Sermon
Harriette Simmons
John 4:5-42

One of the dangers of being a Christian is burn-out. We know what we are supposed to do – we are to share to “good news” of Jesus Christ as Savior. We even know how we are supposed to do it – we are to draw on the power of the Lord through his Holy Spirit which indwells us as believers. But, as human beings we are so often drawn away from what God is calling us to do by what we prefer to do – by what is comfortable for us. That is why when we confess our sins to God it is necessary to confess “those things we have left undone.”

The Christian life is to be a life of mission. Jesus tells us that “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” But many times the yoke does not feel light. He also tells us to “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Many times this is very difficult for us to do. We must change our attitude about mission and develop the attitude which was our Lord’s.

Let’s take a look at the Gospel today – it is a great example of “mission” from God’s perspective.

In the story of Jesus and the woman at the well, Jesus breaks all the rules. First, he goes through the Samaritan city of Sychar, a thing no good Jew would do. The Jews did not like Samaritans. Samaritans were Jews who had intermarried with their Assyrians conquerors around the 9th century B.C. They had maintained something of their Jewish identity, but did not endorse worship at the temple in Jerusalem – they had their own worship places. The orthodox Jews of Jesus’ day considered them “mongrel” people, “half breeds,” as it were.

A proper Jew would have walked miles out of the way to go around Samaria in order to get to his destination – a fact to which Jesus did not pay much attention. He must have gone through Samaritan territory on purpose.

Second, Jesus, who, scripture tells us, was tired from his journey, sat down next to a woman who was standing at the well and proceeded to ask her for some water. Jews certainly did not speak to unknown women and definitely not to Samaritan women. They would go out of their way to avoid women in the roadway. Orthodox Jewish men were required to pray a prayer three times a day thanking God that they had not been born as women. Females were not allowed into the inner courts of the Temple. They had to remain outside with the gentiles, unbelievers and animals. The women of the Palestine of the 1st century were definitely second class citizens.

From the beginning of his ministry Jesus had chosen his position. And his position was to listen to the voice of God, and God (as we know) loves everyone even the outcasts and the misfits and women. Jesus’ ministry was to go beyond the confines of his Jewish world.

All of us like to be with people who are similar to us. There is much truth to the old adage “birds of a feather flock together.” We enjoy admiring the feathers of people who look just like we do. That is why we join private clubs and sororities and fraternities and live in families. This is where we get our identity, and that is a good thing. But, eventually, we need to become so sure of our identity that we can step out of our comfortable surroundings and offer hope to those who are different from us.

That is what Jesus is doing with the “woman at the well.” Perhaps God had given him a little nudge in his spirit that there was someone over in Samaritan land that needed some encouragement. We don’t know exactly how he got the message to go to Samaria – we only know that he went.

So, here is Jesus sitting by a well in foreign territory, speaking to a woman who is astonished by his attention, and he looks into her soul. After asking her for a drink of water, he tells her that he wants to give her “living water.” Understandably she is perplexed, but when she hears that this “living water” is going to give her “eternal life,” she wants it immediately. Here is a person who is anxious for the things of God. God must have known this when he nudged Jesus into going into Samaritan territory. The way that God brings people into his Kingdom is always one soul at a time.

Then Jesus begins to talk to her about her life. He tells her to go and get her husband, and, when she says she has no husband, he says that he knows that she has been married five times, and the person she is living with now is not her husband. Now, how did he know that about the woman? Well, after all, he was the Son of God and, so, he must have had a “pipeline” to Heaven. But, yet, as Christians, we too are given the gift of knowledge and the gift of discernment as gifts of the Holy Spirit. Jesus must have been praying under his breath that God would help him in this situation, and he must have been very, very present to this woman at the well. He was not distracted.

To me, that is the secret of successful Christian living. It is the key to mission also. To live in an undistracted way – truly present to the moment. That is so hard to do. We have to become still enough internally to draw on God’s presence.

Constantly, I fail in this area. Constantly, I have to pray for God’s grace to be truly present to the moment. The temptation for you and for me is to go about in a state of agitation and inner turmoil doing what looks like the important thing to ourselves and other people, and totally missing the precious minutes which make up our lives.

It is probably a good thing for each of us at some time in our lives to minister to sick or dying people. Time has become of so little consequence to these people. It is also good to be present to little children. They are not busy going anywhere – the anxious awareness of time is a learned trait. Primarily a Western trait.

Look at the wonderful consequences of Jesus ministry to the woman at the well. He told her that he was the Messiah. He hadn’t yet told his Jewish friends that he was the Messiah. She, in turn, was so amazed at his knowledge of her life that she went running into town and told everyone she saw that she had seen the Messiah. As a result the Gospel of John tells us that many people came to here Jesus teach, and many became believers.

What a lovely story this is. Jesus took the time to go outside the comfortable world of his Jewish roots, and as a result many peoples’ lives were touched. Many were given hope. To put it in very Christian terms – many were “saved.”

That is what mission is to be. “Bloom where you are planted.” Be a light to those who are around you, including your family and friends and those who look just like you. But don’t be afraid to stretch yourselves a little bit. There are people in the world who are dying of thirst. They are dying because they do not know of the “living water” – that is, the blessed love of God and of other people.

That is what Lent should be about for you. God wants to cleanse you as a vessel so that you can better hear his voice. So that you can reach out to any “women at the well” who need to hear the Good News of Salvation. Slow down this Lent and listen to God’s call on your life. Amen.