Through the eyes of an Outcasts-Jesus in HD
Outcasts manuscript
Our perception of Jesus determines whether or not we want to follow Him. And if you are already a follower, your perception determines what kind of Christian you will be.
There are a few pictures of Jesus behind me taken from various films and TV shows. Some border on offensive. Some resemble what you think Jesus might actually look like. The reality though is that none of them are correct. None of them are the real Jesus. To help us see the real Jesus, in this message series, Jesus in HD, we are looking through the eyes of various people that encountered Jesus while He was on the earth. Today we are looking through the eyes of an outcast.
I have to be really up front about our purpose in this message series. It’s two fold:
1. If you are a Christ-follower, we want you to be a better one. We want to make sure you are following the real Jesus.
2. If you are not a Christ-follower, then we want you to be one. We want you to consider the real Jesus and ask, “Why don’t I follow Him? Why don’t I give my life to Him?”
That’s where we are going.
Read John 4:1-10, 15-18
Things were heating up around Jesus in Judea (show map), so he left for Galilee. As you can see from the map, in between is Samaria. Now Samaria was made up of Samaritans and the Jews hated the Samaritans. Several reasons but essentially it came down to their ethnicity (their blood line) and their religious views.
And when I say hated, I mean despised. They wanted nothing to do with them. In the Jewish ceremonial laws, touching a Samaritan or being touched by one would make you unclean. So, good Jews would travel around Samaria, out of their way, to get to Galilee.
But Jesus travels right through the heart of it. He was on His father’s mission, not his own. And his mission was about people.
When he became weary from travel he stopped to rest at a well and sent His disciples into town to get some food. But really He had another agenda.
(1 )That’s where he encounters the Samaritan woman. This whole encounter with this woman is really scandalous.
1. First, she’s a Samaritan.
2. Secondly, she’s a woman. Reality in that culture was that women were 2nd class citizens. But not to Jesus.
3. Third, we find out in the story that she had been married several times and was now living with a guy who was not her husband. So her life choices made her an outcast.
There’s a reason John gives us the detail about it being the 6th hour which was noon. This woman was traveling alone at noon, in the heat of the day, to get water. This type of chore was often done in groups of women in the cool of the evening, not at noon. So either by choice or necessity she chose to come at noon to avoid the ridicule and shame from the other women. And Jesus strikes up a conversation.
(2) Every culture has its outcasts.
I remember in High School it was a kid named Kenny. And basically what made him an outcast was the fact that he never showered. I am not sure his family had running water. Probably what added to it was that he had crazy thoughts he would share with other people. You know those thoughts that I think we all have but we know better than to share it with other people. Kenny would share it anyway, like the fact he thought CDs were never going to catch on. Cassette tapes were the way to go for Kenny.
I felt sorry for Kenny. In my own HS way I tried to befriend Kenny but he was an outcast.
Every culture has its outcasts.
a. Ethnicity
b. Gender
c. Life choices
d. Social status
e. Religious views
f. Political views
Any number of things can make a person an outcast. True in our time. True in Jesus time.
(3) The thing to capture is that you cannot read about Jesus’ life and not see that He chose to encounter and befriend outcasts.
Where we may see differences that cause us to go a different direction, Jesus saw people that needed Grace and chose to engage them.
· Daisy: saw boy with multiple piercings in elevator. “I just had to look away but it was really hard because all I wanted to do was just stare at him.”
There are those whom we make outcasts based on differences.
(4) If we look through Scripture we find this striking thing about Jesus: He actually chose to hang out with outcasts over the religious. The big reason for this is that the very people who should have welcomed Him with open arms actually shunned him. And the very people who were shunned welcomed Jesus with open arms.
We can read about many “outcasts” that Jesus encountered through Scripture but one way we see Jesus’ love for the outcasts was the fact he was always hanging out with them. In the Gospels we read about 8 times that Jesus received a party invitation. 3 of those were by friends. 5 were to places or certain people’s houses that would have made them “socially unacceptable.”
Jesus loved to party. Now don’t hear me saying that Cal Nottin Jr. in Teledaga Nights was right. “I like to picture Jesus in Tuxedo T-shirt because it says I want to be formal but I’m here to party too. Because I like to party so I like my Jesus to party.”
That’s not the real Jesus either. But He did hang out with those that could have caused people to talk. Especially in the story we read today. If people would have saw Him alone with this woman, they would have talked. There was typically only one good reason a man would be by himself with a woman in that culture.
But he came to bring Grace and acceptance to those who were offered neither.
(6)And the outcasts loved him.
a. They were comfortable with Him.
a. “The more unsavory the characters, the more at ease they seemed to feel around Jesus (Jesus I never knew, 147).”
b. They were the most open to Him.
“Jesus, the only perfect man in history always attracted the most imperfect people.”
c. They were most like him.
(7) The big picture here is that Jesus preferred people over perceptions. Whether it was spending time with this Samaritan woman, or it was hanging out with Tax Collectors and prostitutes, Jesus didn’t care much about perceptions. He cared about people.
(8) And if we want to follow Him, we should too.
We should care more about people than perceptions. WE should reach out to those who are cast out of our culture for whatever reason. We should befriend the Kenny’s of this world.
We need to ask, “Who are the outcasts around me?” Who are the people that no one wants to hang around with? Who are the people that I don’t want to hang around with?”
While I know many who have intentionally tried to do this because of the fact they follow Jesus. I also know that in general Christians are not known in culture as the ones who befriend the outcasts.
· Philip Yancey writes about a friend who works with the down and out in Chicago told him this story: A prostitute came to him in wretched straits, homeless, her health failing, unable to buy food for her two year old daughter. Her eyes awash with tears, she confessed that she had been renting out her daughter-two years old!-to men interested in kinky sex, in order to support her own drug habit. My friend could hardly bear hearing the sordid details of her story. He sat in silence, not knowing what to say. At last he asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. “I will never forget the look of pure astonishment that crossed her face,” he later told me. “’Church!’ she cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? They’d just make me feel even worse than I already do!’”
In light of Jesus, I’d ask you to consider who they are and reach out to them.
· It may be a conversation.
· It may be an act of service.
· It may be an invitation to your house.
· It may mean accepting an invitation to their house, even though it may be uncomfortable.
(9) If you don’t yet follow him, you should know what you are getting into.
(10) If you feel like an outcast, know that Jesus doesn’t see you that way.
Jesus changed the message from “No undesirables allowed” to “In God’s kingdom there are no undesirables.”
Pray.