1/14/07 Worlds In Collision Pt. 2
JOH 4:5-15 So He came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria 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 therefore said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water." She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. " The woman said to Him, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to draw."
What I’ve just read for us
is the beginning of the account
of Jesus’ presentation of Himself
to a Samaritan woman He met
as He returned to Galilee from Judea.
If you were here last week
you’ll remember that this conversation between Jesus and this woman
violated so many of the established social rules
of the Jewish culture of the time.
In fact, the woman’s initial response to Jesus’ request for a drink,
and then John’s editorial comment that follows
communicate the situation perfectly.
"How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
Jesus, of course, had not the slightest concern
about social customs designed to create barriers between people.
He did, however, care very much
about communicating the truth about Himself
to this woman who, up to this point, had been thoroughly beaten up by life.
And what Jesus does next
is to take something in this physical world,
something well known to this woman,
in this case water,
and then uses it as a bridge
to take her into the truth about Himself.
This was a favorite teaching technique of His,
one He used often.
I am the bread of life...
I am the light of the world...
I am the living water...
I am the vine...
I am the good shepherd...
I am the door...
These were all things commonly understood -
bread, light, water, vines, shepherds, doors.
They were things that didn’t scare people,
things that didn’t intimidate them.
If He would have talked as so many preachers talk today,
we would never have understood a word He was saying.
“I am the eternal transcendent divine communication of truth.”
Huh?
If ever we had any doubts
about Jesus’ absolute determination
to find the most effective ways He could find
to communicate the truth about Himself to each of us,
all we have to do is look at what took place between Him and this woman.
Here He is sitting by a well,
and a woman comes up to that well with a water pot,
and He says in effect, “You know, I’m just like that water you’re going to draw out of that well,
only I don’t quench the thirst of your body,
I quench the thirst of our soul forever.”
For a while, of course,
this leads to a very strange conversation,
one in which nothing seems to make sense,
but that’s His way with all of us -
He doesn’t tell us where we should be,
He simply starts right where we are.
JOH 4:10 Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water."
To which the woman responds,
JOH 4:11 ..."Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water?”
Now, even at this point in the conversation
it’s obvious that Jesus is using water as an illustration of Himself.
Starting right where she was,
with something she understood perfectly,
He then wants to bring this woman to the place
where she realizes that
just as her body thirsts for physical water
so her spirit thirsts for her God.
It is not an easy truth for her to grasp, of course,
because it is a truth she has worked very hard to hide from
for the same reasons we do.
We hide from it
because whenever we get near that thirst
we simply don’t know what to do with it.
What do we do
with a longing, a thirst within our spirits
that nothing seems to quench?
Certainly we try to find answers.
There was a time when this woman thought the answer she longed for
could be found in the love of a man.
But after at least six men,
and at least five failed relationships,
I’m sure she’d given up even that hope.
She kept trying of course -
another man,
another relationship,
but by this time she’d even stopped marrying them.
Now she was reduced to simply living with them.
It kept things less complicated,
easier to get out of when it once again fell apart.
She couldn’t stop trying, of course,
because to stop trying is to stop living,
but neither did she really have any hope
that what her spirit hungered for could ever be found.
And then this Man,
this Jesus came on the scene.
And even though at first His words seemed like nonsense,
He Himself sounded like the most sane person she’d ever met.
And even as she tried to make sense of what He was saying,
I think she found a hope stirring inside her,
a hope that just maybe there really was something...or someone
who could quiet that ache deep within her.
Do you ache inside this morning?
Do you find yourself filled with emptiness
and you don’t even know why?
Do you think you can find the answer in another relationship?
There is within each of us
a deep longing that no human being can fill,
a longing for the love of our God.
There are some human parallels to this hunger.
Perhaps the most obvious
is the hunger each of us feels for a father’s love.
To be honest,
this is a hunger I was never fully conscious of
until I saw it through the eyes of my daughter, Joni.
When she was in 8th grade
one of her teachers gave the class the assignment
of writing a description of their earliest childhood memory.
What she wrote
now hangs on the wall of my office, framed.
It is the description of something that she and I shared
when we were living in Dallas Texas.
She was three years old at the time.
Here’s what she wrote.
I have many vivid memories of my childhood. I remember the excruciating pain of my first bee sting. I remember how on hot summer days, my cousin and I would don our swimming suits and spend hours running through the sprinkler. But of all the memories that come flooding back to me, the ones that are the clearest and most often bring a smile to my face, are the memories of the dates I would go on with my dad.
