Will You Give Me a Drink?

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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.

John 4:5–29

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.

John 4 · chapter mention

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.

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.

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?

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.