Sermon for 02/24/08

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Sermon for 02/24/08
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Lent Wk 3,
John 4:5-42, (RW96)

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, AMEN

THEME: Some things are too important not to share! Like Jesus! But not every Christian is convinced of that. They think of themselves an unlikely evangelist. But if the Samaritan woman, (a social outcast – morally broken), can be an evangelist, then why can’t we? The only thing required is to encounter Jesus! And then you will discover what the woman at the well discovered; Jesus is the bread of life. He is the living water. When you realize how special you are to Jesus, and to what lengths He went to (the cross) to save you, how can we come to any other conclusion: Jesus is too important not to share!

Page 7 = Gospel Reading

1) TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO SHARE! A long time ago I remember watching a Mercedes-Benz TV commercial showing one of their cars colliding with a concrete wall during a safety test. Someone then asked the Mercedes engineer why their company does not enforce their patent on their car's energy-absorbing car body. The Mercedes' design had been copied by almost every other car maker in the world despite the fact that they have an exclusive patent. The engineer replied, "Because in life, some things are just too important not to share." Wow! What a great statement. Some things are just too important not to share. Question: Aren’t Christians supposed to think like that? The theory is that we believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is one of those things that is too important not to share. In fact, there are some Christians who declare that is an understatement. They believe that Jesus Christ MUST be shared with our friends, our neighbors, and the world. As we walk toward the cross with Jesus during this season of Lent, we are being asked to reflect on what we believe: Do we believe that there are some things (like Jesus) that are too important not to share?

2) UNIQUE EVANGELIST! Now the work of sharing the news of Jesus Christ, we call evangelism. And evangelists are people who spread the good news of Christ. And of course we know what evangelists look like don’t we? They’re people like Billy Graham, right? People like priests and ministers; a select few, somewhat fanatical religious people, called to the heavy responsibility of preaching to the unchurched. Right? Well, if that’s the definition of an evangelist, you’re really going to be intrigued with this very unique evangelist that I am about to introduce you to… But I must warn you, this person is a most unlikely candidate for the “evangelist of the year” award.

3) A WOMAN! Why? Well first, this person lived in a day when only men took on spiritual concerns… and she was a woman! Now today we know in hindsight, that women have always been at the forefront of Christian faith. Most churches today would collapse if women in the church were to withdraw their efforts. But it is only in these latter days that women have been getting much recognition in the church for their selfless acts of service. In fact, there are churches all over this world who are still struggling even today with the role women should play.

4) CAN’T EVEN SWIM! Maybe you have heard the story of a Pastor Nominating Committee that chose a female candidate for pastor. When the committee brought the nomination back to the church for approval, all but one in the congregation confirmed the selection. The one member who voted “no” had no real objection to a female pastor but he had always enjoyed fishing with the former pastors and he just knew this woman would not enjoy fishing. As soon as this new female pastor was installed this gentlemen invited her to go fishing with him. On the first try the pastor left her fishing gear in the car and didn't realize this until their boat was out in the middle of the lake. So the man offered to let her use one of his rods--which she got tangled in the brush and broke the line. The man offered to row back to get her gear but she insisted she had troubled him enough. So she stepped out of the boat and started walking across the water. At this point the man thought to himself, "Humph, that figures, she can't even swim."

5) STRUGGLE! It's an old joke, but it highlights a very real struggle in many churches. Should women be in the pulpit? Absolutely! On March 30^th, our very own Sherri Knutson will be ordained in a church in North Carolina – and she will be a tremendous blessing to that congregation! But we have to remember the first woman to be ordained into the Lutheran Church didn’t occur until 1970. And our Roman Catholic and Orthodox friends are struggling with the question of whether women should be admitted to the priesthood. A long and revered tradition is at stake. So, it's really remarkable that this particular evangelist happens to be a woman. Living nearly 2000 years ago, she would be as surprised about it as anybody.

6) BREAKING ALL THE RULES! When she first met Jesus she was shocked that he even talked to her. It was at a well outside her village. She had gone there to draw water. An outcaste of her own village, she thought she would be the only one there at that hour of the day, but here was this man--a Jew--and he spoke to her--a Samaritan woman. She was taken back! Such things rarely happened in that day and time, in that particular culture. Jesus was breaking all the rules!

7) DISGRACEFUL! To give you an idea of how shocking this must have been in those days, you only have to reflect on the story once told by former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. He was visiting a part of the Moslem world that segregates women much like in Judea 2,000 years ago. One evening as Douglas was talking with two Moslem women, a husband of one of the women arrived on the scene. He came cursing. "His face was livid," said Douglas. "He lunged at his wife with closed fist, hit her on the side of the face, and knocked her to the ground." Later the husband came to apologize to Mr. Douglas, but not for his own behavior. Amazingly he apologized for his wife's conduct. He hoped Mr. Douglas would not think too badly of his wife for what she had done. What was his wife's "disgraceful" conduct? She had spoken to Douglas, a man,… in public.