Every Saturday morning my dad and I would leave the house, hand-in-hand, off on some big adventure. Of all the adventures we ever had, I think I enjoyed the ones at the airport the most. To some people this may not sound very exciting, but there is one thing that they don’t understand. They don’t understand that things are always exciting when I’m with my dad, that’s just the kind of person he is. Once we reached the airport, we had the decision of what to do first. We could watch the planes come and go, ride the subway around the airport, or watch the small television supplied by the airport for people awaiting the arrival of their flight. The tv’s usually got my vote, and my father’s too. The small television sets were connected to chairs located throughout the airport. Once we found one that seemed to be in good working order, I would position my self on my dad’s lap. He would then deposit the quarter necessary to turn the machine on, and we would have ten minutes of uninterrupted viewing. When our time was up and the machine clicked off, I would beg my father to put “just one more” quarter in, and he always would. This would go on for quite some time, but eventually I would tire of it and it was off to the subway!
The subway was really no more than a small train that ran in circles around the airport, stopping at different terminals. We would board the train, still hand-in-hand, and me trying to match my father’s huge steps. After riding halfway around the airport, my dad and I would leave the subway for a snack. Usually we would get peanuts and pop, one of my favorites. When the peanuts were eaten and the pop drunk, we would reboard the train and ride the other halfway around the airport loop.
A trip to the airport was never complete if we didn’t watch the planes come and go. We would see the people boarding, and imagine where they were going and what they were going to do once they got there. There would always be someone who had just robbed a bank and was escaping to some foreign country to spend his fortune. This was usually the last thing we did before we would head home to tell my mom about our most recent adventure.
The thing that made those Saturdays so special was my dad, he always made sure I had the best possible time I could. I will always remember those dates, but what will stay with me the longest is the way my little hand felt in his big one, the way I always felt perfectly happy when we were together, and the feeling of total security I had. I will never forget my dad and the love he showed me.
I share that with you this morning
because it is the best way I could think of
to communicate what every human spirit longs for
in our relationship with our Creator.
What my daughter felt and experienced
in those Saturday outings with me when she was three years old
is what each of us long for
in our relationship with the Father of our spirits.
That is what this Samaritan woman was looking for
in those relationships with man after man after man.
It is what each of us long for
in our interaction with our God.
And I can’t bring this up
without also doing what I can
to help us make it personal.
And perhaps the easiest way for me to do that
is to have you take what Joni described in her relationship with me
and ask you to set it next to what you know in your relationship with God.
Unfortunately some of you would have to drastically rewrite that airport adventure
before there would be any similarity at all.
And the “father” in your airport adventure
would always be in a hurry,
and always have an agenda he wanted you to fulfill.
He would have things he wanted you to learn.
It would be primarily an educational outing
in which you would be required to learn and understand
the basic workings of an international airport.
If you asked to watch the tiny TV for ten more minutes,
or if you dropped some of your peanuts on the floor,
or spilled some of your soda on your clothes,
he would reprimand you for the misuse of valuable time,
or for being wasteful, or careless, or sloppy.
In fact, for some of you,
even the suggestion that there could be any parallels at all
between what Joni and I shared together
and what you could share together with your God,
seems like utter absurdity.
And yet...
and yet it is what the human spirit hungers for above all else.
And I will tell you honestly
that the degree to which what you experience in your relationship with God
differs from what Joni and I shared together
is an excellent measure of the degree to which
you have not yet correctly understood
what God has offered us through Jesus Christ.
Would it help to hear it from God Himself?
ROM 8:15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"
And we can only correctly understand
the power of that statement from Romans 8
when we realize that the word “Abba”
is the word “papa”,
the word a small child would use
as he or she climbed up into their daddy’s lap.
I share that with you
most of all because having lived our entire lives
afraid of our God,
or angry at Him,
or hiding from Him prior to our entrance into His family,
having never known the kind of love He has for us
we simply have no way of recognizing
the degree to which the lies that we believe
continue to blind us to who He is
and rob us of what He longs for us to know.
I know all to well
the power of those lies in our lives,
those lies used by Satan
to convince us that God’s involvement in our lives
is the last thing we want.
