come on! Blow out the candles! If you don't blow out the candles, I'm gonna hafta blow out the candles." And, after an endless few seconds, he did. Then he handed her a knife and told her, "Cut the cake, Agnes. Yo, Agnes, we all want some cake."

Agnes looked down at the cake. Then without taking her eyes off it, she slowly and softly said, "Look, Harry, is it all right with you if I…I mean is it okay if I kind of what I want to ask you is is it O.K. if I keep the cake a little while? I mean, is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"

Harry shrugged and answered, "Sure! It's O.K. If you want to keep the cake, keep the cake. Take it home, if you want to."

"Can I?" she asked. Then, looking at me, she said, "I live just down the street a couple of doors. I want to take the cake home, okay? I'll be right back. Honest!"

She got off the stool, picked up the cake, and carrying it like it was the Holy Grail, walked slowly toward the door. As we all just stood there motionless, she left.

When the door closed, there was a stunned silence in the place. Not knowing what else to do, I broke the silence by saying, "What do you say we pray?"

Looking back on it now, it seems more than strange for a sociologist to be leading a prayer meeting with a bunch of prostitutes in a diner in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning. But then it just felt like the right thing to do. I prayed for Agnes. I prayed for her salvation. I prayed that her life would be changed and that God would be good to her.

When I finished, Harry leaned over the counter and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he said, "Hey! You never told me you were a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to?" In one of those moments when just the right words came, I answered, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning."

Harry waited a moment and then almost sneered as he answered, "No you don't. There's no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. I'd join a church like that!"

Wouldn't we all? Wouldn't we all like to join a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning?

Well, that's the kind of church that Jesus came to create!

I have been reading the Bible every day this year and I have learned so many things. The one that has stood out for me this year is simply this – God has no favourites. It’s in Romans 2:11 and it’s in Acts 10:34. It shines out through Psalms and through the whole New Testament. God is a god for everyone. He doesn’t give us a choice about this. We cannot limit God or who he wants us to minister to.

Jesus makes it clear in his last message to people before he goes to Heaven. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we have the great commission and in it Jesus says

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

The word used in Greek is actually Ethnie and this doesn’t mean country. It means people group. It means every type of person. It means rich people, it means poor people, it means teenagers, it means old people, it means alcoholics, it means drug addicts, it means whores and it means saints. It means muslims, it means atheists and it means people who have been going to church their entire life. It means gay, straight and everything else. It means criminals, it means murderers, it means rapists and worse. It means the disabled and the physically perfect. There are no exceptions.

If God moves you to a well you have to talk to the women who come along.

We don’t know where our wells will be. Maybe it is work. Maybe it is out in town. Maybe it is going to be in the life groups we are moving to in a few weeks. Wherever God puts us, we need to be watching out for those people who are in a bad way and who need to know about the living water 

Jesus offers.

I know it is difficult. I don’t like speaking to people. Telling people about Jesus is even more difficult. Usually because of where they are when God lets us meet them. Jess and I were having a long chat yesterday about various things and she said to me that being a Christian means being prepared to meet people at their worst. She was absolutely correct.

We could do worse that use the model that Jesus uses in this passage. We need to acknowledge their sin but sit alongside them. It is no use admonishing that young mother for smoking in front of her kids when she is stressed out. Instead, buy her a packet of fags and take her for a coffee. Don’t get that the couple upstairs are arguing again, invite one or both of them to yours for dinner. When was the last time we had a cup of coffee with a prostitute? When did we last buy a homeless person a meal? 

Remember that it’s ok to confront them with what they have done wrong in their lives but be gentle. Tell them there is something that is better. Offer them the living water of Jesus. Share your story of how you found out what it was and don’t give up. If they change the subject keep going!

That’s the only way to go. Remember at the start I said that I realised eventually that I had been confronted with my sin. This was the way it happened. I went to a church that modelled Jesus at the well. They sat with me, they had me round for dinner, they showed me that I was looking for happiness in the wrong place and they showed me the inexpressible joy that could be found in Jesus.

That’s the church that Jesus came to build. He came that we could have life and have it in abundance. He came to show us the way to build that church; the church which holds birthday parties for whores at half three in the morning. He came to show us the way to build a church that gives food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless and hope to the hopeless.