8) NOT A VERY NICE WOMAN! No wonder that when the woman in our lesson for this Sunday met Jesus, she was shocked that he would talk to her. That was the way things were in that part of the world in that day and time. Jewish men didn't talk to strange women--especially Samaritan women. So that is the first thing that was unique about this particular evangelist--she was a woman. But here is something even more surprising: SHE WAS NOT A VERY NICE WOMAN. In those days it was deemed incredulous that God would allow a woman to share the good news, yet alone to allow a woman with all the problems that this woman had to be a witness for her Lord. This was a woman who had been married many times and when she met Jesus she was living in sin with a man to whom she wasn't married. By society’s standards she was immoral and not a very nice woman!

9) LIVING IN SIN! Nowadays such behavior as living in sin would hardly raise an eyebrow. Some of you, however, are old enough to remember when film star Ingrid Bergman was invited by Ed Sullivan to appear on his program. This was around1958. For our younger members, the Ed Sullivan Show was one of the leading programs on television in those days long ago. At the time Sullivan invited Ingrid Bergman to appear on his show, Bergman was living in sin with an Italian film producer. She had left her husband and had even mothered a child by her lover. When it was announced that Bergman was going to be on the Sullivan show, such a public clamor arose that Sullivan had to rescind her invitation. Can you imagine that in light of what is allowed on television today? Living in sin seems the norm for television today.

10) SINFUL WOMAN! There has been a definite and dramatic change in the moral climate in our society. Nine out of ten couples that come into my office today to talk about getting married are already living together. Society would not have accepted or tolerated a couple who lived together out of wedlock in Jesus’ day. Society today turns a blind eye to countless sins. Likewise, today, the number of unwed mothers is soaring. Auburn High School has in the past had one of the highest pregnant teenager rates in the country. As sad as it is, we did not invent this new anything-goes morality. It has been cycled around throughout recorded history. All we've done in our society today is to make sinful behavior culturally semi-respectable. But in Jesus' time things were a little different! There were still laws on the books that prescribed that the “adulterer” could be stoned to death. So you can imagine how surprised this Samaritan woman was that a man of Jesus' piety and stature had any dealing with her at all— not only because she was a woman but also because she was such a sinful woman.

11) WOMAN! Jesus can be such an embarrassment, can't he? He embarrassed his own disciples! They were continually having to explain his unconventional behavior. But to have anything to do with this particular sinful woman was really going too far. Here was a woman who was a village outcast. She couldn't even associate with the other women, (that’s why she was at the well in the middle of the day alone, rather than in the evening or early morning.) She had been divorced several times. She was even now living with a man who was not her husband. Yet Jesus sees possibilities in her. He not only speaks to her--he uses a term for her that would be shocking to many people. He called her "woman."

12) SPECIAL LADY! Now that may not seem too shocking in the English, but Bible scholars tell us that the Greek word for woman, "gune," is used here. This is not a term used for scolding or contempt. Rather it is a term used lovingly as a term of great endearment. It can be translated as "special lady"! Here is what is really shocking: Jesus used the same word for this woman that He used for His mother, Mary, at the wedding in Cana and on the cross. Imagine that…. He called a woman who was regarded in her own village as hardly better than a prostitute a "special lady"! Even more surprisingly, Jesus treated her like a special lady. He listened to her and respected her opinions. He did not compromise his own convictions--she went away knowing that her lifestyle must change-- but he treated her with dignity as a child of God. In fact, this special lady was the first person mentioned in the New Testament to whom Jesus revealed His true identity: "I who speak to you am He [the Messiah]."

13) ENCOUNTER JESUS! The impact of Jesus' acceptance on this woman was enormous. Never before had she been treated by a man like this. The men she had known had used her and abused her. They certainly did not treat her like a "special lady." This woman at the well had gone from one dead-end relationship to another. Not one man had given her what she really hungered for. Still she kept up her desperate search. And then... she encountered Jesus. She encountered Jesus and she discovers in Jesus what she really needed all these years. She needed to know that her life mattered. She needed to know that in spite of her failures, in spite of her weaknesses, in spite of her sin, she was a person of worth. She did not know who she really was until she met this teacher from Nazareth. And when she met Jesus her life was changed. She would never be the same again. She had brought her jar out to the well to draw water, but in her encounter with Jesus she had discovered something far more significant-- she had been given the water of life.