We have tasted the pain
that sometimes accompanies
His recreative work in our lives,
and, if we have not yet experienced the freedom He is seeking to bring us,
it’s hard for us to trust His love.
Or we look at certain things in our lives,
things we are clinging to so tightly,
and we’re afraid that maybe this God of ours
doesn’t understand how much we need them,
or maybe He doesn’t care,
and we fear.
Do you think this is an age thing?
Do you think what I share with you now
about God’s involvement in our lives
is something you’d expect from someone really old,
someone who’s way past knowing or caring about real fun, or fulfillment, or satisfaction in life?
“No wonder he likes hanging out with God -
look at them...they’re nearly the same age!”
Do you think the human spirit has an age?
Do you think what our spirits hunger for changes over time?
I was 18 years old when I met my Lord,
and the great wonder of my life
is that nothing has really changed.
He understood me perfectly at 18
when what I wanted most
was a life filled with action and adventure and freedom and exploration.
He understood me perfectly at 28
when I was single and desperately lonely and didn’t even know it
and He brought Sandee into my life.
He understood me perfectly at 34 years old,
riding that little train around the Dallas Airport
with my little girl by my side.
He understood me a month ago
when, every morning at 5:00 a.m. this funny little voice called out “HEY PA!!” from the basement,
and kept calling out until I answered.
Even before He created me
He understood perfectly.
He understood what I truly hungered for
and He planned how to express His love to me
in ways that would satisfy that hunger.
It’s not an age thing.
Most of all I think it’s a fear thing
because having never known His love before
it’s hard for us to trust
especially when He starts dealing with issues
we’ve tried very hard to avoid.
Our friend at the well discovered that.
Jesus began with her
where we all need to begin - by offering hope.
That’s what He was doing
with those words this woman could not at first understand -
...whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.
And even though she didn’t understand,
there was something deep within her spirit
that longed for more information.
But then the conversation took a terrifying turn
because the next thing Jesus said to her was,
“JOH 4:16 “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
And that, of course was the real sticking point in her life.
It must have been a shock to her.
Here they were, the two of them,
having this lovely conversation about wells and water,
and then all of the sudden
from out of nowhere He brings up the great gaping tragic hole in her life.
She did what we would all do, of course,
skillfully avoided the whole thing.
JOH 4:17 The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."
There!
That should put and end to that!
And then came the response that changed everything forever,
the response that, when she heard it,
filled this woman with absolute terror.
JOH 4:17-18 “You have well said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.”
We are going to hold off until next week
before we look at most of this woman’s response to this statement
because it’s way to good to rush through.
But I do want to point out just one thing before we close.
Certainly there must have been a tremendous sense of shock
when this man she had never met
suddenly revealed to her
His detailed knowledge of the worst failures of her life.
But I think there was something else in His comments
that may have affected her even more deeply at that point.
Two things, in fact.
First, though He obviously possessed this knowledge about her
even before they met,
He still began by offering her hope.
I’m making this too complicated...
When Jesus said to her, whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life...,
He made that offer to her
with the full knowledge of the worst failures of her life,
just like He does with us.
She didn’t know that at the time,
but it must have occurred to her at some point in that conversation.
And with us, though it plays out a little different,
I think there is a similar discovery that we must face in our relationship with our God as well.
Of course we know that He knows about all the junk in our lives when we first come to Him,
but I also think there is a little voice inside us
that tells us that very likely the offer He’s making us
is one that assumes that if we take Him up on His offer,
then none of that junk will ever be a part of our lives in the future.
And with all of us
though there are some changes that come relatively quickly
and relatively easily after our union with our God,
there are others that don’t come easily at all.
And sometimes it takes us a very long time of living in His love
before we will even dare risk bringing some of the big unresolved issues in our lives
out into the light.
And when we do that
we, just like this woman,
need to remind ourselves that He knew all about it,
and all about us from the very beginning.
And it was with that full knowledge
that He said to us, “I want you for my child.”
And the other thing I notice here
is the way Jesus told her about her failure.
He did it without condemnation.
He didn’t say, “TO YOUR SHAME you have had five husbands...”
He simply stated it as a fact.
And He does the same with us
because our God will never shame us.
He will work for our freedom,
which sometimes means His asking us to face some very hard issues,
but even then He treats us with respect,
and with dignity,
because of the eternal value He places on His friendship with us.
And we’ll pick it up at this point again next week.