I preached this sermon on February 24th, at People of Hope in Rochester, MN. The sermon is based on John 4:5-42
Thirsty? The woman comes to a point in her exchange with Jesus that leads her to tell others, “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! He couldn’t be the messiah could he?”
One has to wonder why this woman is so excited about someone who knows everything about her. We know it’s not her shimmering resume or all of her personal and professional accomplishments that she is so proud that Jesus knows about, unless you count having as many husbands as Elizabeth Taylor a success. She is a stranger to everyone in her own town, an outcast because of decisions she’s made and circumstances that have happened to her. She is so ashamed of her life, that she has to come to the well to get necessary water in the middle of the day, when it’s so hot that none of the other women in town would be there.
The unnamed woman in our story this morning is thrilled because unlike anyone else in town, Jesus addresses the truth of who she is with her, not just through a gossip mill around other people. She was thirsty for a drink of that living water that only Jesus could give her. And contrary to what we might think, the drink of truth transformed her from an isolated nobody to the primary evangelist in town!
The truth is until she met Jesus, she really had nothing to be proud of. She was dried up and labored just to get a few drops of attention, even if it didn’t amount to much in the long run. She was the woman in town that everyone talked about, but that no body talked to. Her greatest desire was to be known and loved, but not even her relationships with her husbands could quench her thirst for the love she longed for.
Perhaps her whole life had been like this, longing for wholeness. Perhaps she had never really experienced unconditional love, had never had the opportunity to be known by someone because too often in her life, she had been criticized, abused or neglected. Every relationship up to this point had dried her out. Now in the middle years of her life, someone finally sees her and speaks the truth to her in a way that oddly enough…frees her to be who she has always wanted to be, she all of a sudden can swallow easily and thirsts no more.
Being seen is a powerful thing. To know that another human being has truly seen you, understood you, received you for who you really are: that is pure grace. It is the experience of a fresh cleansing rain. Most of us would do anything for it. And sometimes we want to be seen and understood more than anything else in our lives.
Being seen and understood is pure grace. There’s nothing better than someone knowing your deficiencies, neuroses and sins and loving you in spite of them. The more people know of us the more our cracks and blemishes are exposed. The more people know of us, the more we are vulnerable. Media and culture says that if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we’ll end up like kids on the playground, someone is bound to get picked on, knocked down and left crying in the sand. The more you show of yourself; it is possible that this could happen…we don’t live in a utopian world. But the more our cracks and blemishes are laid to bear, the easier it is for that living water of God’s grace to fill us and restore us as well. Grace is delightfully unpredictable. When we see it or experience it, it has the ability to turn us around and see ourselves in a new light. Grace transforms the lost into the found, the scarce into abundance, the broken into wholeness, the ashamed into the proud, and makes the impossible possible.
Five days before the end of the school year of ninth grade, I found myself desperate for grace. I needed to be seen and understood more than anything, because in the course of one evening everything I had known changed. My friend Joe had come over to hang out after school, we were in the basement, and at about 5 o-clock, my dad came to the top of the stairs and said, “Good bye Jason, take good care of your sister.” I thought that it was a strange thing to say, but at the time I didn’t think much of it. When my mom came home, a little later than I had expected her, with tear stained cheeks, I found out that my dad had robbed a store at gunpoint and led a high speed chase down the highway before being caught about 8 miles out of town. Our lives had changed in an instant. The next morning, I was getting ready for school when my mom came half way down the stairs and tossed the local paper on the floor at my feet. On the front cover was a rather large photo of my dad being detained, face down on the pavement of the highway. My mom gave me the option of staying home from school that day, but I figured I couldn’t just escape. The school was my well, I had to go there. So, I finished getting ready and headed out the door. As I walked into school, I felt like I was no longer known, but I was known about, much like the woman that Jesus met. I felt broken and lost. When I got to my locker, some of my friends ignored me, others talked among themselves, but two friends from my church asked how I was. They had seen me, they looked deep into me and saw me for who I was. It was delightfully surprising grace…it was a refreshing drink of life giving water when I was so thirsty.
As the days and weeks went on, my family was sustained by this life giving water. Jesus was present in those dark days of uncertainty through the grace and generosity of others. When we felt we had nothing, we had more than enough, when we felt we were broken Jesus surrounded us with people who helped us feel whole again, when we felt lost Jesus took our hands and guided us back into community, when we thought we had experienced the impossible, Jesus was there to make it possible to transform despair into hope.
Are you thirsty? Are there people in your life that you long to see you and know you and understand you? Do you see others around you thirsty for life giving water? Perhaps we are all like the woman that Jesus meets at the well, thirsty for something, and we’re holding our water buckets full of burdens, stress, power, fear or unattainable control. These things will not quench our thirst. Let go of your buckets, leave them alone. Jesus invites us to living water that doesn’t dry up. This water of grace and hope, love and acceptance is ours from the savior of the world, Jesus. Drink it up and share it with others. Quench your thirst.The woman left her bucket because she didn’t need it any more. She was given a new identity a new hope. We have also been given this same gift, as Jesus takes the truth of all that we are and all that we have experienced and pours grace out over us and into us. For Jesus, it doesn't matter that we carry heavy buckets of junk around with us, he just continues to pour grace into the world, in spite of and because we are thirsty without him. AmenThroughout the course of the week leading up to this sermon, I deliberated on whether the personal story I use in the sermon was too personal and made me too vulnerable. But as I thought about it, I realized it is vulnerability and honesty that opens us to the work of the Spirit among us in the world. May the Spirit of the living God flow through you and in you today that your life may be filled with the quenching water of life.