14) HER! This woman at the well probably would have liked to stay in Jesus' presence, but the disciples arrived and put an end to it. "She went away into the city," John tells us. And then comes the amazing part: This Samaritan woman--this Samaritan woman who had fouled up her life in so many ways--turns into an evangelist: "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did," she tells her friends in the village. "Can this be the Christ?" At her urging, the people from the village come out to the well. They beg Jesus and his followers (a band of Jews!) to stay with them (a village of Samaritans). After listening to Jesus speak, a good number of people from the village believed in Him. And so the people said to the woman: "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world." A whole town meets and accepts Jesus, the Savior, because of her invitation!

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15) UNLIKELY BUT EFFECTIVE EVANGELIST! So there you have it: The story of a very unlikely but effective evangelist. A woman--a Samaritan woman--a Samaritan woman with a shady reputation. And yet she found in Jesus what she really needed—she found out that she was a special lady. She found out who she was—a child of God. And when she found out who she was--when she found what Jesus could do in her life, she went back to tell others. You know, if God can use someone like this unlikely evangelist to effectively spread the good news, maybe God could use ordinary people like you and me! She was hardly a “Billy Graham”, or an “ordained theologian”, and yet her simple words of invitation brought others to faith. When did you last ask someone to come to church to meet Jesus? When did you last intentionally bring the physically, emotionally, and spiritually wounded to this “hospital for broken people”? Some have said the church is nothing more than a hospital for sinners. Others have suggested that evangelism is just one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread. And Jesus is “the bread of life.” He is “the living water.” The Samaritan woman knew it. Do you know it? Are you an unlikely but effective evangelist?

16) YOU! Ask yourself; have you not found what the woman found in Christ? Have you not discovered because of your relationship with Him that you are a special person in the eyes of God? That you matter! And now that you know, isn't it about time you told somebody? When someone asked the Mercedes engineer why their company does not enforce their patent on their car's energy-absorbing car body…. He replied, “There are some things in life too important not to share.” Jesus is here to tell you today, that He loves and cares for you. You are special! ...so special, He overlooked your brokenness, and was willing to die for you on the cross that you may have the living water that bring eternal life. If you can even begin to grasp the awesomeness of that fact, then I am sure you will agree with me, there are some things in life too important not to share. Like Jesus! Praise God, Amen

THE GOSPEL READING JOHN 4:5-42

[Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common 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 no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back." 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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!" The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 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 worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these 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" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us." Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?" Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, "Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?" They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat something." But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I have ever done." 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 truly the Savior of the world."

Confessional Prayer:

Dear Heavenly Father, we confess, that like the Samaritan woman, we recognize that we are undeserving and broken. Sometimes we have resisted this humbling truth through self-deception because the world only praises strength and success. Help us to see our need for you, and forgive us when we do not. Help us also Lord to see ourselves as loved and accepted by you.

Lord, we also confess that we have not always seen others around us as being worthy of your love. By our silence, we have neglected to dispense Your Grace to a Grace starved world. Forgive us for not sharing Your Son, our most precious possession, with those who have yet to experience His love and life-giving presence! Give us the compassion and wisdom to see the spiritually thirsty, and the boldness to bring them to you, the source of Living Water!

And now, although you know us better than we know ourselves, listen as we share in a moment of silence, those other parts of our lives that need to be forgiven, washed clean, and made anew.

(Silence)

Lord, there are some things in life too important not to share – and You should be at the top of the list! Come empower us now, live within our hearts, and show us how to share you with those who are spiritually thirsting for what we drink daily; the living water that brings hope, faith, love, and eternal life! AMEN

Assurance of Forgiveness:

Friends, listen to the good news: the Lord who is too important not to share with others, …that Lord has heard your confession and lovingly forgives you all your sins. Go, and let His Spirit lead you this week in helping others come to know Jesus and His love, through your actions and your words! AMEN

Opening Prayer:

Dear Lord, we come here this morning to worship you and praise you for blessings to numerous to mention. And we come to humbly receive what no one else can give us! No one else can wash away our sins and make us acceptable again to walk with you – so we lay our transgressions before you and await the forgiven that only you provide! No one else can heal our emotional, spiritual, and physical wounds like you can – and so we offer them to you – knowing you compassionately and graciously desire to mend our brokenness. No one else can lead us, guide us, and transform us into faithful servants who are discovering the source of true joy and inner peace. No one else can make us feel worthy, accepted, and loved like You can! So in the midst of this worship experience... embrace us, draw us closer to you. Touch our hearts with your love, and fill them with your Holy Spirit. Give us the gift of true life that we may pass it on to those who have not yet experienced your Grace and Love! In Jesus Name We pray, AMEN

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