Sermon Tone Analysis

One of the hardest parts in sharing a sermon is thinking about how to begin.

How do I hold your interest in something so vitally important that if you really consider it, really deeply think about it, let it seek down in to your soul it will change your life.

A new friend of mine, Austin, from Gravity Lodi, who came and helped put up the lights yesterday, said he wanted to share stories of people in the Bible that people who were hurting today could relate to, not the high and might Moses, David, or Abraham but people who really struggled.

I immediately thought of the person whose story I am going to share with you today.

This is about a woman so relatable that we had to put her in our Christmas light display.

We have to share this story of Jesus and we need to know it as much or more than we need to know about the shepherds and the wise men.

Because when real life hits, when people remind you of how bad you have acted in your life, when you feel the guilt that overwhelms, or the anxiety telling you that you don’t matter.

This encounter with Jesus can let you know how great Jesus really is as God and how important He is in your life.

But before we get to the person we could all relate to we first need to encounter what Jesus was going through when the story begins

At one point early in Jesus ministry, many, many were coming to him.

If you judge success by how many people are coming and listening to you,and Jesus’ enemies certainly did judge success as fame, people were making Jesus successful.

If you don’t know Jesus wasn’t about fame.

Jesus wasn’t seeking the most possible followers.

Jesus was both human and God and one of his priorities was to show us how we are to live as followers of God.

It’s a trip to think but in teaching sometimes the best way to show student’s how to do something is to do it yourself and let them watch.

Jesus did that for us.

He even said so.

In this verse he refers to himself as the Son.

Yes Jesus, God the son, followed what God the Father was doing.

We too are to follow what God is doing.

At this point in the ministry of Jesus, God was still telling us who He was and did not wish to do battle with those in political authority.

That would come later.

So we come into the true story of Jesus in a very surprising time.

He is gaining in popularity but decides to leave where he is at because the political leaders, the Pharisees, are getting to notice in a bad way, his rising fame.

Here are the facts.

Jesus and the disciples are getting out of town, not quite on the run but they know people are getting angry about them.

Jesus knows this is not the time for that fight, and he is leaving to go home.

But interestingly he does something weird.

He goes to a place where people like him tried to avoid.

Here is the map and the area in purple is called Samaria.

There where people different than the Jewish people.

They were disliked, disrespected by both sides.

Prejudice and bigotry based on how you look, where you live, and what your culture is really old.

Jesus doesn’t skip this area, he doesn’t walk around like most people of his race would do.

He goes right into it.

Ever heard someone in Lodi tell you they hate coming to Stockton?

Yes, the people like Jesus hated going to Samaria.

So Jesus left the green part of the map where Jerusalem is because people were starting to get mad at him and then headed to the orange area, his and many of his disciples hometown And they chose to go through the purple area, Samaria.

They walked somewhere between 40 and 65 miles.

That’s like walking from the church to Sacramento or Roseville.

So Jesus came to a well and sat down.

The well was a spring, where fresh cold water comes up from the ground.

They were vital to people as they would come to get water for everything as there was no indoor plumbing.

Usually water would be received for the family in the coolness of morning and days end.

Yet travelers might certainly stop to get water.

This was weird.

Women usually traveled in groups.

For some reason no other women were with her.

It was dangerous for her.

In this day, sexual purity mattered a lot to everyone, not just people who wanted to please God.

So women traveling together could protect themselves from men.

Jesus desiring a drink wasn’t necessarily different but thousands of years ago, the same man later bought this well in a land far off met his future wife by helping her get water for her sheep at a well.

Now this woman is asked for water by Jesus.

Yes, everybody knew the rule.

Yet Jesus doesn’t care what people say about who you can hang out with.

It wasn’t because Samaritans loved Jesus either.

At a later time a who village of Samaritans wouldn’t let Jesus stay with them.

Jesus loves you.

Jesus loves the poor black, mexican, asian, hispanic, white, italian, irish, rich, middle class, living in a mansion to living in the projects to living in a box, to living in someone else’s tent!

Jesus loves you!

Jesus will talk with you!

Jesus will even share with you.

Jesus loves you.

That’s how we know love so we ought to do love that way too!

Right followers of Jesus?

Are we to love people we find weird, different, people who don’t even like us? Yes, Jesus did.

But Jesus kept the work of God as most important even in how he responded to a reminder of racism.

Jesus sitting right there, God himself, if God was sitting outside a gas station and said buy me a soda.

But you didn’t recognize him, then he said, “If you knew who I was, you would ask me to give you the winning power ball numbers.”

What would have changed in your life if you got close to a billion dollars?

A lot of you work or live in places with people who frustrate you, maybe even hate you.

With a billion dollars you don’t have to work with them anymore.

Jesus was offering a source of incredible change to this woman.

Great question right?

She went back to the questions behind the racism.

Samaritans were partly Jewish.

Hundreds of years earlier they had been invaded and other races were forced to live there so the Jews in Galilee and Judea regarded them as not completely Jewish, impure.

Racism is always hard to understand but it has roots in history.

All of us have been afffected by racism, in how we think, what we have, how we react, even having to be conscious of it so that we don’t act as a racist.

Yet, here Jesus is getting accused of once again trying to be a person putting Samaritans down.

This is a metaphor but its a powerful metaphor.

God will supply us with eternal life.

If you commit your life to Jesus the promise that Jesus gave this woman is the same promise He gives you.

Your life could be dramatically different.

You know though, most of us can’t relate to what it means to be promised living water.

We take indoor plumbing for granted.

I don’t even know how to use a well, and have never got water by pumping it out of the ground unlike Dave.

Instead if Jesus offered me water I might be like, I have water Jesus, see sink, turn on, I’m good.

I live a priviledged life and with privilidge I can forget about the amazing truths of God.

We who follow Jesus can forget how real they are and what a difference they make to our lives.

I saw this video recently thanks to Helen Gamez, who didn’t even realize I think but facebook put it up on my feed because she liked it and I enjoyed it too.

It shows us what it means to be living with living water, eternal life.

Video

If you are a follower of Jesus the same offer that Jesus gives this woman is the same truth in your life.

Don’t forget and start living in the hope and faith in its promise.

The woman didn’t have this hope and see what she says in reponse

She wants it bad.

This acutally would be pretty natural for the customs of the day as a contract wouldn’t be made with a woman, it would be made through her husband.

But Jesus used this question as a way to give the big reveal.

She is living a sexually immoral lifestyle.